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JAAP VAN DER BENT
A HUNGER TO PARTICIPATE THE WORK OF JOHN CLELLON HOLMES 1926-1988
A HUNGER TO PARTICIPATE
THE WORK OF JOHN CLELLON HOLMES
1926-1988
A HUNGER TO PARTICIPATE
THE WORK OF JOHN CLELLON HOLMES
1926-1988
Een wetenschappelijke proeve op bet gebied van de letteren
PROEFSCHRIFT
ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor aan de Katholieke Universiteit te Nijmegen, volgens besluit van het college van decanen in het openbaar te verdedigen op maandag 4 december 1989 des namiddags te 1.30 uur precies
door
JACOB WILLEM VAN DER BENT
geboren op 14 september 1948 te Den Haag Promotor: Prof. dr. G.A.M. Janssene
Privately printed
Copyright Jaap van der Bent, 1989
CIP Data Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague
Bent, Jacob Willem van der
A hunger to participate : the work of John Clellon Holmes, 1926-1988 / Jacob Willem van der Bent. - [S.l. : s.n.] Proefschrift Nijmegen. - Met blbliogr., lit. opg. ISBN 90-9003140-5 SISO eng-a 857.6 UDC в20(73)"19"(043.3) Trefw.: Holmes, John Clellon (werken). oonnrs
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 111
Chapter One INTRODUCTION 1
Chapter Two GO 6
Chapter Three THE HORN 52
Chapter Four GET HOME FREE 87
Chapter Five NOTHING MORE TO DECLARE 13A
Chapter Six WALKING AWAT FROM THE WAR 161
Chapter Seven TWO UNPUBLISHED NOVELS 195
Chapter Eight MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 243
Chapter Nine POETRt 302
Chapter Ten CONCLUSION 348
ROTES 353
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 376
SUMMART 381
CURRICULUM VITAE 385
AauKNumoKHTS
I wish to acknowledge my gratitude to the Fulbrlght Program and the
Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research, which both provided grants that enabled me to carry out an essential part of my research in
the United States.
I am grateful to the staffs of the Mugar Memorial Library of Boston
University and of the Butler Library of Columbia University In New
York, for permitting me to examine unpublished material in their
collections, and for providing me with photocopies.
Thanks are due to the Sterling Lord Agency, which also supplied
photocopies of material relating to John Clellon Holmes.
Further thanks are owed to Allen Ginsberg and Jay Landesman, who
•bared their views on Holmes with me.
I thank my family and friends, both in the Netherlands and In the
United States, for sustaining me through the writing of this study.
Special thanks are due to Russell Freedman and Dave Moore, who
critically read my manuscript.
I thank Karin Schreurs, who typed the manuscript.
I wish that I could once more thank John Clellon Holmes and his
wife Shirley for their help and hospitality. As it Is, I can only
dedicate this study to their memory.
A HUNGER TO PARTICIPATE
THE WORK OF JOHN CLELLON HOLMES
1926-1988
Chapter One
imoDDcnai
Soon after World War Two, Americans began to wonder about the war's impact on literature, and who would be the young writers of the postwar generation to catch the spirit of the new times. Anthologies such as
American Vanguard and Discovery devoted themselves in particular to writing by young authors. However, the work published in these anthologies was largely imitative and strongly influenced by the writers of the twenties and thirties. This also applied to many of the postwar novels. The Naked and the Dead (1946) by Norman Mailer owed much to Hemingway and Dos Passos, for instance, while Jack Kerouac's
The Town and the City (1950) was clearly reminiscent of the novels of
Thomas Wolfe. Yet the young writers possessed a certain distinctiveness which could not be denied. Although stylistically they frequently looked back to an earlier period, their subject matter was often new.
Their attention focussed on derelict young people, while the rootless characters which the writers of the twenties and thirties wrote about were usually older. The best example of this development is probably
The Catcher In the Rye by J.D. Salinger, published in 1951. Because of the war and what Norman Mailer has called "the psychic havoc of the concentration camps and the atom bomb," the young authors also tended to write about experiences related to "madness, drugs, religious ecstasies, dissipation, and amorality."2 This tendency found expression, in 1952, in four novels which dealt with all of these
1 subjects and which had the same bohemlan setting: Who Walk In Darkness by Chandler Brossard, A Cry of Children by John Home Burns, Flee the
Angry Strangers by George Mandel, and Go by John Clellon Holmes.
Because these books shared a number of themes with Jack Kerouac's novel On the Road, which made the Beat Generation famous when It was published In 1957, In retrospect Brossard, Burns and Mandel have been called the "pre-Beate." Of these three authors. Chandler Brossard probably became best known, while John Home Burns received the highest critical praise. This was not for A Cry of Children, however, but for
The Gallery, a war novel Burns published In 1947. George Mandel never really broke through as a novelist, although he went on to write three more novels and a book of cartoons and commentary about the Beat
Generation, Beatvllle U.S.A. (1961).
John Clellon Holmes's Go Is usually held to be the first Beat novel. Although Holmes achieved some fame with the book, he has nevertheless remained relatively unknown. Yet, his second novel. The
Horn (1958), Is one of the most interesting novels about the American
Jazz world. His third novel, Get Home Free (1964), as well as his essays, stories and poetry, have never been widely read. Since the late seventies there has been a renewed Interest In Holmes, however. Go and
The Horn were reissued In 1977 and 1980 respectively, and new editions of these books, as well as of Get Home Free, came out In 1988. As a three-volume edition of Holmes's essays has also appeared recently, and a new selection of his poems Is forthcoming, the time seems ripe for a critical revaluation of his work.
John McClellan Holmes was born in 1926 in Holyoke, Massachusetts.
His father was a sales representative for sporting goods firms· Because
2 Jobs were scarce during the Depression, the Holnes family had to move frequently, and John grew up In Massachusetts, Long Island, New Jersey,
New Hampshire and California· Another reason why John's homellfe was very unstable, was the fact that the marriage between his parents was not a good one. They had a trial separation In 1930 and when, In 1941, they finally decided to divorce, John and his mother and two sisters went to live In Chappaqua, New York. One result of being uprooted so frequently may well be the preoccupation with homelessness, which
Holmes sees as one of the red lines running through his work.*
Holmes started to write In his early teens, first poetry, but soon fiction as well. After dropping out of high school, he took a menial
Job at the Reader's Digest subscription department In Mt. Klsco, New
York. Knowing that he would be drafted as soon as he reached eighteen and feeling the lack of a formal education. In the summer of 1943 he took some courses In philosophy and literature at Columbia University.
From June 1944 to June 1945, Holmes was In the United States Navy
Hospital Corps. He worked In a navy hospital In San Diego, and later on
Long Island, tending paraplegics and amputees. The experience shocked him and strengthened the pacifist convictions he already had. Yet his time In the navy also allowed him to catch up on his reading. During night shifts he read Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Spengler, and
Blake. In August 1944 he married Marian Mlllambro, whom he had met the previous year.
When Holmes was discharged, he and Marian settled down in New York.
Although he did not have the necessary high school diploma, he spent most of 1945 and 1946 at Columbia University on the G.I. Bill. Much of his time was taken up by writing, however. From 1948 onward his poems started to appear in magazines such as Poetry and Partisan Review, at
3 first under the name Clellon Holmes to avoid confusion with the poet
John Holmes. In New York he met other struggling young writers. In July
1946 one of them, Alan Harrington, introduced him to Allen Ginsberg and
Jack Kerouac. Both of them would have a lasting Influence on Holmes's
life and work, and especially with Kerouac he was soon very close.
After the publication of Go and the break-up of his marriage with
Marian, Holmes went to live in Connecticut with his second wife,
Shirley Allen, In 1955. Since then, apart from paying extended visits
to Europe in 1957 and 1967, he divided his time between writing and
teaching. He taught literature and creative writing courses at the Iowa
Writer's Workshop In 1963-1964, at the University of Arkansas in 1966
and 1975, at Brown University in 1971-1972, and at Bowling Green State
University in 1968 and 1975. From 1977 to 1987 he taught at the
University of Arkansas, where he was promoted to full professor in
1980. Holmes died in March 1988.
All too often, attention has been paid to Holmes's work primarily
because of his connections with the Beat Generation, whose writers he
defended against frequently hostile critics. While Holmes's efforts in
this field helped to pave the way to academic and critical acceptance
for several of his Beat colleagues, the merits of his own work have
never been widely recognized. One of the objects of this study, the
first book-length treatment of John Clellon Holmes, is to demonstrate
critically that Holmes is a writer of considerable significance, whose
output, though relatively small, is important and able to stand on its
own. This will be done by a thorough examination of the thematic and
stylistic aspects of Holmes's work, while the extent to which that work
resembles and differs from the work of other Beat writers will also be
4 discussed. Because Holmes's stylistic particularities and his relation
to the Beat movement were major concerns of his early critics, their
reviews will be frequently quoted.
The work of John Clellon Holmes Is a perfect Illustration of a
writer finding his own voice. Another aim of this study is to follow
Holmes's development in this respect. Therefore, attention will be
given not only to Holmes's work that was published in book form, but
also to work that came out only in magazines or was never printed at
all. While some of this material is in the first place of interest
because It throws light on Holmes's maturation as a writer, a
substantial number of his magazine publications, as well as some of his
unpublished pieces, have an intrinsic value that Justifies csreful
consideration. Still, the first half of this study will be devoted to
Holmes's published novels and essays. Because these were not easily
available when this study was written, and because it seems appropriate
not Just to state but also to illustrate, quotstions from Holmes's work
will often be used. Now that publishers seem to have rediscovered
Holmes, this study can perhaps help to give his work the greater
recognition that it certainly deserves.
5 Chapter Two
00
Go, the second novel Holmes completed and his first to be published, was written between 1949 and 1951. According to the calendar pages Holmes used to keep track of his progress during the early stages of the novel, he began to write Go on August 3, 1949, completing the first part of the book two weeks later, on August 18.1 After rewriting this first section, he made a beginning with the second part on
September 9. Continuing to work steadily on the second and third parts of Go throughout the rest of 1949 and 1950, he typed up its last
chapter on February 21, 1951. Holmes was then finished with his novel, except for a brief epilogue, which he wrote subsequently but which was not included in the final version of the book, published in September
1952, under the name Clellon Holmes.
Set in the late nineteen-forties, Go covers a period of six months
In the life of Faul Hobbes, a struggling twenty-five-year-old writer
who lives in New York with his wife Kathryn. Kathryn, to whom he has
been married for six years, works in a public relations office to
support herself and Hobbes, while the latter is trying to finish his
first novel and frequently seeing some new friends: the writer Gene
Pasternak, whose first novel is about to be published, and the poet
David Stofsky. At the beginning of Part One, "The Days of Visitation,"
Hobbes has the feeling that "a new 'season" is about to begin, with
fresh ideas and exciting parties. At David Stofsky's coldwater flat,
6 Hobbes, Stofsky and Pasternak come together with several of the other characters in the book: Bill Agatson, a young alcoholic and nihilist,
Daniel Verger, who suffers from tuberculosis, and Christine, an Italian housewife who is unhappily married. Afterwards, Pasternak brings
Verger's cousin Georgia to Hobbes's apartment, where they make love.
This is a further cause for disagreement between Hobbes and his wife, who is already Irritated by having to work all the time and who doubts whether Paul will ever be able to make a living as a writer.
A week later Stofsky receives a message from Jack Waters, an old friend from his Merchant Marine days whom he has not seen for months, but who now asks Stofsky to visit him at once. Waters has committed himself to a mental home, after having discovered what he feels to be the true nature of time, which according to him does not really exist, and after having begun to destroy every watch and clock he can find.
Stofsky feels that Waters has glimpsed into the truth and decides to read the work of William Blake again, in the light of Waters's idea that our lives are only illusion.
In the meantime Gene has become deeply involved with Christine, who loved him at first sight. Walking home after having spent the evening with Gene and Christine in a bar, Paul and Kathryn come upon two men fighting over a woman who apparently has betrayed one of the men with the other. Paul is badly shaken by this spectacle, probably because it reminds him of his own unfaithfulness to Kathryn: he has been having a kind of Platonic relationship with Liza Adler, a girl whom he has not seen since he met her years ago at the university, but to whom he has continued to write intimate letters.
A few days later Stofsky tells Hobbes that because of what happened
to Waters he now has the feeling that his whole life may be changed.
7 Reading Blake he Is going through "visltation[s]" (p. 88), having visions and hearing the poet speak to him. Meanwhile Hobbes, after visiting Agatson (who Is suffering from delirium tremens), becomes so depressed about his life that he tricks Pasternak into believing that he Is suddenly leaving for Mexico.
With the coming of summer, In Part Two, entitled "Children In the
Markets," the "new season" that Hobbes had predicted actually begins.
At a party at their apartment, Paul and Kathryn smoke marijuana for the
first time, and both feel that new and unknown changes are entering
their lives. One of those changes is the flirtation that Paul begins
with a girl called Estelle, while Kathryn starts to flirt with
Pasternak, who is growing tired of Christine. The arrival in New York
of Hart Kennedy, a wild young man Pasternak had met on a trip to
California, Is a source of more confusion. It turns out that one of
Hart's habits is to steal gasoline for his car. Paul and Kathryn
disapprove of this, although Paul does not admit it. This leads to a
telephone conversation between Paul and Stofsky, during which Stofsky
accuses Paul of not coming out with what he really thinks. It is only
when Hobbes angrily mocks Stofsky that the latter feels that Hobbes is
finally honest.
Paul having finished his novel, he and Kathryn, together with Hart
and some of his friends, visit The Go Hole, a jazz club where bop music
is played. Kathryn does not appreciate Hart's favourite kind of music,
and, moreover, becomes increasingly critical of Hart, blaming him for
not working while his girlfriend Dinah has managed to find a job. After
Hart has made a date with the waitress of The Go Hole he has a fight
with Dinah, and Dinah leaves for California. A few days later Hart and
Pasternak decide to leave for the Coast as well. Before they do,
8 Pasternak sleeps with Kathryn· When Paul, wanting to have his revenge, tries to make love with Estelle, he finds that he Is Impotent. The growing antagonism between Paul and Kathryn comes to a head when
Kathryn, alerted by Stofsky, discovers some of the letters that Paul has been writing to Liza, but has left unsent. Kathryn reads them and decides to leave Paul.
In Part Three, entitled "Hell," It turns out that Paul and Kathryn are not able to let go of each other. Still, although they make love and cling to each other, their relationship has suffered a bad blow and the gap between them Is much wider. Hobbes suffers another disappointment when his novel Is rejected by a publisher, on the same day that Pasternak's Is accepted. Stofsky In the meantime has become
Involved with some drug addicts and petty criminals: bis old friend
Albert Ancke, who had been released from jail two months earlier,
"Little Rock" Harmony, and the letter's girlfriend, Winnie. Stofsky allows them to stay In his apartment and use It as a hiding place for their spoils. Driving to Brooklyn to dispose of some of the stolen goods, Stofsky, "Little Rock" and Winnie go down a one-way street in the wrong direction and are spotted by the police. They are pursued and at the end of a wild chase their car overturns. Stofsky and Winnie manage to escape, but the police find Stofsky's address on some of his journals and letters in the car. All are arrested, and Stofsky's father has to ball him out.
A week later Bill Agatson, whose condition has deteriorated, is killed when he tries to climb out of the window of a moving subway train. Paul and Kathryn realize that the "new season" that Paul had so eagerly awaited, has brought only dissipation and unhappiness. In a waterside bar, where Paul and his friends spend the evening after
9 Agatson has died, Paul has a vision of the lovelessness that governs
the lives of the people he knows, and feels that he has to escape.
Leaving their friends behind, Faul and Kathryn go home, feeling as
rootless as ever and still looking for their own place in life·
As Holmes himself has revealed, Go is a barely fictionalized
account of his experiences with some of the writers and personalities
associated with the Beat Generation. Actually, in the first draft he
used the real names of the people he was writing about, and only after
having written the first nine chapters did he come up with some of the
names that the book's characters would have in the published version.
Holmes's own persona In Go is Faul Hobbes, while Kathryn Uobbes Is
based on Holmes's first wife· Gene Pasternak and David Stofsky are now
easily recognizable as Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. The character
of Hart Kennedy Is based on the same person on whom Kerouac modelled
the Dean Moriarty of On the Road: Neal Cassady, a car-stealing
intellectual whose ideas about spontaneity strongly Influenced
Kerouac's writing and who later teamed up with Ken Kesey (as described
In Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test [1968]). The original of
Albert Ancke is Herbert Huncke, a drug-addict and writer who was a
friend of Ginsberg, Kerouac and William Burroughs. According to
Holmes's Introduction to the 1977, 1980 and 1988 re-editlons of Go, and
as also appears from a list of characters among his papers at Boston
University, Bill Agatson is based on William Cannastra, a self-
destructive young lawyer who was a friend of W.H. Auden at Harvard and
whose death, which became legendary in Beat circles, Holmes described
again in Get Ноше Free. From the same list of characters it can be
learned that Jack Waters is actually the poet Louis Simpson, while
10 minor characters such as Ed Schindel and Dinah can be traced back to Al
Hinkle and Luanne Henderson, figuring as Ed Dunkel and Marylou In
Kerouac's On the Road.
The Important events in Go are also drawn from life. While writing the book. Holmes relied heavily on the work-Journals he had been keeping for some years. These allowed him to transcribe conversations between the protagonists as they had actually taken place. This is true, for instance, of the conversation between Hobbes and Pasternak on the day when Pasternak's novel is accepted. Although Ginsberg has always resented the way he is depicted in Go, Holmes claims that his portrayal of him, based on talks with the poet and on Journal entries, is also completely accurate, down to the very words of the dialogues.^
In the description of some of the other characters and events Holmes allowed himself more freedom, however. He has said that the incident involving Jack Waters was "exaggerated in the interests of theme."
According to him, too, the only completely invented Incident in the book, Pasternak's sleeping with Kathryn, was also put in because it seemed thematically correct.
Yet, although the book Is "almost literal truth, sometimes a truth q too literal to be poetically true," as Holmes has said. Go should definitely be treated as a novel, and not as autobiography. Not only is some of its material based on his imagination, Holmes also frequently changed the order of the events. He did this to accentuate the book's major theme: the conflict between an old morality, illustrated by
Agatson's cold Intellectuality and nihilism, and the new values, based on spontaneity and intuition, which characters such as Pasternak and
Stofsky are looking for. The intensity of this conflict is shown in particular in the development of Paul Hobbes. As it is also a major
11 concern in Holmes's development as a person and as a writer, a closer look at Go should start with a discussion of this character.
II
In the beginning, Paul Hobbes is described as someone who is torn
between the negativity and despair that were prevalent among many young
Americans after World War Two, and a new, more positive attitude
towards life, which some of his friends in Go are struggling for.
Although Hobbes is powerfully attracted to this new attitude, he
frequently falls back into the old one, which brings with it the
feeling of being a victim of the age. Hobbes's very surname, which is
also that of the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes, was meant to
suggest the sense of being determined, which was characteristic of the
old attitude:
I picked the name for two reasons. One, it resembled Holmes enough. The other reason is that Hobbes is one of the first pre-19th century thinkers that represented a view of the relationship between society and men that I thought had come to dominate the world...That men were merely products of the society, and that, if you change the society, you change the nature of man. In other words, the reason why I pinned that on myself, was because that is the way 1 thought up to meeting all those people and being involved with them.
Already in the first paragraph of the book Paul Hobbes realizes
12 "how brittle and will-less'' he has become, and that he does not seem able to "dance without a piper" (p. 3). He yearns "for life to be easy, magic, full of love," and thinks how wonderful It would be "If we were all naked on a plain" (p. 3), as his friend Gene Pasternak says. Unlike
Pasternak, however, Hobbes does not believe In himself, but only In
"the spring outside the window on Lexington Avenue" (p. 3). Yet, although the spring gives him "a sense of excitement and restlessness" and "a Joy without object or reason rose within him," like all such
Joys this one "ebbed Into frustration almost Immediately because he did not know how to express It" (p. 3).
Hobbes's feelings of frustration and his lack of belief In himself are stressed time and time again. They are also suggested In the way his physical appearance Is described. In contrast to Pasternak, who Is
"the sort of young man..-on whoa clothes look vaguely Inadequate to
contain the chunky body whose awkwardness Is somehow suggestive of
athletic prowess," everything about Hobbes Is said to be "angular"
(p. 4). He "never filled out the corners of his Jackets," and he has "a
strangely unfinished air" (p. 4).
As a writer, too, Hobbes Is frustrated and lacks faith In himself.
The novel he is writing and "upon which he had been biting his nails
too long" (p. 3) Is an "Involved, symbolical thriller," written
"painfully and without much real confidence" (p. 34). When he finally
decides to submit the manuscript to a publisher, he spends a whole
night "doing rewrites which had seemed so unsatisfactory to him the
next morning that he had thrown them all away" (p. 162). He lacks "even
the barest confidence in the book" (p. 163), which is illustrated by
his reaction when it is rejected:
13 Standing on the busy margin of the Square that was huge, garish and bright In the sunny afternoon, its millions of bulbs burning, buzzing, going off and on with cheerful regularity, he ceased to believe in his book· He held it before him and seemed to know it for the first time as a lopsided patchwork of influences, wishes and vague Intellectual pretensions. Suddenly he was forlornly amazed that he could have written it, and could not imagine what collection of fears and obsessions had kept him from seeing it truly before...He realized his book was worthless, and he was shamed by Its existence, (p. 249)
The intimate letters that Hobbes writes to Liza only lead to more frustration. Hobbes fancies himself In love with Liza because he imagines that he can share with her some of the ideas that may be changing his life, and he writes her two or three times a week· Liza, however, almost never answers, "writing just enough to keep him dependent on her" (p. 34), and in the course of the book Hobbes's attitude towards her changes. Realizing that writing to her is
"basically aimless" (p. 3), he becomes aware that he is merely
"inventing splenetic or weighty sentiments" (p. 112) in his letters, and that he does not write to her because he thinks of her so often,
but rather "out of egoisms that needed a convenient release" (p. 129).
Hobbes's need for emotional contact with Liza Adler is a strong
indication that something is wrong with his marriage. Paul and Kathryn
married during the war, which is seen as the major cause of the
confusion of many young people in the late forties, "who had been torn
up at the roots, regimented, shunted back and forth across the
nighttime wilderness of a nation at war; intimidated by Shore Patrols,
14 Jackedup prices and annoyed civilians; who searched In bars and movie balconies and deadend streets for home and love, and, falling to find them, forgot" (p. 32). Although they were married, Paul and Kathryn saw each other only Infrequently during the war, because Paul was In the service. When he was finally discharged, neither was prepared "for that contlnualness of marriage the war had made Impossible" (p. 32). Their marriage Is described as "a shipboard romance carried on beyond docking against all custom and advice," and It seems "oddly centerless," now that It lacks "the heightened excitement of possible doom In which It had been born" (p. 32).
Partly, Paul and Kathryn's relationship Is problematic because of the Inverted roles In their marriage. Kathryn, having worked all day, only wants to rest In the evenings, while Paul, who has sat at home during the day, wants to go out and have fun. As a result, much of their time Is spent In "working out unsatisfactory compromises between these conflicting desires" (p. 14). Sometimes, Paul Is afraid to speak out, feeling guilty about Kathryn's having to work. He feels trapped when she confronts him with the fact that she will have to go on earning their living as long aa he concentrates only on his writing.
Although he tries to convince her that he Is working as hard as he can, deep down Inside he knows that that Is not true.
The gap between Paul and Kathryn cannot be bridged by the fact that their love life Is strong and continual. Still, also as far as sexuality Is concerned, Paul's attitude Is the cause of many problems.
Early In the book he claims that Kathryn Is free to sleep with any man to whom she would feel attracted, and asserts his own freedom to make love with another woman. It soon turns out, however, that his concept of sexual freedom Is only an idea, part and parcel of the times, and
15 that he Is not able to live up to It. When Kathryn starts to flirt with
Pasternak, Paul Is disturbed. Yet, he cíalos that he Is made happy by the fact that, by kissing Pasternak, she Is "acting freely, naturally"
(p. 113). The schism between Paul's Ideas and his feelings comes out again when Kathryn eventually sleeps with Pasternak. Although Paul Is deeply hurt by this, he says to David Stofsky, when Stofsky tries to console him, that he Is "perfectly happy" (p. 185).
Paul and Kathryn's problems reach a crisis when Kathryn finds the unsent letters to Liza. On that occasion, too, Paul's confusion about his own feelings Is apparent. At first he does "not know what he was
really feeling" (p. 222), and he seems to be mainly worried that his
friends will know that something unpleasant has happened to him. The
continual conflict In him between reason and feeling comes out In his
awareness that "his Intelligence could not seem to catch up to the
situation" (p. 225). When he confronts Kathryn, It Is as If "the
emotione...almost against hie will, found their way out of him through
his voice" (p. 225). Unlike their quarrels of the past, Paul realizes
that now "none of his easy logical explanations would reach her, or
matter at all" (p. 226). In fact, when Kathryn accuses him of all the
time having loved someone else, calling him "selfish, and dishonest,
and a hypocrite" (p. 227), his defensive Intelligence breaks down. When
he sees how much he has hurt Kathryn, "the sight of her misery so
pained him that it left no room for him to care whether it was sensible
for her to be hurt or not" (p. 233). Paul is "free at last from the
huge, complicated structure of deceits in which he had encased himself
for so long," and, "crippled by a new and sickening sense of horror at
himself," he feels "a heaving inside him, a convulsion beyond his
control" (p. 233).
16 Hobbes's doubting personality also comes out In the contacts he has with his friends. In New York Paul and Kathryn first became friends with "mostly intellectual professionals working on newspapers or writing copy somewhere," who were "liberal, slightly cynical, drank a lot and knew what was going on In the world around them" (p. 34).
Through one of the members of this "old group," Arthur Ketcham, Paul and Kathryn come to know Gene Pasternak and David Stofsky, who represent the new morality. Paul Is Instantly attracted to his new friends, but realizes that In many ways he Is different from the new group, so he ventures Into this new world "suspiciously, even fearfully" (p. 36). For one thing, he Is much more self-conscious than
Pasternak and Stofsky, and he does not have "their thirsty avidity for raw experience, their pragmatic quest for the unusual, the 'real', the crazy" (p. 35):
The two of them often amazed and Irritated him. They poked Into everything; they lacked any caution, Hobbes thought; they lacked a necessary self doubt, that extroverted subjectivity that Hobbes was accustomed to and accepted without criticism. They made none of the moral or political judgments that he thought essential, they did not seem compelled to fit everything into the pigeon holes of a system. He spoke of them to others as being "badly educated" but at least not "emotionally impotent" like so many young men who had come out of the war. They never read the papers, they did not follow with diligent and self conscious attention the happenings In the political and cultural arena; they seemed to have an almost calculated contempt for logical argument. They operated on feelings, sudden reactions, expanding these far out of perspective to
17 see In them profundities which Hobbes was certain they could not define if put to it· But they accepted him, came to him with their troubles because he would always listen. They thought of him, he decided, as a regrettable intellectual, but acted as though they believed he was not completely "impotent." (pp. 35-36)
The contrast between Hobbes and Pasternak is not only illustrated by the difference in their physical appearance. From the start It is clear that Hobbes, "normally reserved and even suspicious" (p. 6), is much less open and spontaneous than Pasternak. When the latter makes his first appearance in the novel, emerging from the bedroom in
Hobbes'β apartment, Paul quickly hides the letter he has been writing
to Liza, while Pasternak immediately starts telling him about a dream he just had. Later, when Paul has lied to Gene that he is leaving for
Mexico, he is unable to simply confess the lie, although he is shocked by his own behaviour. The difference between the two is also evident in
Pasternak's more relaxed way of writing. When Paul meets Gene shortly
after the letter's book has been accepted. Gene is waiting in a
cafeteria, with a notebook before him, in which he is "writing
leisurely," with an "air of calm absorption" (p. 250) that Paul envies.
The friendship between Hobbes and Stofsky presents an even stronger
contrast. Unlike Hobbes, Stofsky is open to the point of being an
exhibitionist, and Hobbes's reactions to him frequently reveal his own
character. When Stofsky tells him enthusiastically about his religious
ideas, Hobbes snaps "shut like an oyster on a grain of sand," as he
usually does "[i]n the face of an avid passion" (p. 69), and he also
claims that Jack Waters's ideas about time may very well be just the
result of smoking too much marijuana. Stofsky is aware of Hobbes's
18 "sense of decorum," and he frequently tries to shock it, for Instance by suggesting that he enter Hobbes's apartment "one quiet afternoon with no clothes on" (p. 11).
In the end. In fact, Stofsky is successful in piercing Hobbes's character armour. This happens when Stofsky criticizes him for picking on Kathryn, who is nervous about Hart Kennedy's habit of stealing gasoline, while Faul himself is probably as nervous and disapproving as his wife. He accuses Paul of being "some anxious Socratic straight- man...like Euthyphro. After all, he was really a liberal type, wasn't he?" (p. 151). When Hobbes protests against being called a liberal,
Stofsky explains that he thinks that for Faul ideas are "more Important than men," just as they are for liberals, and that Paul should know that, in spite of his "shrewd smiles and...Macchlavellian agreements," people know that he is mocking and Judging them. Stofsky admits that he has always thought of Paul as "an evil intellectual; by which I mean someone who hates charity, the charity of the heart...more to the point, really fears it because it's not rational or sensible In all circumstances" (p. 152). However, now that, in his anger, Hobbes is mocking Stofsky, the latter finally loves him, because now he is honest at last:
"You always nod your head so insincerely and appear to agree with everything everyone does, whereas actually you don't agree at all. In fact, you look down on everyone in a secretly patronizing way, like a mass observer who never forgets his job even when he participates. That's why I never loved you. But now when you mock me I see your...your confusions, you know? After all, why should you be afraid of confessing?" (p. 152)
19 Hobbes's conversation with Stofsky, which takes place almost exactly In
the middle of the book. Is very crucial. More than anything It confronts Hobbes with himself, and In this respect It leads to his coming in touch with his own feelings·
Throughout the book Hobbes Is never really at home amongst the new group· This Is Illustrated by his attitude towards the use of drugs,
with which, unlike Pasternak and Stofsky, he Is not familiar. When, at a party In his apartment, Hobbes has a chance to smoke marijuana for
the first time, he Is wary of It and avoids the first round. Still, he
does not want to reveal that he Is a novice In these matters, and when
Christine shows that she Is shocked by Pasternak's smoking marijuana,
Paul acts as if it is a completely natural thing. His newness to the
drug scene Is stressed by the humorous confusion which ensues when it
turns out that he does not know that, when the Initiates talk about
"roaches," they do not mean cockroaches, but butts of marijuana. In the
end Paul only has "a certain respect for the marijuana" (p. 110), and
he never becomes really enthusiastic about the use of it. In this
respect he is unlike most members of the new group, especially Hart
Kennedy. When Paul tries to involve him in a scientific discussion of
the effects of different drugs, Hart replies that he is bored by "all
this intellectual terminology," that you cannot explain the effects in
words, but that it is "just getting your kicks and digging everything
that happens" (p. 144).
It Is, in fact, in relation to Hart that Hobbes's discomfort with
his new friends is frequently revealed. Although he accepts Hart and
Hart's girlfriend Dinah only grudgingly and although he disapproves of
Hart's stealing, Hobbes is also attracted to him, because he is "no
20 pale Basarov-.not Just negative like some Village Agatson" (p. 203).
However, In the company of Hart and Hart's comrades, Hobbes'β ambiguous attitude towards his new friends and the new experiences they bring comes out time and time again. When, accompanied by Hart, Pasternak and Stofsky, Hobbes visits Times Square, he feels nervous and apprehensive. Yet, although "oddly unnerved" by the "grlfters, dope
passers, petty thieves, cheap, aging whores and derelicts" who populate
the place and to whom his friends feel attracted, Hobbes "was not
repulsed, but rather yearned to know It In Its every aspect, the lives
these people led, the emotions they endured, the fate Into which they
stumbled, perhaps not unawares. He longed to know It all, and for a
moment hated his own uneasiness while sitting there" (p. 120).
The same uneasiness comes over Hobbes when, again In the company of
Hart, he visits The Go Hole. Paul admits to himself that he Is
"uncomfortably out of his element" (p. 162) there, but blames his
discomfort on "an Imperfection In himself, some failure of the heart"
(p. 164). His reluctance to reveal his true feelings comes out again In
his not wanting to show his discomfort to Kathryn, although she freely
vents her negative feelings about the club and the music. When Kathryn
and Arthur Ketcham, feeling that they have had enough, decide to leave
the club, Hobbes again le not honest, acquiescing "with a martyred air
which did not reflect the tinge of relief he actually felt" (p. 165).
To Hart he pretends that It Is only because of Kathryn that he Is
leaving so early. Later, however, when Ketcham asks him to explain the
cult of bop to him, Hobbes has to admit that he Is unable to deal with
Hart and the experiences he represents, and that his "dismayed attempts
at explanation were little but an Intellectual gloss over his sense of
treachery, for he did not feel that he could understand Hart and all
21 the rest of It through the Invocation of merely fashionable social or psychological analyses" (p. 166).
Although Hart Kennedy stands for some of the negative aspects of the new group. It Is especially Albert Ancke and his criminal friends who are ultimately responsible for Hobbes's withdrawal from the group.
Without knowing them yet, Paul first sees Ancke, "Little Rock" Harmony and Winnie one evening at The Go Hole, where he has taken Estelle on a date. It Is on this date that he turns out to be Impotent. Thinking back, Paul blames his impotence on his fascination with "Little Rock"
Harmony, who Is strikingly "passionless" and "cool" (p. 210). Later,
when he comes to know Ancke and his friends personally, Paul recognizes
that there Is a wide gap between him and these representatives of the new morality. He sees that they live In "a world of shadows that had
drifted out of the grip of time...a world In which his values were a
nuisance and his anxieties an affront" (p. 262). When, In the company
of Ancke and his friends, Paul realizes how unconquerable the gap is,
"his Interest in them turned to horror, and he got up to leave"
(p. 262).
However, Paul's actual withdrawal from the group only comes after
Agatson's death. In the waterside bar where he and a number of friends
eventually end up, he regards the scribbled statements on the walls of
the latrine as "blunt confessions of longing, words as would be written
on the walls of hell" (p. 310). (Pasternak actually calls the bar "a
helluva place" [p. 308], without realizing that for Hobbes it really
represents the ultimate symbol of suffering and loneliness.) Paul
recognizes that not only the adherents to the old morality, like
Agatson, are victims, but his new friends as well, and that they are
all like "children of the night, everywhere wild, everywhere lost,
22 everywhere loveless, faithless, homelesa" (p. Э10). Paul Is unable to deal with this realization and, having already rejected the old
Borallty, he now also draws back from his new friends and the values they represent·
At first sight Paul Hobbee, estranged from his own feelings and hiding behind his character amour, might be thought of as a rather unexciting fictional hero. This does not mean, however, that he Is not a convincing character. His complex reactions to the tensions caused by his being In the middle of conflicting attitudes are very lifelike, and that also goes for his slow and painful development. His contacts with
David Stofsky lead to more self-knowledge, so that, after having met
Hart Kennedy, Hobbee realizes that he cannot understand Hart by analyzing him socially or psychologically, feeling "these attitudes for the first time somehow too narrow" (p. 166). The same realization of the Insufficiency of the reasoning mind strikes Hobbes In his relationship with his wife. His conflicts with Kathryn open him up emotionally, and finally he has to admit that he has come "to fear emotions, to think of human needs as s sign of weakness, and to view isolation, not as a curse and a blight, but as a protection" (p. 292).
Although at the end of the book he withdraws from his friends, by then
Hobbes has become much more aware of what he really feels and is finally able to make a definite choice.
Ill
The figure who is chiefly responsible for the changes In Hobbes and
23 some of the other characters. Is David Stofsky. His Importance Is stressed by the fact that six of Go/s thirty-four chapters are told from Stofsky's point of view. Moreover, the manuscript as It was accepted by the publisher contained a chapter, preceding the first chapter In the published version, which Is told from Stofsky's point of view too, and an epilogue In which he plays a central part· Both were
cut before publication, however. Originally Holmes tried to link the
chapters told fron Hobbes's and those told from Stofsky's point of view
by ending a chapter told from Hobbes's point of view by having him
think of Stofsky, or by opening a chapter told from Stofsky's point of
view with a sentence like, "That night was to prove significant to
Stofsky as well," referring to Important happenings to Hobbes in the
preceding chapter. 3 However, Holmes's later decision not to use this
device is in line with the thematic concern of Go, which is not so much
about the connection between Hobbes and Stofsky, as about the contrast
between the two·
In spite of his being much more open than Hobbes, Stofsky Is a
lonely and confused person, given to "exaggeration and self-ridicule"
(p. 6). After having been introduced to someone In the afternoon, he
will ask that person to come and visit him that same night, and he
solicits letters from people on very feeble pretexts, taking them as
proofs of friendship. This craving for contact Is said to have arisen
when he was young and had often been alone, because his mother had
spent long periods in an asylum. Although he tries to overcome his
confusion about his sexual identity by undergoing psychoanalysis, the
purpose of which is "freeing the clogged desires so they might function
naturally" (p. 45), he sometimes feels that he is "not even qualified
for analysis" (p. 8), especially when his desires turn out to be of a
24 homosexual nature.
Stofsky changes, however, after his neetlng with Jack Waters, who
claims that "[w)e live In an eternity now, every Instant" (p. 49), and
that we should let go of "our frightened egos" (p. SO). As Holmes has
said. Waters Is "a real John the Baptist figure to Stofsky,"14 which Is
Implied by his name. In the Bible, John's baptizing Jesus Is described as the beginning of the letter's acts. Likewise, In Go, Stofsky's
meeting with Waters leads to bis visions and to definite changes In his
behaviour and view of life. Stofsky Is, In fact. In many ways
reminiscent of Jesus. This Is also suggested by his first name. In the
Old Testament, David Is the ancestor of the family of which the Messiah
would eventually be a member, and he Is usually regarded as Christ's
prototype. The coloured reproduction of Grünewald's "Crucifixion" on
the wall of Stofsky's room points to the plausibility of this
comparison, as well as predicting Stofsky's ultimate fate.
The changes Stofsky experiences become apparent In his changing
attitude towards his psychoanalysis. After a while, he realizes that he
has "come to think of analysis as a sort of intellectual game - a
scavenger hunt through the mind - really quite empty of emotional
value" (p. 64). Rejecting It as "all Aristotelian," what he Is now
striving for Is "a breakthrough Into the world of feeling...! mean
subjective truth" (p. 65). In his search for this kind of truth,
Stofsky Is of course radically different from Hobbes, who is looking
for "objective validity" (p. 66). Hobbes concentrates on the "values of
the mind," while Stofsky is urgently in need of "a reason for [his]
being" (p. 69). Having discovered that he can no longer believe in
"man's systems of knowledge, which are really only the emblems of his
fear" (p. 65), Stofsky feels that he has got to believe in God, in
25 "soul, spirituality, what endures" (p. 66).
Another change In Stofsky Is the fact that, especially after his visions, he feels the need to make his friends more spontaneous and to confront them with themselves, "tilting with everyone's ego...like a
Saint George" (p. 239) and playing the role of "the devil's advocate"
(p. 159). Although Stofsky is genuinely concerned about his friends and has a remarkable insight into their characters, they are not very happy with his interferences. They dislike Stofsky's meddling because they usually have to admit flaws in their character or behaviour. (In this respect, too, Stofsky may be said to resemble Jesus, who was also hated
for the way in which he opened people's eyes to their own faults.)
Ironically, Stofsky's Interfering frequently has unfortunate
results. When he criticizes Hart Kennedy for deceiving Dinah, while
Dinah is present, he is successful in freeing her pent-up emotions and
In having her air all her grievances about Hart. However, although Hart
and Dinah show their real faces in their argument and in the ensuing
fight, the result of Stofsky's meddling is that Hart ends up with a
broken thumb and that Dinah abruptly leaves for California. The
consequences of Stofsky's interferences are even more tragic when he
suggests to Kathryn Hobbes that Paul, whom he correctly surmises not to
be honest with his wife, may be keeping a Journal with all his secrets
and "intellectual anxieties" in it, and that Kathryn's reading the
journal may lead to a "reconciliation of the heart" (p. 219). What
happens is exactly the opposite. Kathryn finds the letters that Paul
has been writing to Liza and threatens to leave him at once.
Because of the unfortunate outcome of Stofsky's interferences,
eventually most of his friends start to mock and avoid him. However,
when almost all of his daily companions have deserted him, an old
26 friend of hls, Albert Ancke, cones looking for help. The way Stofsky treats Ancke, who has been walking around New York for weeks trying In vain to obtain the drugs he is addicted to, is again reminiscent of some of the things that Jesus did. He gently washes Ancke'в feet, echoing Jesus's washing the feet of his disciples before the Last
Supper, and afterwards tenderly puts his to bed. Just as Jesus in his darkest hours was deserted by his disciples, so Stofsky is deserted by
Ancke, who is so tired that he falls asleep when Stofsky wants to talk about his own very urgent problems. When Stofsky has also gone to sleep, he has a dream in which he talks with God, as if God were his father. In the dream Stofsky asks God how he shall help his friends, now that he feels so confused and tired. God replies that he "must go...and love without the help of any Thing on earth" (p. 246).
Stofsky realizes, after having met Ancke again, that he is going
"to get mixed up in crime and degeneracy" (p. 262), in which respect he is again like Jesus, who mixed with publicans and prostitutes and who promised the criminals with whom he was crucified that they would enter paradise with him. In fact, Stofsky compares Ancke and his criminal friends to "the ancient Jews in Babylon" (p. 263), and claims that they are "God's chosen and the world's damned" who are, temporarily, going through "the Captivity, the Punishment" (p. 263). He feels that he may be able to deliver these people, whom he would "love and redeem"
(p. 277). He pities his friends, but that pity is also "a sweet, sad pity for himself, a pity that had only a memory of his old altruism, but it was not love. It would not be love somehow" (p. 277).
It is clear that Stofsky is aware of his shortcomings, which become apparent again when, after the car accident with Winnie and "Little
Rock" Harmony, he realizes that he will be arrested. Like Jesus asking
27 If Che cup could be taken away from him when he was crucified, Stofsky then wonders If It would not be possible to think of an alibi: "He would go out to Pasternak's, to Hobbes', or somewhere. He would tell them about everything, get them to swear before God that he had been with them all afternoon, beg them If necessary, promise anything. Or just take a subway, go as far as It went, then walk, vanish for good"
(p. 282). Stofsky realizes, however, that he cannot escape "the reckoning, the eye, the wrath" (p. 282) and he accepts his fate, comparing the arrest to the carrying away of "Israel...out of their own
land to Assyria" (p. 286). A final echo from the Bible le to be found
In Stofsky's being released from jail after five days, although Christ
was resurrected after only three days, and in his visiting Hobbes, five
days later, wearing a new pair of shoes.
Stofsky Is the most successful character In Go. He Is much less
static than most of the other figures In the book, and his development,
which Is Illustrated by hie changing attitude towards psychoanalysis
and by his gradual awareness of the negative aspects of his
Interferences, Is described In a very convincing manner. Holmes
preferred Stofsky to the other characters: "I first experienced with
him the wonder of seeing a character In fiction coming to life on his
own, however falterlngly. He existed outside me, though I was his
creator. He wrote himself towards the end, and I simply put down his
words."
28 IV
If Stofsky stands for the new morality's longing for spiritual
salvation. Gene Pasternak can be said to personify Its desire to reach a new naturalness. Pasternak Is someone who Is "usually as eager as a boy to grasp the moment and experience It fully" (p- 9); In him "even angers and Irritations found rude. Immediate expression" (p. 9), as a
result of which an "unashamed directness" (p. 35) Is attributed to him.
Pasternak's longing for natural qualities makes him abhor Georgia,
the girl he brought to Hobbes's apartment after the first party
described In Go, because she turned out to be a virgin who refused to
sleep with him. Dismissing her as "one of those 'emancipated' women
who's really cold as a snake" (p. 57), Pasternak quickly turns his
attentions to Christine, a simple housewife who has a "natural
loveliness, the kind of beauty which Is vaguely suggestive of Innocence
of soul" (p. 56). To Pasternak she Is "just one of those crazy, warm
little girls you meet at a dance In Harrieburg...the kind of girl I can
understand, not these New York bitches!" (p. 55). Unlike Georgia,
Christine does not talk very much, which Is In accordance with
Pasternak's view that talk "doesn't matter, as long as people do the
natural thing...Everyone talks the guts out of life, abstracts It,
perverts It" (p. 57). He Is In favour of "the sexual regeneration of
the world...[w]hen everyone Is just simple, natural...like so many
apples": "The rest Is only mental, psychological. Think If we all just
started acting like apples to be eaten, to be enjoyed" (p. 57).
According to him, "[m]ost people feel guilty about not feeling guilty
in the first place. They're sure something must be wrong with them
29 because they don't feel all anxious and ashamed about their real desires...But I think we should all just go around naked and forget about the goddamn rules!" (p. 57). When Christine objects that "[e]ome people [she] could think of would look awfully funny...If they went around that way," Pasternak Insists that they would be "natural, really beautiful, the way they're supposed to be. Do you think we were made for clothes?" (p. 57).
Still, Pasternak Is an Intellectual and a writer. Throughout the book. In fact, he Is torn between his ambitions as a writer, and his strong urge to live freely and naturally. When his affair with
Christine goes wrong, he has a depression for three days, during which he ponders the question "why [he] was a writer, and even why [he] was alive and everything" (pp. 120-121). Later, too, Pasternak expresses his doubts about his literary aspirations. When a publisher Is slow In
reacting to the novel on which he has been working for three years, he
says to Paul: "All this wrlterlsh worry and care is really unnatural,
you know? And maybe I'll get me a job on the Santa Fe for the fall, and
then go up and play roulette In Büttel Той have to live, Paul, llvel"
(p. 182). Before leaving for California with Hart Kennedy, Pasternak
has decided again that writing is "really unnatural, biting your nails
and writing books. What did I ever get out of It? Three years sitting
up nights, scribbling, and being unmarried and madI" (p. 202).
Actually It Is his relationship with Hart Kennedy which makes
Pasternak realize that he has "to choose between the drawing rooms full
of Noel Cowards and the rattling trucks on the American highways"
(p. 122). With Hart, Pasternak is able to realize some of the
naturalness he was looking for in his affair with Christine. To Gene's
questions about the meaning of life, Hart replies: "Don't worry,
30 man...Everything's fine, and life is only digging everything and waiting, just waiting and digging" (p. 122). Under his influence,
Pasternak comes to see that life is "really magical and crazy and nothing more" (p. 121).
At the end of G£ the conflict in Pasternak between writing and living seems to have been solved. This is illustrated in particular by the scene in which Hobbes and he meet after Hobbes's novel has been rejected and Pasternak's accepted. Although Pasternak Is then absorbed in the act of writing, at the same time he is aware of life going on around him, even pointing out the beauty of the afternoon to Paul. This same openness to life and new experiences is stressed in the last chapter, in which Paul and Kathryn abruptly decide to leave their friends in the waterside bar where they have spent the evening following Agatson's death. Although it is indicated that Pasternak
"perhaps understood," he "made no move to come with them, as If what he pursued In that night lay still a little further on" (p. 311).
In spite of the fact that Pasternak makes only infrequent appearances in Go, his function as the personification of certain aspects of the new morality, and as a contrast to Hobbes, is of major importance. Although he does not develop as much as David Stofsky and is thus a relatively flat character, on the whole his portrayal is very successful.
Although Hart Kennedy and Bill Agatson only play minor roles in Go, their function as characters is certainly relevant to the main themes.
Hart Kennedy is primarily the personification of the destructive aspects of the new morality, and some of the negative sides of his personality are already implied by his physical appearance. His reddish
31 hair and broken nose give him "an expression of shrewd, masculine ugliness," while he Is said to move with "itchy calculation" (p. 114).
Bis habit of scheming, which is Indicated by the way he moves, is
Illustrated by the fact that he Is always trying to convince people to give or lend him money. It Is also evident in hie behaviour towards women, which is very egocentric. He mainly seems to use his girlfriends for his own purposes, and, for Instance, is very anxious that Dinah does not lose her job, while he himself is not working at all and only looking for fun.
To some degree Hart Kennedy is described as a Western hero, whose
spontaneous behaviour has a liberating influence on the New York
intellectuals. Frequently this influence Is not very positive, however.
It leads to the end of Pasternak's affair with Christine, while it also
throws Hobbes's marriage out of kilter. Moreover, Hart is not as
uninhibited as he sometimes pretends to be, which is Illustrated by the
extent to which he is hurt after Dinah has left. At a party shortly
after her departure, his playing with a water pistol stresses the fact
that he is not a real cowboy, but only "going through impersonations of
cowboy actors" (p. 1Θ2). In fact, this scene shows how unhappy and
mixed-up Hart really is. He mocks hie own sexuality by leveling the gun
from his hips and aiming at Estelle, while later on he pretends to
commit suicide with the same water pistol.
While Hart Kennedy represents some of the destructive aspects of
the new morality, Bill Agatson embodies the negativity of the old one,
which is characterized by cynical intellectualism and a nihilistic view
of life. He stands for the inability to believe in the new values, and
for the "craving for excess" (p. 19) which this inability inspires.
32 Agatson Is described as "a nan possessed of a rage that Is always frustrated, that has enthralled his waking nature, and which has no object; the sort of rage that only the obliteration of a world could sate" (p. 272). Unable to obliterate the world, he tries to obliterate hlaself by being continually drunk. His dissipations and exploits are
"near-legendary" (p. 18), and he gives the Impression that he "might do anything that came Into his head; and yet that all this was somehow the result of a fatal vision of the world" (p. 19).
Agatson's negativity comes out In particular In hie attitude towards people, whom he constantly exposes to his "streak of malicious
Irony" (p. 19) and who are for him "mere material objects to be lifted and thrown to see if they would break" (p. 269). This is illustrated by his behaviour towards women, whom he treats in a highly degrading manner, in spite of the care they give him. As one character in the book puts it: "That's Bill's stock in trade. He's got to ruin a woman every few months or lose hie opinion of himself" (p. 195). More explicitly Agatson's destructive attitude is expreesed, already early in the book, by the way he treats Daniel Verger. He taunts Verger about his continual coughing, knowing that Verger actually has tuberculosis, and about his still being a virgin, when Verger, who has in fact never had a woman, has just lost his girlfriend May to Agatson. Later on he cruelly expoaes what he considers to be Verger's hidden longing to be a martyr, again by mocking his coughing, and by entreating him to die, so that everyone would pity him.
In spite of his behaviour, Agatson has a strong attraction for many people. According to Bianca, a former girlfriend, this is because
"people who can't believe in anything else always believe in Bill"
(p. 21). In the course of the book Agatson's star wanes, however, and
33 he degenerates, as Verger puts It, Into an "aging clown," from "a way of life...Into a state of mind" (p. 195). Actually, his gradual downfall and eventual death symbolize the passing away of the old morality. As Verger says:
"Agatson used to be a hero, after all, to lots of us; at least he believed in himself and that's always convincing. But now that he's repeating himself, going through the old vaudeville routines, he should disappear...But the more people who see him losing his grip, and see him merely chuckle when some envious existentialist breaks a lily over his head...when they see him ignore that, the less people will be able to believe in him." (pp. 194-195)
Holmes has been accused of not having paid enough attention to the
role and characters of women in Go. In Minor Characters Joyce Johnson
blames him for not revealing the names of the women on whom the female
characters were modelled in his Introduction to the 1977 re-edition of
Go, "whereas he scrupulously matches each of the male characters in his
roman à clef to their originals."1 She also attacks him for
describing, in the same introduction, the women in Go as "centerless,"
"amalgams of several people," and "accurate to the young women of the
time." According to Johnson, "Holmes can't quite remember them - they
were mere anonymous passengers on the big Greyhound bus of experience.
Lacking centers, how could they burn with the fever that Infected his
young men? What they did, I guess, was fill up the seats." IB Johnson
omits to mention, however, that in the introduction Holmes says that
"Dinah, Christine, Winnie and Bianca are as close to their originals as
34 [he] could bring them." ' This goes for his description of Kathryn, too, and his publisher even convinced Holmes that It was necessary for him to obtain a written statement from Marian, as well as from Allen
Ginsberg and some of the other originals of the figures In Go, that they would not sue him after the publication of the book. 20" In fact,
Holmes's depletion of Kathryn Is a subtle and convincing portrait of a woman who, like the men around her. Is trying to find her own place In a bewildering world.
From the start It Is suggested that Kathryn Is more In touch with her own feelings than her husband. This Is implied by the description of her physical appearance, Holmes ascribing to her "that decisiveness of movement that seems natural and feminine In a body that verges on voluptuousness" (p. 13). Frequently critical of Paul's restrained behaviour, Kathryn Is attracted by Pasternak's spontaneity and naturalness. Pasternak claims that she Is "pure as snow" and natural, too, and that she Is "really motherly, not one of these scared, brittle. Intellectual girls who pretend to know everything" (p. 183).
In his relationship with her, Pasternak stresses his own simplicity and the fact that he Is "really only a Polak, just a damn Polak mlllhand"
(p. 183). This makes Kathryn, who Is also from a simple background, feel more at ease with him than she often Is with Paul, who Is from a higher social class and whose attitude Is much more Intellectual than
Gene's. After her quarrels with Paul about his letters to Liza, Kathryn closes up completely, only to become more open again when Pasternak returns from California.
Still, In spite of her friendship with Pasternak, Kathryn remains an outsider among the people she and Paul come to know In New York.
Feeling empty even after her first flirtation with Gene, she becomes
35 extremely antagonistic towards the "new crowd" after Hart Kennedy has arrived In the city. Starting out by criticizing him for his habit of stealing gasoline, she soon dislikes everything he stands for. Not only does she blame him for not working and dismiss his favourite music, she
is also critical of Hart's relationship with Dinah, although in this case her criticism may be all the more harsh because Hart's attitude Is
reminiscent of the fact that Hobbes Is not working either, while she,
like Dinah, has to provide the money. In the end, deeply hurt after having found Paul's letters to Liza, she considers her husband to be an
adherent of the new morality, too, confessing to him that she does not understand "the way [he] do [es] things...all of you...I'll never
understand" (p. 230).
Cathryn may be seen as a victim of the attitudes concomitant to the
new morality, in which respect she is like Dinah and Christine. It
first seems as if Dinah is the perfect match for Hart. She Is described
as "a wise child, without confusions" who, like Hart, is "utterly
wrapped In the moment's developments but distrusting analysis of them"
(p. 132). However, when it turns out that Hart is dating another woman,
she is distressed and suddenly has enough of the life they have been
leading. Telling him that she is no longer able to understand him, she
hastily leaves. Christine, too, soon realizes that the values of the
"new crowd" are not hers and that she "can't be like the rest of
[them]" (p. 164). When it becomes clear to her that Gene has tired of
her, she actually breaks down and has to enter analysis.
Unlike Kathryn, Dinah and Christine, Estelle is not a victim of the
new morality. Although she makes only a few appearances in Go, the way
Holmes uses her self-possession to contrast with Hobbes's doubting
personality Is very successful. When Paul starts to flirt with her,
36 Estelle's relaxed manner la "at once terrifying and Intriguing to him"
(p. 183). While he Is forced to spar with her "uneasily," she answers
all his questions "in an off-hand, precise manner, all the while
Inspecting his face with calculating, challenging glances that bore no
relation to the conversation" (p. 183). This flusters Hobbes, who tries
to fall back "on an attitude tinged with cynicism under which
familiarity could be safely hidden" (pp. 183-184), but Estelle's "wide,
rational eyes" (p. 184) disarm him. Later, when he kisses her, he is
struck by "that intent preoccupation in the act itself that always
amazed him" (p. 211). The extent to which he himself is out of touch
with what he really feels and wants becomes clear when, trying to make
love with Estelle, he finds that he cannot match her passion.
It Is true that some of the other female characters in Go_ are
"types" rather than "individuals," and that some of them are
portrayed In a sketchy manner. However, that goes for some of the male
characters in the book, too. Still, In Estelle, Bolmes has described a
woman who definitely knows where she stands and what she wants. Dinah
and Christine are also full characters, and Holmes's portrayal of
Kathryn Is frequently very moving.
V
Go is not only generally considered to be the first Beat novel, but
also the novel which introduced the term "beat generation." Originally
the word "beat" meant weary, spent, or tired. In this meaning it was
used by the addicts and criminals with whom Kerouac, Ginsberg and
37 Holmes associated, and In this meaning the word is also found in
Brossard's Who Walk In Darkness. The meaning that Holmes attributes to
It In Go is slightly different, however, as can be seen when he uses It
for the first time:
Once Pasternak said to [НоЪЪев] with peculiar clarity: "You know, everyone I know is kind of furtive, kind of beat. They all go along the street like they were guilty of something, but didn't believe in guilt. I can spot them immediately) And It's happening all over the country, to everyone; a sort of revolution of the soul, I guess you'd call iti" (p. 36)
Actually this passage is the fictional reworking of a conversation
between Holmes and Kerouac, In which Kerouac coined the term "beat
generation," giving the word "beat" a more specific and also more
positive meaning than Holmes does:
I kept goading Jack to characterize this new attitude, and one evening as he described the way the young hipsters of Times Square walked down the street - watchful, cat-like, inquisitive, close to the buildings, in the street but not of_ it - I interrupted him to say that I thought we all walked like that, but what was the peculiar quality of mind behind it? "It's a sort of furtiveness," he said. "Like we were a generation of furtives. You know, with an inner knowledge there's no use flaunting on that level, the level of the 'public,' a kind of beatness - I mean, being right down to it, to ourselves, because we all really know where we are - and a weariness with all the forms, all the conventions of the world...It's something like that. So I guess you might say we're a 22 beat generation.
38 In Go Holmes used the terms "beat" and "beat generation" several
times, thereby attracting the attention of Gilbert Mlllstein, who reviewed the book for the Hew York Times, and who subsequently asked
Holmes to write an article about the "beat generation" for the New York
Times Magazine. Although Holmes was aware of the danger of generalizing and of the absurdity of trying to name a whole generation, he consented because his publisher was not advertising Go. Especially, however, he decided to write the article because he felt that there really was a new consciousness among young people and that "this was a new thing
that was much more widespread than anybody knew, and that it was going
to become even more widespread as time went on.n23
Holmes's article, "This Is the Beat Generation," appeared on
November 16, 1952. In it. Holmes argued that the postwar generation,
having grown up during the "bad circumstances of a dreary depression"
and the "uprooting of a global war," found itself living in a world
without personal and social values· According to Holmes, virtually all
the young people In America had to come to terms with that world. In
which "[h]ow to live seems more crucial than why." For him it Is not
only the young drug addict or the "giggling nihilist, eating up the
highway at ninety miles an hour" who Is "beat," but also the "young
Republican" and the ex-G.I. intending to become "a comfortable cog" in
a large corporation. Because the hipster has "no desire to shatter the
'square' society in which he lives, only to elude it," he can be
compared to the young Republican, who only conforms "because he
believes it is socially practical, not necessarily virtuous." While the
hipster is looking for "a feeling of somewhereness, not just another
diversion," the young Republican feels that "there is a point beyond
which change becomes chaos, and what he wants is not simply privilege
39 or wealth, but a stable position from which to operate." Although he was criticized by Kerouac for calling young Republicans "beat,"
Holmes's definition of the term In "This Is the Beat Generation" comes very close to Kerouac's earlier reflections on the word:
More than mere weariness, it Implies the feeling of having been used, of being raw. It Involves a sort of nakedness of mind, and, ultimately, of soul; a feeling of being reduced to the bedrock of consciousness· In short, it means being undramatlcally pushed up against the wall of oneself. A man Is beat whenever he wagers the sum of his resources on a single number.
Most striking In "This Is the Beat Generation," however. Is
Holmes's claim that for the Beat Generation "the problem of modern life
Is essentially a spiritual problem." According to him, it is "the first generation in several centuries for which the act of faith has been an
obsessive problem, quite aside from the reasons for having a particular
faith or not having It." Unlike the Lost Generation, which was occupied
with the loss of faith, the Beat Generation Is concerned with the need
for it. As such. Holmes calls it "a disturbing illustration of
Voltaire's reliable old Joke: 'If there were no God, it would be
necessary to Invent him.'" In Go this craving for spirituality Is
exemplified by David Stofsky, who, when he has discovered that he can
no longer believe in human knowledge, comes to the conclusion that he
simply has to believe in God, In a "binding unifying fact of human life
that will make it all real, and not some vicious prank" (p. 66).
Actually, in his essay Holmes comes close to attributing the
connotation "beatific" to the word "beat." This particular meaning of
"beat" Kerouac later claimed to have realized during a visit to a
40 church in Lowell In 1954, although there is some slight evidence that he may have used 'beatific' as early as 1948''·-'2 S. However, In Go the concept 'beatific' Is already suggested when Agatson, mocking Pasternak whose novel has just been accepted, murmurs to him: "But what about beatitude, eh? Eh?" (p. 266).
This spiritual aspect, which Is not characteristic of the novels of
the pre-Beats, puts Go In line with the majority of Beat literature.
The use of drugs, which we come across frequently In Go, Is another
major subject In both prose and poetry of the Beats. In this case, however, It Is more appropriate to compare Go to Who Walk In Darkness
or Flee the Angry Strangers, whose authors definitely hold a less
condoning view of the use of drugs than, for Instance, Jack Kerouac In
On the Road or William Burroughs In Junky. It Is true that Hobbes goes
further than the narrator In Brossard's novel, who does not use drugs
at all. Hobbes, however, Is not as enthusiastic about smoking marijuana as Pasternak and, eepeclally, Hart Kennedy are. He also does not really
sympathize with Stofsky's experiments with drugs, Stofsky having 'tried
them all with eager experimentation a year or so before" (p. 107). In
fact. Holmes seems to be downright critical of the use of hard drugs,
clearly linking Albert Ancke's deterioration to his addiction to heroin
and morphine.
As far as crime, another frequent subject In Beat literature, Is
concerned. Go cannot easily be compared to a pre-Beat novel such as Who
Walk In Darkness. In which crime Is only seen as a threat. Yet Holmes's
treatment of the subject Is also markedly different from the way It Is
treated by Burroughs and Kerouac. This difference can perhaps best be
Illustrated by comparing Kerouac'a view of Dean Morlarty In On the Road
with Holmes's depletion of Hart Kennedy In Go. For the narrator In On
41 the Road, Sal Paradise, Dean's "'criminality' was not something that sulked and sneered; It was a wild yea-saying overburst of American Joy; it was Western, the west wind, an ode from the Plains, something new, long prophesied, long a-comlng (he only stole cars for Joy rides)·" 26
For Paul Hobbes, on the other hand. Hart's stealing is not really acceptable, even though he is unable to speak out against it· In contrast to Hobbes, David Stofsky is less disapproving of crime, regarding it as understandable and forgivable behaviour of people who have been led astray through no fault of their own. However, when he becomes more and more mixed up in the crimes committed by Albert Ancke and his friends, even Stofsky starts to feel "reproaches, earnest but firm, reproaches for which he could find no decent explanation"
(p. 276).
As in some of Kerouac's early novels, bop music plays an important part in Go. It is the kind of music to which Hobbes and his friends most frequently listen, while Hart Kennedy's enthusiastically shouting
"Gol Gol" when bop is played is partly responsible for the title of the book. Jazz as a subject is treated more seriously and sympathetically in Go than in any of the pre-Beat novels. It is depicted as one of the factors that help Hobbes in shedding some of his defences and in bringing him closer to the attitudes of the new morality, as is clear
from this description of him listening to a jazz singer:
The singer, stamping her foot three times, led off into a fresh burst of song, raising her arms in graceful supplication. "All of me-ee-ee...Why...not... take...all of me-ee-ee!" She started sliding between the tables, head thrown back, pausing at each with her
42 hands expressively outstretched In appeal. The guitarist shuffled along behind her, muttering encouragements. Her dueky eyes leveled knowingly at each customer and, as though each saw there and heard In the music the memory they all must have attached to this rebellious and wistful American jazz which was somehow most expressive of the boiling, deaf cities and the long brown reaches of their country, at every table a dollar was pressed Into her hand, and with a swing of generous breasts she would move on. Hobbes, caught up In the living music, gravitated to the piano she left behind. At every fresh chorus, the ascetic Negro there released greater ringing chords, as though the increasing distance of the voice brought the Inner melody closer to his poised ear. Hobbes, leaning toward him, was, through hie giddiness, suddenly possessed by the Illusion of emotional eloquence and started to chant softly, Improvising broken phrases. The Negro glanced up for an Instant, nodding abstractly, long gone, and with no resentment at the Intrusion, (p. 138)
Holmes's portrayal of Hart Kennedy Is more cerebral and objective than Kerouac's characterization of Dean Morlarty. As a result, Holmes's descriptions of Hart listening to Jazz lack some of the fire and spontaneity of comparable scenes In On the Road. Still, Holmes comes close to matching Kerouac's power to transmit the excitement of jazz:
The singer was moving across the open space toward the bar and Hart, his head bobbing up and down and his eyes narrowed, was shuffling to meet her, stooped over and clapping hie hands like an euphoric savage who erupts Into a magic rite at the moment of his seizure. She watched him coming toward her, with dark experienced eyes, and for an instant sang just for him,
43 her shoulders swinging on the deep strums of the guitarist who tarried behind, watchful and yet also appreciative. Hart stopped before her, bobbing, ecstatic, and then, falling down on his knees, he cried: "Y-e-sl Blowl Blow!...You know who you arel"; for this was his offering, all he could give. And, as If she accepted it in lieu of money, with a wave of her head, a bright wink at the crowd, and a great display of heaving bosom, she strutted on. (p. 139)
However, as was the case with his treatment of drugs and crime,
Holmes's account of jazz life in New York accentuates Hobbes's position as an outsider. This is obvious in the scenes In The Go Hole. While
Hart as usual Is excited by the music, Hobbes has to admit to himself that he feels "discomforted and alien" (p. 164) among the bop fanatics.
That Hobbes remains a stranger in Beat circles is also Illustrated by the use of slang in Go. When Paul uses hip expressions such as
"pad," "hungup," "gone," or "hooked," they are usually placed between
Inverted commas, indicating that he is not really comfortable using them. The same thing can be said of the author himself. Holmes never became totally immersed in the Beat world, and his use of slang is far less natural than that of Kerouac in On the Road or Burroughs in Junky.
Once Holmes's habit of placing hip expressions between inverted commas is In fact meant to imply downright criticism of a character's slang.
This is the case when Hobbes's reaction to Hart Kennedy's vague optimism is described: "Hobbes did not 'know,' and felt annoyance at the ideas, because to him 'everything' was not really true" (p. 145).
However, when Hart talks hip, his usual way of speaking, no inverted commas are employed. This is also the case when the story is told from the point of view of Stof sky, who is much more in his element in the
44 Beat world than Hobbes. λ word like "pad," which Is placed between
Inverted commas when Hobbes's point of view Is used, appears without the Inverted commas when It Is used by Stof sky. In his case only some expressions pertaining to the world of drugs and criminals, In which he
Is not really at home, are placed between Inverted commas.
Among the novels of the pre-Beate and the first Beat novels, Go has an Intermediary position. It Is much more open to a new, postwar consciousness than Who Walk In Darkness and, especially, A Cry of
Children. Its difference from such novels as On the Road and Junky has to do with the fact that Holmes was never able to embrace the Beat experience completely. This Is, In fact, Implied by the very title of the book, "go* not only referring to Hart Kennedy's enthusiasm about bop music, but also to the ultimate withdrawal of Paul and Kathryn
Hobbes from Beat circles. While writing Go, Holmes was aware of the fact that his attitude towards the Beat experience was different from that of Kerouac and some of his other friends:
I did want to show the destruetiveness In this kind of experience, not Just in the kinds of experience that are reflected in Agatson but also the destructlveness that Is implicit to me in Hart Kennedy and some of the Beat stuff too. And of course, Jack at that point and most of the people I knew who were involved in that really thought it was all upbeat and ongoing and celebratory, while I felt there was also a note of destructlveness and wastage in it.
A5 VI
Since lts publication Go bas received a good deal of negative criticism. Most of the early critics concentrated on the subject matter of the book, usually In a highly derogatory manner. When these critics paid some attention to Go's stylistic aspects, reactions were mixed.
One of them claimed that, although Holmes had written "a dreary story,"
It was "beautifully written with descriptive passages that border on «29 genius. Frederic Morton, however, was less enthusiastic, describing
Holmes's style as "almost appropriately slack and erratic":
"Occasionally It bulges out Into a cramped lyricism - only to retreat
fatigued Into a bare transcription of happenings."
Later critics, while usually less disapproving of the subject
matter of Go, were generally not much more enthusiastic about Its
stylistic aspects. According to Ihab Hassan, "the powers of feeling and
Intelligence of its characters are not only limited by their limited
articulations but further curtailed by weaknesses In the mind which
dramatically conceived them. 31 Hassan continues by saying that, while
"the spiritual facts which It forces upon our attention must haunt our
sleep," Go "may strike some of us as a hobbling work." It is true that,
six years after Its appearance, Kenneth Rexroth made a case for the
book, but he too mentions Holmes's "more pedestrian talents," 32 as
compared to those of Nelson Algren and Jack Kerouac. Holmes himself has
called Go "a young writer's book, full of solemn gaffs, technical
awkwardnesses, excesses of pessimism, and uncertain prose. 33
A careful consideration of the stylistic aspects of Go reveals that
the book Is a much better novel than these evaluations suggest. In the
46 first place It should be noted that, unlike the pre-Beats and other
contemporary writers, Holmes did not try to Imitate the writers of the
Lost Generation. According to Holmes the Beat writers, while being
well-read In 20th-century literature, were much more deeply Influenced
by 19th-century novelists such as Herman Melville and Dostoevsky. While
writing Go, Holmes was primarily Interested In Dostoevsky:
I was lucky enough to understand that I could not write like Hemingway or Fitzgerald or Faulkner. My attempts at It were really pretty silly. So In Go what I was doing pretty much was trying to write fiction In which scene by scene had the same kind of excitement that Dostoevsky has. 34
The Influence of Dostoevsky Is found In the way Holmes describes hie
characters. For him Agatson was "always very Dostoevsklan: self-
consuming, self-destructive, self-illuminating."35 The same thing can
be said of Jack Waters, who shares the "consumptive paleness" (p. 47)
that Daniel Verger has In common with many a hero In Dostoevsky'e work.
Verger's martyrdom over his love for May is also Dostoevsklan and
reminiscent of the behaviour of Myshkin in The Idiot, to whom Pasternak
compares himself, when he starts to think about the meaning of his
being a writer and of being alive. Hart Kennedy is compared to Kirilov
in The Possessed, who "couldn't stand ecstasy for more than a split
second," while Hart "can stand it all the time, and all of life is
ecstasy to him" (p. 122). These characters are "constantly running up
to one another and talking about the problems of eternity," as Holmes
has said of Dostoevsky'e figures, modifying his admiration for him by
adding that "the older you get, the more that seems charming, but
47 somewhat young." ° Finally, Stofsky's name clearly seems to be a reference to the Russian writer, while Holmes's descriptions of the dingy apartments of New York are reminiscent of the way In which
Dostoevsky describes the run-down tenements of St. Petersburg.
In contrast to the Influence of Dostoevsky stands Holmes's use of comedy, which adds a lighter colour to the "reds and blacks" In which, according to the author, Go Is nostly painted." The humour In the book often results from Paul and Kathryn's clashes with the alien Beat world. This Is the case when Paul's only reaction to Stofsky's religious raving is, "Well, that explains It" (p. 67), after being told that Stofsky has been reading Blake carefully, or when Paul comments on
Stofsky's visions by saying that "eye strain can bring about perfectly credible hallucinations" (p. 69). Another example is Kathryn's
interjection, "It sounds horrible" (p. 95), when Pasternak excitedly
tells her that "Little Rock" Harmony's girlfriend Winnie just "lives to
bop!", constantly listening to a Lennie Tristano record while "throwing
her morphine habit" (p. 95). Humorous, too, is Paul's reaction, "David
must have told you about his visions," by which Holmes is able to put
Into perspective Pasternak's brooding "about death and other enigmas"
(p. 121).
Another, more painful kind of humour results from the irony which
Is sometimes implied by the statements made by the characters. Thus,
when Estelle on her date with Paul Jokingly says that "Little Rock"
Harmony's apparent lack of sexual interest "might be catching"
(p. 211), she does not know yet that Hobbee will turn out to be
impotent later on. The same kind of irony is involved In Paul's
reassuring Estelle by saying, "You don't have to worry...I'm tame"
(p. 213), before they enter his apartment. Ironic, too, is Agatson's
48 adaonishlng Verger to die, while he himself will be the one who is
going to die first, and hie inviting people "to celebrate [his] last birthday" (p. 264), which it will really turn out to be.
Go is a carefully structured book. In its three parts the
progression from spring to summer and autumn stands for Bobbes's
involvement with the Beat Generation. Hopeful in the beginning, then
becoming more enthusiastic, Paul ends up by turning away from hie Beat
friends. Parallel to Paul's development runs Holmes's description of
the new morality in general, which is much more positive in the
beginning than it is in the end. In fact, when Holmes began to write
Go. he thought of the novel as the first volume of a trilogy that
would be modelled on Dante's Divine Comedy: "Go was to be my Inferno.
describing the circles of disbelief, descending from the upper world of
young urban professionals, through the Bohemians, through the Beats,
down into the outright underworld of criminality."38 Although Holmes
later dropped this thesis, the original outline is still felt to be
there, holding the book together as a novel. Its successful composition
is furthermore illustrated by the climaxes which the three parts lead
up to, and which all have their own relevance. In the next to last
chapter of Part One, Hobbes is plagued by feelings of guilt, when he
remembers how he had been unable to show some emotion for a dying boy
he had to take care of in a naval hospital during the war. Strongly
contrasting with this chapter is the next one, the last of Part One, in
which Stofsky's having visions is described. By placing these two
chapters together. Holmes Is able to accentuate the contrast between
Hobbes and Stofsky. Part Two, which starts at a slow pace, ends with a
chapter in which Paul's impotence plays a central part, and one in
which Kathryn finds Paul's letters to Liza. Here the deterioration of
49 Paul and Kathryn's marriage is brought to the fore. At the end of Part
Three, with chapters describing Stofsky's arrest, Agatson's death and
Paul's withdrawal from his friends, the failure of Uobbes's Involvement with both the old and the new morality is accentuated. Holmes's clever way of Introducing all the main characters should also be mentioned.
These all figure in the dream which Pasternak tells Hobbes about in the
first pages of the book.
Although the title is hardly the most important aspect of a book,
Go Is definitely a title that stresses the originality of Che subject
matter of Holmes's novel, and is much more original than titles such as
A Cry of Children and Who Walk in Darkness. In this case, however,
Holmes is not the one to be credited for this stroke of inventiveness.
The original title of the book was The Daybreak Boys, which, according
to Holmes, was an allusion to a river-gang on the New York waterfront
of the 1840s. Holmes felt that "It was an appropriate title for a book
about a new underground of young people, pioneering the search for what
lay 'at the end of the night' (a phrase of Kerouac's)."3' However,
Holmes's publisher had recently brought out a novel about public
relations called The Build-up Boys, and rejected the title. Holmes came
up with some fifty other titles, ranging from "Ignorant of Eden,"
"Summer of Discontent," "The Gawdy Nights," and "The Sad Captains," to
"The Scarlet City," "The Fugitive Generation" and "The Beat Nights,"
but none of these seemed to fit. In the end it was the wife of his
editor Burroughs Mitchell who thought of "Go," which title could hardly
have been more appropriate, echoing as it does throughout the book,
with slightly different shades of meaning. It is also used, for
instance, when Ketcham says to Kathryn, "Just let yourself go" (p. 98),
when she plans to let a party "take care of itself," and when, in
50 Stofsky's dream, God says: "You must go...Go, and love without the help of any Thing on earth" (p. 246).
However, as Holmes himself has also suggested. Go does have some
flaws. One of Its "technical awkwardnesses" Is the fact that Its point of view sometimes inexplicably shifts to that of an omniscient narrator, when the story at that moment Is told explicitly from
Hobbes's or Stofsky's point of view. Hobbes, for Instance, cannot know
that Pasternak's "guilts, which had Inhabltated him like a haunted house, vanished so abruptly that for a moment he doubted their reality"
(p. 205), when the two of them are discussing Pasternak's relationship
with Kathryn. It is also not possible for Hobbes to know, when he comes
across Daniel Verger, that the latter "wore the same filthy, torn white
shirt and ripped trousers as when Stofsky had visited him nearly two
weeks ago" (p. 193), or for Stofsky to realize, when Ancke comes to see
him, that "[h]e was, in fact, the wrinkled little hustler that Hobbes
had seen in The Go Hole with the 'cool' man a few weeks before"
(p. 236). The prose itself is sometimes slightly flawed. A comparison
of the sun to a "red coal" which turns "all the world to flames"
(p. 45) is hackneyed, and Holmes's language can be rather stilted. This
is the case when he calls the dreary streets of New York "this Acheron
of tenements" (p. 137), or when he describes cars that are slower than
Hart's as "less agile machines" (p. 117). However, these imperfections
do not at all alter the fact that, on the whole. Go is an accomplished
and authentic novel, which merits more praise and serious critical
attention than it has usually been given.
51 Chapter Three
TBK BDBH
While still working on Go, Holmes started to play with the idea of writing a novel about the world of Jazz. In a letter to Jack Kerouac, written in 1950, Holmes meditated on this project, which was to be called "The Afternoon of a Tenor Man." Although at the time Holmes's plans were still rather vague, it was already clear to him that the Jazz musician he wanted to write about would only perform symbolic actions. His "odyssey" would be "nothing less than the trek of the American across his wastes": "On all sides lie the dangers of the Journey: police, temerity, wildness, spiritual impoverishment. Ahead lies what? Some intoxicative moment of fruition, some indefinable phrase or note or tone that will be hit, will be hit, will be hitl It is freedom that is strlved for, and this is the freest, most totally potential music that ever existed·"'- Holmes planned to concentrate on a Jazz musician's afternoon, because, for the tenor-man to blow "wilder every night," it takes "an afternoon of careful tight-rope walking to reach this pitch and to maintain it," an afternoon which is "filled with the terrors of being inexorably dragged by something he cannot 2 control.
By May 1952, Holmes's plans had taken a much more definite form.
According to a letter to Kerouac, he had realized that for him "Jazz- musicians most perfectly epitomize the sorry, and often fabulous, condition of the artist in America.' Consequently, he now wanted to
52 link the fictional characters In his Jazz novel both to musicians and writers, while be had decided that the novel would cover one afternoon and night· Shortly after sending this letter. Holnes wrote the first
chapter; under the title "The Horn" It was published as a short story
in Discovery In August 1953. By that tine Holmes had written a second chapter, entitled "Chorus: Wing" In the published novel, and he
"started to glimpse the book that lay, nascent, in that beginning - a
man's life as remembered by those who loved and envied him." However,
Holmes concentrated on writing Perfect Fools, the second volume of the
trilogy structured on Dante's Divine Comedy. When that novel was not
accepted for publication In 1955, he embarked on the third volume of
the trilogy, and It was only In the spring of 1956 that he returned to
his Jazz novel. Alto samlet Charlie Parker's death In March 1955 had
given him the idea for the ending of his novel. It took Holmes a year
and a half to finish the book, which was published, as The Horn, in
July 1958.
The Horn, set in 1954, covers the last twenty-four hours in the
life of tenor saxophonist Edgar Pool. The book begins with tenor saxist
Walden Blue waking up In his room in New York at four o'clock of a
Monday afternoon. Walden remembers how, early that morning in a Jazz
club called Blanton's, in a musical duel he had outplayed Edgar, a
legendary forerunner of bop music who has fallen on evil days, his
decline having been accelerated by the ending of his long relationship
with singer Geordie Dickson, also present at the club. That morning
Walden, a young and upcoming musician, had suddenly felt that he had to
withstand Edgar's negativity. Almost against his will he had cut in
while Edgar was playing, even though such an action was bound to be
53 frowned upon. Having triumphed over Pool, Walden had been shocked by his own audacity and the consequences of his deed. Not only had he realized that he had taken a decisive step as a musician, but he had also been afraid that, by defeating Pool, he might have completely crushed him. Geordle Dickson, however, had tried to reassure him by
telling him that, before leaving the club. Pool had only said to her
that Walden had sounded good.
While Walden is waking up, Pool la drifting from bar to bar. In the
company of Cleo, a young pianist who bad accompanied him and Walden
during their tenor duel. For Cleo, Pool is the personification of a
myth, a musical hero. Pool, however, feels outwitted and superfluous
now that younger musicians are able to outplay him and Jazz has become
much more commercialized than it used to be when he was at the height
of his creative powers. It also becomes increasingly clear to him that
his health is quickly deteriorating. He realizes that the best thing
for him to do would be to leave the New York jazz scene and to try and
raise the money for the early morning bus back to his home town, Kansas
City.
Worried about what may have happened to Edgar after he left
Blanton's, Walden goes to see alto saxlst Eddie Win(g)field Red bum, to
try and obtain Edgar's address. Eddie was one of the brilliant
musicians who, under the Influence of Edgar, created bop music. Like
Walden, however, he had been put off by Edgar's negativity, abruptly
leaving Edgar and the musicians who formed the original bop fraternity
during a concert tour. Although it first seems as if Redburn does not
like to be reminded of the past, he decides to help Walden in tracking
down Edgar. The latter is still trying to collect the money for a bus
ticket. He cannot reach anyone who is willing to help, however, and he
54 proudly rejects Cleo's suggestion that he earn the money by joining him that evening in a jam session in a jazz club called the Go Hole. After admitting that he really cannot play any more, he decides to ask
Geordie Dickson for help, leaving Cleo In a bar to look after his saxophone.
From Geordie'e apartment Edgar calls Junius Priest, a pianist who,
Inspired by Edgar, ten years earlier had been one of the originators of bop. Junius remembers that year,1944, which he spent in California, searching for a new kind of jazz with musicians like Wing Redbum and
Curny Finnley. Be met Edgar then and together they recorded one of
Junius'в tunes. During the recording session Edgar was drunk and about
to break down, which made Junius draw back from him and the destructive
side of the Jazz world, forever after preferring a peaceful life with his mother in Harlem. So complete had been the break with his old
friends that, now that Edgar asks him for money, he hangs up on him.
Junius realizes, however, that he will always be indebted to Edgar, and he asks Wing Redbum to give Edgar the ten dollars he still owes him.
In the meantime Cleo wonders if he should go on trying to help
Edgar, or just let things take their course. However, before he has had
a chance to leave the bar, Edgar returns from his visit to Geordie.
Instead of the fifty he needs, Geordie has been able to give him only
fifteen dollars. Left alone In her hotel room, she reminisces about the
years she spent with Edgar. She and Edgar had met In Charleston in
1936, when she was a simple sixteen-year-old country girl, singing to
records in a bar. He had taken her to New York and helped her to become
a famous singer. Gradually, however, her youth and Innocence had
dropped away, and, through Edgar, she had become addicted to drugs. Her
life with Edgar had become more and more chaotic and destructive,
55 especially during the time they had spent in California, when Edgar had met the young bop musicians. Finally, Geordie had freed herself from her addiction, and after Edgar had allowed himself to be committed to a state sanatorium, she had returned to New York to lead a more steady life away from him.
Joining Cleo again, Edgar realizes that, now that it is already after nine thirty in the evening, time is running out on him. He keeps on refusing to play with Cleo, however. Instead, he goes out to pawn his saxophone, turning up an hour later at a rehearsal of the big band of trumpet-player Cumy Finnley. Curny had been another of the creators of bop music, but he is also a commercially inclined artist. During the rehearsal Edgar repeatedly shows his disgust for commercial jazz and
for playing to arrangements. He almost drives Curny to despair, until he suddenly leaves and returns to Cleo. Walking down Broadway with
Cleo, Edgar talks about the traps that beset the Jazz musician in
America, and that may lead to his wanting to give up playing
altogether. He repeats that he no longer has any music in him, and he
Is even relieved that, now that he has pawned his instrument, he will not be able to sit in with Cleo at the jam session. However, when he
sees two young white men enthusiastically listening to jazz in front of
a record store, Edgar loses some of his negativity, becoming amused and
absorbed by the scene.
Meanwhile, still searching for Edgar, Walden and Wing have decided
to look up Metro Myland, a tenor saxophonist who Is also an old friend
of Edgar's. Metro, who had run away from his home in St. Louis, met
Edgar during the Depression when they, like thousands of other kids,
were tramping around the country. Edgar, having left home to escape
from his father and a job he did not like, was then returning to Kansas
56 City, after having made the decision to become a jazz musician. When It turned out that Metro was not really able to take care of himself on the road, Edgar took him along to the house of his mother. There Metro watched Edgar practice on the saxophone he had bought, until he convinced a local band to let him sit In and perform In public for the first time. Although they later lost sight of each other, Metro is still willing to help Edgar, asking Walden and Vlng to call him any time at all. Wing, however, has just found out that Edgar has turned up at the Go Hole, so they decide to go downtown at once.
After haggling about the pay with the owner of the club, Edgar appears before the public of the Go Hole, using a borrowed saxophone.
He has become so drunk, however, that one of the other musicians refuses to play with him. As a consequence, Edgar's performance Is disastrous, even though towards the end of It he does become Inspired.
After the show, waiting for the next set, Edgar wanders down Broadway,
realizing that. In spite of his sudden burst of Inspiration, he is really sick and played out. Feeling hopeless and worried about the set he still has to play, he has a drink in a bar where he meets Mr. Owls,
Curny Finnley's manager. Edgar keeps interrupting Owls until the latter
gives him a shove, which seems to damage something in Edgar's stomach.
When Edgar eaters the Go Hole, the other musicians are already
performing, and what they are playing sounds to Edgar exactly like the
music he himself used to play when he was at the height of his talents.
Approaching the stage, he is stopped by Wing, who explains to him that
Walden Is playing Edgar's set to help him with the money for his bus
ticket. Edgar, however, collapses and, after being taken to the kitchen
of the Go Hole, dies there of α stomach hemorrhage.
57 II
Holmes has Indicated that the origin of The Horn lay In his feeling that "the Jazz artist was the quintessential American artist," and that
"his work-hang-ups, his general neglect by his country, his continual struggle for money, the debasement of his vision by tbe mean streets, his ofttlmes descent Into drugs, liquor, and self-destructlveness" seemed "to typify the experience of our great 19th Century American writers." This Is why the characters In The Horn are based on jazz musicians, while they are also meant to represent writers such as Foe,
Melville, Hawthorne, Dickinson, Twain and Whitman.
Although Holmes personally knew little or nothing about the jazz musicians he used as models. In most cases they are easily recognizable. This goes in particular for Edgar Fool, whose prototype
is tenor-sax player Lester Young (1901-1959), nicknamed "The President"
or "Frez" because he was the predominant horn player of the thirties and early forties. Like Young, Fool is an immediate precursor of bop,
who does not like the new university-taught musicians, who stress the
importance of jazz as a form of art and who no longer play songs, but
"tone poems" (p. 147). Likewise, Fool shares Young's conviction that a
good musician should be able to play the blues and know the lyrics to
the songs he performs. References to Lester Young are also to be found
in the description of Edgar having "leapt in, cutting his road alone"
(p. 22), which alludes to Young's composition, "Lester Leaps In," and
in the account of Fool's blowing, "one night in 1938, in a railroad bar
in Cincinnati...forty choruses of 'I Got Rhythm,' without pause or
haste or repetition, staring at a dead wall" (p. 7). This story is
58 based on a saxophone duel between Lester Young and Chu Berry, In which
Young defeated Berry by playing more than fifteen choruses of the same song.
Moreover, the way Holmes describes Edgar Fool's physical appearance
Is reminiscent of Lester Young. Holmes mentions Pool's "peevish mouth below the pencll-thln mustache" (p. 81), his "swollen lids and uncaring mouth" (p. 23), and his "lidded, sleepy eyes under the broad-brim felt he would not remove" (pp. 65-66). Young also had lidded eyes and a mustache, and, as pictures of him testify, often wore a large-brimmed hat. Even the way Pool holds his horn Is compared to the way Young used to hold his Instrument· Both Pool and Young started out by holding their saxophones "almost horizontally extended from [their] ooutMs]," while later "the horn came down" (p. 8). Still, most of these resemblances between Pool and Young are rather superficial, and, as far as their characters are concerned, the two are not at all alike. Holmes has stressed that, unlike Pool, Young was neither a dissipate nor a drug-addict, while he was happily married and had children. Moreover,
Young was not born In Kansas City, but in Woodvllle, Mlssleslppl.
The similarities between Edgar Pool and Lester Young are closest
In the first two chapters of The Horn. In the rest of the book, written after the death of Charlie "Bird" Parker, Holmes used details from the life of this legendary musician to characterize Pool. Parker actually was born in Kansas City, in 1920. Playing with the big band of Jay
McShann, he made his first recordings In 1941 in New York, where he worked at Minton's Playhouse, reputedly the place where bop music was created. In 1945 he teamed up with trumpet-player Dizzy Gillespie, with whom he further pioneered hop. He accompanied Gillespie to Los Angeles,
59 where hls drug addiction led to a nervous breakdown. Parker had to be hospitalized for seven months at the state sanatorium at Camarlllo.
Although he kept on making highly Influential and brilliant recordings after his discharge In 1947, he also continued to suffer numerous breakdowns through his addiction to drugs and alcohol, which finally killed him. In The Horn It Is primarily the details pertaining to
Parker's illness which Holmes uses to describe Pool. Thus, like Parker,
Pool is addicted to alcohol and drugs, and, after an unfortunate stay
In Los Angeles, has to be committed to a state sanatorium. The
description of the recording session at which Pool, about to break
down, plays "Comin' Virginia," closely resembles Parker's record date
of July 29, 1946, when, held up by two friends, he recorded an uneven
but moving version of "Lover Man." Parker later rejected this
recording, which has the same qualities as those of Edgar's version of
"Comin' Virginia": "hesitant yet strsngely pure, crude but curiously
unencumbered" (p. 70). The resemblance between the two recordings is
even found In a detail like "the light introductory brush of the drums"
(p. 69), while Pool's playing, like Parker's, is "fragmented, arduous,
spaced with poignant and terrible intervals," "gasping and slow, always
just In danger of falling behind the beat" (p. 69). Another reference
to Parker's life is the amazed outcry of the doctor when Pool is about
to die, "What's this man been doing to himself anyway?" (p. 235), which
echoes s doctor's statement, at Parker's autopsy, that the musician
looked like a man twice his age. While after Parker's death his
followers wrote the legend "Bird lives" on the walls of buildings and
subways, when Pool has died, Cleo plans to "go home, tonight, and chalk
upon the unfeeling iron of the subway wall, 'The Horn still blows,' in
grave, anonymous hand" (p. 242).
60 Some of the more positive aspects of Parker's life and career are
to be found In Holmes's description of Eddie Wln(g)fleld Redburn In the second chapter. The optimistic tone of this chapter may well be due to the fact that Holmes wrote It when Parker was still alive. Holmes describes Redburn, whose nickname "Wing" can be compared to Parker's
being called "Bird," as "the prima alto In modern jazz music, so startling and original that amid the changing fashions and new sounds he already occupied that peculiar obscurity into which only an unassailable fame can vail a man" (p. 33). This description would fit
Parker as well, while Redburn'β once having heard "the big, plumed Bird
who sings somewhere In the center of America" (p. 35) clearly refers to
Parker's nickname. Other references can be discovered in Holmes's
description of Redburn's style, which resembles Parker's with its
"darting, bravura phrases that wheeled and flashed like the wings of a
frenetic hummingbird (hence his name)" (p. 34), and its "furious, crude
jumble of alto sounds that a man either dug with his mind or it was all
noise" (p. 63). Redburn, like Parker, has "played things then that few
other men could rightly understand" (p. ЗА), and the two also share a
liking for modern classical music. While Parker was very fond of
Stravinsky, Redburn "sometimes listened to Bartok, Hindemlth, and
'those cats,' and had accomplished (without self-consciousness or
pretension) the feat of hearing all music with the same ear" (p. 34).
Another musician in The Horn who is easily recognizable is trumpet-
player Curny Finnley, based on Dizzy Gillespie. Gillespie is usually
mentioned in one breath with Charlie Parker as one of the
revolutionaries of modern jazz. However, he was much more of a showman
than Parker, and always had an acute awareness of publicity values· It
61 was he who started "bebop" fads such as the beret and the goatee beard
which Curny Flnnley, a showaan like his original, also sports. Dizzy also popularized the bop language used in scat singing, reflected In
titles such as "Oo-pop-a-da" and "In the land of Oo-bla-dee." In hi·
turn, Flnnley uses this kind of language when he says, "Man, loot Is
just around the oobla, don't you know about the oobla?" (p. 128): a
statement which illustrates the commercial concern he shares with
Gillespie. A further comparison between the two is the fact that both
are leaders of big bands. Although Flnnley is described (a description
that would also fit Gillespie) as "in certain ways, the most
iconoclastic musician that modern jazz had produced," nevertheless he
Is "always forming a new band 'to hip the public, and incidentally make
loot' - a band Jerry-built each time out of wild hopes, esoteric
arrangements and bone-grinding schedules, which invariably came to no
good end after a few months, a few records and a sobering look at the
overhead, in some out-of-the-way city on the road" (p. 130). While
Gillespie did not break up his band as frequently as his fictional
counterpart, he too was several times unable to keep a band together,
due to lack of commercial success. Of both musicians It can be said
that their bands were "invariably uneven, boisterous, advanced"
(p. 131), and that they "simply loved big, complex, funny arrangements,
dense with conflicting section work, buoyed by relentless, driving
rhythm, but (above all) loud - etraining the ears with the prodigious
volume of sheer noise that only the huge lurch of a swinging band,
almost out of control and blowing just a little beyond its limit, can
produce" (p. 131). While playing trumpet, Curny even copies Dizzy
Gillespie's habit of inflating his cheeks,"until it looked as though
he had wedged two apples Into them" (p. 135). Moreover, Curny's solos,
62 like Dizzy's, consist of "a fusillade of copper-clear notes, like machine-gun f Ire...curiously arbitrary and released" (p. 64). Like
Dizzy, Curny 1B a musician "not во much Inspired as simply infused with delight at his own skill" (p. 135). Finally, a hidden clue about the
Identity of Curny Finnley's original is to be found in Curny's statement, "I'm too deep tonight, I get dizzy just considering it..."
(p. 128).
A hidden reference like the afore-mentioned is also found in
Holmes's portrayal of Geordle Dickson, based on singer Billie Holiday.
Describing Walden listening to Geordle singing "I Must Have That Han,"
one of Billie Holiday's standards, Walden is said to hear "the slur,
the sugar, the pulse In the voice" (p. 12), "Sugar" being the title of
another song made famous by the woman who was one of the greatest Jazz
singers. Because her grandfather was the son of a black slave and an
Irish plantation-owner, Billie Holiday was partly white, like her
fictional counterpart. Like Geordle Dickson, too, Billie Holiday was
raped at an early age, when she was ten. After being discovered by John
Hammond and Benny Goodman when she was eighteen, she took the popular
songs of her time and transformed them into significance, like Geordle
Dickson discovering that "all words are alike on their levels, and so
she sang the papler-mSché, stagey, white-men's words, lending them the
brief sincerity of her dark voice to express the truth beneath their
cheap simmer" (p. 97). Billie Holiday and Geordle Dickson also share
the same feeling about the blues, to which both keep returning:
There was so much to be done with them that still sometimes, when the grave, accomplished mood came on her, she would do a whole set; varying only the rhythm
63 and the words, and how she chose to unfold the ancient, repetitive lament. Blues like "Black and Evil" were never done anymore In the mldtown cellars where she worked· They were Uncle Tom, and times had turned against the kinky-headed wallers, sweating earnestly for the white folks, who had sung them simply and without a second thought. But the blues themselves went on, even behind the bittersweet of show tunes that had their truths as well, and Geordle merely listened to the words, and sang the same. (pp. 96-99)
Dickson was to a large extent formed by Edgar Fool, even as Blllle
Holiday was strongly Influenced by Lester Young, her favourite
accompanist and the man who gave her the nickname "Lady Day" (just as
Geordle Is nicknamed "Hiss Baby" by Edgar Pool). Like Young, Blllle
Holiday thought the words of a song Important, while her manner of
einging had much In common with Lester's tenor-playing. Both artists
were fond of lagging a little behind the beat, which habit Holmes may
refer to by mentioning Geordie's "slur in the voice" (p. 12). Still,
although Blllle Holiday's relationship with Lester Young was very
important to her, their friendship was not as close or as tragic as the
tie between Edgar and Geordle, who are described as "the one Jazz
singer and the one horn who, by poetic truth, should have been in love,
and somehow incredibly had, in reality, actually come together"
(p. 68). Nor was it Lester Young through whom Blllle Holiday became
addicted to the drugs which helped to kill her in 1959 at the age of
forty-four, while in The Horn it is Edgar who is held responsible for
Geordie's morphine habit. Moreover, unlike Blllle Holiday, Geordle is
finally able to free herself of her addiction. Other, sometimes minor,
details again show correspondences between Geordle and Blllle, however.
64 Thus, while Blllle Holiday's trademark was the gardenia she used to wear in her hair when she appeared before the public, on stage Geordle always wears a large rose In her hair. Finally, while Geordle has a little cocker spaniel named Marco (called Buster by Edgar Pool), Blllle
Holiday was very fond of her boxer Mister, which she used to take backstage with ber.
Of some of the other muelclans in The Horn tbe originals are less easily distinguished. Junius Priest Is clearly based on pianist
Thelonious Monk, which is suggested by Holmes's comparing Priest's face to 'that of a blind man or a monk" (p. 59). Like Monk, Junius is seen as a private, somewhat mysterious person and a pioneer of bop. Junius's
"fleet right-hand runs and sternly dissonant chords" (p. 59) resemble
the playing of Bud Powell more than that of Monk, however, and Monk, as
Holaes has taken care to point out, "has never been to California, he
is older than Junius, he does not live with his family, he is a
Mohammedan by faith, and he is anything but innocent." Still, Edgar
Pool's calling Junius's music "shroud music" (p. 67) is an obvious
reference to the fact that Monk's compositions and playing have been
called the music of a zombie.
Although Walden Blue is reminiscent of tenorist Wardell Gray mainly
because of his name, his being influenced by Edgar Fool is In line with
Gray's usually being considered one of most Important of Lester Young's
followers. Metro Myland is "just any great big yawping tenor sax g player, according to Holmes, although he has also mentioned a
musician called Willis Jackson as a prototype for this character.
65 Ill
Although the epigraphs that open each chapter make it easy to
Identify the fictional characters of The Horn with the great writers of the American Renaissance they are also meant to represent, the resemblances between characters and writers are not as obvious and abundant as those between characters and Jazz musicians· Some of the writers who served as models are easily recognizable, however.
Edgar Pool is Holmes's Edgar Allan Foe, as the similarity between their names already indicates. In fact. Holmes has said that the main source of inspiration for The Horn was "to wonder what might have happened if all the great American literary figures had stood up for
Edgar Allan Poe when he was reduced to obscurity and demise."1°
Elsewhere he has called Pool "a very Intuitive, extremely subjective extrapolation of Edgar Allan Рое": "The way his mind works, the way he reacts, and his general attitudes are lifted, almost direct, from accounts of Poe's later years."
Just as Pool pioneered bop and influenced younger musicians, so Poe in some respects pioneered the literary life in America, influencing the writers who came after him. To identify Pool with Foe, Holmes stressed the 'loneliness, drunkenness and obscurity" of both artists-
He alludes to Poe in his description of Edgar's and Geordie's life together, which is compared to a "narrowing toward the giddy equilibrium at the center of a maelstrom" (p. 140), a possible reference to Poe's story, "A Descent into the Maelstrom." Similarly,
Holmes's description of Edgar's frustration at "the veritable avalanche of music paper that had thwarted his horn for years...like an imp of
66 the perverse" (ρ· 138), recalls another story of Poe, "The Imp of the
Perverse." Furthermore, there Is an obvious reference to Foe's poem
"The Raven" In Cleo's suddenly glimpsing "the dark reality that sat
like a nlghtblrd, large and taloned and beady-eyed. In Edgar's brain"
(p. 146).
The Identification of Ulng Redburn with Herman Melville Is established by Wing's surname, which is also the title of Melville's
fourth novel. Another comparison between Redburn and Melville Is to be
found In the Edenlc experience Wing has with Fay Lee, an unspoilt young
girl In Louisiana, whom he meets after having fled from Edgar during a
concert tour. As Holmes has suggested, this Is reminiscent of the
idyllic friendship between Tommo, the narrator In Melville's novel
Typee (1847), and Fayaway, a girl he meets in the Polynesian islands
and who belongs to a tribe called the Typees, among whom Melville
himself lived for a month in 1842. However, most important In the
portrayal of Redburn seems to be the link between his separating
himself from the bop fraternity in favour of a steady Job, and
Melville's spending the last twenty years of his working life as a
customs officer in New York, after having given up writing because of
the critical and financial failure of his last four novels. Apart from
these resemblances Holmes decided not to make the analogy between
Melville and Redburn too exact, having realized that Melville was "too
big...he threatened to take over the whole book."
The resemblance between Curny Finnley and Mark Twain is not as
precise as that between Redburn and Melville. Still, the obvious
reference to Huck Finn in Curny's surname aside, aspects of Twain are
definitely recognizable in Holmes's description of Finnley as "this
tireless, authentic windbag (heir of the extravagant Mississippi
67 boaster with hls epic oaths, and the grandiloquent county politician stumping the hustings with a barrel of 'hard,' and the loquacious frontier journalist to whom life was rich and violent and interesting)"
(pp. 129-130). The same likeness is to be found in Holmes's calling
Curny "one of those garrulous, high-spirited clowns that America still occasionally produces, as If to balance out the gloomy poets (like
Edgar)" (p. 129). Still Curny, like Twain, is "no less perceptive of
the dark side of things than the poet," while for the musician as well
as for the writer, rhetoric is "his natural medium: the distance
between reality and the ideal, his ironic subject; and he could always
find something to slap his thigh about, even in a certified disaster"
(p. 129).
A· Holmes has pointed out, the character of Junius Priest was
loosely based on accounts be had read of Nathaniel Hawthorne's
apprentice years with his mother in Salem.15 Holmes took the name
Junius from Hawthorne's unfinished novel Septimus Felton, and added the
surname Priest, which also echoes the name Monk, because he had always
thought of Hawthorne as a priest. Like Hawthorne In Salem, Junius
abjures the world to live "a sedentary Harlem life" with his mother, in
order to make "the lonesome discoveries with which a man becomes
himself" (p. 59).
In the case of Geordie Dickson references to her literary analogue
are scarce. It is mainly through her name and the epigraph heading the
chapter that we are able to recognize Emily Dickinson in the full-
blooded, sensuous jazz singer who was the mistress of Edgar Pool and a
large number of other men. It is true, though, that Emily Dickinson,
like Geordie Dickson, could be called "a distracted woman accustomed to
lonely rooms" (p. 95). Moreover, in his description of Geordie's way of
68 life. Holmes seems to refer to the poet by sometimes making his style,
If the sentences are scanned properly, resemble that of Emily
Dickinson's poetry: "A room, her dog, a window on the night, to the world, to half the men she knew, it would have seemed an empty, lonely life at best, and no one would believe her if she told them how it suited her" (p. 96).
The same procedure is found in Holmes's description of Metro
Myland, based on Walt Whitman. Metro's thankful words, while travelling with young Edgar Pool, "Thank Old God for His sweet morning, thank Old
God for His winter fields loosening towards spring, thank Old God I'm here, and haven't missed iti" (p. 172), are certainly reminiscent of the tone of much of Whitman's poetry, as is Metro's enthusiastic outcry, "yes. Old God, I see our three heartbeats in vapor on your morning airi Oh, yeal" (p. 171). The catalogue in the second half of the following description of Metro preparing to play is also an obvious stylistic tribute to the poet:
And so he went back to his fidgeting rhythm section that was wild to begin again; and as Wing and Walden left, there he was, grinning shyly at the eager crowd, clear-eyed as he uncapped his mouthpiece, ready to call thea all together one more time, announcing with his fat-toned song: Who do 1 love, and celebrate, and covet?...All these: all shouters, dancers, boasters; all who turn the volume higher; all given to extravagant gestures, and impulsive kisses; all thigh- slappers, back-pounders, breast-touchers; those who weep, and laugh, and love easily, and hear God's Joyful hands keep time to all their couplings. All these, and Edgar, too. (p. 187)
69 In the characterization of Metro's music, too, references to
Whitman can be discerned. Metro is said to blow "a sax as crude as a climbing stud" (p. 152), "crude as the flesh most naturally is when the mind lets go" (p. 154). This crudeness Is also to be found in at least parts of Whitman's poetry. Metro's playing "in thin, high-pitched squirts of sound that said a clear and untranslatable 'Yes!' to everything that was not of the mind" (p. 155) seems to reflect
Whitman's optimistic, all-embracing attitude towards life, although
Whitman would probably not have made such a clear distinction between mind and body. For Whitman, and for Metro finally too, "all was one," and "the only sacrament was life, the very breath itself" (p. 186). The poet's longing for democracy is clearly illustrated by the fact that
Metro is usually to be found "down a cheap street, under buzzing neons, through a door with barely room enough to open because of the crowds beyond it, in a milling, smoky uproar dense with the smell of pork and beer and dime-store perfume and good rank human sweat" (pp. 152-153).
Of the remaining characters, Walden Blue represents Holmes's Henry
David Thoreau, although it is again mainly through the name Walden and the epigraph that one is able to make this connection. According to
Holmes, however, he associated the two because both musician and writer cared more about principle than tradition. Holmes has also claimed that Willy Owls, Curny Finnley's nervous personal manager who Is always trying to get down to business, took his origin from William Dean
Howells, while trumpeter Kelcey Crane is based on Stephen Crane.
Kelcey, like Stephen Crane more interested in art than in life, refuses to play with a drunken and defeated Pool on his last date, which is in accordance with Holmes's feeling that Stephen Crane would have rejected Poe, "also for the wrong reasons.' Crane's interest in
70 the Western themes of American literature is nicely reflected in
Holmes's description of Kelcey, 'leaning against the mirrored pillar to one side, with the sulky, hungry-to-be-insulted slouch of a young punk gunman In a Laredo saloon" (p. 202).
Billy James Henry, to conclude. Is a composite of William and Henry
James, "leaning rather more heavily on careful Henry than profound
William."19 Billy James is, like Kelcey Crane, one of the younger
musicians in The Horn who prefer arrangements to spontaneity in jazz,
and "felt that Jazz could _be an art (forgetting that it was), and
frowned on those who liked a hard beat, and worked the clubs
reluctantly, who wrote arrangements with names like 'The Thinking
Reed,' and really felt more comfortable in Europe" (p. 119). Translated
into literary terms, this descripton could be applied to Henry James.
When Billy James refuses to play and to be associated with Pool, it is
clear that Holmes not only wants to illustrate the distance between the
older musicians, who still believe in improvisation, and the younger
musicians, who are more interested in the formal aspects of Jazz, but
that he also wants to criticize the development in American literature
that Henry James was part of, which moved away from the idealistic and
transcendental aspects of the American Renaissance.
IV
The fact that there are a number of striking resemblances between
Jazz musicians and fictional characters in The Horn caused several
critics to regard the book, like Go, as a roman à clef. In doing so,
71 they overlooked the obvious reason for linking The Horn to Go. This Is that Paul Bobbes and Gene Pasternak, the characters In Go who are based on Holnes and Kerouac, make a few short appearances In The Horn. When
Edgar Pool sees the two young white jazz enthusiasts In the street, the latter address each other as Paul and Gene. The two are also present at
the Go Hole when Pool makes his final appearance· In fact, the nane the
Go Hole, for a fictional jazzclub, was also used in Go. 20
This natter aside, the tern "ronan a clef was used both by Kenneth
Rexroth and Nat Hentoff when The Horn was first published. More
recently Richard Ardlnger has written that "on one level, the novel can be read as another roman à clef portrayal of jazz artists of the late
1940s."21 While other critics also touched upon the correspondences
with Jazz musicians, the literary analogues in The Horn have drawn less
attention. Jack Kerouac, however, reacting to the Hay 1952 letter in
which Holmes detailed his plans about The Horn, blamed hin for using
"slapped-on literary comparison!s]." Holmes's own attitude towards
his use of the musical and literary correspondences was ambiguous. In
late publications, such as the introduction to the 19S0 and 1988 re
issues of The Horn, he stressed the significance of his references both
to musical and literary figures. Earlier, however, he disclaioed the
importance of the analogues. To Kerouac he wrote that "'[T]he slapped-
on literary conparison' of which you speak was simply my way of feeling
Into material of which my first hand knowledge (In the soul) is
faulty." He also claimed that his book "was never intended to be a
history of jazz, 1935 or 1945," and more recently he stressed again
that "with exception of a few very public details about all the people
in there, whatever I said about them was strictly from their music. I
took their music and invented from there." In an unpublished draft
72 for an Introduction to the book. Holmes even wrote that "[n]one of the people In this book have actually lived; none of the things which happen to them have actually happened." 27 Statements such as these make
It clear that he Intended The Horn primarily to be a piece of fiction, and as such it will here be dealt with.
What Is immediately striking about The Horn, la its structure. The book consists of six long chapters called 'Choruses,'' each headed by an epigraph, portraying the characters with whom Edgar Pool's life is
Interwoven; a seventh and last 'Chorus,' consisting of two parts, is dedicated to Edgar. These "Chorus'-chapters alternate with six short chapters, called 'Riffs,' in which we follow Edgar and Cleo on their peregrination through New York. The 'Choruses' were all completed first; the 'Riffs' were "added afterwards to tie them together on a primary time level."28 The book ends with a 'Coda.' in which Cleo's reactions to Edgar's death are explored. With the exception of the
chapters on Curny and Edgar, which describe a band rehearsal and
Edgar's final performance respectively, the 'Choruses' consist largely
of long flashbacks, in which the main characters' involvement with
Edgar is depicted. Consequently, there is hardly any character
development to he found in the "Choruses," and, each one having another
main character, they are essentially autonomous. In fact, while Holmes
looked upon the first two as independent short stories, the other
"Choruses" could also be regarded and read as such. In his unpublished
Introduction to the book. Holmes wrote that he was "not sure that It is
a novel or a collection of short stories."29 Still, The Horn definitely
has a number of novelistic aspects. These are, however, primarily to be
found in the "Riffs."
73 In the "Riffs" Edgar Is contrasted with pianist Cleo, hls young companion who attempts to steer him away from drink and concomitant misfortunes, and to help him In finding a solution for his financial worries. From the start Cleo, who Is "a straight, out-and-out creation, without even a writer to give him birth, 0 Is described as an
Innocent. He la Edgar's "young, doe-faced companion" (p. 23), whose gaze has "the patient, wild delicacy of a small animal or an unjudglng disciple" (p. 24), and who Is called "stupid," but "good-natured"
(p. 146) by Edgar. The latter Is markedly different from Cleo. He Is
portrayed as, outwardly at least, uncaring and perverse and unscrupulous enough to wilfully hurt his protector. In spite of this,
Cleo decides to stick with Edgar, and Is Initiated Into Edgar's dark view of the world of jazz and a changed outlook on life.
At first Cleo firmly believes thst be will be able to help Edgar and that there must be a simple solution for the older musician's
problems. Gradually, however, he comes to realize that he cannot save
Edgar from "the Ironies which were a part of any history" (p. 76):
"Everything was much more complicated than he had Imagined when he ran
after Edgar 'just last night'; and for the first time his own
simplicity, his urge toward sweetness and toward harmony, seemed to him
naive" (p. 77). After Edgar has pawned his saxophone, Cleo becomes
painfully aware of some of the troubles facing the artist in America.
He suddenly sees "the three sterile, pendant balls of compromise and
cynicism and capitulation as Edgar saw them, horrible and tempting and
at the end of every street down which a man might flee with the crime
of the Imagination In his heart" (p. 147). He also recognizes, however,
that it is not Just "neglect, indifference, poverty and time" (p. 149)
which have made Edgar, as Cleo views it, castrate himself by pawning
74 hls Instrument, but that Edgar's decline Is ultimately caused by "what happened In a man himself, what could happen to anyone If It happened
to Edgar" (p. 149).
Cleo's decreasing Innocence as be becomes aware of some of the
tragic aspects of life Is Illustrated by his gradually becoming drunk, even though drinking Is not one of his habits. In the eyes of others he
le put on a par with Edgar, who, as one character says, has "gotten our piano nan so stoned he can't nearly stand up" (p. 191). In the "Coda,"
Cleo's new, more accepting attitude towards life Is underlined by his decision not to redeem Edgar's horn from the pawnbroker, and to let
things take their course.
While In the "Choruses" Edgar Is usually described as tough and
cynical, In the "Riffa" hls vulnerability Is also revealed. This Is
Illustrated by the way In which he comes to rely on Cleo, even
entrusting his saxophone to him when he goes out to search for money.
In fact. It Is In the "Riffs" that the symbolical value of Edgar's horn
Is firmly established. Partly It la seen as expressing Edgar's
sexuality, which Is revealed by Holmes's description of someone staring
at the horn, "the way women stare, lured and heady, at all things
masculine, and Indlssuadable, and fecund" (p. 54). This aspect of the
horn Is also Indicated when Cleo regards Edgar's finally pawning his
saxophone as a form of castration.
More relevant is the fact that Edgar's horn symbolizes his life and
his art, the music that la all-important to him. The close link between
life and musical instrument is Illustrated by Edgar's nickname, "the
Horn." It Is also expressed when, thinking about the painful
experiences in his life, Edgar fingers the deep scars on his horn case,
stopping for a moment "to trace one particularly ancient scratch up
75 near the handle" (p. 53), when he considers his troubled relationship with Geordie Dickson. It is Edgar's tragedy that the very essence of his life has come to be a burden, which he wants to lay down· He has become so closely connected with his music that, now that he feels that he is played out, he tries to break free from his identity as a musician by selling his horn. Already shortly afterwards, however, he decides to borrow another musician's saxophone to devote himself once more to the creation of his art.
Because what happens to Edgar and his horn Is closely related to a more general view of art and artists in America, it is highly appropriate that Holmes situates Edgar's birthplace "midway in the
land, not truly North or South" (p. 225). As his May 1952 letter to
Kerouac showed, from the start Holmes wanted to write about the artist as American, about "the artist on whom America lays its basic impact;
the men and women perfectly strung between the ambiguities of this
country; love and hate for it." In part, however, Holmes's portrait
of Pool as an American artist can be applied to all artists. This goes,
for instance, for his description of Pool's musical training during
"years of simply trying to manipulate the stops, and further years of
the impatient expending of this mastery on worthless tunes, and finally
that Just astonishing moment when the skill was adequate to the Idea"
(p. 70). It also holds true for the way in which Holmes describes the
lack of inspiratori which sometimes, suddenly and without warning,
befalls Edgar, just as it might befall any artist.
In other respects, however, Edgar's plight is very much the result
of his being an American artist. More than elsewhere, art in America
seems to have been commercialized and to have become regarded primarily
as something which can be bought and sold. Edgar Pool feels that art la
76 actually so little appreciated In America that artists are sometimes paid In order not to create. The disastrous result of this negative attitude towards art and artists Is reflected In Edgar's desperate exclamation, "Why do you have to destroy something to create something here!" (pp. 225-226). Of course It cannot be denied that there have been many cases In which American society with Its unresponsive attitude towards art seems to have negatively Influenced the lives of artists, from Foe and Melville to Scott Fitzgerald and Jack Kerouac. In fact. The Horn is partly dedicated to Kerouac, and one can hardly escape the uncanny feeling that, In describing Fool's degradation,
Holmes seems to have foretold the tragic course which Kerouac's artistic career was to take.
More Important than the criticism of American society which Is to be found In The Horn. Is that Holmes wanted the book to be a celebration of jazz as an art. From the start It was clear to him that he did not Intend to "write a history of Jazz, or to analyze minority problems, or even to dramatize a special world,"32 but that he wanted
to celebrate a particular kind of music. This Is also clear from the note la front of the book. In which he calls the novel, "like the music
that It celebrates..л collective Improvisation on an American theme."
In The Horn Edgar's disintegration Is Improvised upon In the
"Choruses," the way In which In a jazz number one musician after the
other Improvises on a theme. In fact, the "Choruses" are clearly
different from each other In tone. Thus, Geordle's "Chorus," which has
hardly any dialogue and which largely consists of Geordle's sad
recollections. Is very much reminiscent of the wistful quality of
Blllle Holiday's singing. Cumy's "Chorus," on the other hand, with its
abundance of funny dialogue, reflects the gay character which Is such
77 an essential part of Dizzy Gillespie's personality and of his playing.
Holmes has several times declared that In The Horn he shaped his characters from their music, which he was listening to while writing the book. This does not only account for the differences in tone and style between the "Choruses," but also for the convincing and lively descriptions of jazz performances. As far as this last aspect is concerned. Holmes has explained his method in the following terms:
I had a large record collection, and after each day's work, over a drink or two, I'd listen to examples of the kind of jazz I would be writing about the next day, free-associate images and ideas, jot them down in a notebook, and be ready. The prose, though sometimes over-lush & romantic, seemed proper to what was a mythic tale, and I let the stops pull themselves out. To find a metaphor, as an example, for Parker's lightning flights of sheer song, I had only to think of 33 the wild, agile, fleet base-running of a ball player.
Although, in the last analysis. The Horn is, as Holmes has put It, a "conscious creative effort" and not a history of jazz, it must nevertheless be said that one of the virtues of the book is precisely the lively sense Holmes is able to create of the jazz world of the forties and fifties. Holmes's deep knowledge of Jazz music reveals itself time and time again, especially in his descriptions of the origin of bop music. Perhaps even more important, however, is the understanding and sympathy that Holmes evokes for that "whole tribe of
Jazzmen (a mere sixty years wandering now) who had shaped and protected
the music...traveling the bad buses, eating the indifferent food,
sleeping behind the blind windows on the wrong side of town, to get up
78 late and wake hard, and night after night bootleg a ragtime, upbeat make-believe to all the main etreets" (p. 26).
V
When The Horn came out, it was received much more positively by the
critics than Go had been six years earlier. The way In which Holmes described his characters was especially singled out for praise. Kenneth
Rexroth called Holmes "a conscientious craftsman, with considerable understanding of humans and their motives," while even a much less
positive critic such as Whitney Balllett still stressed the "vivid
authenticity"^ of The Horn. It Is easy to subscribe to the views of
these critics. By representing, In long flashbacks, the thoughts of his
protagonists. Holmes Is usually able to portray the latter fully and
convincingly, at the same time having an opportunity to display his
often keen psychological insights.
As opposed to the characterization in The Horn, the stylistic
aspects of the book were problematic for many critics. While Gene Bsro
claimed that perhaps the structure...shows a bit too strongly, 37 a
more Important point of criticism was raised by Nat Hentoff, who wrote
that Holmes "falls into a self-conscious straining for a national (or
perhaps cosmic) affirmation that is an uncomfortable blend of Thomas
Wolfe and Jack Kerouac."™ Theodore M. O'Leary, as a final example,
claimed that Holmes's prose, "in Its particularly rhapsodic moments,
threatens to get out of hand," and that "not infrequently his words
become merely rhetorical instead of precise In their meaning."
79 Holmes, while aware of the "overflow of language"*0 in The Horn, said that, while writing the hook, he felt that its style was adequate to Its subject, and that it was necessary for him to let the book
"write Itself": "I let it find its own tone and language - lyric, wordy, continually verging on the legendary. ^ He did feel, however,
that the rhythm In the book was "almost iambic pentameter," and that
It was not syncopated enough. He attributed this flaw to his being very much Influenced by Melville, who. In his turn, had been influenced by
Shakespeare and was working with a Shakespearian rhythm.
Still, in spite of Holmes's feeling that the prose suited the
subject, it must be said that the language in The Horn is sometimes
rather stilted. This comes out in Holmes's over-frequent use of
compound adjectives, while the stilted quality is also to be found in
constructions such as "the wizened October sun stretched Its old finger
to touch the dark, flutterless eyes of Walden Blue" (p. 3), and "their
great twilight exodus of baby carriages and knitting bags" (p. 23),
when Holmes describes young New York mothers walking their
perambulators. Occasionally the dialogue, too, becomes less convincing
because the language used can hardly be that of the persons who are
speaking. This happens, for instance, when Fay Lee, upon seeing Wing
Redburn's saxophone, exclaims, "Oh, isn't it blessed! Isn't it just
holy golden!" (p. 43), or when Wing says, "We're winking at the moon,"
as a reaction to Curny Finnley's exclamation, "Man, what are we doing!"
(p. 6A).
Rather stilted and strained, too, is Holmes's frequent use of the
words "America," "American," and "Americans," to drive home the point
that the theme of The Horn is closely related to American life and
culture. On one page, towards the end of the book, Holmes uses these
80 words as much as seven times. Especially when he writes about Edgar
Fool's saxophone as "the holy vessel of American song" (p. 36) and about "the great Aoerlcan inner life that flowers here and there behind drawn shades" (p. 60), one wishes that Holmes had relied on more subtle means by which to make his message clear. The extent to which he wanted to celebrate America, is even more apparent from his unpublished
Introduction to The Horn than from the novel itself:
It was borne in upon me, as I searched for the sources of inspiration out of which jazz has flowed, decade after decade, that it was nothing more, or less, than the rich, contradictory, furious, goofy, sorrowful life here in America which had created and sustained it, and that the music itself was reconciling me to my land - without intellectual acrobatics, and without reference to politics or history. For the first time, I was consciously confronting the American reality, - with nothing in between, either to focus or distort; and with reconciliation, the heart thaws. For truely now, I love the hard winter light on American rooftops; I love the great automobile graveyards on the outskirts of our cities, junked flivvers with their entrails driven out piled on rusted sedans, forlornly ownerless, that once went so far, so fast - behind a delapidated palntless board f enee...Truely now, I love the lust for harmony which makes us instinctively world-savers, singers, democrats, big drinkers; which has kept us hurrying, accumulating, giving away, creating, and getting right to the point from our very beginning. I love the urge toward unity which is in our manifestoes and our wars, and our music - which has, with little abatement, flared continually here - even in our red-brick. Jerry- built, superhighway, neon-lit, billboard, beer-joint, 43 LeviСtown reality.
81 Parts of this Introduction were included In a somewhat adapted version In the "Coda" of The Horn. Although its celebrating tone and
Its repetitions give the "Coda" a Wolfean quality, the novel as a whole. In spite of Nat Hentoff's contention, can hardly he said to have been Influenced by the work of Thomas Wolfe. This is corroborated by
Holmes's having said that he was never influenced by Wolfe, whose work
"seemed very adolescent to [him], and not what fiction writing should be about. As far as the stylistic influence of Kerouac is concerned, which according to Hentoff Is also to be found in The Horn, it is true
that Holmes's descriptions of Jazz performances are sometimes reminiscent of comparable descriptions in Kerouac's work. However, as was the case in Go, Holmes's descriptions seem to be somewhat less
flowing and natural than Kerouac's, who certainly would not have
included a classical reference such as "Eleuslnian mysteries" (p. 154)
In an account of a Jazz performance.
Although there is hardly any stylistical resemblance between
Kerouac's work and The Horn, when Holmes wrote Kerouac about his plans
to write a jazz novel, Kerouac felt that, thematically, Holmes was
dealing with material that Kerouac had wanted to use himself. Like
Holmes, Kerouac had been toying with the idea of writing a jazz novel
for some years. In the summer of 1951 he told Holmes that he was
writing a piece of traditional fiction which would concern jazz, and
which would be called Horn. In response to Holmes's May 1952 letter, in
which Holmes outlined his intention to link jazz musicians and writers
in his jazz novel, on June 3 Kerouac warned Holmes not to write a novel
about jazz. In this letter he described his own projected jazz novel,
which was to be entitled Hold Your Horn High. Part One of this book
would be called "Afternoon of a Tenor Man," and would deal with Lester
82 Young, Kerouac's friend Seymour Wyse, and the Swing Era. Part Two would focus on Neal Cassady and jazz ausician Slim Gaillard, while the third section would portray Al Sublette, a San Francisco friend of Kerouac's, whose favourite expression was "Blow, baby, blowl" (Blow Baby Blow being another projected title for the book). Kerouac planned to close his novel with a chapter about Blllie Holiday, which would be called
"The Heroine of the Hip Ceneration."
After all this time it is not easy to establish to what extent
Holmes was Influenced by Kerouac in writing The Horn. It seems that both the title of Holmes's novel and the phrase, "the afternoon of a
tenor man," which Holmes used as an important source of inspiration,
stem from Kerouac. After reading the first chapter of The Horn, Kerouac
also felt that Holmes had used a number of phrases from the manuscript of On the Road. In the end, however, Kerouac agreed that the book
Holmes envisioned would be very different from his own projected jazz novel, and he asked Holmes "to accept from [him] the Jazz book idea."45
He urged Holmes to delete Just one thing, the phrase "bop was in the
air," which exact words were also to be found in On the Road. Holmes
subsequently changed this phrase to "bop was gathering in everyone"
(p. 7).
Kerouac's main reason for deciding that, as far as he was
concerned. Holmes could go ahead with The Horn was the fact that, after
criticizing them, he felt that Holmes's literary comparisons were a
good idea, "one typical of you, i.e. more cerebral and bookish than
what I might have."46 Of Holmes's three novels, however, The Horn is
actually the least cerebral, although It is true that, at first glance,
the literary comparisons seem to give the novel an Intellectual
quality. Holmes himself was aware that his jazz novel would be
83 different from the work he had produced before, and that by writing the
book a change in his personality might ensue. This is already clear
from the first letter in which he mentions the book to Kerouac. In that
letter, after meditating on the character of the "tenor nan," he
writes: "I wish I could be as obsessed, as totally caught-up. It Is to
become the center of your own orbit and the orbit of the things around
which your existence is staked. To be a vortex, and not merely a
periphery."
A "periphery" is exactly what Paul Hobbes is In Go, unable to enter
the vortex in which most of the other characters in the book are fully
experiencing life. At the periphery is also Holmes's own position in
relation to the other Beat writers. More cerebrally inclined than
either Kerouac, Ginsberg, or Gregory Corso, he is someone whose place
seems to be on the outside of experience, in the meantime accurately
observing what Is going on around him. Holmes was very unhappy about
that situation:
I do not want to be prisoned in some grim sense of decorum or awareness, cut off from others in their relative happinesses or fate or mission. But that is how I seem to be - that is the vision of my role that I carry around with me as though it were a bomb, threatening at any moment to go off and maim those around me mortally. I have my enthusiasms, you know that· It is not alone Immaturity or the wish to become lost that makes me rave about the End of the Night - but only some foolish, ideal wish that I may swing or leap off the track upon which I set myself so long ago, and rest or save myself the tortures that must be gone through. This Is why I feel the Dostoyevskian universe to be mine own: a place of compulsions and Insights and
84 waitings, of Infinite Interior broodlngs upon others, and an eternal failure at reaching them; a place of great distorted loves and passions, of hearts that never reach one another, and for whom there Is no surcease, no rest, because of what they know (as the wild geese know). This all sounds Idiotic, doesn't It? I cannot as yet surround It with subtlllzatlons. But that will come. I cannot resign myself to being misunderstood, disliked, misconstrued, typed, ridiculed, forgotten or Ignored. If I could I would be an artist, with all the mingled love and hate that that entails. As It Is, I am some sorry secretary, shabby, nondescript, without even the shiny bowler of my profession - possessing only a hidden eagerness and desperation. I am not moored with anyone, nor In anything, some outer knowledge casts Its baleful glow upon all my pursuits. I fight to get within some magic circle, not alone out of respect for communallty and friendship, but because only there Is the temperature at MT pitch, the tension such as to produce amazement, the very atmosphere so charged that the ANYTHING of my imagination and desire might, at any moment, occur. I am sick of the shadows, my name is constantly being lost among the endless lists of the attendants, I stand inside some precinct of darkness, just out of the rim of light, and taking my foolish notes and making my inane remarks, afraid lest I be seen, angry that I am not. It is not my role, this one. I should throw everything up, all barriers to honesty, all compromises that I have made in the name of anyone or anything, resolve that Isolation.
Holmes felt that, by writing his jazz novel, he might be able to reach the "moment of readiness and security" which he sought, and to find the faith in himself which he also attributed to the tenor man:
85 "It Is that faith In himself, which Is a leap, a wager, a risk, that sustains him and In fact creates him."^" To a great extent this Is precisely what happened. By regarding The Horn as his Doctor Sax, a novel Kerouac had written for himself alone and without hope of ever finding a publisher for It, Holmes was able to let his creative urge take Its own course. Consequently, the first two chapters were written more easily than anything Holmes had written before· Although the rest of the novel came with more difficulty, the manuscripts frequently show only minor corrections, a clear Indication that Holmes had discovered the faith In himself which he still found lacking when he wrote his
February 1950 letter to Kerouac. When he had finished writing the last page of the book, he had "a moment of satisfaction that was as near to complete happiness" as he had ever known.50 It is certainly no exaggeration to claim that by writing The Horn. In the same way that
Jazz "tempted us out of our llly-whlte reserve with Its black promise of untrammeled joy," Holmes was tempted out of some of his own reserves as a writer.
86 Chapter Four
GET BOMS НЕЕ
Although the writing of The Horn had been a liberating experience
for Holmes, the two years following the publication of the book proved
to be difficult· A number of personal problems. Including the death of his father In 1959, and his keen disappointment with the social and political situation In America made him suffer a writer's block, which
turned out to be hard to overcome. Feeling that he had lost his talent, he had a breakdown. When he had struggled out of It, he decided he was
going to "write or die"1:
So one day In mid-December, 1960, I sat down before a fresh and Intimidating notebook, and (terrified lest the first words I wrote would sicken me back Into silence, as words bad been sickening me for months, as words sicken a wordman off his feed) I put down the only hard and unassailable thing I knew that morning: "To write for two hours every day no matter what. And - 2 to pin my life on it.
Holmes's extensive Journal writing helped him to overcome his
creative sterility, and finally resulted In the writing of another
novel, Get Home Free. When the book came out In 1964, he dedicated It
to "December, IS, 1960," the day on which he resolved to start writing
again. Holmes already had the idea for Will Mollneaux, one of the main
characters in Get Home Free, because he had met someone like Mollneaux
87 In Connecticut. In Holmes's notebooks Mollneauz Is first mentioned In
November 1959, when he wrote the Introduction and some dialogue of a piece of fiction entitled "The Fall of Old Man Molineaiut."3 In October
1960, Holmes returned to this character, but It was not until January
4, 1961 that he started to write the first draft of "Old Man Mollneauz" as It was later published In Get Home Free. On March 28, 1961, Holmes
completed this first draft. A trip to the South with his wife had given
him the Idea for another story, and on April 13 he embarked on the
first version of what would later become the "Hobbes and Little Orkle"-
sectlon of the novel. This draft, which took a little longer to write,
was completed on September 4, 1961.
Having finished these drafts. Holmes realized that he had written
two autonomous novellas. Aware of the fact that there was "little or no
market for such a form," he decided to "tie them together."* The three
sections that were written with this purpose - entitled "New York: The
End," "New York: The Middle," and "New York: The Beginning" In the
published novel - proved to be difficult to set down. On September 27,
1961, Holmes started to write what he then simply called the
"narrative." It took almost a year to finish the first connecting
section, which was completed on August 16, 1962. As Holmes's notebooks
Indicate, the first draft of this section originally contained much
material that was later discarded. This was not the case with the
second connecting section, written between August 23 and September 8,
1962, The last section, "New York: The Beginning," again took a lot
more work; ezcept for the last two paragraphs of the published book. It
was completed on November 24, 1962. Initially, Holmes hesitated between
"Allee Allee In Free" and "The Pure Products" as possible titles for
the book; later he decided to call It Get Home Free.
88 Get Ноше Free, set In 1952, covers віж months in the lives of
Daniel Verger and May Delano, a young couple sharing a Greenwich
Village loft that was owned by Agatson, May's former lover who has accidentally been killed under a subway train. After Agatson's death
Daniel, who works for a public-opinion survey, moved in with May, a
secretary. Their relationship is not a happy one. May has turned out to be frigid, much to Dan's frustration and anger. Dan Is also
dissatisfied that the new decade has not become a continuation of the
exciting postwar years.
In the first chapter of Get Home Free, entitled "New York: The
End," Holmes decribes the impasse in Dan and May's relationship.
Disappointed with each other, both have taken to drink, and are
thinking of a way to end their affair. Dan is considering the
possibility of returning to his home town Grafton in Connecticut, or of
going to Europe for a time. May has started seeing Tertlus Streik, a
man she and Dan met at one of many parties. At the last party Dan and
May attend before they split up, Dan delivers a drunken speech about
everything that he feels has gone wrong with America.
In the second chapter, "Old Man Mollneaux," Dan's three-week stay
In Grafton is described. Staying with his mother, Dan quickly becomes
bored and resorts to Grafton's only bar. There he meets Will Mollneaux,
the sixty-year-old town drunk with whom he soon becomes friends. All
his life, Will has wanted to leave Grafton, which he thinks too small
for him, to experience freedom and to see something of the world. He
continued to put off his departure, however, until he was forced to
marry at the age of thirty-four, which put an end to his plans. Out of
disappointment he started to drink, losing his Job as a barge pilot
89 when, drunk one night, he piloted five barges aground· Spending the rest of his working life as a part-time switchman at the local railway depot, he left his family to live alone In a tarpaper shack on a hill near the house of his wife. Bertha. Disturbed by his frequent misbehaviour, Bertha and her three children have been planning to have
Will sent to a hospital to be cured of his chronic alcoholism. Their plans become more definite after Will has spitefully beaten up Bertha, when Dan thoughtlessly told him that in three weeks' time he would be
Bailing for Europe.
"Old Han Hollneaux" focusses on the Sunday following Will's fight
with Bertha. Waking up with bad hangovers in Will's shack, Will and Dan
Bet off for Bertha's house, where a large part of the Hollneaux family
has come together. Although Bertha is not badly hurt. Will's daughter
Sally and the family doctor have decided that Will must spend some time
In a hospital. Will feels himself to be misunderstood and deserted by
his family, and angrily leaves the house, to look unsuccessfully for
Sally. In Sally's empty house. Will and Dan start to drink again, while
Dan has a chance to phone his mother, who Is worried because he did not
spend the previous night at home. Afterwards they meet Sally In the
shack at the marina where her husband Jack Doughty rents boats and
fishing tackle. Will pleads with Sally to go back on her decision to
have him put in hospital. Sally, who has always been ashamed of her
father and has come to hate him, is unrelenting.
Although Will Is deeply hurt by his daughter's attitude, he refuses
to give up. As a last resort he goes to the railway depot with Dan,
where he asks to start working for the railroad again. When that proves
impossible he returns home, his will and strength having deserted him
to such an extent that Dan has to help him climb the hill. Once on top,
90 Will refuses to enter his shack, and falls off the embankment into a pile of beer-cans that have been collecting there over the years. Now that he no longer sees a way out of his problems, he grasps at the chance to give up his struggle. Pretending to be badly hurt, he allows his son Billy and Dan to take him to Bertha's house, back to the bosom of his family. Although Dan Is relieved that he has managed to get Will
"home" and "free,"3 he Is also left with a feeling of Isolation because, unlike Will, he is not yet going home, but to Europe.
In "New York: The Middle," the third section of Get Home Free, Dan passes through New York, before catching his boat- He spends a few hours with May, at whose apartment he has to pick up some clothes. It
turns out that May's affair with Streik did not work out, and that she
plans to go home to Louisiana for a few weeks.
In the fourth chapter, "Hobbes and Little Orkie," May has returned
to Louisiana. However, after spending two weeks in her grandmother's house in Alexandria, she has come to the conclusion that she no longer
feels at home In the South. This becomes particularly clear at a
cocktail party at which she meets her old high school friends, all of
whom she seems to have lost touch with after living in New York. To
break through the façade of gallantry and avoid becoming further
Involved with Church Flouchet, her old beau who escorted her to the
party, May suggests visiting Fats', a Negro bar she and her friends
used to frequent when they were teenagers.
In the bar May and her friends listen to a blind, nineteen-year-old
blues singer called Orchid Small, whose nickname is Little Orkie. Orkie
Is accompanied on the piano by a white man, Paul Hobbes, whom May turns
out to have known in New York. With Verger, May and Agatson, Hobbes
belonged to the same group of intellectuals who all thought that the
91 postwar period would herald something new. At that time Hobbes was married and trying to write a novel. May now learns that, after his marriage had gone wrong, Paul left New York, wanting to run away from the anxiety attending the threat of a nuclear war. On his way to
Mexico, In Alexandria, Paul came across an old friend. Jack O'Meara, and he ended up living, with Little Orkle and some other negroes, at
Jack's old plantation house. (Jack's wife, Betty Prenderman, was an old high school friend of May's, and daughter of the original owners of the house.) After talking to Hobbes, May Is even more disgusted with her
Southern friends and, following a quarrel with Church Plouchet, she abruptly decides to leave her friends and to follow Hobbes and Orkle to
the Prenderman house, outside of town.
At the house May talks to Orkle for the first time, sharing a drink with him after having drunk some bootleg gin during the drive to the
Prendermans in Paul's car. She meets Betty, whom she has not seen for
many years, and her husband Jack, who bargee Into the house with a
peanut-vending machine which he has stolen at the railway depot where
he works at night. When May goes to call Paul for supper, he Is Just
giving himself a heroin Injection. Paul explains to her why he stopped
writing and what he Is looking for In the South, after which his fix
threatens to make him sick. May, also, Is becoming 111 from all the
alcohol she has consumed that evening. She Is sobered by the marijuana
which Jack gives her, however. Feeling like dancing, she first dances
with Orkle, and then with Willie Glover, a rebellious young negro also
staying at the Prendermene'. Because he feels used by May, Willie
abuses her. He then enters into a vehement discussion about racism with
Jack and Hobbes, at the end of which Hobbes, still sick from his fix,
falls over Into a heap at Willie's feet, crushing his glasses.
92 After helping Paul's girlfriend. Little Orkle's sister Blllle, put
Paul to bed. May stumbles Into Betty's bedroom, where Betty Is feeding her baby and smoking marijuana. When May has accidentally come across and looked at some nude pictures Jack took of his wife, Betty tries to
seduce her. Almost giving In, May suddenly draws back and leaves the
room. After Jack has made advances to her as well, she enters the
garden, where she meets Little Orkle. It has become morning In the meantime and, sharing the freshness of the dawn and the beauty of
nature with Orkle, May feels reconciled with her life and less
desperate than before. With the feeling of a new maturity and harmony
she returns to New York after Church Plouchet, who alarmed the police
after her sudden disappearance the evening before, has turned up at the
Prendermene' to take her home.
'New York: The Beginning," the last section of Get Hone Free.
describes May and Dan's reunion in New York. After May has spent a
quiet winter In the city, growing accustomed to being alone, Dan
returns from Europe. He comes to May's apartment to collect his
possessions, and the two find that they are still attracted to each
other. When May visits Dan in his new apartment, they make love.
Because of the individual experiences they have gone through, they have
become more Independent of each other, and their lovemaking Is now more
satisfactory. The end of the novel, with Dan and May considering the
possibility of a better relationship, seems to imply a new beginning.
93 II
Get Home Free reintroduces three characters which Holmes had already used In Go: May Delano, Daniel Verger, and Paul Hobbes. Apart from these, a number of other characters from Go - Agatson, David Stofsky, and Gene Pasternak - are also briefly mentioned. However, while May and Daniel were only minor characters in Go, they have become the main protagonists in Get Home Free. Although Dan, especially at the beginning of Get Home Free, is not yet a strong, self-sufficient person, he is definitely no longer as pitiable and as unlucky In life and love as he was In Go. May, who was only a type In Go, has become a self-assured woman in Get Home Free. The Paul Hobbes of the first novel, a marginal and shy figure, Is hardly to be recognized in the much more spontaneous and outgoing character called Hobbes in Get Home Free. Another major difference between the two novels is the fact that in Get Home Free the spirit of the time determines to a great extent the thoughts and actions of the protagonists, all of whom are highly critical of what is happening in the world around them. This is particularly true for Dan Verger, whose social criticism is clear from the beginning. Disappointed that the early fifties did not fulfil the promise of the first postwar years, Dan feels that "the pure products of America go crazy" (p. 10), quoting William Carlos Williams. According to Dan, "America's old all of a sudden," and "nobody's excited any more, nobody's disturbed...And last year we were thinking about deer" (p. 10). Dan's negative feelings are expressed when he claims that Tertius Streik is a symbol of America: "He's Just like my
94 father used to be - charming, cynical, empty, absolutely absorbed In
hie own repulsive ego" (p. 12). Dan voices his disappointment with
America most harshly at the party he attends Immediately before leaving
May and New York:
".••'cause America's where everybody knows the words to the songs!" he was yelling in a harsh, staccato Incantation. "America's a state of mind trying to become a point of vlevl It's a Comanche living in a ranch house!" yelling louder to be heard over the phonograph. "The degradation of America is epitomized by the James boys - Jesse and Henry I America's as sad and ludicrous as Tom Sawyer at thirty-five!" ignoring a burst of laughter. "Don't nobody realize? America is Moby Dick, and we're putting our five-dollar harpoon into the last priceless blubber on this earthl... Listen here, you guys," yelling into the gay faces that turned on him from the corners of the party. "It's where aomething's going to endl It's buffalo bones under the aupermarkets! It's where the wound runs all the way to San Diego! One huge Brook Farm where nobody knows how to milk the cows any more!" He swung his glass in dangerous flourishes, spilling on a nearby girl, as someone let out a tipsy Bronx cheer. "But the dogs of America, you bastards! The whores sacrificed to Monopoly! The gym suits of Denver! U.C. Fields! The winde of Kansas mourning - I'll tell you what! The bad orgasms that make Topeka so grey! What Sam Houston did to hie virgin bride we'll never know about! Coca-Cola ineanities! The pious police! All the Sundays, everywhere!" laughing with such despairing rage that it ached all of a sudden In everyone who heard it. "Don't nobody realize that finally, and most profoundly, and - and most hideously, America's some stupid goddamn drunk standing up and yelling, 'America's where everybody knows the words to the songs!'" and he hurled his glass
95 at the stark image of his own punished face in a mirror across the room. (pp. 50-51)
One of Dan's quarrels with society is that people are no longer able to love each other. Dan blames their coldness, including the lack of love between him and May, on "Hiroshima, Belsen, the foolishness at
Torgau, all that" (p. 28). He feels that in a world which has become unlovable, "what we're looking for is not each other, but a glimpse of our own faces that will reassure us that we're not unlovable, after all" (p. 28). In such a world love has no more chance "than a mirror
facing a mirror could ever reflect either of the people holding them"
(p. 28).
In this kind of society Dan feels like an outsider. In fact, while
In Go Dan's surname seemed to illustrate both his interest in religion
(a verger being a person carrying a flag before a bishop or another
religious figure) and his position on the margin of society, in Get
Home Free it is especially this last aspect which is stressed. His job,
asking other people's opinions about developments In society, is
another indication that Dan is not really at home in the world.
However, it is not only society from which Dan feels estranged, but
also life in general. This is illustrated by hie habit of reading most
of the time. Once he is not even aware of May's tenderness, as he is
completely absorbed in, ironically, De Rougemont's Love in the Western
World. When May tries to attract his attention, he rejects her by
saying, "But look, I'm reading, sweetheart. I mean - well, I'm in the
middle of a paragraph" (p. 33). Another time, when May Is having fun
with Dan and Tertius Streik and feels like dancing, Dan suddenly wants
to go home, complaining about the late hour. According to May, this is
96 to be attributed to Dan's "reading questionnaires all day and big abstract books all night" (p. 38). Elsewhere, May blames him for
"thinking so hard about what the other person's thinking about that she could have stood up naked In front of you, and you probably wouldn't even have noticed" (p. 2S2).
Dan's alienation Is linked to the "purltanlsm that characterized his secret mind" (p. 15), and which Is seen as the reason why he Is
"always beached In his dour thoughts and his throbbing head" (p. 20).
According to May, Dan's purltanlsm makes It Impossible for him to give himself up to life and to love. After making love for the first time,
she already blames him for not being able to keep his mind, symbolized by Dan's wearing glasses, out of the lovenaklng, and for wanting to know exactly how it had been for her:
"Oh, Christ, can't you leave it alone Γ she flared back suddenly with a hopeless pout. "That goddamn idiotic question you men always askl I hate it worst of all. I hate It 1...Don't you realize how close I was?...! mean if you'd just leave It alone, if you'd wait - we could have tried again later....But no....No, instead apologies, and sweet-nothings and - accusations! Just like you've put on your stupid glasses again. When I felt something really tender." (pp. 26-27)
Later, May returns to Dan's "New England preoccupations": "He can't
swing loose from them. He can't stop caring. I mean, you'll be drunk
and happy, and then he'll say, 'But can all this lead to a new
morality?" (p. 173). Especially towards the end of his relationship
with May, Dan himself comes to see that he is "stuck with the
97 puritanical squareness of the sick" (p. 49). Although he la aware how difficult It la to "expatriate yourself from your own mind," he realizes that It Is necessary for him to change, and that he "ought to go home to Grafton, and look at a tree" (p. 49).
In Grafton Dan changes through his relationship with Old Man
Mollneaux. Both Dan and Will Molineaux regret the passing away of an older, unspoilt America. In the case of Mollneaux, this Is Illustrated by his rejection of television and other accomplishments of modern
society: "Tell you the world's getting to be a cold place, ain't a£
world any more....All this darn TV, look at 'em, like a lot of darn
skeletons on the roofst" (p. 97). Will reiterates his abhorrence of
television when he desperately wonders what has happened to "wild
America": "Where've all them Indians gone to, and the sailors, and
bums, and crazy damn fools with funny notions In their heads?...'Swear,
in twenty years we'll all be city people, won't we, hldln' In closets,
lookln' at the TV" (p. 100). When Will auggests that he and Dan go out
rowing, he claims to "know places these summerpeople ain't ever gonna
find with their goddamn thermos Jugs, and silly goggles, and dinky
lures from Hamburger Slimmer" (p. 84).
However, Will does not only regret the fact that trees which he
knew all his life suddenly turn out to have been cut, or that what once
was the town pump Is now a traffic rotary, and that the river ferry has
been replaced by a four-lane bridge. He mourns in particular a sense of
freedom which he connects with the past, and which Is personified by
the "Old Leather Man," a tramp he knew In his youth:
"No one knew where he come from, see, but every
98 spring there he was begging at the back doors. Talked French I think aostly, everything he wore was leather, even his queer old hat, and he had no socks at all, and slept soaewheres up King Phillip's In a dry creek bed, and I always wanted to go off with hla, see, and live that way - Lord Almighty, wild and who cares, new town toaorrow, trap a rabbit, get drunk In the woods, need nothing, you know? That always seemed the way a aan should live. They got to locking ae up whenever he coae through....God daan I" (p. 67)
Will's urge for f reedoa Is stressed tlae and again. As a young aan he
dreaaed of shipping out or of going West. After learning of Dan's plans
to go to Europe, Will says that, If he had the choice, he would "head
for Alaska or someplace. Someplace that's still natural" (p. 99).
Will tries to blame his never having left Grafton on the fact that
there was no "real West" (p. 127) left In his tlae. Mostly, however, it
Is because he was forced to marry that he has not been able to realize
his dream of freedoa. Consequently, Will feels resentful towards his
wife, and other women who try to restrain their aen. "Never let
yourself be anchored by them," he warns a friend: "They wouldn't put a
pillow under your poor head If you was lying on the railroad tracks,
your old back could be busted In three places, and all they'd say was:
'Can't you stand up straight)'" (p. 65). Thinking about Will Mollneaux,
Dan laaglnes hla saying to his wife, who Is always trying to take care
of hla: "There's things aore laportant to a man than having eggs, and
Jelly toast, and aaybe even a sausage or two - there's his ideas, his
free spirit) Don't you realize that) You can't snare a free spirit with
your sausages, you idiot) You think you can satisfy a thirst of the
soul with a con-earn cup of coffee?" (p. 63).
99 However, It Is not only hie wife who Hill feels ties him down. He
Is eleo wary of his daughter Sally, who le Instrumental In having her father sent to a hoepltel, and whoee low opinion of men comee out In her reaction when her husband end a friend are working on an outboard motor, "with that happy preoccupation of grown men with the Intricacies of engines - as egoless, for the moment, as enthralled boye" (p. 106):
"Look et them, Mldgle," she says scornfully to a friend, "They're never happy unless they're covered with grease!...Te gods, Jack, can't you at least be careful of those Blacks? I'll never get that disgusting mess off them Γ (p. 106). Later Sally actually exclaims that she hates men, after which her fether asserts that she le "dead as a cod below decke," and that she has "[n]o life In [her], nothing but meanness" (p. 116).
The small amount of freedom Hill Mollneauz has been able to attain
is symbolised by the tarpaper shack on a hill near his wife's house,
where he spends the nights end where he cen drink ее much ее he wants
and do whatever he pleases. However, the fact that thle eheck le not
really situated In the wilds, but near hie wife's bungalow, shove that
Hill has not really been able to shake himself free. In the couree of
the chapter devoted to Dan's experiences with Mollneauz, Hill's
strength to keep on fighting for his freedom starts to fall him.
Although, at first, he is very decisive about not going to beg Sally
not to have him sent to a hospital, he ends up pleading with her after
all.
Although Dan realizes that Mollneauz Is "a loser in hie Idea of
life" (p. 132), he is also aware that Hill has a saving quality for
him, and that he is able to change through his relationship with Hill.
Mollneauz symbollzee Dan'β father, whose last words to his son before
100 leaving the family had been, "You'll come to see me when I'm settled, and we'll go out on the town, just the two of us, and get drunk or something, and make up for it" (p. 117). Dan's father never returned, but Dan finally has a chance to "go out on the town" with his
substitute father, Molineaux, who "could have been his father"
(p. 1Э9), as he remarks to Hay. When Dan wonders why he stays with Will even when they keep on running into trouble, it is clear to him that it
is because he has come to regard Molineaux as a father, and because of
"that curiously filial protectlveness that you feel for anyone whose mistakes have educated you" (p. 96).
Among those mistakes, which serve as a cautionary example to Dan,
is Will's drunken beating of his wife, according to Stanley Edgar Hymen
"a savage caricature of Dan's verbal sadism toward May."6 Dan is also
influenced by the fact that Will has never been able to leave Grafton.
That Dan is aware of this particular influence becomes clear when he
says, "...if I succeeded in the pulling-loose, it was not a little the
result of his having failed" (p. 73). To May he later claims that Will
could have been "me in thirty years, if I hadn't met him now" (p. 139).
Mainly, however, Will's influence on Dan is based on positive
aspects of Will's personality. Will's spontaneity and eagerness to
enjoy life help to release Dan from some of his emotional reserves.
Under Mollneaux's influence Dan comes to realize that thinking is not
as Important as he always considered it to be. When he finds an ancient
copy of Cotton Mather's Wonders of the Invisible World in the house of
a friend of Will's, Dan says: "Here's where all the trouble started,
'cause this lecherous old bastard made us all stop and think, and we
quit seeing things any more" (p. 80). Consequently, after having spent
some time with Will, Dan suddenly feels "exhilarated by the keen sense
101 of seeing everything for the first time" (p. 87).
Will also exerts an influence on Dan's attitude towards women.
Having left May, Dan comes under the influence of his mother in
Grafton. Although he tries to be a "dutiful eon" and manages "not to get irritated by the sad little stratagems by which [his] mother hoped
to make Grafton appealing to [him] again (the blueberry muffins, the knitted socks, the pointed avoidance of any questions about why I had
come home)" (p. 57), he soon starts to resent his mother's protective attitude. Knowing that he "loved her with the same inarticulate reserve
with which she loved [him], and yet...impatlent with her because of It"
(pp. 73-74), Dan follows Will's example by trying to gain a sense of
freedom from drinking too much. In the course of Dan and Will's drunken
peregrination through Grafton, Dan finally proves his independence by
opting for Will. When, during a telephone conversation, Mrs. Verger
urges her son to return to her ("You're going to catch cold, Danny.
You're going to have your trouble again. Why don't you just come home,
dear?"), Dan answers that he wants "to stick it out with Mr. Molineaux"
(p. 102).
The feeling of a greater Independence and self-sufficiency that Dan
has attained through his association with Molineaux, stays with him
when he returns to New York, on his way to Europe. He calls May because
he has to pick up some of his clothes at her loft, but If It bad not
been for those clothes he probably would not have tried to get in touch
with her at all. The change In his personality Is shown in a new
attitude towards posseseions· When May asks him what she should do with
the rest of his belongings, Dan answers that he does not really care:
"Oh, Just hang onto it. Or get rid of it, if it's in the way. I don't care·...I'm through with
102 accunulating things that way," still so unused to these new certainties that he almost flushed, repeating them. "I mean, that whole way of thinking - you get so many possessions, so many Involvements, that you can't move. And when It's time to get away, you don't do It because of some damn box of books, or a cow, or something" (p. 136).
Dan's new awareness of the beauty of things, resulting from the fact Chat he now considers It more Important to see than to think, remains with him after he has left Grafton. On his way Co see May, he
Is suddenly struck by the beauty of New York:
New York at dawn seemed very fine to him. Bundles of newspapers scacked by shuttered stands, street lights changing automatically at empty corners, the fleeting aroma of fresh coffee from a steamy doorway: he realized It had been months since he had seen the first white-gold glisten of Che sun on wet pavements deserted all the way to the river, except through eyes distorted by drink or Its aftermath. A yawning Janitor, a dog straining the leash of his sleepy-eyed walker, cabs going In after the long shift: for a moment he had a sense of the urgent beauty of New York that he hadn't felt In years, a sense of Its Island nature. Its sheer physical audacity, and all the Invisible millions slumbering fitfully behind the windows that caught the early light of that fresh day. It seemed to him that life was actually simple and thrilling; midnight and Its confusions were a needless complexity; and a poignant Joy came up In his throat, a Joy Intensified by the imminence of his going away from It all. He breathed up the damp smells of morning In the city, famished by awareness; his cigarette tasted rare and delicious; he was off on a great adventure, (pp. 134-
103 135)
Because Dan has changed. May now seems another person to hin too-
Looking at her, he le "unaccountably aoved by the sense of her distinctness, her aliveneas" (p. 136). After they have talked for a while and May has asked hin if they are still friends, Dan feels "the stir of a new, siaple eaotlon, an emotion unclouded by love and its demands" (p. 140).
After Dan's return from Europe, the extent to which he has changed is illustrated by his changed attitude towards America. While he was very pessimistic about his country before he left it, he now feels that
America is still a country full of possibilltlee:
'So, anyway, I don't bate it any more, not like I used to at least—I don't, I'm not going to. You can't afford it....And, anyway, there's always a second chance, you have to feel that, and here, when you can't believe it any more, you can always go out and take another name, or flee to the Wind River Mountains, or go get drunk until you do again...." (p. 247)
A second chance is now also possible for Dan and May. After his
return Dan is perhaps even more independent of May than he was when be
passed through Hew York on his way to Europe. He calls her after he has
already been back in the city for ten days. When the two meet again,
the way in which Dan has changed and is more relaxed, la expressed by
May's reactions to him: "He seemed taller to her, and yet less lanky,
as if he had somehow knitted together, and filled out his frame from
the Inside. They sat back over a second drink, and be lit her
cigarette, studying her with level, curious eyes that had no trace of
104 uncase In them, and answering her questions about his trip In brief, almost indifferent statements* (p. 241). Dan, who says of himself that he has "got a lot straight," Irritates Hay with "his air of certainties arrived at" (p. 242). After he has made some casual advances to her, she says sharply, "Tou certainly have gotten sure of yourself"
(p. 243). May's Irritation stems from the fact that, unlike before, Dan
Is now so self-reliant that, when she asks him to stop touching her, he
"simply let[e] her go, smiling blandly with a funny little shrug that angered her even more" (p. 242).
However, It Is precisely because Dan has changed that, after May has given In, the two are able to make love In a more satisfactory manner. How that Dan has become Independent of her. It Is possible for
May to be more self-centred, which allows her to experience more pleasure too. Dan's new attitude towards May Is Illustrated In their sexual relationship, and Is ultimately another Indication that Dan has finally become at ease with life and himself.
Ill
In spite of the fact that. In her relationship with Verger, May
Delano Is frigid. In several ways It Is suggested that she le a person who Is more In touch with her own feelings than Dan. Unlike Dan, she Is frequently able to freely express her emotions. This Is the case, for
Instance, when she talks to Verger about her past relationship with
Agatson, "letting herself £0 completely, as people do when they finally allow themselves to say all those old mawkish words they don't believe
105 In for a minute, but which seem to express certain emotions for which they have not been prepared' (p. 22). Furthermore, Holmes stresses
May's basic sensuality when he describes some of her physical aspects, such as her "sensual mouth" (p. 15) and "the sheen of her curved shoulders glowing richly brown" (p. 24).
However, Holmes's comparing May to "a sorrowing Spanish madonna" and his noting that her mouth "pouted even when she slept" (p. 15), indicate that, like Dan, May Is not really attuned to her own deeper feelings. This is also suggested by the fact that she cannot bear silence and, as she herself puts it, has to "talk and talk all the
time" (p. 17). Holmes also stresses May's lack of harmony by mentioning
"the feeling of estrangement that occasionally fell like a veil between her mind and the world. Isolating her - even from her memories"
(p. *1).
As he did In the description of Verger, Holmes illustrates May's character by having her reflect on the development of America. Like
Daniel at the last party before he leaves for Grafton, May becomes a personification of America when she confesses that what makes her
ashamed of her own country is "that we all understand it so little, and
the secret's lost on us, and In growing up we came down so much"
(pp. 11-12). It is suggested that May was much more harmonious when she
was a young girl In the South, "the fragrant, sensual South one knew
through one's servants and the streets, and accepted naturally, and
didn't think about till later, and didn't miss till much later"
(p. 159).
May seems to have become estranged from her own feelings by the
cold, intellectual climate of New York. It is no coincidence that Dan
is highly intellectual, as was the cynical and self-destructive
106 Agatson. Although Streik, the man with whom she has an affair after
Dan's departure, Is more alive and in tune with himself than Dan, he
too Is Intellectual, cynical, and obsessed with the negativity of contemporary society· Strelk's having been deformed by society Is
Illustrated by the fact that he Is not so much Interested in being In
love with Hay, as In having an affair with her and another woman at the same time. Aa May puts It later to Dan, "1 guess he wanted the three of us to make It· I mean. It had to be weird or he wasn't much
Interested really...He got very mean to me" (p. 138). Strelk'a sexual preference does not agree with May's Ideas about love and Is a final
factor In the events that lead to the "exhaustion of spirit" (p. 1A6)
that make May decide to return to her home town.
In Alexandria May soon finds out that she has become a stranger to
her old schoolfrlends, whose formal behaviour reminds her that they are
all keeping up false appearances. Holmes also mentions "the peculiar
theatricality of some Southern men, who are idle and self-centered and
constantly watching themselves be men - like actors who sometimes seem
so lonely Inside their good-looks" (p. 154). Both Southern men and
«omen help May realize the extent to which she Is estranged from her
own feelings, and living behind a façade. In sharp contrast to her
friends, however, she wants to break down that façade and "to enter
Into reality at last" (p. 239). This urge Is Illustrated by her desire
to "rough up" her friends, to "open the dark cellars in their
consciousness. I wanted them to acknowledge what they were like under
their nice clothes, and I played the game I sometlmea play with myself
to this day - I tried to imagine them naked, I tried to imagine each of
them in all the grotesque, utterly solemn attitudes of lust, I tried to
107 pair them off In the most unlikely combinations - all with somewhat ludicrous results" (p. ISO). Hay's wanting to break free, both from herself and from the attitudes of her friends, also comes out when, alone In a powder-room with her woman friend Turtle Cheney, to Turtle's amazement Hay "flounced up [her] skirt, unfastened [her] stockings, and wriggled out of [her] girdle" (p. 151), which ehe felt was "strangling" her, returning to the rest of the company without putting It back on, and stealing Turtle's compact, a symbol of the Importance May's friends attach to appearances· To her friends May also keeps on stressing her
wish to be taken "someplace dirty, and sentimental, and backward," away
from the new South with Its "flash-growth of ranch houses, service
stations and supermarkets that appeared as soon as the bulldozers went
away, giving everything the same brand-new, freshly painted, resolutely
shallow veneer that was the latest mode of the Great American Ugliness
Just then" (p. 155).
Fats', the Negro bar where May and her friends spend some time. Is
situated on the edge of Alexandria, as If to suggest that one has to
leave modern society behind In order to become attuned to one's own
nature again. The reactions of her companions to Little Orkle's singing
In the bar make May realize once more that she has become a stranger
amongst her old friends: "at one point I clearly heard Turtle's nervous
little snicker - the sort of snicker people always accord any kind of
nakedness when others are present, being afraid of what they actually
feel" (p. 162). The extent to which May wants to free herself and to
get "loose from the people there, and all they represented" (p. 174),
Is stressed by her unpinning her hair before joining Hobbes and Little
Orkle to go to the Frenderman house. Driving to the house May Is aware
that, after the unreality of her old friends, "something real Impended
108 In the fragrant dark" (p. IBI), and that she Is entering an atmosphere of a greater authenticity·
The Prenderman house Itself symbolizes the reality which May Is
trying to enter. It Is "wilder" (p. 186) than she remembered It to be.
Inside It Is carpetless, the ceilings are cracked, the rooms almost
fumltureless, while the banisters give treacherously when people lean on them, and the French windows have "soggy shirt-cardboards In place of missing panes" (p. 186). It has an "Incalculable aura of careless anarchy, and underground freedom of whim":
It was as If you had gotten beyond all eyes at last, all restraints, all codes, all dreary necessities, and reached that oasis of overripe green and sensuous shadow that exists somewhere In every desert - even a desert as limitless as our lock-step age - and had nothing but yourself, and whatever was Inside you (all that rich mystery of Individuality that the penitentiary of modern society is bent on narcotizing) to rely on. (p. 187)
During the one night she spends at this house, similar to the way
Verger was changed by Old Man Mollneaux, May is transformed by the
confrontations she has with several of Its inhabitants: Jack O'Meara
and his wife Betty Prenderman, Paul Hobbes, and, especially. Little
Orkle.
To May, the O'Mearas initially appear to be the perfect embodiment
of harmony and love. Jack seems to be very spontaneous and completely
at ease. When he and May first meet, this is expressed by the excited
manner in which he talks about Ыв just having stolen a peanut-vending
109 Bachine, and by the way In which he admonishee his little eon Jocko, who Is "stark naked and sleepily rubbing his genitals" (p. 192), to
"stop fiddling with your peanuts there, klddo": "Look at him - Just like your old nan, eh?" (p. 193). Jack's outgoing nature Is also
Illustrated by the way he looks: "all angles and shoulders, all lank flung legs and big run-down railroad shoes; hlpless, bony-faced, with
stiff red hair as wiry as the stuffing in an old horsehair sofa, and
powerful forearms spattered with amali freckles and easy sweat - all
active bones that you expected to hear clatter when he moved" (p. 192).
Furhermore, he Is unable to keep his hands off his wife Betty. In fact,
Jack's philosophy of life Is based on the Idea that people can only get
to know each other by touching and by making love. As he puts It to
May:
"No, sir, I don't care what they say - you don't know anyone you haven't balled. Han, what In hell Is there to know you don't know already from lookln', or can't make up out of your own goddamn mind, but for that?...I mean, I figure you're alive all right, see, everyone's alive, but the point Is you gotta know It, you gotta feel It - and that means getting out of your head, getting beyond your evaluating mind...and that leaves nothln' but ballln'. So I say everyone should ball everyone, every which way, all together, any old time, all the times they can." (p. 210)
Like her husband, Betty Frenderman seems to be a more harmonious
person than May. Unlike May, who after leaving the South lost contact
with her own deeper nature, Betty has hardly changed. To May It seems
as If for Betty "no time had passed, none of those disordered years
that had put bitchy dresses on my back, and sardonic thoughts In my
110 head" (p. 189). Betty still looks "precisely the same, her abundant brown hair still high-school long, her eyes large and ingenuous behind the unbecoming glasses, her girlish mouth still palely paintless"
(p. 190). The changes that Betty has gone through have brought her more in touch with herself, as illustrated by the extent to which her body has changed: 'And yet the mouth was somehow fuller, too, delicately sensual, and the eyes seemed clearer and less frightened, and her figure had blossomed modestly at bosom and hip" (p. 190). Furthermore,
Betty's greater self-assurance is illustrated by the fact that she is more honest with herself than May. When May asks her, "How come we've never kept in touch all this time, honey?" (p. 191), May suddenly becomes aware of her own fatuousness. Betty does not even blink, however, and for May there is a "shaming simplicity" to her reply: "Nov
we never really knew the same kids. May. I was awfully square and
withdrawn in those days" (p. 191). Because of Betty's honesty, Msy
suddenly likes her, feeling "vaguely guilty of a myopic snobbishness all those years ago" (p. 192).
However, In spite of the O'Mearas' greater spontaneity, in the end
they do not strike May as a good example to follow. In this respect the
O'Mearas resemble Old Man Mollneaux, whose influence on Dan Verger was
due to both positive and negative aspects of his personality. In the
case of the O'Mearas these negative aspects have to do with their
morals, which are much too loose for May. In fact, their promiscuous
attitude does not appeal to her at all. This comes out in the unease
she experiences when she accidentally comes across the pornographic
photographs in Betty's bedroom, over which she lingers "as you linger
over the snapshots of someone's children you've never seen, simply
because it would have been impolite to hurry" (p. 223). It is also
111 Illustrated by May's rejecting both Betty's and Jack's casual suggestion to make love with her.
The Influence of Paul Hobbes on May Is also the result of both positive and negative aspects. It Is suggested that Hobbes has found himself after having left New York. Although he used to be a writer, he got "surfeited with literature, and surfeited with politics, and surfeited with - well Just words." after realizing that "we've lost
touch with something - something wild and natural, call It bliss or
reality, a capacity for spontaneous love" (p. 197). According to him,
white people can learn something from "the uncomplicated ability to
accept reality' and the 'basic joy' (p. 213) of the negroes. In
Alexandria, Paul Is "searching for the natives, for the lost America.
But like a Schweitzer-in-reverse, you see, because I want them to help
me* (p. 197). He feels that "only rebels, and oddballs, and outcasts
can still feel freshly any more" (p. 197), which is the main reason why
he has teamed up with Little Orkle and his sister, Blllle Dew. Orkle
has. In fact, become so Important to Paul that Paul claims to be
"studying" (p. 172) with him, quoting him the way he quotes Rimbaud.
That Paul has found himself in Alexandria Is suggested by his
breaking his glasses, the symbol of his Intellectual scrutiny, after an
argument with Willie Gee. "Thus I give up my wand - or, no, that's
wrong - my spear," Paul announces, adding that "whatever you fight life
with, you have to be willing to relinquish It,' and that, blind but
more harmonious, he Is "just like Orkle now" (p. 216). While before, in
New York, Paul felt out of touch with life and with people, he has now
realized that to overcome the basic loneliness Inherent in the human
condition, "touch Is all" (p. 218). In spite of this, however, Paul Is
112 not really able to leave his mind alone, and to fuse with other people, as Is clear when he talks to May about his ex-wife, Kathryn:
"But I always meant to tell you - you know what's beyond sex? All of It? our kind? I don't care how far you go, what you do - with Kathryn I went down and down, tableau, costume, pornography, you have no Idea, anything to flay the mind. But you know what lies beyond the wildest, weirdest thing that you can dare?...Despair, May, just despair. Because we've only ourselves, after all. It's nothing but despair, like everything else." (p. 217)
Paul's despair, as well as the suggestion that his drinking and drug-taking have made him Impotent, cause May to draw back from him.
Like the O'Mearas, Paul Is not a good example for her to follow. May
realizes that Paul Is out of place In Alexandria, looking like "a gone- bad white man In the tropics - just like the brawling Gaugulns, without
socks, who always seem to be waiting for Maugham to turn up, or the
Ambrose Blerces with a strong smell that you find In the most
outlandish Midwest towns - all of whom were once admen, or kid movie
stars, or communist Intellectuals" (p. 167). When Paul stares at her
with "those steel-blue, wondering eyes that looked out on everything
from such a pathetic distance" (p. 217), May realizes that Paul has not
been able to eliminate the distance between himself and reality, and
she urges him to go home.
The only person In Alexandria who Is a completely positive
Influence on May, and who ultimately transforms her, Is Little Orkle.
May Is struck with Orkle when she hears him singing at Fats'. She Is
113 avare that In Orkle "unimpeded emotions" come up "so simply, so strong," and that, when he sings, Orkle tries to "re-establish some broken contact, to reconnect a circuit that had been shorted" (p. 189).
Dancing vlth her after supper at the Prenderman house, Orkle is able to reconnect the broken circuit In May herself. That occurrence, however,
Is already prepared for by May's smoking some marijuana, which makes her become "outward, amused, whole" (p. 201). She feels "warm...but wiser" (p. 201) towards Jack, as he Is frantically trying to open the peanut machine. A waft of alfalfa through the open windows strikes her as "sweet as childhood, full of the simple hunger of the uncorrupted
eenses," and makes her swoon "with drowsy languor, pleasantly aware of
[her] eyelids, and the way [her] little toes turned under demurely'
(p. 201). May feels "unconcerned, tolerant, beautiful for sure"
(p. 201).
Feeling relaxed and In touch. May wants to share that experience
with Willie Gee. She fastens on him, "impishly certain he could be made
to smile the way Orkie did, and for the same reason: just because it
was truer to reality" (p. 201), and invites him to dance with her.
Willie's anger about racial dlscrlminaton makes it impossible for him
to react spontaneously to May's invitaton, however. When Willie angrily
refuses, Orkie accepts May's offer. Dancing with Orkie makes May come
alive to herself even more, and she finally experiences herself as a
woman again:
I let him lead me, I let him take my waist and move me, the dance in me answering to the dance in him, as if I had suddenly understood how separate we all are, or how close - something silly like that about the simplicity of reality. I experienced an instant of womanly
114 tenderness and acquiescence that flooded through my llnbe without forewarning, and wanted to take that dreaming ecstatic face between my hands, or bend beneath It at his behest, knowing In my Intoxication the inmost leaf of female feeling (that warm willingness, that simple surrender), having little to do with him. (p. 204)
However, when the effect of the marijuana and the alcohol wears off, May loses again the feeling of harmony she experienced while dancing with Orkle· After she has realized the extent to which people like Hobbes and Jack 0'Meara are despairing and alone, she Is suddenly overwhelmed by a feeling of uselessness:
I wanted to get away. A bottomless weariness, beyond despair, had come down on me; that lonesomeness of life, and time, and all dawns. In which I could think of no one I wanted to see, no place where It would be any different, no song that would purge the feeling by expressing It· I longed unreasonably to believe In God or any other fortuitousness· My very flesh seemed sad and somehow violated to no purpose· I had come to the end of my Imagination. I sat, disheveled and glrdleless. In that dazzling dress turned merely silly by the dawn, and, for one graphic moment, I longed for any oblivion In which I might rest; a longing to give up filled me - and then, as Jack said, "that game, remember though baby?...kick the can or something?...How they yelled: 'Allee allee out Infree' when someone had really booted It a long way off, and you had a chance to get home safe, and you were so glad hunched up down there In the slimy rain barrel, you felt It ache right down In your bladder?" When he said this, something from childhood scared up In me, and I wanted only to sit by a chill Cape sea In
115 autumn, and stare at the gun-metal swells that heaved shorewards at no behest - toes, thighs, defenseless groin Itself let down on Impulse Into the cold salt surge, breaking grey over stark rocks In a sullen November, muttering with squall. The nerves of cities seemed tendrlled through my body like avaricious roots seeking blood; the lees of all the nights of search were as sour as bad wine In my mouth, (p. 230)
Still May's stay In the South does not end In despair. Leaving
Hobbes and Jack O'Meara behind, she can "see the morning come"
(p. 231), finding comfort In the "throaty and contented" chirps of hidden birds, that break "[her] heart with their sweet Indifference to our unceasing fret" (p. 228). Again It Is Orkle who brings May closer
In touch with nature and thus with the reality of her own life, this time without the aid of stimulants and In a more lasting manner.
Orkle'β very blindness makes him "so alive to everything" (p. 233) that he Is able to transform May and to, symbolically, serve as her
"gardener," In spite of May's having wondered, "And how can he be someone's gardener If he's blind?" (p. 232):
I looked at everything he heard and smelled, all the myriad, thronging life to which he seemed so attuned, and found I was translucently open to It - the gnats, like a fine cloud of golden specks, swarming In a ray of early sunshine; the wild asters meek and fragile In the glistening grasses; the cock that crew with lazy conceit somewhere over near the bayou; all the verdure, and the growth, and the awakening - tiny hidden worlds from which we are mostly excluded by our formulating Intelligence - all there In the dewy sanity of morning. And I suddenly thought: best to sleep, and wake to It, yes. Because there's balm In that rabbit -
116 the day's Just little green shoots and caution around fences and the silliness of birds to him. There's balm in that flower, and those gnats, and balm, too, in the spider wherever he is, and the snake curled up In a dank shadow waiting for the warmth of noon - intent mites of sentience, a little mysterious, a little maddening - but there's rest in them for us, because they're there no matter how we wound, or are wounded. And he knows that, all that: he's still part of it, he's never lost the wonder. I looked back at his black, thralled face, and I was full all of a sudden. (pp. 233-234).
After her transforming experience with Orkle, May realizes "how desperate and beautiful Is the urge in all living things to survive life, and enter Into reality at last" (p. 239). Having herself entered
Into reality now and driving home with Church Ρ louche t, May sees "the world renewed once more a drop of dew at a time" (p. 238). She is now also able to be more humane towards Church, holding his hand now that
she has reached "that surpassing understanding that is held out, beyond
the hangover and the orgasm, to all those who are exhausted by excess -
the single understanding I know about, that need not be bitter simply because it is bleak" (p. 239).
Like Verger after his stay in Europe, May gets "home free" to New
York. The extent to which she has cast off her old self is illustrated
by her spending the weekends "absorbed in redoing the loft from paint
to pillows, until all signs of Agatson's years were obliterated, and
all signs of Verger (except his books) were buried in a closet"
(p. 240). Even her outward appearance changes, as she has her hair cut
off, and shaped to her head. Although she has to cry over the fact that
117 her face le now "no longer the face of a rash and pretty girl, but older and soberer," In the end she decides that "she liked the new face veil enough, after all" (p. 241).
When Verger has returned to New York, and he and May have met again. May's change Is also expressed by the fact that she Is now able to enjoy their love-making. After they have made love for the first time after Dan's return, May says, "You'd think we'd never done It before" (p. 246), the Implication being that, as far as their love life
Is concerned. May and Dan have been able to leave the past behind. As
May puts It when Dan comments on some new clothes of hers:
"everything's new" (p. 249). Although It Is true that she still Is not
able to achieve orgasm with Dan, May catches "a brief glimpse," and for
the first time she feels "drowsy and spent once It was over" (p. 249).
Later, sitting In a bar, both May and Dan are "open to everything
around them" (p. 252), and, thinking of Dan's body and what they have
done together. May feels "complete, and uncomplicated, and pleasantly
empty" (p. 253).
IV
Get Home Free Is not only a novel about love and regeneration, but
also a book In which Holmes tries to come to terms with the American
experience. In this respect It is relevant that he situates Verger's
birth-place In the North of the United States, and that of May In the
South, explicitly subtitling the second and fourth sections of his
novel, "Verger-North-Day" and "May-South-Night." Moreover, the book
118 abounds with references to American literature and writers. Pound,
Hawthorne, Faulkner, Tennessee Williams, and William Carlos Williams are among the authors referred to. Get Home Free also alludes to such quintessential American novels as Moby Dick and The Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn. Consequently, it is hardly surprising that the novel
treats a number of themes that are prominent in a great deal of classic
American literature.
One of the essential American themes in literature is the search
for a paradise away from the snares of society. In Get Home Free both
Dan and May engage in this search. May leaves New Tork and Alemandria
behind to look for harmony in the garden of the Frenderman house, the
paradisical, unspoilt nature of which is stressed time and again. Like
the Garden of Eden, the garden of the Prendermans is not completely
unspoilt, however. May's fear of snakes had its beginning there, when
as a child she had found "a cottonmouth's depthless, unblinking eye,
like a dread bead, staring straight at me, not six inches from my
mouth, as I bent toward the chipped Indian fountain out in the
obliterated gardens to have a sip of rainwater that had collected
there" (p. 185). Talking to Orkie about this event, even the snake
becomes harmless, however. "He was probably only havin' himself a
drink, too, though, wasn't heî" (p. 234), Orkie suggests to May, as it
is Impossible for him to believe In the existence of evil in the
garden, and in nature in general.
In his turn, Dan looks for a kind of paradisal harmony when he
teams up with Old Man Molineaux, whose shack, like the garden of the
Frenderman house, is also removed from society. Grafton itself, still
unspoilt when Will Molineaux was young, is already corrupted by the
modern age. This is in accordance with Leslie Fiedler's notion that
119 "everywhere In our classic fiction - In Cooper's use of the historical past, in Melville's evocation of his own receding youth, In Twain's and Faulkner's reversion to a rural boyhood, there la implicit a suggestion that the Edenlc affair Is lived out In a Garden In the process of being destroyed. The aound of axes Is heard; the trees fall;
the ground la broken for factories and stores."7 It Is precisely the disappearance of familiar old trees and houses which symbolizes the degradation of present-day Grafton for Mollneaux. Destruction of this
kind makes It clear to Dan as «ell that the past Is forever lost and
that he "cannot go home again," a notion In American literature which
was prevalent long before the publication of Thomas Wolfe's novel You
Can't Go Home Again in 1940. May, too, Is aware of the Impossibility of
a return, as becomes clear when she and Dan discuss her going back to
Louisiana:
"So you're going home," he went on. "That's probably a good Idea." "Yes, I suppose so. I'll do some of that corny thlnklng-thlnga-over. I'll be sweet and dutiful with my grandmother, and probably get my accent back again," glancing at him all at once with a guarded, winning smile. "And I guess the only way you find out that you can't go home again is to Just up and go, isn't it?" (p. 139).
In the case of Dan and Old Man Mollneaux, their search for paradise
is connected to a theme which Leslie Fiedler has called the central
myth of American culture. This Is the fact that the paradisical quest
is usually pursued by a pair of men. Novels dealing with this
particular subject have certain characteristics in common:
120 ...all of thea have male protagonists, adult or Juvenile; all Involve adventure and Isolation plus an escape at one point or another, or a flight from society to an Island, a woods, the underworld, a mountain fastness - some place at least where mothers do not come: most all of them Involve, too, a male companion, who Is the spirit of the alien place, and who Is presented with varying degrees of ambiguity as helpmate and threat...The relation between the protagonists takes various forms: servant and master, foster-father (good or bad) and foster-son, lover and beloved. It Is always opposed, at least Implicitly, to the "stickler" and more sentimental kinds of relationships Involving women, whether that of mother and child, husband and wife, or passionate wooer and a mistress.
According to Fiedler, this theme was first primarily found In
British literature, and scarcely at all In other traditions. With the
Introduction of Natty Bumppo and Chlngachgook In Cooper's
Leatheratocklng Tales It became an essential motif In American
literature. Not only does It occur In Moby Dick and Huckleberry Finn,
it Is also to be found In Stephen Crane, Henry James, Hemingway,
Faulkner, and Sherwood Anderson. More recently the theme was picked up
by Kerouac In On the Road and Visions of Cody. In Get Home Free the
relationship between Mollneaux and Dan Is pictured as that between a
foster-father and a foster-son, who are trying to disentangle
themselves from society and to reach a kind of Edenlc harmony In
natural surroundings. Both Dan and Mollneaux are concerned with
escaping from the bonds that tie them down, although In the end It Is
only Dan who manages to free himself and to escape to Europe. The
ambiguity In Holmes's portrayal of Mollneaux Is caused by Will's very
121 failure to escape· In this way he serves as a horrible example to Dan·
The rejection of women which frequently accompanies the theme of the two male companions In American literature, Is In Get Home Free
Illustrated by Old Man Mollneaux's rejection of his wife and of his daughter Sally, and by Dan's rather strained relationship with his mother. These women are seen as trying to restrain the men, and wanting to civilize them. In this respect the "Old Man Mollneaux'-sectlon resembles Washington Irvlng's story "Rip Van Winkle," according to
Q Leslie Fledller "the first legend to seize the American Imagination."
Although Old Man Mollneaux Is not able to free himself completely from
the civilizing Influence of his wife, alone In his shack he would definitely be able to share Rip's joy at his deliverance: "there was one species of despotism under which he had long groaned and that was
petticoat government· Happily that was at an end; he had got his neck
out of the yoke of matrimony, and could go In and out whenever he
pleased."10
Another classic American story which should be mentioned In
connection with Get Home Free Is Nathaniel Hawthorne's "My Kinsman,
Major Mollneux." By calling one of the main characters In his book Will
Mollneaux, Holmes clearly refers to this story· As It turns out, both
"My Kinsman, Major Mollneux" and the "Old Man Mollneaux'-sectlon of Get
Home Free deal with the theme of a youth achieving manhood through
searching for a spiritual father. In this respect Dan Verger and the
protagonist of Hawthorne's story, Robin, are not unlike Redburn, Eugene
Gant, J.D. Salinger's fatherless youths and many other characters In
American literature, who, as Melvln W. Askew has pointed out, are all
looking for the authority and security which America Itself lost when
It dissociated Itself from England.
122 In "My Kinsman, Major Mollneux," Robin arrives In Boston to visit his relative. Major Mollneux, supposedly a rich and Influential man, who has promised Robin's father to establish his son In society.
However, It soon turns out that Major Mollneuz Is not at all the powerful man that Robin thought him to be. It Is even suggested that, like Will Mollneauz, he Is addicted to drink, and that he may live In a brothel. When Robin finally comes face to face with his kinsman, the latter Is covered with tar and feathers, and as run-down In life as
Will Mollneauz: "His face was pale as death, and far more ghastly; the broad forehead was contracted In his agony, so that his eyebrows formed one grizzled line; his eyes were red and wild, and the foam hung white upon his quivering lip. His whole frame was agitated by a quick and continual tremor, which his pride strove to quell, even In those
circumstances of overwhelming humiliation."12 Like Will Mollneauz to
some eztent, who Is not at all the free man he claims to be. Major
Mollneuz turns out to be an Impostor. In spite of this, Robin's
confrontation with him leads to his achieving manhood, and to his
decision to leave town. Like Dan Verger after his association with Old
Man Mollneauz, Robin now has "adopted a new subject of Inquiry.""
A last typically American subject dealt with In Get Home Free. Is
the International theme, which was developed In particular by Henry
James, but which Is also found in the work of, among others, Hawthorne
and Thomas Wolfe. Novels In which this theme is treated describe the
experiences of Americans abroad, and usually establish an antithesis
between American innocence and European corruption. Although the
protagonists In these novels look upon Europe as a place where they can
spiritually renew themselves by getting in touch with their roots, they
usually end up by withdrawing from the European experience and by going
123 home. This applies to Get Ноие Free as well· Although Dan travels to
Europe In the hope of finding spiritual harmony In "the asymnetry of quiet streets behind a cathedral, of fortified hill towns evoking slapler wars, of a palpable past" (p. 21), In the end he draws back from the degradation and sterility pervading Europe, as becomes clear when he tells May about his experiences abroad: "Paris, confusing
America's soul with its refrigerators...Vienna's done-for faces, sick with too much history.••Berlin, smashed by politics, having no black market in Ideals any more....Sad armies of U.S. students, so many
wistful Attllas, come to drink at a dry well....The pimps of Hilan,
eyes full of scorn and lire, hating the Americans because they wanted
to be loved...."(p. 246).
According to Leslie Fiedler, what happens to the American abroad is
that, "discovering in Europe that his own country Is myth as well as
fact, and Europe fact as well as myth, he comes to see that one myth is
as good as another, and he might as well stick to the one to which he
was bom":
Meanwhile, he learns that in fact, in terms of plumbing and class relatione and politics, America is clearly preferable; for even the superior comforts of Europe, cheap services and greater leisure, for example, are for him guilt-ridden advantages. In Paris, obviously different from the dream of Paris, the American discovers he can bear Kansas City, which he began 14 knowing was different from all dreams of it.
This is in line with Thomas Wolfe's feeling that he "discovered America
during those years abroad out of [his] very need of her," and with
what happens to Dan Verger. Realizing that "somehow America never lives
124 up to our dream of it," Dan concludes that "sometimes the only way to preserve the dream Is to get away from the reality" (p. 247):
"So Europe beckons us, and rests us for a while· But then you find yourself missing something - the cruel beauty of New York, or an ugly Intersection outside of Phllly where half the signs point to Chicago - that creative turmoil that keeps us nervous, dissatisfied, improvising - that strain of violence that's always the best goad to aspiration. And ten minutes after you get off the boat back home, you realize what It is. We've lost our national innocence, I think, and we're bitter about it. But it_ we're bitter, it's because we haven't given up hope. Somehow there's still room for anger here. There's still time for joy..." (p. 247)
That Holmes himself was aware of the particularly American themes
running through the subject matter of Get Home Free is Illustrated by
an entry he made in his journal on December 31, 1960. Except for some
notes, all of his novel was still unwritten then. However, in the
"curious psychoanalysls-of-my-creative-urge" Holmes carried out that
day, he already mentioned the theme of "the Wild," referring to
Thoreau, who claimed that "the lure of the West is the lure of the
Wild." According to Holmes, "the Wild was like a magnet, focussed
relentlessly on this meager coastal civilization, this narrow margin of
light between the two boundless darks of sea and wilderness, exerting
an Invisible pull on everyone, and those not rooted in the past were
drawn away from the light toward some unimaginable stark heart."
Realizing that people went West in order to escape from "white rational
civilization" and "to 'become men' again," Holmes mentions Melville,
who, although in the South Seas "he knew this was the better, saner way
125 of life - the simple love of Fayaway, the unsullied simple paradise, the virgin earth on which men sojourned and loved in a primeval purity," returned to America "enlarged, possessor of a secret he dared not spell out, his work an ever more complicated series of hints and glimpses." Holmes feels that his still unwritten story, "May and Hobbes and Little Say" (the "Hay" referring to Ray Charles, who was one of the origins for Little Orkie17), is Melville's story in a contemporary setting: "In the Negro, still, we feel this old reminder of what drew us here, of what America has whispered to our deeper natures, and my having Hobbes give up 'the white, daytime world' Is only a retreatment
(unconslously) of Melville Jumping ship, of the Mountain Men who vanished, unrecorded, among the fugitive Shawnees of maplese mountain
faetnesees·"
Holmes's Journal entry also reveals that he was aware of the ground broken in Cooper's Leatherstocklng Tales: that In the densely populated
America of the twentieth century a search for paradlsal wlldnese can
only lead to a desperate circling for a purity which is no longer to be
found. "All too often these days," according to Holmes, "our West, our
Wild, can be achieved only in the liberation of excess, intoxication -
here the 'savage life' exists right in the center of the 'civilized
one,' and in some senses this is whst I seek in 'Old Man Molineaux' -
and here the very comedy of the irascible old town-drunk, is the
tragedy of the Quest for Freedom turned back on itself." Meditating on
his two protagonists. Holmes concludes that Verger "sees in Old Man
Molineaux his own fear of 'leaving, venturing outward,' and how this
urge unsatisfied becomes self-destructive." May, finally, "sees that in
her 'chase for the wild' she lacks Hobbes' final nerve to break loose
altogether": "They come back finally more able to be themselves: Verger
126 soaewbat freer. May soaewhat more restrained."
Although Holaee clearly knew that the two stories he planned to write vere "redolent of deep theaes, Intlaatlons, meanings," fortunately he heeded his own adaonlshaent, aade in the same journal entry, not to "ruin It with cerebration." While in The Horn Holaes's technique to relate the book to American life and culture is sometimes rather heavy-handed, in Get Home Free the American themes form a natural part of the novel, enriching and illustrating its main theae, nan's longing for regeneration.
V
Get Hone Free was published to mixed reviews in early 1964. Several critics did not like Holaes's depiction of the relationship between Dan
Verger and May Delano. As the reviews aade clear, Dan and May's
attitudes could be too easily associated with those of the Beat
Generation, which had lost all interest as a literary and social
phenomenon by 196A, and had often become a source for ridicule.
Holaes's portrayal of Old Man Mollneaux, on the other hand, aet with
auch praise. Haskel Frankel called Mollneaux "a giant character fully
alive and totally engaging."18 Comparing him to Falstaff, Stanley Edgar
Hyaan felt that "in this mixed bundle of a novel, only Will Mollneaux
is an absolute success. He comes triumphantly alive, as full of the
body's Juices as his fat prototype." 19
It is not difficult to agree with these critics that Mollneaux is a
successful character Indeed. To a large extent this is due to the wsy
127 In which Holmes created Mollneaux's angry and rambling monologues.
Mollneaux's anger at his daughter Sally comes out very convincingly, for Instance, In the following outburst. In which Will turns on his wife, after she has told him that Sally thinks that It would be a good
Idea for him to be hospitalized for some time:
"- whelps turning on the old bastard, like even creatures In the woods don't do!" In a sudden ecstacy. "Get rid of that tree! What's It doing there? What's It good forT.-.Walt'll the old wolf's got a sprung back, and bis feet are going, and the winter's In his knees, and then - whapl - finish him off I Pen him up like a broken-down dogi It's unnatural! Sally saysl" he roars, lurching to hie feet. "I know what Sally saysl 'It's just mortifying. It's humiliating. It makes me want to throw up!'" In a sneering, evil parody. "'Get the lecherous old bastard to sit home, and drool In his oatmeal, and say I'm sorry when he wets his pants, or I'll fis him for good!'...That's what your daughter says. Well, ain't It? Ain't It?...But she ain't no daughter of mine. Bertha Kelly! She ain't no goddamn Ноііпеаиж!" (p. 94)
Also successful in the portrayal of Molineaux is Holmes's use of
comedy, which in Get Home Free is much more prominent than in his
previous novels, and which, especially in the "Old Man Molineaux"-
section, serves as a welcome relief from the gloom and despair
characterizing the New York chapters. The humour is found, for
instance, in Holmes's description of Molineaux trying to shave himself
when he is hungover, "getting the steamy water from stove to basin in a
lurching rush of scorched fingers, spilling great whaps of it, and
hopping out of the way like an amateur fakir on real coals," and later
128 'lathering hls face from a bar of laundry soap that slips out of Its
saucer like a fish floundering on a wet deck, only to be retrieved by a
lucky catch on Its last bound before the floor" (p. 86). Even better and funnier Is the description of Hollneauz stumbling drunkenly through
the backyards of Grafton, "menaced by murderous washllnes that [he] never seems to gauge right, alwaye ducking his head while still four
feet away, fainting and bobbing like a rheumy boxer, or coming up smack
into them with a strangled curse, and almost beheading himself"
(p. 96).
Although Holmes's portrayal of Mollneaux Is very convincing,
several critics thought the "Hobbes and Little Orkle"-sectlon the best
part of Get Home Free. Charles Boewe called It "almost tactile In
Intensity," while Haskel Franke1, praising Holmes's "wonderful
ability to make the mansion and every bit of filth In each of Its rooms
stand out In full dimension," wrote that In this section, "the scene Is
so well envisioned that It becomes a part of personal memory, something
experienced rather than read."21- Edward Field also appreciated "Hobbes
and Little Orkle" the most, because In It "the social stakes were
higher, mixing Negroes and whites In a Southern town."22 He felt,
however, that May's monologue "sounds odd since the author's male voice
comes through decorated with phrases like 'girlish crises' and 'giddy
fun' and using the word gay to mean gay not queer." On the whole, one
has to agree with Field. Examples of May's rather masculine way of
speaking are, for example, her exclamation, "Christ! Who the fuck is
thatl" (p. 164), when she sees Orkle for the first time, and her
description of her first visits to Fats' bar as a high-school kid,
"when we were just starting to drink more or less seriously and hell
around as a matter of course" (p. 157).
129 Holmes was also aware that he had not really succeeded in writing
"Hobbes and Little Orkle" from a woman's point of view. He realized
"how difficult it Is for a man to write convincingly as If he was a
woman," and that "the book would have been more successful If [he] could have solved from the very beginning the problem of the voice. ^
It should be noted, however, that May herself has a "clear perception
of how idiotically nervous and abrupt, how deliberately tough and even
masculine, so many of [her] gestures usually vere" (p. 200). In this
respect, the fact that at times she also talks like a man may very well
be functional, indicating that, as we have seen. May has become
estranged from her female nature. Towards the end of "Hobbes and Little
Orkle," and also In the last section of the book, when May has become
more harmonious, her language has become less tough and more in tune
with her changed personality.
Another aspect of Get Home Free which did not satisfy Holmes, is
the use of tense in both "Old Man Mollneaux" and "Hobbes and Little
Orkle". According to him, the "Old man Molineaux'-section is "Verger
recalling this from years later," while "the other is much more
immediate."24 In both sections, however, It is made clear that Dan and
May are telling their stories twelve years after the events they
describe took place. Some critics completely overlooked this fact,
thinking that the action in Get Home Free Is set in the sixties.
However, Holmes does not at all bring "the drunken and narcotized 50s
into the disenchanted and overhung 60s, "25 as Lawrence Lipton claimed.
What Holmes wanted to do, in fact, was "to reflect the changing milieu
of the Fifties, and the emotional aftermath of the experiences 26 described in the earlier book,' Go.
Although Charles Foore referred to the book's "mercurial time
130 scheme,"27 and Charles Boewe mentioned, slightly condescendingly,
Holmes's way "to write backward,"26 most critics did not pay much attention to the structure of Get Home Free. Holmes himself felt unhappy about the structure of his novel: "The form was always wrong.
It was really meant to be two novellas, but of course you can't publish novellas. They were too long for magazines and too short to be 29 published as a book. So that's why I put those three sections In.
However, although the structure of Get Home Free may have Its faults,
It Is definitely suited to the subject of the book, and to the
development of Its main characters, because the fact that most of the
book Is taken up by two novellas, each devoted to one of the
protagonists. Illustrates the distance between Dan and May.
Very effective, too, is the consistent use of animal Imagery In Get
Home Free, especially In "Old Man Mollneauz." After "deer" (p. 10) have
already been Introduced as symbolizing purity and freedom In the first
pages of the novel, the Image Is taken up again when Molineaux, the
bonds of society closing down on him. Is compared to a deer as Dan,
trying to help Molineaux stand up, catches one of his ankles, "as thin
and tendoned as a deer's ankle in a trap" (p. 124). At other times
Molineaux, about to be defeated, Is compared to an "old wolf" (p. 9A),
to a "broken-down dog" (p. 94), or simply to "a hurt animal" (p. 125).
Molineaux'в fascination with the wilds and with freedom also comes out
when he tells Dan about the "wild woods right back there where they
trapped the last wolf In '14....Weary old ugly customer, half starved
out of his mind or they wouldn't have got him, not him!...Something In
them wild eyes wouldn't forgive 'em eitherl" (p. 97). It is clesr that
Molineaux is also talking about himself here, and about his own urge
for freedom, which is also Illustrated by his murmured comments at "a
131 long wavering vee of mallards migrating'': "...safe In Jersey by sundown, see, somewheres In a woodsy lake only they know...ducking
their heads In under, and squawking a little In the dark, you know -
just to be sure they ain't drifted...squawk, squik-squik, squawk,
that's how they sound....! don't eat 'em any more -" (p. 74). Although animal symboliso is not as prominent In the "Hobbes and Little Orkie"-
sectlon. It is found towards the end of it, when descriptions of birds and rabbits are used to Illustrate the natural harmony which Hay has been able to attain.
As was the case with the structure of Get Home Free, most critics did not pay much attention to the actual style of the book either·
Although, like other critics, Charles Boewe and Stanley Edgar Uyman
liked the dialogues In the novel, Hyman in particular was downright
negative about its descriptive passages. According to him, the book's
language is "neither fresh nor sophisticated enough for Its story."
The examples of bad writing cited by Hyman are not very convincing,
however. There does not seem to be much wrong with a description of a
Charlie Parker recording as "Bird's tumbling kinks of raw song"
(p. 200), or of a man staring insolently at another man's mouth, "as If
noting traces of canapé - though in fact none had been served" (p. 34).
The only critic who was completely laudatory about the style of Get
Home Free, was Lawrence Lipton, who felt that "Holmes's skill in prose
language here goes far beyond Go and The Horn": "It is more inventive
than anything by Kerouac, except perhaps The Subterraneans and Doctor
Sax and Is superior in scope and understanding than either of the
latter. 31 Lipton also claimed that Get Home Free "meets Norman Mailer
on his own ground and challenges comparison, in prose style and
content, with Mailer's An American Dream." However, this does not mean
132 that, as far as Its style Is concerned, Get Home Free Is a flawless novel. As In The Horn, Holmes sometimes has a tendency to generalize
too much, which mars his prose. This Is the case, for Instance, when he describee May's need "to obliterate the silence of time, which Is so disturbing to the young and restless," referring to "the steady buzz of
trivial music and shallow voices drowning out the silences of contemporary history In her days" (p. 18), or when he writes sbout
"those black, causeless depressions that sometimes ooze up out of the modern soul, like poisonous miasmas" (p. 40).
On the whole, however, the prose in Get Ноше Free has become much more personal and characteristic than that of Holmes's previous two novels. In writing the book. Holmes wanted "to get some of the soft
quality that Is in The Horn out, to get the prose tougher and harder
and more exact."" ¿t the time of writing Get Ноше Free, he was
"reading back in Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Mailer's new stuff then, and
trying to work the prose-thicket down to exactness, preclseness. The
precise and clear-cut quality of the style of Get Home Free Is very
much in tune with the frequently stem subject matter of the book. It
is also a quality which became a lasting characteristic of the prose
Holmes wrote after Get Home Free.
Get Home Free has never been a popular book· According to Holmes,
"even people who know my work somewhat have never read it. * However,
in spite of some stylistic flaws. Get Home Free is a serious and
rewarding novel which does not at all deserve the almost complete
oblivion Into which it has sunk.
133 Chapter Five
ЮІНІК МНЕ TO ΚΟΛΙΕ
When Go was issued Holmes had already been publishing poetry and prose In literary magazines for four years. Hie first publication had been a review of an anthology of Danish verse in the March 1948 issue of Poetry. That same year he published, apart from several poems, a short story and an essay in Neurotica, a magazine recently founded by
Jay Landeeman in St. Louis. Landesman wanted neurotica to be "a
literary exposition, defense, and correlation of the problems and
personalities that in our culture are defined as 'neurotic.'"2 Although
Initially the Intention of the magazine was primarily literary, it soon
shifted away from literature to social analysis in psychological,
Freudian terms. This was especially due to the Influence of one of the
contributors, Gershon Legman, a scholar of erotic folklore who became
Landesman's associate editor, and who was the sole editor of
Neurotlca's ninth and last issue In 1951. Both Landesman and Legman
felt that "the true character of a culture can most easily be glimpsed
in the popular arts, and consequently Neurotica printed many articles
on all aspects of popular culture, as well as poetry and prose with a
psychological tendency. After Holmes's story, "Tea for Two," had been
published in the Summer 1948 issue, Holmes met Landesman in New York,
during the July 4th weekend that he also met Gershon Legman, Allen
Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac for the first time. Holmes felt attracted to
Landesman and his ideas, as a result of which he published his first
134 essays in Neurotica, eventually even collaborating with Landesman on a number of essays which criticize the feminization of American culture.
Although these early essays are all very readable, especially those written In collaboration with Landesman, they do not really presage the fine and highly personal essaye Holmes was to write during the fifties and early sixties, most of which are Informed by the search for spiritual wholeness that also characterizes Get Hone Free. These essays were first collected In Nothing More to Declare, published In 1967; with the exception of one they were reissued In Representative Men and
Passionate Opinions. Because Nothing More to Declare was conceived as an organic unity, the essays are here discussed In relation to their first appearance in book form.
The origin of Nothing More to Declare Is to be found In 1963, when an editor at Bobbs-Merrlll euggeated to Holmes that It might be a good
Idea for him to write a book about the Beat Generation. Having finished
Get Home Free the year before, Holmee felt attracted to the Idea. In the spring of 1963 he started to work on the book, on an advance from
Viking Press, with which he had signed a contract after he and Bobbs-
Merrlll could not come to an agreement. He quickly rejected the idea of writing a coherent, chronological history of the Beat Generation, however, feeling that the time for such a book had not yet come.
Consequently, Nothing More to Declare became much more than a history of the Beats. The book also deals with such subjects as the sexual revolution, the movies of the thirties, and Lee Harvey Oswald and the
Kennedy assassination. Moreover, Nothing More to Declare contains a long autobiographical section. In which Holmes looks back at his own development as a man and a writer during the forties and fifties. As he
135 points out In his foreword, Holmes considers Nothing More to Declare as a spiritual Customs Declaration made at the age of forty, which he sees as a"frontier between the countries of ежрегіепсе,""poised between
the past you can never recover and the future you have yet to
achieve.
II
Although Nothing More to Declare deals with a variety of subjects,
nearly everything Holmes writes about In the book Is In some way
connected with his view of the Beat Generation. The oldest essays In
the collection are. In fact, his two essays on the subject, "This Is
the Beat Generation," written In 1952, and "The Philosophy of the Beat
Generation," written In 1958. In "This Is the Beat Generation," Holmes
claimed that for the postwar generation In America the problem of
growing up was essentially a spiritual problem. In "The Philosophy of
the Beat Generation", which constitutes "a deeper and more detailed
look at the Beat point of view as It had solidified since the first
article was written," he returns to this subject.
When "The Philosophy of the Beat Generation" appeared In the
February 1958 Issue of Esquire, On the Road had been published five
months earlier and become the object of much controversy. As Holmes
points out, what Irritated critics most of all was Kerouac'β Insistence
that the restless characters In his novel were on a spiritual quest,
and that the generation he described, the Beat Generation, was
"basically a religious generation" (p. 67). Holmes admits that, on the
136 face of It, Kerouac's statement may seem absurd. Still, although their elders see "no signs of a search for spiritual values In a generation whose diverse tragic heroes have included jazzman Charlie Parker, actor
Dean, and poet Dylan Thomas" (p. 67), Holmes claims that the Beat
Generation Is "a generation whose almost exclusive concern Is the discovery of something In which to believe" (p. 68). For him this
concern Is expressed by the admiration many young people have for James
Dean. Dean shared a strong need for mobility, which Holmes regards as one of the distinguishing characteristics of the Beat Generation, with
Kerouac's characters, and, as Holmes puts It, only the "most myopic"
can view this need as "a flight rather than a search" (p. 70). Even
Dean's acting technique, which he shared with the older actor Marlon
Brando and other well-known actors. Illustrates the need for
spirituality among the young, according to Holmes. The primary concern
of this technique, known as The Method and taught at the Actors Studio
In New York, Is "to find the essence of a character, his soul" (p. 71).
Because this technique so "Interlorlzes" the character that It becomes
clear that "man Is not merely a social animal, a victim, a product,"
but that "[at] the bottom, man Is a spirit" (p. 71), Holmes feels that
The Method Is the acting style best attuned to the Beat Generation.
In Holmes's view even juvenile delinquency, a subject treated In
films starring Dean and Brando, Is not really the result of en
Indifference to values. According to Holmes, "[e]ven the crudest and
most nihilistic member of the Beat Generation, the young slum hoodlum,
Is almost exclusively concerned with the problem of belief, albeit
unconsciously" (p. 72). For Holmes, the juvenile murders which shocked
the public In the fifties are specifically moral, spiritual crimes,
because they are crimes which "the cruel absence of God" makes
137 obligatory If a man Is to prove that he Is "a man and not a mere blot of matter" (p. 72).
"The Philosophy of the Beat Generation" shares a number of Issues with Norman Mailer's "The White Negro," which originally appeared In
Dissent In the summer of 1957, and which Is one of the most Important essays written In America since World War Two. In "The White Negro"
Mailer defines the philosophy of the hipster, the "American
Existentlallst," who pursues a vision of freedom, personal growth and
pleasure In a hostile and partly totalitarian society. Like Mailer,
Holmes feels that the need for a new way of life among young Americans
was one of the results of "the constant threat of collective death"
(p. 77) after the Second World War. Both Mailer and Holmes regard the
search that hip young people have engaged upon as an almost religious
quest, in which "movement is always to be preferred to Inaction,"
because, as Mailer goes on to say:
In motion a man has a chance, his body Is warm, his Instincts are quick, and when the crisis comes, whether of love or violence, he can make it, he can win, he can release a little more energy for himself since he hates himself a little less, he can make a little better nervous system, make it a little more possible to go again, to go faster next time and so make more and thus find more people with whom he can swing.
Perhaps the most striking resemblance between "The White Negro" and
"The Philosophy of the Beat Generation" lies in the fact that Holmes,
who in Go did not seem to condone criminality, in his essay has come to
regard crime as something which can be morally justified. In this
respect Holmes's street hoodlums resemble the hipster as described by
138 Maller, who maintains that violence may be one means for the hipster to free himself from all social constraints.
Although "The Philosophy of the Beat Generation" Is well- structured, stylistically It Is not as overpowering as "The White
Negro." On the other hand, It Is precisely the accessibility of
Holmes's style which made a number of delicate issues, such as bohemianism and criminality, also more accessible. Another asset of the essay Is that Holmes, more than Mailer, was aware of recent alternative currents in American literature, which allowed him to link the
lifestyle of the young hip American not only to Jazz, as Mailer also does, but to literature as well.
In his third essay on the Beat Generation in Nothing More to
Declare. "The Game of the Name," Holmes wanted to "supplement and amend
the other two In the light of more recent developments." In this
essay, written In 1965, Holmes looks at some of the developments of the
Beat Generation, after both the term and the phenomenon had become
famous in the late fifties. Holmes regrets this notoriety, because It
focussed on the fashions and fads of the so-called Beatniks, and
obscured the deeper implications of Beatness. For him it was clear that
the Beatniks, as "Bohemians have always [done], drearily, derived most
of their behavior patterns from attentively watching the bourgeoisie
and then doing the opposite" (p. 80). Still, although the Beatniks were
not authentically Beat, according to Holmes there were critics who
"glimpsed the state of mind of which the Beatniks were only the
theatricalized symptoms" (p. 82). While these critics sympathized in
different degrees with the Beat phenomenon. Holmes proposes that a look
at the objections of three of them could clarify some of the confusion
139 about the Beat Generation.
From the beginning one of the severest critics of the life-style and work of the Beat Generation had been Norman Fodhoretz· Fodhoretz
looked upon the Beat Generation as a "revolt of the spiritually
underprivileged and the crippled of soul" (p. 82). He objected to the
Beat attitude because he considered it to be apolitical, asocial, and
amoral, and because it concerned itself with "intuitions, soul states,
and affirmations of Being" (p. 83). Consequently, Fodhoretz complained
that "Kerouac's love of Negroes and other dark-skinned groups is [not]
tied up with any radical social attitudes," and that, "if a filling
station will serve as well as the Rocky Mountains to arouse a sense of
awe and wonder, then both the filling station and the mountains are
robbed of their reality" (p. 83).
Holmes has to admit that it is difficult to counter some of these
charges. However, he blames Fodhoretz for not being able to see that
"what attracts the alienated white to the Negro in this century is
that, having been excluded from the society, the Negro has been less
stultified, in his soul at least, by it" (p. 84). With biting humour he
also attacks Fodhoretz because he "cannot comprehend the nature of 'awe
and wonder,' and he wants things firmly in their places, so that when
he sees the Rocky Mountains he will know what to feel, and when he sees
a filling station he will know what not to feel": "Blake's ability 'To
see the world in a grain of sand / And heaven in a wild flower' is not
for him, and it is not for him because 'awe and wonder' are not for him
either" (p. 84).
A much more positive commentator on the Beat Generation was the
social critic Paul Goodman. Goodman approved in particular of the fact
that the Beat Generation had found a viable alternative to the standard
140 culture. However, he almost completely dismissed the art works created by the Beats. Moreover, like Podhoretz, Goodman was disturbed by the
Beat Generation's preoccupation with mysticism. Although he realized that the Beats were looking for the kinds of experience that mystics of all time have looked for, Goodman argued that this need for mysticism and transcendence could be relieved by Improving Interpersonal relationships and by making work more meaningful. As Holmes sharply points out, Goodman apparently belongs to those critics who seem to
think that mysticism, although a valid experience In the past, cannot
possibly be experienced by young people today, and who feel that the
"systematic derangement of the senses,* which Is heroic In Rimbaud, Is merely "sordid" (p. 86) In Allen Ginsberg.
The critic of the Beat Generation to whom Holmes feels closest, is
Norman Mailer, whom he already referred to In "The Philosophy of the
Beat Generation." Here Holmes affirms that he considers "The White
Negro" a highly Important exploration of the new consciousness, whether
It Is called Beat (as Holmes does), or Hip (which Is Mailer's term).
However, contrary to "The Philosophy of the Beat Generation," Holmes
now rejects the violence which Is one of the consequences of Mailer's
philosophy.
In spite of all the critical attention given to the Beat
Generation, for Holmes the fact remains that the spiritual hunger at
the root of the Beat consciousness did not really lead to a new way of
life. Still, the changes that did occur In American life and society
after 1960 are at least partly due to the revolt of the Beat
Generation, according to Holmes. The new generation (with its
Involvement in civil rights, disarmament, poverty and freedom of
speech) would not have developed as it did, if it had not experienced
141 the Influence of the attitudes of the Beats· Holmes does feel, however,
that in the end the differences between the generation of the sixties and the Beat Generation may turn out to be greater than any
Blmllarltles· Although existentialism exerted a strong influence on both generations. Holmes maintains that what was important for the
Beats was existentialism's conception of the nature of man, while for
the younger generation it Is existentialism's engagement in the community of men which Is especially appealing.
Another difference between the two generations is that, while for
the young people of the sixties "[njonviolence, pacifism, and reverence
for life are aostly means of social action," for Holmes's generation
they were ends in themselves: "you were nonviolent not because it was
one way of changing Institutions, but because it was the only way of
remaining a human being" (p. 92). Strikingly enough, a note of
Irritation seeas to enter Holmes's argument here. This becomes even
clearer when he decribee how "the improvised, individualistic onrush of
our music and the warm, sexy mutuality of the spontaneous dances we did
to it have given way to the amplified whanging of massed guitars and
the squirming. Jerking onanism of the Pony, the Swim, and the Watusi,"
and when he contrasts "our solemn, quasi-biblical beards" to "those
androgynous, fin de siècle mops that suggest an inner dislocation more
psychiatric than eccentric" (p. 92). This kind of criticism, which
seems as unwarranted as that of homosexuals In some of Holmes's essays
in Neurotica, suggests that he was not as open to cultural changes as
he frequently appeared to be. It is a blemish on what is otherwise a
valuable account of the reactions to the Beat Generation in the fifties
and sixties, and of Holmes's own attitude towards the phenomenon.
142 Ill
It Is possible to trace the same development In Holmes's essays which Is also found In his novels. In both genres Holmes's voice
gradually becomes more personal. While the tone of Holmes's essays In
Neurotica Is detached and objective, his essays on the Beat Generation
are already more characteristically his own as far as their point of
view and style are concerned. This applies even more to most of the
other essays in Nothing More to Declare and certainly to the section
"Representative Men." This section, which opens the book, consists of
four character sketches of friends, all of whom Holmes met on the July
4th weekend in 1948.
Two of these friends, Gershon Legman and Jay Landesman, were not
writers of fiction or poetry, and their influence on Holmes was not
really literary. Still, both Legman and Landesaan were Important to
Holmes's development as a person and a writer. Legman, the subject of
the essay "The Last Cause," was one of the first to argue that "the
Increasing violence and sadism of American culture was the direct
result of our society's relentless suppression of вея."8 Although
Holmes agreed with Legman's tenets and admired his essay. Love and
Death, he Is aware that it was not Legman's work which had such a
lasting Influence on him, but that It was "the attitude of the man, and
the man himself, that was most important, most enlarging" (p. 33). What
struck Holmes In particular, was the "curious effect" Legman had on the
people around him. "If you had a secret layer of apathy, compromise or
dishonesty," Holmes writes, Legman would "instantly sniff it out and
subject it to a barrage of sarcasms" (p. 27). As a result of this
143 behaviour, "people went away from Legman - their psyches stripped naked, their defenses In tatters, their nerves In that odd hum of exhaustion," but still "feeling somehow Incalculably better than they had felt when they cane" (p. 28). Holmes attributes this to the "aura of total freedom about [Legman], of honesty without mercy, of having nothing to lose, that made you realize that your usual social armor was unnecessary, slightly silly, an Impediment" (p. 28). For Holmes, who was reserved and who suffered from It, knowing Legman was a stimulating
and liberating experience, which enlarged him In both his work and his
life.
Another side of Legman which was Important to Holmes, was Legman's
awareness of what Holmes calls "the last cause of all": "oneself (the
besieged human person) and the stubborn flower of one's sex that
resists, even when nothing else can or will, the dead concrete
pavements of depersonalization which our age seems intent on laying
over everything" (p. ЗА). This sexual aspect is also the focus of
Holmes's essay about Jay Landesman, "The Pop Imagination." Tracing
Landesnan's development as editor of Neurotica, writer of musicals and
television personality. Holmes speculates that "It was a radical notion
of sex that stood behind most of Landesman's projects. Holmes notes
how, as Landesman grew older, he was "less and less concerned with
challenging the powers that be, influencing the age and competing In
the arena," and how he became "more hedonistic, less success-driven,
and occasionally an advocate of avant-garde sex mores" (p. 65). He
attributes this development to Landesnan's assunptlon that "the most
far-reaching revolution of our generation would probably turn out to be
the Sexual Revolution - predicated, as it was, on a conception of the
totally unsuppressed human being, and promising, as it did, an end to
144 the duality of which all the Issues were only the bitter, cerebral end products" (p. 65). It Is clear that Landesman's attitude In this matter
Is close to that of Holmes himself, who all hie life tried to end the duality In his personality, and who became convinced that sexual love
Is essential In reaching personal spiritual wholeness.
What also attracted and Influenced Holmes In his friendship with
Landesman, was that Landesman represented to him the "game-playing,
style-enamoured, pomposity-puncturing side" of his generation (p. 66),
In which respect Landesman resembled Legman (having called Legman a
"psychiatric Genghis Khan" In his behaviour towards people. Holmes
compares Landesman to a "social Diaghilev"). Like Legman, Landesman
manipulated the people around him In a desire "to break through all the
masks, and heighten his sense of life as being open-ended, dangerous
with possibilities, free" (p. 62). As Holmes's essay Illustrates,
Landesman's longing for personal freedom was probably as strong as
Legman's, and, as far as Holmes Is concerned, certainly as influential.
Although the other two men whom Holmes befriended on that same
weekend in 1948, Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, were writers who
would have a lasting literary influence on him, in the case of Ginsberg
Holmes was fascinated more by the man than by the poetry Ginsberg was
writing at the time. In spite of this, Holmes's essay on Ginsberg, "The
Consciousnees Widener," contains a valuable and perceptive survey of
Ginsberg's work. "The Consciousness Widener" focusses on Ginsberg's
personality, however, and on Holmes's relationship with him. Both In
Ginsberg's personality and poetry Holmes recognized the same longing
for "unified Being"10 which he felt in himself, and which also
attracted him to Legman and Landesman. In Ginsberg, Holmes saw "how we
145 humane tremble at the prospect of losing the very carapace of ego that has so tortured us that we make the attempt In the first place," and he
was able to Identify his own needs with Ginsberg's wish to reach "the health of a unity of Belng"(p. 88). Although Holmes did not resort to hallucinogenic drugs himself, he could well understand Ginsberg's doing
so. In order to "widen the area of consciousness," to reach the
physical and spiritual harmony that Holmes himself strlved for, and to
break free from "our own stunted consciousness that Imprisons us" and
makes us "suffer from a consequent hunger of the spirit for which all
our perversions and our politics are only a kind of ugly stomach cramp"
(pp. 94-95).
Of the four men Holmes met on the Independence Day weekend. Jack
Kerouac would turn out to be the most Important for him. As Holmes puts
It In "The Great Rememberer," MB essay on Kerouac In Nothing More to
Declare. Kerouac has "awed me with his talents, enraged me with hie
stubbornness, educated me In my craft, hurt me through Indifference,
dogged my Imagination, upset most of my notions, and generally enlarged
me as a writer more than anyone else I know." More quickly than with
anyone else Holmes became friends with Kerouac. From the first,
however. Holmes realized how different In character he and Kerouac
really were: "Our minds, which work In opposite ways, have never been
entirely compatible. He Is freely contradictory, I tend to be trapped
by my own consistencies; he abaorbs, I analyze; he Is Intuitive, I am
still mostly cerebral; he muses, I worry; he looks for the perfection
In others, and finds existence flawed; I am drawn toward the flaw, and
believe In life's perfectibility" (p. 116). Still, In spite of these
differences, Holmes feels that there always was a "real and generous
affection" between him and Kerouac, "based on a peculiar sense of
146 kinship- puzzling, maddening. Indescribable - that has made [their] relationship oddly fateful for both of [them]" (p. 116).
As Holaee also suggests, this feeling of kinship may be based on the fact that he and Kerouac represented to each other everything they were not themselves· Holmes describes hov he realized, after meeting
Kerouac, that he had been unhappy about his life, that he had been waiting for a change to come, and that he was "more dissatisfied with
the attitudinizing of most of [his] other friends than [he] knew"
(p. 118). Consequently, Holmes immediately felt attracted to Kerouac, who was "at ease In all the myriad worlds outside [Holmes's] stuffy,
bookish rooms" (p. 119), and to Kerouac's "undivided flow of being"
(p. 117), which was so different from Holmes's own attitude in life.
For his part, Kerouac soon felt close enough to Holmes to entrust his
work journals for The Town and the City to him.
According to Holmes, his reading Kerouac's Journals marked the moment when he "began to be a writer in all seriousness" (p. 121). From
then on, Kerouac was Holmes's catalyst, who "always looked over ay
shoulder in my imagination" (p. 121). Kerouac's Influence on Holmes was
not in the first place stylistic, however; as Holmes puts It, what he
got fron Kerouac was "not a voice, but an eye" (p. 121). Kerouac taught
Holmes that reality is made up out of details, and that a writer should
"cut as close to the bone of the detail as words would go" (p. 121).
Holmes tried to develop Kerouac's Instinct for "the moment when gravity
became pretension, and emotion turned to sentiment" (pp. 121-122), and
he describes how Kerouac once, by adding the simple exclamation
"Goodness mei", erased the tone of false solemnity in a piece of
dialogue Holmes had given hia to read.
Apart from being an account of Holmes's friendship with Kerouac,
147 "The Great Rememberer" is also a penetrating essay on Kerouac'e life and art. Holmes was among the first critics to stress that Kerouac was a serious artist, and that Kerouac'e concept of spontaneous prose did not imply that for him writing was simply "a matter of sinking down a pipe and letting the water gush" (p. 125). In this respect one should also note Holmes's early and prophetic praise for Kerouac'e Visions of
Cody. This novel, according to Holmes containing prose of "an eloquence that was Elizabethan, in an accent that was indelibly that of our
postwar generation" (p. 130), was not thought fit to be published in
its entirety during Kerouac'e lifetime; the complete text only came out
in 1973, and since then the book has gradually come to be regarded as
one of Kerouac'e finest achievements. Another aspect of Kerouac'e work
which was pointed out by Holmes in "The Great Rememberer," and thus
relatively early, is that Kerouac's work is in the direct current of
American literature.
"The Great Rememberer" is, after twenty years, still one of the
best short introductions to Kerouac's life and art. It is also one of
the most successful and personal essays in Nothing More to Declare,
although the other three essays in the section "Representative Men" are
almost of the same quality. What is immediately striking about these
essays, is that Holmes has become much more honest and open about his
own personality than he was in the essays he published in Neurotica and
in his essays on the Beat Generation. Holmes's style, too, has become
much more lively in these essays than in the earlier ones, which comes
out in Holmes's descriptions of his friends. Legman, for Instance, is
lively and lovingly depicted as "hurrying along like the White Rabbit
in an Impatient waddle, more tban likely wearing a knitted cap, a
couple of threadbare scarves, a length of rope for a belt, and the huge
148 scuffed shoes of a London dustman" (pp. 28-29). Moreover, Holmes's style frequently captures aspects of the personalities he le writing about. Thus, the second paragraph of The Consciousness Hldener," which describes Ginsberg walking up and down In Holmes's apartment and
talking on and on In what seemed a single sentence, consists itself of one long sentence, resembling one of the long lines of Ginsberg's poem
"Howl." Another example is the second paragraph of "The Pop
Imagination," the colloquial language of which accurately reflects the hip and somewhat superficial side of Landesman's character. Stylistic aspects such as these help to make "Representative Men" some of the
best prose Holmes has written.
IV
The "undivided flow of being" which attracted Holmes to Kerouac and
to his other friends, also plays an important part in two of the essays
in Nothing More to Declare which most clearly have a strong social
concern: "The Silence of Oswald" and "Revolution Below the Belt." "The
Silence of Oswald" Is an Impressive attempt to understand Lee Harvey
Oswald's motives for killing President John F. Kennedy. A reading of
the Harren Report gave Holmes the feeling that "Oswald embodied, albeit
to an extreme, a condition of Being that is growing more and more
prevalent In our time,"12 that of the anonymous, urban mass-man, who is
estranged from life and from himself and who cannot find meaning in the
world around him. Describing Oswald's background. Holmes comes to the
conclusion that everything disappointed the man who was to kill
149 Kennedy: "nothing gave him a feeling of his own distinct being; he tried over and over again to find a situation In which he could experience himself as alive, productive, a person of consequence"
(p. 233).
In several ways. In fact, Oswald resembles the psychopath or part- psychopath (the hipster) as described by Mailer In "The White Negro."
Opting for a solution which also attracts Mailer's psychopath, by committing a murder Oswald β truck back at the reality that bad excluded him In order to end the duality In himself, and to break through the
wall that separated him from reality. As Holmes puts It, "Oswald's
crime may have been a last desperate attempt to become part of reality
again, to force hla way back Into the reality that had Ignored him, so
that be could experience himself as acting, as living, as committed"
(p. 235). Viewed In this light. Holmes feels that It Is even
understandable why It was Kennedy who bad to be shot by Oswald: "For
John Kennedy was everything that Lee Oswald was not. He existed
directly in the vivid center of reality, he was potent In every way,
his life and personality were one continuous action and Interaction; he
was neither dualistic, separated, nor helpless; he had never been
prevented from experiencing himself as alive and consequential"
(pp. 238-239). By killing Kennedy, Oswald attempted "to become the sort
of man he killed by the very act of killing" (p. 239), as Holmes puts
It, and for one brief moment Oswald "must have felt the exhilaration,
the keenness to sensory stimuli, and the virile power of choice that
characterize a man functioning at the top of himself as a human being"
(p. 240).
"The Silence of Oswald" is an excellently written essay. Holmes's
psychological Insight In a character such as Oswald's Is remarkable,
150 even If we take Into account that his analysis of Oswald's personality
Is frequently based on assumptions only. In fact. Holmes, suffering himself from the very duality he detects In Oswald, may well have been
the Ideal person to Identify with Oswald and to give this moving account of the dangers of duality for those who are, unlike Holmes and other writers, unable to wield a pen to affirm their humanity and to
re-establish a fruitful contact with reality.
In "Revolution Below the Belt," first published In the August 1964
Issue of Playboy, Holmes also deals with the problem of duality, the contrast between body and mind, sexuality and spirit. The essay
consists of two parts, entitled "1905" and "1917." In the first Holmes
compares the sexual revolution of the fifties and early sixties to the
Kusslan revolution of 1905, claiming that, although American society
has come to take a more tolerant view of sexuality, this change In
attitude Is nothing more than the kind of liberal reform following the
1905 revolution, which was equally abortive. Holmes feels that the
attitude towards sexuality has not really changed. According to him,
what Is basically wrong with man's sexual attitudes Is connected with
the assumption that sexuality Is the antithesis of spirit: "At the
bottom of It, all our attitudes rest as squarely on the old Christian
dualism of mind-versus-body as did the rather more austere Injunctions
of St. Paul." Holmes relates this dualism to the success of such sex-
dominated works as Suddenly Last Summer. Candy, Our Lady of the
Flowers, and the film La Dolce Vita, claiming that these show that the
world has become so morally and spiritually impoverished that people
are "deprived of any way to experience their uniqueness, except through
their own flesh" (p. 117).
151 In "1917," the second part of his essay, Holmes points out what a real sexual revolution should consist of. The sexual attitudes as described in the first part of "Revolution Below the Belt" arise from
the internalization of authority. Eventually, however, people will start to protest against this internalization, and "the underground man, made raw to his exlstentiallty by these very controls, breaks through in the form of the psychopath or the rebel" (p. 119). In order
to avoid that men and women become dangerous and cruel because they are
"physically cut off," as D.H. Lawrence put it. Holmes proposes that we
should "[cjonquer the fear of sex, and restore the natural flow"
(p. 123).
Holmes is aware that he is not the only one in America concerned
with this subject, and goes on to analyze the ideas of Norman Mailer
and James Baldwin on some aspects of sexuality. According to Holmes,
Mailer sees sexuality as "one of the only unobstructed avenues back
into the richness and creativity of the whole personality" (p. 126).
For Baldwin sexuality is an opportunity to express and anneal "the
violence and despair of outcastness," and, according to Holnes, the
best of Baldwin's work "vibrates with the belief that the barriers will
only come down when we allow ourselves access to one another across all
abysses, sexual and racial" (p. 126). Baldwin's world. Holmes feels, is
"taut with the angry loneliness and fevered curiosities of the
isolated, to whom touch itself is the only comprehensive act of
communication" (p. 126).
Like Baldwin and Mailer, Holmes believes that modern man's
suffering is largely due to the duality of mind and sexuality. To end
that duality, "the cannibal mind, swollen to gigantic proportions by
centuries of over-thinking, arrogant with the bloodless logic of the
152 computers It has fashioned In Its own Image, must be drenched In the passions once again" (pp. 133-134). it Is only then that we can become whole again; and, like Lawrence, Mailer and Baldwin, Holmes Is convinced that "one source of that wholeness lies In the mysterious
sexual energy through which we can still experience our uniqueness, even when anxiety has most obscured It" (p. 134).
"Revolution Below the Belt" Is not one of Holmes's strongest essays. Especially In the second part the argumentation Is somewhat muddled, due to the fact that Holmes attempts to deal with too many aspects of the sexual revolution In the same essay. It should be noted, however, that he was one of the first to pay serious attention to the
rise of the feminist movement In the early sixties. Unlike before, when he blamed the breakdown of virility on the Influence of homosexuals,
Holmes does not attribute the "feminization of America" (p. 131), which
was concurrent with the feminist movement, to any change In attitude of
American women. Although he Is not certain whether such feminist
manifestoes as Betty Frledan's The Feminine Mystique or Elizabeth Mann
Borgese's The Ascent of Women are the result or the cause of the sexual
difficulties of men, Holmes points out that what Is more Important Is
that "women, like men, are growing restive In their sexual roles,
albeit from the other side of the frontier" (p. 131). What Is
particularly Interesting about "Revolution Below the Belt," however, is
that some of the main ideas In it are also to be found in Get Home
Free. The essential importance of touch, for instance, which Holmes
emphasizes In his essay by discussing Baldwin's view on sexuality, is
in Get Home Free illustrated by Little Orkie, the O'Mearas, and
especially by Faul Hobbes.
153 ν
Nothing More to Declare ends vlth a long section entitled "The Raw
Materials," which consists of autobiographical fragments dealing with the forties and fifties. As he explains In the Introduction to "The Raw
Materials," Holmes added this memoir because he felt that he owed
"some sort of private testimony" to the public character of the rest of
Nothing More to Declare, claiming this section should be considered as
"an appendix to what has come before; as the raw material out of which the Ideas and Impressions of this book have been fashioned."1* In these prose-pieces. In which he used "the associative method usually employed In poetry," Holmes describes the "disconnected Images"
(p. 182) that had kept on haunting him.
As Holmes points out, because "one's memories of youth are rarely chronological, but move from Image to emotion to Idea, back and forth across a stretch of time," the first part of "The Raw Materials," entitled "The Forties," Is to a large extent "elliptical and discontinuous" (p. 182). "The Forties" begins with Holmes's discharge from the navy In 1943, and ends with a meditation on how the war had been caused by rationality, and how Holmes and other young Americans, who had yet to be named the Beat Generation, after the war learned "to expend the exuberance of youth on the far-out, the eccentric, the twisted, the unique - anything that did not smack of the murderous logistics of power run amok." In between Holmes describes, In short, evocative passages, his first term at Columbia University, his first marriage and the love-affairs he had on the side, the beginning of his friendship with Ginsberg, Landesman and other young Intellectuals, his
154 experiences as a hospital attendant during the war, and his political
Interests.
As could be expected, In almost all of these passages aspects of
Holmes's personality are described which are also to be found In his other work. Thus, In the first sections, dealing with his discharge from the navy, Holmes focusses on the rootleseness which in Go he saw as the main cause for the confusion among the young In postwar America.
Another aspect already found In Go, Is the ambivalence Holmes felt In himself, but which also seemed to be part and parcel of the times. This ambivalence Is humorously Illustrated by Holmes In his description of
The Kafka Problem, a book which came out In the late forties, and which collected "twenty-odd Interpretations, by as many hands. In a single volume, enabling one to understand that Kafka was at once a communist, a fascist, a Catholic, a Hasldlm, an existentialist, a satirist, and a psychotic" (p. 31).
The ambiguity In Holmes himself comes out In his attitude towards
the writing of poetry. Writing a paper at Columbia University on the
relation of poetic form and social chaos. In which he insisted that
"pentameter was as dead as Petersburg," two years later Holmes
nevertheless composed highly formal "Auden-ary Ironies" (p. 10).
Ambiguous, too, were Holmes's reading experiences of that time. This
becomes clear when he remembers "talking about William Empson, and
reading Whitman on the sly" (p. 11), or when he describes how one
"slogged through that month's article on Henry James In a pad full of
stolen radios" (p. 31).
Holmes's ambivalence Is also apparent In the love-affairs he
describes In the first part of "The Raw Materials." Although he was
married, he kept "reaching out from [his] marriage during those first
155 years, still greedy with the war" (p. 11). In some of the girls Holmes courted, characters from Go can be recognized, while a description of
Holmes being struck by Impotence echoes a similar occurrence In the novel. Perhaps the most Influential affair Holmes had at the time, was with an older woman, who Is also the subject of one of Holmes's short stories, "The Next to the Last Time." As Holmes's moving memories of this woman and of his first wife make clear, "The Forties" can to a large extent be read as a tribute to the women who loved and Influenced him. In this respect. It Is the counterpart of "Representative Hen," In which Holmes portrayed the male friends who had a formative Influence on him.
The absurdity which the paradoxes In Holmes's mind could lead to Is perhaps best Illustrated by the passage In which he describes his mood after he had written a letter to the editor of FN, having been angered by that magazine's "pusillanimous agonizing over the hardships of being a liberal" (p. 1A). When that letter had been printed. Holmes "sat down and wrote two anonymous replies to It - one accusing [hlm]self of being a reactionary, the other accusing [him]self of being a communist, both letters perfectly logical and airtight and mutually contradictory, given their assumption" (p. 14).
Still, it was precisely in politics that Holmes looked for the realization of the "lust for order" which was his "reigning passion then: that the world would be coherent, after all" (p. 15). "The
Forties" traces his growing dissatisfaction with politics. He describes how "the overloaded mind, like a computer being fed a psychosis on a punch card, bogged down in those endless, solemn Partisan Review symposiums on 'Socialism' or 'Religion and the Intellectuals,' longing for a clear, impatient statement like 'A spectre is haunting Europe -'
156 or 'There flashed upon my mind the phrase. Reverence for Life'"
(p. 11). At the end of "The Forties," Holmes has come to realize that
the Incoherence both In the world and In himself has to be accepted and endured· This Insight Is looked upon as a "freeing from fantasy"
(p. 46), as the kind of "breakthrough Into reality" which Hay Delano experiences In Get Home Free.
As he does elsewhere In his work. In the second part of "The Raw
Materials," "The Fifties," Holmes relates his personal development to
that of America· In his view, he broke down physically and spiritually
In the late f if lee because "[his] psyche, like that of the nation just
then, suffered a series of numbing bruises to the self-esteem, and [he]
endured the personal equivalent of the Ü-2 incident, the Cuban
Revolution, and America's prestige-losses and epace-failuree-"16 Holmes
felt that both he and the country had been "in a kind of thrall for
years" (p. 244). However, with his literary work getting worse dally
and certain that he had lost his talent, the image Holmes had had of
himself was collapsing and "the armatures In [his] personality melted
down": "The habits and disciplines of years crumbled one after the
other, I came down to some sort of private bedrock, and was (it seems
to me now) actually mad for one morning, and part of an afternoon"
(p. 243).
Holmes overcame his crisis by healing himself "as a dog does": "by
keeping alone, by being patient, by licking the wounds clean" (p. 244).
Realizing that the Second World War had "made" him and that the Cold
War years had "unmade" all Americans and brought them "down to [their]
skins at last. Holmes felt that the fifties had made him "come down to
the bone itself" (p. 246). In sccordance with this feeling was his
157 notion that he would have to make a new start as a writer:
I would have to begin all over again In my work If I was to find a distinct personal voice to embody the besieged human being I saw all around me then - and which I had, myself, become. No more Balzacien scope, no more Tolstolan sanity, no more godless, godlike eye. Consciousness itself (contracting and evolving, distorting and defining) would probably be the subject and the form of any future work I did. (p. 245)
This notion may have guided him In choosing the travel essay as the genre In which he would prefer to work during the next few years.
VI
Holmes finished working on Nothing More to Declare In August 1966,
when he wrote the final version of the foreword. As he himself has put
it, the sequence In which the book was composed had been "crazlly
truncated." The first essay which Holmes wrote for the book, was "A
Decade of Coming Attractions,*' in which he lovingly remembers the
movies and movie-stars of the thirties and forties and tries to trace
their Influence on himself and on some of his fellow artists. Although
the essay Is well-written, it is not as Incisive as the other material
in Nothing More to Declare and Holmes does not really succeed in
showing the effect that prewar films had on literature and social
attitudes. After having written "Revolution Below the Belt," Holmes
spent the autumn of 1963 as a visiting lecturer at the University of
158 Iowa, and was only able to resume work on his book after his return home· He then wrote the four essays of "Representative Men," "a
prolonged bout of two months work,' and "The Silence of Oswald." In
1965 followed "The Game of the Name" and "The Name of the Game," an
Introduction to the three essays on the Beat Generation, which were
given the chapter heading "Generationlng" in the published book. The
last section Holmes wrote was "The Raw Materials," although at least
two parts had been written earlier and were published In magazines in
1962 and 1963.19
The order of the different sections in the manuscript as Holmes
submitted It to Viking Press was radically different from that In the
published book. In the manuscript, "The Raw Materials" came first,
followed by "Representative Men" and "The Game of the Name" (the
original title of the complete section that was later called
"Generationlng"). These were followed by a fourth section, entitled
"Some Circumstantial Evidence," which consisted of "A Decade of Coming
Attractions," "Booze and the Muse," "The Silence of Oswald," and
"Revolution Below the Belt."
"Booze and the Muse," which was later dropped from the collection,
is an essay which Holmes had written earlier, and which was published
in Nugget in 1962, under the title "The Booze and I. In this essay
Holmes takes a look at some of the causes that made many major writers
in his generation drink too much. Stylistically, "The Booze and I" is
not as successful as most of the essays in Nothing More to Declare.
Rather unfortunately, for instance, Holmes opens several paragraphs
with questions such as "Can you write on liquor?" and "Where will It
end?". Moreover, the argumentation is not always very clear: after
claiming that "more first novels today exhibit a higher degree of basic
159 technical competence than was true during the 20s," several lines down
the page Holmes writes that he has "the clear Impression that we expend
far more effort to produce far less than our Immediate forbears"
(p. 63).
The first version of Nothing More to Declare was rejected by Viking
Press, after which Holmes offered the manuscript to Dutton. When Dutton accepted the book. Holmes made a rearrangement of the pieces and some
cuts to avoid repetition. The version which was finally published to
favourable reviews stresses the personal character of the book. Almost
nothing remains of the original foreword, In which Holmes takes a much
closer look at recent history and at the effects of the Cold War than
he does in the published book. The personal character of the final
version Is also underlined by the new arrangement of the essays. After
the formative experiences which Holmes deals with In the section
"Representative Men" and In "A Decade of Coming Attractions," In
"Generatloning," "The Silence of Oswald" and "Revolution Below the
Belt" he discusses a number of subjects with which he was personally
Involved In the fifties and sixties. Finally, "The Raw Materials"
accurately reflects the way Holmes's mind, shaped by the experiences
described earlier In the book, deals with his memories of the forties
and fifties. In the end, the development towards a greater subjectivity
which Is apparent In all of Holmes's work, turns out to be a dominating
aspect of Nothing More to Declare as well·
160 Chapter Six
HAIXnC ABU ПОЛ TBE ШЖ
As Nothing More to Declare Indicates, Holmes's discontent with American life and politics, which had badly hindered him In the vrltlng of Get Home Free, gradually grew during the fifties and sixties. Gspeelally when America Involved Itself more and more in the Vietnam War, Holmes was Increasingly at odds with his country. By the spring of 1967 the situation both In Vietnam and America Itself had worsened to such an extent that he felt a strong need to expatriate himself for a while. In September he and Shirley travelled to Europe, where they spent the next few months, returning to America at the end of December.
During his trip Holmes kept a journal. When he returned to America he saw that he had collected enough material for a series of travel essays, and he started to work, on them In March 1968. Because he was counting on money from magazine sales, he conceived each essay as being able to stand alone. In February 1973 he finished the tenth and last essay of this series.2 Holmes then arranged the essays to form a book, which he called Walking Away from the War. Although, between 1969 and 1978, seven of the essays were published in magazines, the book In its entirety was published only In 1987, as part of Displaced Person. Walking Away from the War will here be dealt with as an autonomous book, although sufficient attention will be given to the individual character of the essays.
161 Walking Away from the War consists of ten essays, covering Holmes's travels In Ireland, England, France, Germany and Italy In the fall and winter of 1967. In the Introductory essay, "Escape," the narrator, who
Is clearly Holmes himself, describes his growing need to leave the
United States, his preparations for a trip abroad, and his eagerly awaited departure for Europe, where he spends some time In Ireland
first. The second and third essay deal with his Irish experiences. In
"Taking the Wound to Yeats Country" Holmes writes about a trip to Thoor
Ballylee, where William Butler Yeats lived in a restored tower during
the Irish Civil War, and about his stay In Silgo, where he visits
Yeats's grave. "Whispering In the Pubs" deals with Holmes's stay In
Dublin.
Following a short visit to Edinburgh, the Holmeses arrive In
London, where they stay with their friend Jay Landesman. This stay is
the subject of "London: Games, People, Play," in which Holmes focusses
on the art scene in the English capital and on the many parties he
attends, at which he meets celebrities like Mama Cass Elliott,
Christine Keeler, and Yoko Ono. In "A Wake in the Streets of Paris,"
the fifth essay of Walking Away from the War, Holmes tries to come to
terms with the death of two friends, and with what these people
represented for him. The next stop on the European trip of the Holmeses
is Munich. In "Encounter with Myself in Munich" a chance encounter with
a Polish refugee in the streets of Munich turns out to be of vital
importance to Holmes.
The last four essays in Walking Away from the War all concern
Holmes's experiences in Italy. "Venice About Which Everything Has Been
Written -" focusses on a description of the city and on his suddenly
coming across Ezra Found. In "Flesh and the Machine: Thanksgiving in
162 Florence* Holmes deals with the Thanksgiving Day he and Shirley spend
In Florence· "Awake In Rome" focusses on meetings with some American
acquaintances and on an encounter with the actor Tab Hunter. "See
Maples and Live," finally, deals with Holmes's reactions to the last
city he and Shirley visit In Italy. The essay contains a description of
life In Naples, an account of a visit to Pompeii and Holmes's
concluding views on his trip to Europe.
II
The typescript of Walking Away from the War opens with α quotation
from D.H. Lawrence, Illustrating one of the major themes underlying the
book as a whole. In the quotation Lawrence compares America with
Europe, putting forward the Idea that European civilization Is "much
more tense" In the Americans than In the Europeans:
The Europeans still have a vague Idea that the universe Is greater than they are, and Isn't going to change very radically, not for all the telling of all men put together. But the Americans are tense, somewhere Inside themselves, as If they felt that once they slackened, the world would really collapse...And that seems to me the rough distinction between an American and a European. They are both of the same civilization, and all that. But the American grips himself, at the very sources of his consciousness. In a grip of care: and then, to so much of the rest of life. Is Indifferent. Whereas the European hasn't got so much care In him, so he cares much more for life and living.
163 The contrast between tenseness and frustration on the one hand, and temporary relief and harmony on the other, permeates all of the essays
In Holmes's book, and also the collection In Its entirety. In "Escape"
Holmes starts out by describing the physical turmoil he suffers because of the var he sees everywhere around him: "[t]he war In Vietnam, the war In the streets, the war In the American soul." Holmes knows that be should stop caring about the war, because his caring Is making his
life more and more problematical, but he is unable to. While "the very air In America" becomes "poisonous," he recognizee that he has started
to harm himself: the "tension-band across the forehead" tightens "a
notch day by day," the newspapers he reads "squeeze[d] the stomach of
anxiety," and his sex life has "suffered a splintering" (pp. 17-18).
Realizing that, in order to save himself, he has to "get away from
the sight of tragic, mad America breaking Its heart" (p. 18), Holmes
decides to escape to Europe for a few months. At first he tries to
convince himself that he is going to make the trip to "regain
perspective," but soon he has to admit that he is leaving the United
States to "survive at all" (p. 18). Not wanting to become Involved In
any hectic city life in Europe right away, and having read Yeats's
"Meditations in Time of Civil War" "for the fourth time in as many
months," he decides to travel to Ireland first, "lovely superseded
Ireland where all the cauaes were fueled with nostalgia and poteen"
(p. 19). It is especially the West of Ireland which attracts him, and
which for him still seems to possess some of the unspoilt qualities
that used to be associated with the American West. Holmes dreams of
simply renting a car and vanishing in "the wild, peat-bog counties of
the West," where "immemorially poets had withdrawn, like Horace, when
the world was too much with them" (p. 19). Hoping to become whole
164 again. Holmes goes to "mend the wound In Yeats country" (p. 19), and already In the airplane he has a great sense of relief and liberation:
"one knew the keen, unhuman delight of being severed, of leaving the old, raddled Self behind, of voyaging outward from all the suffocations of the street-pent consciousness" (pp. 19-20). Appropriately enough, the air from the nozzle above Holmes's head Is described as "suddenly pure," while even the clothing of the stewardesses, who wear
"parochial-school blouses and demure green skirts" (p. 20), seems to
Illustrate a feeling of Innocence which Holmes has temporarily regained. In fact, Holmes's sense of relief Is such, that he grins "as wltlessly as Huck Finn on his raft" (p. 20), realizing that, like
Twain's hero, he has escaped from the pitfalls of civilization for the
time being.
"Taking the Wound to Yeats Country" begins with a description of
the thrill that Holmes feels when he sees Ireland lying deep below him.
His weariness "evaporatele] In an instant," and he feels the "Immense
excitement" of the frontiersman, "the thrill of going great distances
In the wink of an eye towards absolutely new and unknown places, the
sheer adventure of it, the essential optimism of moving on, no matter how embitteredly" (p. 22). After his arrival in Ireland, he is struck
by the generosity of the people and by the raw purity of the
countryside, both so very different from the tense city life he has
just left behind. Holmes, who has been "chasing sleep desperately for
months, with all the red-eyed, fretful obsession of the Insomniac"
(p. 2A), Is now able to sleep again.
Still, Holmes's first confrontation with Ireland does not
immediately lead to the harmony he is looking for. Visiting Yeats's
tower. Holmes realizes that, like the Irish poet, he should like to
165 "root the town-bred consciousness, torn by politics and parched by psychologies, back in the fecund dark of the earth again, and thereby restore coherence to our mutilated natures" (p. 27). This same urge strikes him when he sees an old bouse, covered with lichen, which seems to him "not to have been built, so much as rooted in its lonely spot, and it seemed to promise that the speculating mind would become rooted
there as well" (p. 29). However, the "raw, torn beauty" of the house, as well as the raw quality of both the weather and the Irish countryside, makes Holmes realize that he has "come to such a place too late" (p. 29).
In fact, it is especially because of the bad Irish weather that
Holmes feels "anzlous" and "constrained" (p. 30) again. Trying in vain
to "penetrate" the countryside through which he drives, to "experience"
himself there, he is suddenly overwhelmed by a sense of hopelessness,
"as If the secret, healing power of those new and unknown realities, on
which I had banked the last of my nerves, was sealed off from me by
some Impenetrable plexiglass in my coneciousness": "I was appalled,
disheartened, furious. I had the urge to tear at my forehead to
dislodge the obstruction there" (p. 31). However, with "the rapid
alternation of moods characteristic of a pressure-cooker personality
taking everything too hard" (so typically American, according to
Lawrence), Holmes suddenly feels better again, "pulled-together,
inquisitive, open to everything" (p. 32). He likes Silgo with its
narrow streets and dim pubs, and is finally happy and excited to be in
Ireland, where, he feels, "some nourishing link to the rural past was
still intact" (p. 32).
At Yeats's grave this link to nature again turns out to have its
disquieting sides too. Because it is cold and dark In the graveyard, to
166 Holmes the place seems "forever sunless, clammy with death" (p. 36).
Listening to blackbirds quarrelling in the trees, he suddenly feels out of place, as if he has "blundered into a non-human place, a place pulsing with dark, non-human life, life of another dimension than that of our consciousness, bird-life, plant-life, where the awful cycle of growth and decay, from which men shrink back instinctively, sensing their own mortality, goes endlessly on and on" (p. 36).
Still, this new confrontation with the dark side of life does not really change Holmes's happy mood. Returning into the sun, he quickly re-experiences the feeling of harmony he had found before visiting
Yeats's grave. This feeling stays with him throughout the rest of his stay in the West of Ireland. It comes out, for instance, in his description of his conversation with Shirley at dinner later that day, when he is "completely engrossed In finding the true words for [his] reactions of the day, at ease the way a man is only at ease when he is no longer asking himself whether he is or not, absorbed in everything, flowing with it" (p. 39). Holmes realizes that he has been "snappish, trigger-happy, distracted, tense, partial for longer than [he] knew," and that he has been "carrying [him]self like an armful of broken crockery, willing every response" (p. 40). Now that the "elusive impediment of the last few days" has "simply vanished" (p. 39) and he is at ease with himself again, he is attractive to the girl who serves him and Shirley at the hotel, and to Shirley as well. He begins to
"recuperate," and at the end of "Taking the Wound to Yeats Country," when he playfully suggests to Shirley "the congress of these states"
(p. 40), even sexuality between Holmes and his wife seems possible again, the way it no longer was in the tenseness and confusion of
America.
167 As the opening of the third chapter shows. Holnes Is still In good spirits when he and Shirley are on their way to Dublin. Driving across
Ireland, It appears to him that "the worst of [bis] sense of dislocation had ebbed away" (p. 41), and that "[his] nerves were detaching themselves from America one by one" (p. 42). Holmes Is very much looking forward to visiting the Irish capital, but when he arrives
there the city does not at all come up to his expectations. He had
fancied Dublin to be a city In which "a man who was sick to death of
the suicidal, chemie stink of the world's New Yorks might breathe up
the richer human odors of backwardness, clogged drains, stale
metaphysics, stout, sad chastity, and verse" (p. 42). The real Dublin
Is so different from what he had Imagined it to be that, walking
through Its streets, he registers It as "counterfeit" (p. 42). He Is
struck In particular by the different aspects of corruption which he
notices everywhere around him: the "fry-foul smell of cafeterias," and
the cinema marquees that flicker on and off with "that Idiotic,
mechanical frenzy.-.that depresses you with a premonition of what the
world may be like once our species vanishes and only the machines
remain" (p. 43). The river Llffey, whose name brought to his mind "the
soft-focus blur of spring showers, and a source somewhere far up In the
greeny dells of fairy Ireland," turns out to be "mud-befouled and
pungent-ae-an-armpit at low tide, full of sodden newspapers and the
rusty skeletons of bicycles" (p. 43). Especially, however. Holmes Is
tsken aback by the fact that whenever he enters a pub, the people there
are not laughing or talking out loud, but guardedly whispering among
each other. To him, this Is a sign of the very tenseness which he had
tried to leave behind In America.
Judith Brooke, a woman-Journalist with whom Holmes and Shirley
168 spend some time In Dublin, also confronts hla with what he thought he had escaped froa. During an Interview Judith wants to know everything
about the Hippies, drugs, the Black Panthers and Vietnam, all subjects
that had lead to Holaes's very expatriation. When, visiting an art
gallery In Dublin, Holaes unexpectedly coaes across a portrait of
Judith, painted by her Irish ex-husband, he Is realnded again of
Aaerlca's difficult position In the late sixties. In the portrait. It
Is especially Judith's eyes which strike hla, "eyes full of those
anxious questions - 'What went wrong?', 'What am I to do?', 'Do you
still love me?' - that cloud so many Aaerlcan eyes now that we are no
longer happy Innocents In the world's playground, but have assumed our
share of Its wickedness and coaplexlty. Poat-Jaaeslan eyes" (p. 51).
Although Holaes keeps on looking for an unspoilt Dublin, in the end
he finds that he has to give up his dreaa and to face reality. After
seeing an O'Casey play, he realizes that "O'Casey's Dublin, with all
it· wit, squalor, hope and blarney," the Dublin of Holaes's
imagination, is "no more relevant to contemporary Ireland than the Book
of Kelle in the library of Trinity College" (p. 57), and he finally
stops "trying to rebuild the city a little closer to [his]
preconceptions" (p. 59). Holmes's change In attitude is the result of
his new insight that he will have to "relent," that the "'useless
aemorles' ba[ve] to go," and that he will only regain his strength and
eagerness for life if he opens his eyes to "what actually l[ies] in
front of thea" (p. 59).
This new insight makes it possible for Holaes to appreciate London,
the next city he visits. In "London: Games, People, Play" he compares
the city, which he feels has become lively and exciting, with the
London of the late fifties, when he had also visited the English
169 capital, and when It had been grey and dull. To Holmes, England now seems "pulled together by a new energy, a new flamboyance, and a new humor" (p. 63). According to him the reason for this change Is that
England has finally "admitted that It [le] little more than a small
Island off the coast of Europe, a geopolitical anachronism" (p. 63). It does not seem too far-fetched to link this admission and Its favourable
results to Holmes's own new awareness that he has to accept reality as
It presents Itself to him.
However, the fact that Holmes Is able to enjoy London and Its many
social excitements does not mean that he has become completely
uncritical. Taking part In some of the hip diversions of the time, such
as smoking marijuana and watching light shows and pornographic movies,
he is struck by the realization that these forms of amusement do not
really lead to a better, more harmonious world, but only "farther away
from the Garden, deeper Into the Expulsion" (p. 68). A particularly
strong sense of the Incompleteness of modern life comes to him when he
visits a show of the Japanese artist Toko Ono at an art gallery. There
Ono has set up a "half-room - that Is, half-a-bed, half-a-chalr, half-
a-shoe, half of a perfectly every-day life," and Holmes la suddenly
painfully aware of the "partlalness of the contemporary personality, of
the splintered self stumbling along on Its one leg" (p. 78).
As happened to him In Dublin when he met Judith Brooke, In London,
too. Holmes has to admit that America keeps Intruding on his European
experiences. In talking with English friends and colleagues, he Is
often confronted with the war In Vietnam and the moral catastrophe In
the United States which has been the result of It. Frequently, he finds
himself "trapped...In unbidden thoughts of what was happening back
home, unable to enjoy the experiences [he]'d come for" (p. 86).
170 Especially towards the end of his stay In London, Holmes le brought face to face with what Is happening In America. Watching the television news, he suddenly sees an Item about a large demonstration In
Washington, In which both Dr. Spock and Norman Mailer participate, and
which Is broken up by the police. A feeling of frustration comes over
Holmes and for the first time during his European trip he wishes to be back In America.
America and Its problems catch up with Holmes In Paris, too, as "A
Wake In the Streets of Paris" makes clear. Not only does Holmes In
France come across the same young Americans he sees elsewhere In
Europe, whose baffled faces seem to him to have been marked by the
political events in America, shortly after his arrival In Parle he also
receives news from America that two of his friends have died. Although
In both cases the cause of death was Illness, to Holmes It seems that his friends are also victims of what has been happening In the United
States. Stu, a designer of aircraft systems and one of Holmes's oldest
friends, apparently died of a heart attack. Holmes feels, however, that
Stu's death has at least been partly brought on by the fact that he was
a secret Idealist, who broke down under the stress of being torn
between his Idealism (his spare time was "Increasingly devoted to the
American Civil War" [p. 96]) and the fact that, In the course of the
sixties, his contracts were Increasingly military. Holmes's other
friend, Nick, who had been Involved In the civil-rights movement,
finally became a teacher at a black college In Georgia, only to be
disillusioned when. Instead of the reconciliation between black and
white that he had hoped for, there occurred "the violence which the
despair of a divided America was bringing out on both sides like a
171 tragic native flaw" (p. 103). Holmes's feeling Is that Nick, even though he died of cancer, la also a victim of "[olid Bitch
America..-Btill devouring her young" (p. 104).
As Is the case In the other essays In Walking Away from the War, In
"A Wake In the Streets of Paris" there le a gradual development from a spiritual crisis to a sense of harmony, however fleeting and temporary
that may be. Holmes's confrontation with death first leads to feelings of despair and anger, and also to nostalgia, "for the good years that are gone; for simpler times and simpler choices; for camaraderie, and horseplay, and loyalty, and sentiment; for the Innocence of America
Itself before Its days of empire faced us with moral dilemmas that
could so break the heart, and Immoral conditions that could so abrade
the nerves, that Stu's coronary and Nick's cancer could become only
another occasion for holding a wake over the corpse of the Republic"
(p. 105). Gradually, however, Holmes realizes that he Is being unjust
to his dead friends by linking their deaths too closely to political
problems. Holmes recognizes that "they were dead of an absurd, qulrklsh
bodily flaw, and not because the country was foundering," and he admits
that he Is simplifying the "human richness" of his friends' lives by
turning them Into "cheap eymbol[s] of some fleeting national crisis"
(p. 105). It Is this realization of the richness of life which helps
Holmes to become at least partly reconciled to the death of his
friends, as well as to his own problematic life. At the end of the
essay this feeling of reconciliation Is Illustrated by the fact that he
and Shirley, together with the two American friends with whom they are
staying In Paris, are able to enjoy the Idea of having a typical French
lunch In a neighbourhood café. Holmes's friends, a couple who are going
through the tension and throes of a difficult divorce, have even let up
172 on each other for the time being.
In spite of Its relatively optimistic ending, "A Wake In the
Streets of Parle" belongs to the most pessimistic essays In Walking
Away from the War, together with the next piece In the collection,
"Encounter with Myself In Munich." This sense of pessimism seems to be
largely due to the fact that In Paris and Munich, more than In the
other European cities he visits, Holmes Is reminded of the bad things
that are happening back In America. In fact, as Is made clear several
times In "Encounter with Myself In Munich," to Holmes the America of
the sixties Is In some ways not unlike Germany. Holmes's host In Munich
explains to him that "Germany le a strain for Americans now. It's too
auch like home" (p. 126), while Holmes himself finds It very difficult
not to put the mass slaughter In the concentration camps during World
War Two on one line with the atrocities going on In Vietnam In 1967:
"Dachau. Hué. Concentration Camp Commandant Hoess with his love of dogs
and Brahms. The American Captain who said of the Vietnamese village he
had Just burned, 'We had to destroy It In order to save It'" (p. 118).
Moreover, walking through Munich Holmes Is disturbed by the fact that
he recognizee some of the psychological disabilities he himself suffers
from, such as the disharmony between body and intellect and a feeling
of social distance, in the German life going on around him:
Platzl struck me with a sharp pang of déjà vu, which, upon investigation, proved to be grounded in Fritz Lang. An old infatuation with Expressionism hallucinated me with the feeling that I understood everything I saw - the heavy overcoats muffling the body but not the will, the gluttonous menus stupifylng both, the mood of public propriety and private quirk, of unexamined urges and a damning sense of social
173 distance. All this framed Itself Into an unhappy question as I walked. Why did I seem to know, Instinctively, how to function In a German city? It was everything about myself from which I wanted to escape. (p. 117)
In Munich Holmes Is confronted with the American and the German past when he is accosted by a Polish refugee called Adam, who claims
that he has been In Dachau during the war, and that he Is now waiting
In a relocation camp to go to America. Although it gradually turns out that Adam Is mainly after Holmes's money, Adam's words of praise for
the Americans remind Holmes that for the early settlers America was once a place of freedom and possibility, and for a moment he is moved by that thought: "I still believed that at bottom we were good; and the old tarnished dream of haven in America lived on in [Adam], despite what we had made of it. I felt a secret reflex of pride in my country,
in its instinctive decency (now so bafflingly obscured). Its honesty
(now so appallingly compromised), its idealism (now buried in a file
somewhere in the antiseptic warrens of the Pentagon), but there, still
there in the hopes of Europe's displaced and uprooted" (pp. 121-122).
Although, because of the Second World War and the war in Vietnam,
the original purity of America is lost forever and, as Holmes puts it,
no one can ever be "quite whole again" (p. 122), he decides to keep on
striving for that wholeness and for being human. In Munich he does so
by deciding to believe in Adam, even though there Is a strong
possibility that Adam has only been trying to con him. Holmes makes
that decision when he realizes that, in meeting Adam, he has also
encountered himself. While Holmes has "conned to get away from America
in order to save a part of [his] American-ness that seemed in
174 jeopardy," Adán Is "conning to get there before something of himself
[Is] finally lost" (p. 126). Holmes Is aware that both he and Adam are
spurred on by the same drive: "to survive, to avoid hating life, to
remain human" (p. 126). In the end It Is this awareness which turns a
deeply disturbing encounter into an experience of relief and acceptance.
In the last four essays of Walking Away from the War, Holmes Is
Increasingly engaged In trying to remain human, In "looking for native
strengths, for the old American breadth of vision, for ancestors"
(p. 145). Holmes feels that, much more so than In America, In Italy the
qualities of being human have been preserved, because "the old, natural
order of things has endured there and still nourishes" (p. 135). This
holds for Venice, which to him seems a city "fully commensurate with
the most excessive human appetites" (p. 133). According to Holmes,
Venice is "the only city where you were always aware of people"
(p. 132), and he feels that the Venetians have produced "an environment
equal to their own vivid emotional colors, whereas our imperial
American passions seemed to have become as mechanistic as the cities we
had unwittingly built to express the meanness to which our original
vision had come down" (p. 133).
In spite of Holmes's positive view of Venice, at the beginning of
"Venice About Which Everything Has Been Written -" he finds himself, as
elsewhere in Europe, out of sorts, and unable to write. Breaking off
idly trying to take down his impressions of his first two days in
Venice by writing in his notebook, "Venice about which everything has
been written already -" (p. 133), he remembers coming upon Ezra Pound
the previous day. Because of his indebtedness to the old poet. Holmes
175 feels that he should have gone up and paid his respects to Found· As often with Holmes, however, thinking interfered with feeling, and In
the end he decided not to talk to Pound, who once wrote, "Down, Derry- down / Oh let an old man rest" (p. 142), and who made a worn-out and defeated impression on Holmes, while he was being harassed by photographers.
However, out of Holmes's frustration at not having stepped up to
Pound, and out of the "surfeit and impotence" that Holmes feels "had
lain like a shadow across Pound's eyes" (p. 145), something good comes,
after all· Holmes finds it impossible to accept that, both for Pound and for himself, there seems to be "[n]othing more to he written,
nothing more to be imagined, nothing more to be done" (p. 145). He
remembers that Pound had believed that "artists were the frail bridges
across which the past escaped into the future through the upheavals of
the present (a belief In the continuity of human experience that was
the source of his own survival)" (p. 145).
In the end, however, it is not primarily Pound who brings Holmes
back to writing, but a pigeon in San Marco which, waddling about among
the feet of the tourists, is "self-satisfied, and engrossed, and
warming to behold" (p. 146). Holmes compares the bird to "one of those
fat. Jovial little priests you see in the third class carriages of
Italian trains, who carefully thumb up every crumb in the corners of
their lunch boxes, and drain their wickered bottles of rosso down to
the last drop, and only then, with a little sigh, reopen their
breviaries": "Like them, he knew exactly where he was, and why he was
there. He was in his world, he was within himself, and the play was
continuing" (p. 146). Finally, for Holmes, too, the play Is continuing.
Watching the bird, he has to laugh, "for the sheer stubborn wonder of
176 existence - all of It - had come back" (p. 147). Reconciled with his life, he Is again able to write. At the end of the essay he turns back to his notebook, changing the last line he had written Into,
'Venice..-about which there Is always something more to be said -"
(p. 147)
Although his essay about Venice ends on a note of hope. In "Flesh and the Machine: Thanksgiving In Florence" Holmes Is again confronted with a disturbing contrast between the harmony of the past and the corruption of the present. Looking out over Florence, he Is moved by the city's almost paradisical aspect:
The light was the pure, emphatic light you saw through the windows of Quattrocento paintings, and of course the landscape was the same. The cloudless blue sky was as keen and scoured as tempered steel, the cedars were that black-green that seems the very essence of greenness, and the rooftops looked as if they had been kilned out of the red earth Itself. It brought back a forgotten memory of California foothills in the smogless, early thirties when the air was still as clear and cool and rational as a glass of mountain water, (p. ISO)
For Holmes, Florence Is the result of the "communitarian vision that had once represented man's deepest urge towards civilization," and he considers the city to have been touched by "the genius of old cities, cities that had grown up naturally out of a communion of energies and ideals until they achieved their own unique character the same way that a man achieves his" (p. 151).
Holmes Is also painfully aware, however, that the original dream which led to the building of the city has already long ago turned into
177 a nightmare. Contemporary Florence has become "a community of machines rather than men, a museum surrounded by a traffic jam" (p. 151). It Is especially the traffic, racing through the streets of Florence In "a ceaseless drag-race," which gives him the Impression that the city has
"degenerated Into a nightmare of cement jungles" (p. 151), and which makes him feel tense and exasperated. Although the year before Florence had been flooded by the Arno, Holmes feels that "the more permanent
Inundation was bound to be the automobile" (p. 153):
The city cried out for a traffic-planner, but you couldn't escape the suspicion that he would qualify for a straight-Jacket within ten days. The twentieth- century machine had ravaged the fifteenth-century city as remorselessly as a horde of army-ants, turning what had been a citizenry Into a fragmented crowd, and Florence had become less a place of human habitation than a kind of claustrophobic, automated Antonlonl-land In which the people, souls somehow muffled behind their eyes, seemed as ephemeral as their counter-parts In London or New York. (p. 153)
However, as Holmes explains, It Is especially "a sense of flesh"
(p. 153) which characterizes his disappointment In Florence. Confronted
with the "massive, violent nudity of sculpture" everywhere In the city,
Holmes becomes even more strongly aware of the shortcomings of
contemporary, industrialized society, in which there no longer seems to
be a place for "the ecstatic mystery of the body's life" (p. 153). It
is only after having come in touch with some simple Italians in a small
"trattoria" where he and Shirley have a nice meal, that he becomes
reconciled with Florence and city life in general: "What did I care
that the glut and pollution and nerves of the modern metropolis had
178 reached here too? There was still wine, skylarking children, the afternoon siesta, and the wise smile of a woman who knew the Important things" (p. 157). Holmes Is suddenly "open" to life again, "unimpeded by the gloomy reflections of the discursive Intelligence," and once again able to enjoy "the simple unfoldment of reality Itself" (p. 158).
Holmes's feeling of having become attuned to life and reality stays with him while he and Shirley visit the Medici Chapel. There It becomes clear to him that Michelangelo, some of whose sculptures are on display
In the building, has turned out to be "the crashlngly obvious revelation" (p. 159) of his stay In Italy. Michelangelo's wooden torso of the River God, which Holmes has seen on the Via Buonarottl In
Florence, had already reminded him, "with unexampled power," that "a titanic, Archimedean energy - sufficient to turn us all Into gods did we but accede to it - lay somewhere just below the navel" (p. 159). In the Medici Chapel Itself he is impressed by Michelangelo's four nudes, representing Day, Night, Morning and Evening. Studying the sculptures, he becomes more aware of hla own body and, while "waves of sensual understanding" sweep up through him, he realizes that, through
Michelangelo's sculptures, he has come "beyond a fixation on the erotic into the realm of a deeper longing, the longing of the soul to be a celebrant In the temple of the body" (pp. 160-161). This realization leads to Holmes's feeling that nan is not as damaged as the cities in which he lives would suggest:
We were not broken, we were whole. All the ephemeral people hurrying through the streets were complete and perfect, and their machines were only rueful evidence of their distrust of that completeness, that perfection. We humane had recoiled from our physical
179 selves, as from a mystery our arrogance could not abide, and the fantastically complicated watchworka we had made of modern life was nothing less than an exteriorization of that pathetic self-hatred, (p. 161)
Having felt "the redemptive power of art In broken times," and realizing that. If they "could still be rouaed by the Integrity of body and spirit" In Michelangelo's sculptures. It must be because they are
"still Integral [them]selves somewhere beneath the cracked veneer"
(p. 162), Shirley and John feel at peace with each other and with the
world. While earlier the noisy traffic In Florence had made them
Irritable, at the end of the easay they cross the street hand In hand,
smiling apologetically whan they almost collide with a baker's boy,
whose own Irritation evaporates when he sees John and Shirley's happy
mood. It Is only appropriate that Holmes finishes "Flesh and the
Machine: Thanksgiving In Florence" with a description of the
preparations he and Shirley make for their Thanksgiving dinner. Like
the Pilgrims who Instituted Thanksgiving to give thanks to God for
their survival In America, John and Shirley are "[β]trangere...ln a
strange land" (p. 163), Americans In Italy and beings of flesh and
blood In a world of machines, and In both qualities they have once more
survived.
As was the case In the opening of Holmes's essay about Venice,
"Awake In Rome" opens with a description of Holmes's Irritation at
Italian city life. He Is disappointed by the "weather-worn faces of the
marble busts along the Viali Magnolie" which are drifting around the
pedestals "like withered tea-thousand lire notes" (p. 165). Holmes ends
up seeking solace In drink, hating the city and becoming obsessed by
time, which Is running out on him: "At the moment, there wasn't enough
180 time, and I found myself hating Rome - because I loved It, and I had to
leave. Up ahead, there was too much time - months of teaching in a backwater college-town In Ohio during which to ponder what in God's name the trip had profited me, after all" (p. 166). Moreover, tired of
travelling and plagued by insomnia, Holmes has suddenly started to feel his years, and he is angered and frustrated by his feeling old. Rome's
beautiful women only make him realize all the more that he Is growing
old, as do the dance-barges on the Tiber, which remind him of "old Jean
Vigo films of the Thirties" (p. 167) that he saw more than twenty years
before.
In spite of hie disappointments with the city. Holmes admits that
Rome Is the first European city where he "didn't want to feel like a
stranger" (p. 169) and that he might even like to live there. Baffled
by the contradictions in his mind, it is only gradually that he
realizes that his malaise is to a large extent due to the day he and
Shirley spent in Rome in the company of three Americans. Two of them,
Jon and Trlsh, are a young couple and acquaintances of the Holmeses
from Connecticut. The four of them come together for a meal, after
which they spend some time drinking wine on the beach. John is
outrageously jealous of Jon and Trlsh, who have given up their Jobs in
America and who have enough money to spend a year travelling through
Europe. Holmes's mood Is further soured when Jon and Trlsh, who have
been Involved in the peace movement in America, start talking about
political conditions In the United States. Having to go home soon
himself, Holmes does not want to talk about America, and he secretly
crlticices Jon and Trish for wanting to indulge their feeling of
disillusionment. The difference between Holmes and his young friends
comes out again when Trlsh asks Shirley a question about her past,
181 which makes It seem as If Shirley Is already quite old· Angered again,
Holmes has to be pacified by Shirley, who says to him, "They're just kids.»Christ, they're almost young enough to be our kids" (p. 174).
It is precisely the lack of having a child which Holmes feels poignantly In his meeting with Glnny, later that same day. Glnny, the daughter of Holmes's oldest friend, Is living In Rome for a year and having an affair with an Italian. Having been commissioned to check out the relationship between Glnny and her Italian lover, Holmes has a meeting with the girl and her beau, Sergio. When It becomes clear to him that, as Glnny's parents had feared, Sergio has no Intention of marrying Glnny, Holmes suddenly experiences "the fierce, unreasonable protectlvenesa of fatherhood" (p. 176).
Feeling old and alone, and hungering for "some simple richness - of
continuity, and Christmas, and children" (p. 177), on a last walk
through Rose Holmes comes across the American actor Tab Hunter, who was
popular In the flfles but who now, having lost his reputation and his
good looks, makes a run-down and dejected Impression. Although Holmes
Is certain that they have never met. Hunter looks at him as If he
recognizes him, and It suddenly becomes clear to Holmes that In the
"forty-lsh, raddled, out-of-place American" that Holmes feels himself
to be, Hunter recognizes "nothing less than himself In ten years": "Too
much liquor blurring the features, too much speculation blurring the
mind. The losses and the costs of some native fixation on ephemerallty
must have been as plain In my face as the fact that I was half-drunk at
three o'clock in the afternoon" (p. 179).
Wondering how he can survive the years if he cannot even seize the
day. Holmes enters a bar, which a young barman and a young sandwich
girl are decorating for Christmas, under the supervision of the woman
182 behind the cash register. Watching these people being absorbed in their simple activities, "utterly alive In the moment," Holmes realizes that
to them, "the bells of Christmas signaled the rebirth of a new chance, a new Intensity of life" (p. 181), and he feels a "fine, reckless uprush of freedom" (p. 180), and life becomes Interesting to him again.
Having disappointedly almost put off his visit to Naples, the last city he and Shirley were going to visit In Europe, Holmes now feels open to
life's possibilities again, and he decides to travel to Naples the next day. Having experienced another rebirth himself and "finally having come awake," at the end of "Awake In Rome" he can "admit how sleepy
[he] really [Is]" (p. 181), which suggests that be has finally overcome
the Insomnia that was bothering hin In Rome.
The harmony Holmes seems to have found at the end of his essay on
Rome again has to be recaptured In "See Naples and Live." At the
beginning of his stay In Naples he Is once more at odds with himself
and with another strange, seemingly hostile city. He Is Irritated by
the thought that he will have to return to America soon, and his first
Impression of Naples Is not at all favourable. Just as In Rome, the
weather Is cold, and Holmes Is vexed by the Neapolitan beggars who keep
asking him for money, while a taxi-driver and the desk clerk In his
hotel try to cheat him Into spending more money than he actually has
to.
Soon, however, Holmes starts to be enthralled by Naples. Walking
through Its slums, he Is Impressed by the "feeling of neighborhood" he
finds there, "of a community created out of passions, appetites and
dangers suffered In common, of a mean life that somehow was not
demeaning" (p. 187). Even the "cheerful air of swindle" (p. 188), which
he comes across everywhere In Naples, he starts to experience as
183 "Invigorating," and during his second day in the city it becomes clear that he has accommodated himself to his new surroundings· Looking out over the Bay of Naples, Holmes and Shirley are so struck by its beauty that they "become for a moment saner, soberer at the very sight, aware that, after all, the Inmost drive of our nature is to yearn for Beauty, and to suffer the knowledge of our smallness in its presence" (p. 193).
Looking at the Isle of Capri, with Veeuvlus behind him. Holmes realizes that he "had forgotten what it was like to be completely happy"
(p. 193). This emotion stays with him during the rest of the day.
Walking through a park, he notes that its paths are "cold with that deep and penetrating chill that makes you feel keen in your own flesh, all a-tlngle with the damp, verdant green of shadowed places on a
warmish winter's day" (p. 193). Holmes and Shirley amble through Naples
without direction, "noticing everything with delight, following [their]
noses" (p. 194), feeling "complete" (p. 195). As Holmes puts it, "[it]
seemed enough" (p. 194).
However, visiting Pompeii the next day, death Is again on Holmes's
mind. During a visit to a museum, he is struck by the plaster bodies of
both men and animals that died in the eruption of Vesuvius. Moreover,
even though the city has been strangely preserved by the very flow of
ash that marked its end, Pompeii makes Holmes think of the smashed
cities of his own time.
Still, Holmes's mood brightens again when he realizes that for the
Neapolitans the "calamitous" but beautiful coast on which their city
was built, remains "a reminder of a harmony older than history and all
its discontents" (p. 199). Even though they have "suffered" and
"starved" (p. 199) for nineteen centuries "in the very shadow of that
mountain that had laid an inexplicable and existential death upon
184 Pompeii," the Neapolitans still care about "sun, wine, the new day with
Its unknown possibilities for further riches, and all the passions - griefs as well as Joys - by which, alone, we become truly human"
(p. 200). Like the Inhabitants of Naples, Holmes agrees once more that
"the only real duty [is] to survive the past," and he has started to
share with the Neapolitans "their faith...in the unfolding of life, not
In its close" (p. 200). In spite of the war in Vietnam, Holmes now feels that, like Naples, Saigon will outlast the lie that violence is
inevitable: "Let the dead bury their dead, and bad dreams to them! But
let the living (among whom now I numbered myself) be done with
paralyzing memories, and proclaim instead a stubborn 'Health to those
of us who are left I'. In hopes of restoring to human life that supreme
value our century has held so cheap" (p. 200). Although Holmes's
positive moods In the past frequently turned out to be all too
fleeting, in this case it aeems as if he has finally broken through
Into a new perspective on life. He is now ready to return to America,
hoping that something will have changed there in the meantime, and that
one day, like the Neapolitans, we shall all be eager for life, instead
of death.
Ill
Thematlcally, Walking Away from the War can be compared to Get Home
Free, of which one predominant theme is "the wild," the search for
paradisical harmony away from the snares of society. Echoes of this
theme are especially to be found In the first two essays of Walking
185 Away from the War, when Holmes describee his longing for the unspoilt purity of the West of Ireland, comparing his escape from corrupted
America to Huckleberry Finn's escaping from civilization on his raft.
In view of the subject matter of the collection. It Is hardly
surprising that a second theme, used only marginally In Get Home Free,
Is much more central to Holmes's travel essays. This Is the
International or European theme. Holmes's Indebtedness to James In this
respect can already be deduced from the fact that James Is referred to
frequently throughout Wallclng Away from the War. Like James, In trying
to come to terms with his experiences as an American, Holmes uses the
antithesis between American Innocence and European corruption. He Is
very much aware, however, that In the twentieth century America has
lost Its Innocence, too. This notion comes out In particular In his
description of the portrait of Judith Brook.
In Tab Hunter Holmes describes another American who has lost his
Innocence. In Hunter's case, however. Holmes sticks more closely to the
Jameslan tradition of having an American lose his Innocence by an often
painful confrontation with the evil and corruption of Europe. When
Holmes comes across the actor. Hunter Is looking down on the city,
"studying It as he might have studied a plate of tripe or octopus"
(p. 178), a clear Indication of the unpleasant strangeness of Europe,
which Is baffling to the American abroad. Although It seeos that Hunter
Is willing to eat what Is foreign to him, It la clear to Holmes that
"he wasn't going to understand It," and he fancies Hunter "missing the
simpler options - of a hamburger and fries, and later a spin out to
Mallbu for a dip - that made such queasy afternoons possible In
Southern California" (p. 17Θ). The extent to which Hunter has been
corrupted by his European experiences Is evident:
186 He looked debauched, numbed to nuance, beset by new and disturbing moral experiences, and he had that battered- by-Europe expression that a certain type of depthless American face takes on as it travels, giving up its naïveté a lire at a time, and condemned by the utter strangeness of everything around it to the travail of an unaccustomed degree of consciousness, (p. 178)
Other figures in Walking Away from the War, too, suffer from the contrast between American and European values· This goes, for instance, for the "optimistic, good-hearted" Ginny, "in love with her Sergio - just like so many of the Daisy Millers of those years" (p. 174). As is only too clear, Ginny Is bound to be hurt by her Italian lover. In describing his meeting with her. Holmes refers to himself as Lambert
Strether, the principal character in James's The Ambassadors, who travels to Europe to rescue a young American from the wiles of a French adventuress, losing some of his own inherent naivete in the process.
In fact. Holmes himself also seems sometimes to fall headlong into the traps set by conniving Europeans. After his encounter with the
Polish refugee in Munich, he feels "foolish, like the All American
Sucker, the good-hearted boob so ignorant of the modem world that any reminder of the years of suffering and death there in Europe would automatically evoke the corniest sort of pity, and the money with which to buy it off" (p. 124). Holmes realizes that he has "fallen for one of the oldest European cons, no less callow than a Jameslan heroine from
Duxbury" (p. 124). This same feeling comes over him when he has to deal with cunning Italian beggars and taxi-drivers, who leave him
"standing...in the puddle of [his] own foolishness" (p. 184). In the end, after several unpleasant clashes with European codes and
187 conditions. Holmes starts to wonder why he has come to the Old World In the first place.
Another theme which links Walking Away from the War to Get Home
Free and also to an essay such as "Revolution Below the Belt," is the search for spiritual and physical wholeness· Although this theme underlies all of Holmes's essays in Walking Away from the War, it becomes especially prominent in "Flesh and the Machine: Thanksgiving in
Florence," in which Holmes's visit to the Medid Chapel leads to a keen awareness of the Integration of body and spirit· Holmes's "overpowering urge to touch" (p. 161) Michelangelo's sculptures, which he feels on that occasion, is strongly reminiscent of bis insistence on the importance of touch, which he had earlier dealt with both in Get Home
Free and in "Revolution Below the Belt."
As has been Indicated before, the urge towards physical and spiritual harmony Is a major theme in a large amount of Beat literature. Thla is especially true of the work of the poets Allen
Ginsberg and Michael McClure. McClure's work in particular Is almost exclusively concerned with the integration of the "beast spirit" and the "tyrant mind."5 McClure's play The Beard, for instance, which
Holmes refers to once in "London: Games, People, Flay," deals with overcoming "the cultural division between socialized head and animal body," the same division which is frequently such a strong cause of suffering both for Holmes's characters and for Holmes himself. Although it Is much more a case of sharing the same concerns than of having been influenced by McClure, it is striking to see that in "Flesh and the
Machine: Thanksgiving in Florence," while describing his reactions to
Michelangelo's sculptures. Holmes puts the same emphasis as McClure
188 does throughout hls work on words like "flesh" and "meat" to stress
man's physical side.
Closely connected to Holmes's search for harmony Is his strong
criticism of a society which allows wars to be fought and man to be governed by machines. Social criticism has always been a major aspect
of Beat literature, and In this respect Holmes Is sometimes close to
Allen Ginsberg, probably the most politically aware of all the writers
of the Beat Generation. In Walking Away from the War the similarity
between Ginsberg and Holmes comes out In particular when Holmes,
watching television In London, gives vent to his feelings of
frustration while seeing an anti-war demonstration being broken up by
the police: "It all came back over me again In those two minutes of TV
film: America! An Egyptian land! Despair and bayonets! No way to reach
the seats of power and appeal to their 'better angels'! The demons of
history bargaining for the American soul!" (p. 88). Down to the
frequent use of exclamation marks, this passage echoes the strongly
political poetry that Ginsberg wrote throughout much of the sixties,
making It clear once more that Holmes, while being a somewhat marginal
figure In the Beat movement, still Incorporates In his work many of
that movement's stances and techniques.
IV
As early as August 1969 Holmes's literary agent. Sterling Lord,
submitted the five essays which had then been written of Walking Away
from a_ War, as the book was then still called, to E.F. Dutton, the
189 publisher who had brought out both Get Номе Free and Nothing More to
Declare. However, Dutton reacted negatively to these five essays, which deal with Holmes's experiences In the West of Ireland, Paris, Munich,
Venice, and Naples. In a letter to Holmes, Peggy Brooks, editor ac
DuCton's, wrote thac, alchough she liked Che Cicle of Che book and
alchough she ChoughC chac the five pieces were all excreaely well
wrlccen, she felc that Che essays seemed Co conCaln too little about
Holmes and "Che specifIcicles of [his] interior state," and too much
about his travel experiences: "There does not seem to be enough
Interior drama to carry Che pieces when put together for a book, and
the narrative lines of the individual episodes are too concerned with
comparatively fragile travel anecdoCes Co stand up, when read In
sequence. Although Peggy Brooks was aware that 1c might be possible
to Improve the essays by rewriting, her opinion of Che five pieces as
Chey scood was In face so low that she hesitated to suggest to Holmes
to take time away from a novel on which, according Co Miss Brooks's
leccer, he was also working at the time, and In which Dutton had shown
an interese.
When Walking Away from Che War, afcer ics completion In 1973, was
submitted to other publishing houses, their reactions were roughly the
same as that of Dutton's. While several editors praised the quality of
Holmes's writing, most of them also felt that Che subject of Che book
was not substantial enough. Even Burroughs Mitchell, who had edited Go,
thought that, in spite of Holmes's gift, he had not "managed to make
this account of his European experience as interesting and meaningful
as it needs to be. Moreover, in the course of 1974 and 1975 editors
started to complain that the subject of Walking Away from the War had
become dated, because seven years had passed since Holmes had made his
190 trip to Europe, and the war In Vietnam had ended In the meantime.
Reading Walking Away from the War In Its entirety, one cannot help but feel that some of the editors who judged the book were right In attributing a degree of slightness to It. Although some of the Issues which Holmes broaches are substantial enough, the book contains a number of elements which seem to belong to a travel guide, rather than
to a collection of essays by a writer trying to come to terms with his
life and his country. This criticism could be applied, for instance, to
the way in which Holmes describes some of the buildings he visits, and
the hotels at which he stays. In a book such as Walking Away from the
War It does not seem quite appropriate to describe a hotel as "chat
jewel of a hotel on its quiet campiello In back of the Teatro La
Fenice" (p. 129). A certain superficiality is also brought into the
book by the fact that it abounds with, often quite extensive,
descriptions of the food and wine which Holmes consumes on his European
trip. Holmes has a preference for giving brand names and the original
names of foreign recipes, which is also strongly reminiscent of the
travel guide, and a passage like the following is only one among many
of the same kind:
We ate dellclously and at length - zuppa dl pesce thick with mussels and shrimp for Shirley, fritto misto mare for me (so that I might savor one last time the virginal squid in their delicate peignoirs of batter), and two ice-cold mezzos of vino di paso that digested our food for us as we walked down the long esplanade towards our hotel, (p. 195)
Holmes may well have been aware of the dangerously slight quality
of some of the essays he wrote for Walking Away from the War. In a
191 "Prefatory Note" not Included in the printed version, he Is rather defensive about the book· After stating that It Is "not an exhaustive record of what happened on our trip," he goes on to describe the book as "a series of those haphazard snapshots that travelers bring home from a Journey whose real destination was inward·" Guarding himself against any criticism of the sometimes unexpectedly sudden changes of scene In his book. Holmes claims that "the abruptness of the 'cuts' between these pictures is Intentional, for we no longer experience contemporary life as narrative" (p. 3). According to Holmes, "vivid moments are all we have to show for a segment of time" (p. 3). Some months before he wrote his final version of the "Prefatory Note," he had already thought of comparing the essays In Walking Away from the
War to snapshots· He had then written the following note: "A snapshot
is piquant because of what is not in the picture, all one has is the
intensity, the thereness of the moment, and the book was written in the hope that these few Intensities would suggest as much as they
captured." This clearly indicates that Holmes knew that to some
extent his essays were lacking in intensity and completeness.
Unfortunately, while the "few intensities" in Walking Away from the
War are frequently sufficient to give the reader a convincing picture
of Holmes's struggle for survival, they are not always particularly
relevant to some of the Important issues underlying the book, America's
political crisis at the end of the sixties and the war in Vietnam. The
very theme of the book, Holmes's "walking away from the war" and trying
to forget about America in order to heal himself, seems to have made it
impossible for him to deal with America and its problems with the
acuteness that characterizes some of Norman Mailer's essays of the same
period, and in fact Holmes's own essays in Nothing More to Declare.
192 Stylistically, Walking Away from the War Is often of a very high quality. Sometimes the structure of the Individual essays captures nicely the essence of the subjects they treat. "A Wake In the Streets of Paris," for Instance, Is one extended narrative, not divided by any blank lines, and Its flowing element strikingly underlines the elegiac mood of Its dark subject, Holmes's mourning two dead friends. "London:
Games, People, Play," on the other hand. Is broken up Into many short fragments, sometimes divided from each other by a number of asterisks.
Here both the very title of the essay and Its structure Illustrate the
fragmentary and hectic life Holmes Is leading In London. In fact, the
titles of the essays are also used to Indicate a thematic progression
In Walking Away from the War as a whole. The healing process which Is one of the main themes of the book. Is definitely to be noted In the
development from "a wake" In the streets of Paris, Holmes's "encounter
with [him]eelf In Munich," to his becoming "awake" In Rome and his
starting to "live" In Naples. In the chapter about Florence, finally,
Holmes's somewhat anarchic sense of humour, which Is not found In the
other essays. Is a striking and attractive parallel to the anarchy
which rules In the overcrowded streets of the city.
As Walking Away from the War proves once more. Holmes has a very
good eye for detail. In the description of his Parisian friend
Francesca, who Is sitting near the man she Is divorcing with "one
nyloned leg scissored tensely over the other" (p. 106), both the Image
and the very sounds of the words evoke the strain which Francesca's
marital problems are causing her. In fact, the essays In Walking Away
from the War abound with striking Images and comparisons. In Florence,
Impressed by Michelangelo's sculptures. Holmes compares the noisy
school children he sees In the streets, "wielding strapfuls of books,"
193 to "so many young Davida brandishing their slingshots at the Goliaths of the traffic" (p. 155). As a final example of Holmes's ability to add meaning to purely descriptive passages, one could mention his portrayal of an accordionist in Naples, to whom Holmes attributes "one of those indescribably urbane faces that you see all over Italy (the sheer weight of experience stamped into it as Indelibly as tank-tracks into macadam)" (p. 188).
That Walking Away from the War as a whole is not saved by the fine writing it contains, is at least partly due to the fact that the book was conceived as a series of Individual essays· In some respects this gives the book a somewhat repetitious quality. Holmes has the tendency
to mention the same feelings or thoughts in different essays. This
happens, for instance, when he expresses his reluctance to return home
both in "Awake in Rome" and "See Naples and Live." Walking Away from
the War is also marred by the fact that, thematlcally, both the book in
its entirety and each of the separate essays describe a progression
from discord towards harmony. This leads to a certain monotony, of
which Holmes himself was perhaps aware when he wrote in the "Prefatory
Note" that, in one sense, "the book is a volume of short stories, all
written out of a similar emotional mood, In which the techniques of
fiction were employed to intensify real events·" How effective the
use of fictional techniques in Walking Away from the War sometimes is,
can be seen in "Encounter with Myself in Munich," in which the
character of the Polish con man is revealed only very gradually, which
leads to a mounting tension and a slowly Increasing Involvement of the
reader In the story. In the end it is probably best to look upon
Walking Away from the War as Holmes suggests: as a collection of short
stories.
194 Chapter Seven
ПО OIFUHLISHED HIVKLS
It was not only late In hie career that Holmes encountered difficulties in finding publishers for his work. Among his unpublished manuscripts are two complete novels, one of which is called The
Transgressor. This Is the first novel that Holmes completed: it was written before he attempted Go. between the spring of 1946 and March
1949. When he started to write The Transgressor. Holmes had not yet met
Kerouac and Ginsberg, and was still very much interested in political theory. This Is apparent from his novel, which could be described as a political thriller, somewhat in the manner of Graham Greene.1 Holmes himself called The Transgressor "an attempt to Isolate the social, psychological and moral implications of rebellion on the basic level.
The Transgressor describes the last twenty-four hours in the life of a hired assassin named Ernest Frankel. At the beginning of the novel
Frankel arrives in Greenwich Village after having murdered the wealthy advertising executive E. Phelps Pollack, as arranged with a middleman called Norlyst. After disposing of his gun, Frankel enters a bar where he watches three sailors rough up a homosexual intellectual, while some other patrons are completely transfixed by a boxing match on television. Holmes's description of both fights effectively illustrates the impersonal, almost mechanical quality of modern man. This also goes for the way in which he describes a crowd of people apathetically waiting in front of a school, and for the description of a truck that
195 almost runs over Frankel as he is walking through Greenwich Village:
"It was huge, its slab sides shiny with the rain, the cab so dark that
It looked empty· It was almost as though It were operated from some central station along a proscribed course. It crashed by, lumbering heavily through puddles, impersonal."3 In fact, the very first scene of
the book, which depicts Frankel arriving at the Fourteenth Street
subway station, also shows both man's and society's dehumanized character. Frankel sees the hordes of people leaving the train with him and pressing him against the wall of the station, as α "bank of slate-
white faces and bunched bodies," and when the train is moving again be
watches "the swaying bodies within," while "the long whistle of the
train echoed back along the dank tunnels like a shriek, and the grate
of the turnstiles punctuated it mechanically" (p. 1). It is this lack
of human qualities which Frankel seems to protest against when, alone
on the station platform, he adds the pencil scrawl "I DID" (p. 2) to
the question "WHO LAID HOBERIA COCHETTIÎ," written on the wall, at the
same time making a hidden and Ironic confession of the crime he has
Just committed.
After leaving the bar in Greenwich Village, jostled and pushed
along by another mechanically moving crowd, Frankel is carried into а
Jazz club where a girl called Jane Oliver strikes up a conversation
with him. Although Frankel instinctively feels that he is endangering
his safety by becoming Involved with the girl, he only manages to free
himself from Jane when they are back in the streets and after it has
turned out that Jane has been working for the very man whom Frankel
killed that afternoon. Badly shaken by this coincidence, Frankel
returns to his room, where he wakes up the next morning in the company
of a woman called Diane.
196 We then learn that Frankel has met Diane, whose last name he does not know, at Norlyat'a office; the two have become Involved with each other, although Frankel feels very uncertain about the nature of their
relationship. Diane's psychological insight and political awareness are
foreign to hi«, while ahe also assoclatea with a man called Edward
Agataon and a group of bohemiana, who are all Juat "a lot of coked-up
bebop musicians and perverta" (p. 95) to Frankel. To Diane these
people, who accept their flaw· and who "live In a world of weakness,
honestly empressed against their will" (p. 95), represent a way of life
that la genuine and not tainted by the hypocrisy generally found in
society. It is especially through Diane that an existential viewpoint,
which stresses the authentic experience, la brought forward in The
Transgressor. While he himself does not really underatand what she is
talking about, Diane looks upon Frankel as the most authentic person
that she knows:
"I know enough to be honest. I know enough not to pay for anything, to live by my own rules, to try for authenticity. You have to shock yourself into a recognition of things, take that shock, live It through all of yourself; decide upon it not by Instinct but by intelligence. Everyone's like Agatson inside, but they refuse to admit It. He's the way he is, honest, by default but that's something after all. If you strike yourself hard enough you destroy your weaknesses. I think even he could do that if he thought about It and wanted to. You're the only person I know who Is authentic and never thought yourself Into being that way." (p. 99)
Shortly after Diane's departure Jane Oliver enters Frankel's
197 apartment, the address of which she has found in the wallet that
Frankel had left behind the previous night. Although Frankel still does not like to become involved with her, Jane refuses to let him go and the two of them end up wandering through Greenwich Village, trying to escape from the police, who have come to suspect Frankel of the murder of Pollack· In an effort to shake off the plainclothesman who is following them, Frankel and Jane enter a place that looks like a bar, but which turns out to be the basement flat of a man called Joe Tarcos, who is looked upon as a kind of spiritual and political leader by many
Greenwich Village intellectuals. In the absence of Tarcos himself, his
followers are discussing the nature of the true revolutionary, which
they feel is "his ability to act" (p. 183) and to "kill without
compunction" (p. 190).
Realizing to his discomfort that his own murder of Pollack has
given rise to this discussion, Frankel quickly leaves Tarcos'a
apartment and, still In the company of Jane and still trying to mislead
the police, takes cover in a bar. There an old drunk, who later turns
out to be Joe Tarcos in person, tries to tell Frankel and Jane a story
in exchange for a quarter. When Tarcos refers to the killing of Pollack
and to the notion that we are all "guilty" and capable of murder
(p. 202), Frankel loses his temper and gives the old man a shove. After
a fight with a visitor of the bar who takes offence at Frankel's
rudeness, Jane is arrested by the police. Frankel manages to escape,
and before doing so confesses his murder to Jane.
After travelling home, near his house Frankel is stopped by a boy
who gives him a message from Diane, who has found out that the police
are watching Frankel's apartment and who advises him to meet her at
Agatson's· There a wild party is going on, with moat of Agatson's
198 friends being present: Aaran Stofsky, a playwright like Agatson himself, Fayden, Fauzano, Agatson's girlfriend Erica McKay, and a
lesbian called Bianca. Aftel a violent argument between Agatson and
Fauzano about the question whether Bach's music Is more valuable than bop, Diane also enters the apartment. During a long conversation that
she has with Frankel, she explains why she prefers him to Agatson and his friends, whose bohemlanlsm and rebellion to her only amount to "a
kind of sabbatical, a year In Greenwich Village to get their bearings
before returning to the safe firesides and all the absurd values"
(p. 285). According to Diane, Frankel's revolt is not "just a
meaningless little obscenity uttered In the church" (p. 285). She
confesses that when she met him for the first time, she was immediately
attracted to him because she felt that he was "real somehow": "You did
things accurately, real things, the supreme moments in things and you
did them without cluttering up the scene with any of the ridiculous
excuses for excess or rebellion. That's the difference between the real
rebel and the others..." (p. 2B7). While Frankel grows increasingly
uncomfortable because he realizes that Diane considers his killing an
act of rebellion, whereas he only kills for money and does not
recognize himself In her portrayal of him, it gradually becomes clear
that Diane, who has a tendency to scheme and to misuse her friends, has
used him as a mere tool, to "bring reality" (p. 291) to him and to
herself:
"Tou rebelled because it was your makeup. You could rebel, decently, from the inside, because you knew you were that way and that reasons, all of that nonsense, were unnecessary. You could even kill, Frankel...Yee, I know, you could stand and pull the trigger and kill for
199 simply no reason, as a way of life. That was why you were my hero, why I worked on you like a work of art, as though you were some statue I was moulding, and I, a kind of inspired Pygmalion." (p. 292)
When, as the reader has come to suspect, Diane finally reveals that she is E. Phelps Pollack's wife and that it was she who, through
Norlyst, hired Frankel to kill Pollack, Frankel loses control over himself. With Diane's view of murder as an act of true rebellion
striking back at herself, Frankel kills her, after which he tries to escape from the police who, in the company of Jane Oliver, have entered and surrounded Agatson's apartment. The Transgressor ends with
Frankel's being shot to death by the police, which action results in a
spiritual rebirth for Jane Oliver, who feels "as if she had been
awakened harshly from a long, drugged sleep, and had to think every
action into being from then on, perhaps forever," and who leaves
Agatson's apartment with a "strange, hot feeling of knowledge and
readiness" (p. 314).
The Transgressor is not only marked by Holmes'a interest, as a
beginning writer, in political and existential ideology, but also by
his use of irony, a stylistic feature that is almost non-existent in
his later work. It is to be found, for Instance, in Jane Oliver's
enthusiastically praising her boss to Frankel, when neither he nor the
reader know yet that the man in question is Pollack, who has Just been
killed by Frankel. The reactions of the police to the murder are also
sometimes characterized by irony. This is the case when they off
handedly reject the possibility of the murderer being a hired assassin,
and when they expect that Diane will be badly shocked when ehe hears
200 about the murder, because, as the police think, she "loved" Pollack and
"was always helping him with what he should do" (p. 71). Strikingly
Ironic, too, Is Frankel's reaction when Diane unexpectedly attempts to
make love with him In his room: "Someone will kill you
someday...They'11 just kill all that itch right out of you" (p. 93).
The supreme irony in The Transgressor is Introduced by the book's
epigraph, a quotation from Jean-Paul Sartre. In that quotation Sartre
claims that "the silk workers of Lyon, the workers of the June Days of
1848, were not revolutionaries but insurgents; they fought for an
improvement in certain details of their life, not for a radical
change." Sartre contrasts these insurgents, whose "situation engulfed
them" and who "accepted it in its ensemble," with the revolutionary,
who is "defined by his transcendence of the situation in which he finds
himself." This distinction was taken up by Holmes, who entitled the two
parts of The Transgressor, each consisting of six chapters, "The
Insurgent" and "The Revolutionary," while these terms are also used to
Illustrate the striking and ironic difference between Frankel's view of
himself and what he represents to Diane. To Diane he is an authentic
person and an example of the true revolutionary. The reader knows,
however, that Frankel, who has mainly been down and out since he was
discharged from the army because he was supposedly suffering from a
"split schlzo-paranoic psychosis" (p. 162), is only an insurgent,
killing merely to improve his situation with another "lousy ninety
dollars" (p. 180), as Frankel himself puts it. Still, without being
aware of it, at the end of the book Frankel paradoxically becomes a
revolutionary after all: it Is through his having become Involved with
Jane Oliver that the latter, who has been leading a dull and monotonous
existence in New York, dreaming her life away at the movies, is
201 awakened and shocked Into a consciously experienced, more authentic kind of life.
Although It is striking that In The Transgressor Holmes already suggests that crime can be an assertive action, an Issue he later took up In such essays as "The Philosophy of the Beat Generation" and "The
Silence of Oswald," throughout The Transgressor It Is frequently all
too clear that In his first novel Holmes Is dealing with subject matter
that Is essentially foreign to him. In fact, as Holmes has admitted,
the three chapters towards the end of the book which are set In
Agatson's apartment, are "the only thing In the book that was based on
the kind of life that I was living at the time."4
These three chapters are of special Interest because. In some ways,
they anticipate Go. This Is already suggested by the fact that the
names of several of the characters appearing In The Transgressor
resemble those of characters found In Go. In both books there are
characters called Agatson, Stofsky and Blanca. However, while Agatson's
and Stofsky's first names in £0 are Bill and David, respectively, In
The Transgressor they are called Edward and Aaran. It must also be
added that, while there Is a resemblance between these characters as
far as their names are concerned, In other respects they are not alike
at all. While David Stofsky Is presented as a relatively small person
(on one occasion his feet are described as "Impishly small In the
multi-colored socks"5). In The Transgressor Franke1, when he sees Aaran
at Agatson's party. Is struck by "the Immense hulk of Stof sky...like a
cowering animal" (p. 236). In later descriptions of Aaran his "gross
body" and "heavy cheeks" (p. 242), as well as the fact that he weighs
"two hundred pounds" (p. 274), are mentioned. Moreover, unlike David,
Aaran Is not a poet, but a playwright. Different from Bill Agatson In
202 Go, Edward le a playwright too, although both his bohemlan and nihilistic way of life and his dingy apartment are not unlike those of
William Cannastra, the model for both Edward and Bill Agate on. What
Holmes has done in The Transgressor. is to ascribe some of the less significant circumstances of William Cannastra's life to Edward, while the more essential aspects of William's life, as well as his physical appearance, are attributed to the character called Fauzano.
The origin of the name Pausano is to be found in the Symposium,
Plato's Socratlc dialogue on the nature of love, in which a man called
Pausanias takes part in the discussion with Socrates· Holmes has, in fact, asserted that the party at Agatson's in The Transgressor was based on Plato's dialogue,6 so It is not surprising that the names of some of the other characters in the novel can aleo be traced back to the Symposium. This goes not only for Fayden and Erica McKay, whose names can be recognized in those of Phaedrus and Eryximachus in Plato, but also for Agatson and Stofsky: Agatson is of course close to
Agathon, and a second look at Aristophanes' name reveals that It was the source of that of Aaran Stofsky. Moreover, like Agatson and Stofsky
In The Transgressor, Agathon and Aristophanes are playwrights, while
Erica McKay, of whom It is said that "she might be a doctor or a grave- robber" (p. 244), shares her interest In bodily functions with the physician Eryximachus. These resemblances aside, it is possible to connect Holmes's novel with Plato's dialogue because, apart from the heavy drinking that goes on in both. In Plato's text the love that is
the subject of discussion is mainly of a homosexual nature, while among
those present at Agatson's party there are at least three homosexuals:
Agatson, Stofsky, and Bianca. However, Plato's main issue, the nature of love, has in The Transgressor been replaced by a violent discussion
203 about music. Holmes seems to say that among his uprooted bohemiana love is no longer a valid topic, and the smashing of records at Agateon'β
party suggests that, while Holmes used the Symposium as a starting point, he may at the aame time have been parodying Plato.
Apart from the description of the party at Agatson's and the names of some of the characters, there are a number of other elements in The
Transgressor which Imply that In some respects this book was a
preparation for Holmes's description of the Beat Generation in Go. In
fact, the term "beat" Is already used In The Transgressor, when at
Agatson's party Pauzano reveals his criticism of Frankel In the
following terms: "What's he doing here? He's not beat, he's not
genuinely furtlvel" (p. 237). Also the word "furtive" In this
eKclamatlon refers both to Kerouac's first description of the Beat
Generation as "a generation of f urti ves,"' and to Holmes's own version
of Kerouac's statement in Go: "You know, everyone I know is kind of a furtive, kind of beat. Another aspect of The Transgressor that points
forward to Go is the enthusiasm about music, which in both books is
sometimes described in the same terms. This is the case, for instance,
when Pauzano's reactions to a recording of "a deafening chorus of
meaningless bop, accentuated with slamming drums" strongly resemble
Hart Kennedy's response to jazz in Go: "Pauzano sat down before them,
leaning back into the ashes on the hearth, his head bobbing
mechanically. 'Got' he screamed at the phonograph. 'Go! Lose me you
mother-loverl'" (p. 241).
Some other resemblances between The Transgressor and Go stem from
the fact that Holmes transferred a number of features from characters
in The Transgressor to characters in Go who are not at all connected
with the characters in the first novel. The most striking example of
204 this transference results In the resemblance between Diane's scheming personality In The Transgressor and David Stof sky's Interfering with other people's lives In Go, another example being the transference of
Fauzano's tuberculosis to Daniel Verger In the later book· Moreover,
Ketcham's view of Agatson In Go as a former hero who has started q "repeating himself, going through the old vaudeville routines. Is strongly reminiscent of Diane's criticism of Agatson In The
Transgressor, who according to her Is "becoming studied, a caricature of himself": "He used to be a real beast, harnessed to a sense of dynamism that he didn't bother to understand. Now, he gets conscious, be thinks about things...and he's getting dry, he makes a production out of everything. I think actually he's playing Agatson being a decadent or something of that sort" (p. 284). Finally, It is of
Interest to note that on one occasion In Go Holmes consciously refers back to his first completed novel. This Is the case when Stofsky, leafing through some old poems of his, is reminded of "a murder at one of Agatson's wilder parties," which had taken place two years before:
No one had known Frankel, the killer, very well; he was taken for one more strange friend of neurotic, Ironical Diane who had had many of them. But then one night in the midst of the most drunken disorder, Frankel had kicked her to death. Then It had come out that he was a professional gunman whom she had hired to do away with her husband, and when he had learned that she had done this out of a sort of demented irony, he had turned upon her. For a month thereafter, Stofsky had gone about mulling it, even dreaming about a symbolic figure that he dubbed "the pale criminal." Finally he wrote a series which he called "The Killer Poems," of which the one he had just read was the last.
205 Now he found them all adolescent and obscure.
Although The Transgressor holds considerable Interest for the student of Holaes's work, it is understandable that the book was never published. While the scenes in which Frankel'β Involvement with Jane
Oliver is described are effectively written, immediately engaging the reader's attention, Holmes's first novel as a whole is definitely flawed. To some extent this is due to Holmes's somewhat strained attempt at a portrayal of his mentally unstable protagonist, Frankel, that is psychologically complete and correct in every respect. This leads to Holmes's devoting an entire chapter to a fictitious psychiatric report about Frankel, written by an army psychiatrist, which offers rather dry reading matter without really adding anything
essential to the reader's conception of Frankel's parsonality.
Moreover, Holmes's use of dialogue In The Transgressor is frequently
still somewhat heavy-handed. This is clear In particular in the four
chapters in which the investigations into Pollack's murder by a New
York police detective and his assistants are described. Holmes's view
of the police here seems to originate mainly from the way in which the
police are portrayed In motion pictures, and his attempt to write hard-
boiled detective fiction in the traditon of Hamnett and Chandler widely
misses the mark.
II
For a short time after having completed The Transgressor Holmes vas
206 pleased with hls first novel. In February 1949 he had given the first eight chapters to a friend of his, a literary agent called Rae Everltt,
who worked for MCA Management. Rae Everltt liked these chapters very much; she told Holmes that the book was definitely puhllshable, and
that she would like to handle It through her agency. Jack Kerouac also claimed to like the book, but some other friends of Holmes's,
Edward Strlngham and Alan Harrington In particular, did not care for It at all, and their opinion was corroborated when the book was rejected
by Alfred Knopf on March 30, 1949, the very same day that Kerouac's The
Town and the City was accepted by Harcourt, Brace and Company (a
coincidence Holmes used In Go). When a second publisher to whom The
Transgressor was offered. Harper's, did not want to publish It either, al2 because they thought the book was "confused, too long and too mixed,"
Holmes himself began to dislike his novel and to have serious doubts
about its quality. Still, as some of his journal entries of the time
Indicate, he found It hard to relinquish all hope for the book: "In a
way, for all the mistakes In structure, I am still fairly sure of
Frankel. By this, I mean that I am not convinced that It's a bungle all
the way through. Perhaps It's essentially a movie story or something. I
realize that I haven't written it from knowledge."" It Is this last
realization which finally convinced Holmes that he had not managed to
create a living novel:
It was my critical Intelligence which has created that book. That's why it's dead. Because I understood it from the beginning. I knew exactly where it was going. I knew every character and what they represented, and the book as a result is a hollow shell. I remember it as being utterly willed, and good creative work is not willed, It happens of itself, It's a mysterious
207 process.
While The Тгапвягеввог was rejected by two йоге publishers. Random
House and Macmillan, In June and September respectively. Holmes had already begun to conceive Go. At the same time, he started to plan a trilogy, tentatively entitled "The Brothers," which would be "loosely based on the Oedipus of Socrates In Its three plays."1' In "The
Brothers" Holmes planned to deal with various aspects of political, religious and personal rebellion. Among its protagonists would be a political leader and an "advanced mystic figure," while the plot would be based on such contemporary political Issues as the Richard
Sorge spy-conspiracy in Japan and the Cardinal Mlndszenty trial In
Hungary.1' Although this plan never materialized, the idea of writing a trilogy stuck with Holmes, and, as we saw and as a letter to Allen
Ginsberg illustrates, he soon came to consider Go the first part of a trilogy based on Dante's Divine Comedy. In that letter, written towards the end of 1950, Holmes claims that he wants to make Go "a genuine
Inferno": "I see now that it deals primarily with love, all kinds of love. It pictures the hell that Zosslma defines: 'the suffering of being unable to love'" (this quotation from The Brothers Karamazov eventually became one of the three epigraphs In Go). Holmes's plans about the two remaining parts of the trilogy were still very sketchy st that time, however: "I do not know about the next book as yet, but I want It to be something of a Purgatorio, in preparation for the Jesus in Our Time that will be the Faradiso, albeit a dark and fatal one."1'
Still, Holmes was already aware that he intended to use some of the same characters in all three books, "not for any cute artistic reasons, but merely because I have learned to work with these people and to love
20S Shortly after having finished Go In September 1951, Holmes started
to work on the second part of his trilogy. At first only referring to
the book as "the Verger novel,"21 Holmes knew that he wanted to make
Daniel Verger Its main character. It took him a long time, however, to decide on the novel's scope and subject matter. As his journal entries of the time Indicate, for a while he contemplated the Idea of turning
Verger Into a Christ figure. Verger, having returned to America after
an extended visit to Europe (a theme Holmes used again In Get Home
Free), would be like "the prophet back from the wilderness with the
Word."22 In the fragmentary early draughts for his novel, time and
again Holmes stresses the Idea of Verger wandering "through the vast
wilderness of Middle Europe, as though It was a desert. 23
As some of his letters to Kerouac show, a year later Holmes had
dropped the Idea of making Verger "[his] Christ and [his] saint."2 By
that time he had decided to write about Christ in the third part of the
trilogy, while his plans about the second part had taken a much more
definite shape:
I'm going to write about a man, whose life Is a compromise, whose marriage Is a compromise; a man frightened and deceitful; a man whose defence Is a certain placid anonymity; who falls In love, against hie will, falls In love Just In time. Just as he Is losing faith In love as any personal answer. It outwits him, and he has to act. In other words, a kind of moral 25 Gauguin.
By this last comparison Holmes meant that his book would be about "a
man who, out of the same collection of compromises. Irritations and
209 small frustrations, suddenly decides to throw everything up and be a good man, as Gauguin threw everything up and became an artist."*"
In the meantime Holmes had also conceived a possible progression In the three parts of the trilogy: from David Stofsky, who according to
Holmes mainly "moaned for man," to Daniel Verger, who makes "one small, private step toward the Forest of Arden," while the protagonist of the third part would "try to seize the wheel of the world and arrest Its 77 ceaseless revolution toward oblivion. As Holmes later explained, the
three books were also meant to reflect a progression from "the shucking of old moralities" In Go, to "the discovery In personal lives of new moralities" In the second book, and "the translation of that discovery
Into public action" In the third.28
Perfect Fools, as the second part of Holmes's trilogy came to be called, was mainly written In 1953 and 1954. The book's action, which begins In the autumn of 1954 and ends the following summer, primarily
concerns Daniel Verger, a thirty-year-old researcher for a public
opinion survey who, still married, has fallen in love with another
man's wife, Laura Renzo. In Its first half, entitled "In the Dry,"
Holmes's novel describee the beginning of Daniel's and Laura's
relationship, which gradually becomes more intimate, and the confusion
which their love affair creates, not only in their own lives, but also
In those of Daniel's wife, Ellen, and Laura's husband, Michael. To some
extent this confusion is due to Verger's "crazy notion that love and
morality were inextricably connected."2' Holmes calls his protagonist
"a perfect fool, a fool so fed up with his current life in the New York
of the Eisenhower Era that he was intent on nothing less than
completely re-ordering his relationship to it" (pp. 2-3). Verger feels
210 that It Is his love for Laura which may bring about an eagerly awaited change In him both towards the world and towards himself, because "his feelings for her had suddenly filled him with a hunger to be straight with his world, to be free of Its deceits, free to become the new self those feelings were bringing to light" (p. 13). However, suffering from the same Incompatibility of Intellect and emotion that Paul Hobbes struggles with In Go, Verger fears passion, "that heedless emotion that rouses up In the chest against all good sense, that urgent, stubborn,
Inexplicable need for another person, for their glances, their hours, their very presence, for the same need In them" (p. 4). As a consequence of his conflicting feelings, Verger ends up feeling guilty about loving Laura, sometimes even denying that love and clinging to the notion that "guilt [can] make us good" (p. 13).
Both Laura Renzo and Ellen are aware of the ambiguity In Verger's nature. Unlike Verger, Laura Is able to accept her feelings of love without worrying about them. More attuned to her own emotions than
Verger Is to his, Laura realizes that Verger frequently merely strikes a pose. This happens especially when he talks about serious matters with what Laura feels to be "such affected lack of conviction," as If he "didn't want to be caught dead believing In love, and decency, and all that" (p. 8). In a revealing conversation which she has with Verger at the beginning of the book, she even goes so far as to confess that
Daniel Is more attractive to her when he Is "sick or hung-over," because she feels that he Is somehow "much more [hlm]self that way"
(p. 6).
Like Laura, Ellen Verger has an Insight Into her husband's character which he himself seems to lack. Ellen Is described as "a stubborn, fatalistic person of strong likes and dislikes" (p. 39), an
211 Indication that she shares with Laura an emotional harmony that is foreign to Verger. In the course of her three-year-marriage with
Verger, Ellen has come to realize that Daniel's thoughts about love and guilt are mainly "windy generalizations" (p. 59). Dnderetaadably rejecting Daniel's notions as "Just ideas...Ideals" (p. 59), it has become clear to her that Daniel's frequent theorizing about their relationship only serves to cover "the undeniable truth that he had always cared about her more than he had ever loved her" (p. 54).
Verger's ambiguity also comes out in his attitude towards an article of his, entitled "A Spiritual Revival?". At the beginning of
Perfect Pools this has just been published in a magazine called Gauge, edited by Marc Quarles, a friend of Verger's. In the article Verger
criticizes contemporary society, making a case for a return to love and moral values. But while the article undoubtedly expresses some of
Verger's deepest convictions, he only consented to Marc's publishing it under a pseudonym, and to his friends he derides its contents. Partly
because of his fluctuating feelings about his article. Verger realizes
that his world has become a world of "'chic deceits': a world of lies,
and lying, that was so pervasive that he could only bring himself to
attack it behind the mask of a further untruth" (p. 27).
Gradually it becomes clear that Verger cannot go on denying his
"real self" (p. 27). This is Illustrated by the fact that soon it
becomes impossible for him to deal with his job as a coder at Attitude
Normality Tabulations, Inc. (significantly called "ANTI," for short), a
Job he has obtained through David Stofsky, who was "his wildest friend
at Columbia, always writing metaphysical poetry, badgering the
professors with unanswerable questions, expressing contempt for
rationality, and experimenting carelessly with all manner of drugs"
212 (p. 63). However, after "his crackup just before Verger went to Europe" and a six months' stay In a psychiatric clinic, Stofeky has become
"fearful of overlmaglnatlve things" (p. 63) and has resigned himself to a routine job, also as a coder, at ANTI.
It Is precisely the deadening routine of his work which becomes
Intolerable to Verger. The lifeless atmosphere at ANTI, which Verger can no longer reconcile with his growing love for Laura and with his moral and religious Ideals, Is made very explicit by Holmes. ANTI's office Is described as having "something funereal about It" (p. 64), which aspect Is especially due to the large amount of paper piled up everywhere:
Thick bundles of ...questionnaires, dieted to death to make a bloodless statistic, were piled everywhere, tied with black string, like so many blunt headstones In a cemetery of a hundred dead surveys, the results of which were burled in filing cabinets, entombed in slender printed booklets, or cremated, unmourned, with last quarter's report on sales, (p. 65)
It is hardly surprising that in surroundings such as these Verger comes to feel "like a mortician himself" (p. 66). When, because of his growing Irritation at his work. Verger starts making errors, it is striking that these mostly concern religion. Holmes seems to suggest that In contemporary society there Is no place for religion, which view
Is corroborated by the way In which Verger is reprimanded by his superior when he has trouble finding the right category for an answer with a religious character on a questionnaire that he has to code:
"people who suggest prayer or recourse to meditation, or make incoherent remarks like this one, don't really fit into the
213 categories" (p. 68). Verger himself also does not "fit Into the categories' because of his religious Ideals, so It comes as no surprise that shortly after the falling out with his boss Verger Is fired.
The loss of his job Is another Indication to Verger that everything
Is slipping "out of his hands, he who was always so careful" (p. 42), and, although he and Laura are very much In love. It takes a long time for him to adjust his feelings to the changing circumstances In his life. Even when It turns out that Laura's husband, Michael, Is having an affair with Verger's former girlfriend May Delano, and that Laura and Michael are on the verge of a separation. Verger does not want to commit himself to his love for Laura. In fact, because of his moral
Ideals and because he is afraid of unsettling emotions, Verger even goes so far as to try and reconcile Laura and Michael when they start to quarrel more violently.
When Verger finally separates from Ellen, almost at the same time that Laura leaves Michael, Verger keeps on being obsessed by his particular notion of morality, as "In the Wet," the second part of
Perfect Fools, amply Illustrates. Although he and Laura, having moved
Into new apartments, are now relatively free to see each other and to enjoy their relationship, Verger's primary concern remains Ellen and
Michael, whom he does not want to hurt more than Is absolutely necessary, and whom he wants to "get·.-out of It In one piece"
(p. 226). In spite of the fact that Laura's feelings about her and
Verger's change of partners are much more realistic, she is Impressed by Verger's attitude towards Ellen and Michael, and willing to play along with her lover's moral obsession. Gradually, however. It becomes clear to Verger that It Is almost Impossible to live up to the high standards which he has set for himself. It strikes him, for Instance,
214 that In order to be morally good to Laura's еж-husband, he has to go on lying to Michael about the true nature of his relationship with Laura.
Although Verger had first felt that "In the name of the Idea of love, a
•an might lie, deceive, cheat," he now starts to wonder whether he can
"simply deny the truth in the name of a higher truth" (p. 275). Growing more and more confused about these matters, Verger begins to strongly dislike "all the windy moral nonsense, all the tortuous reasoning, that had constantly stewed In his brain" (p. 275).
Still, Verger is only able to give up his moral idealism when it starts to threaten his relationship with Laura, who is growing "sick of being charitable" (p. 315) and who has begun to wonder whether Verger is not more in love with his morality than with her. Following a violent argument with Laura, Verger realizes that "his obsession all these months, and his tireless involvement in it, had prevented her from being herself, and that she had probably only been humoring him all along" (p. 321), after which he decides to adopt a more realistic attitude. Actually, this change Is also partly due to the fact that
Ellen, still angry at Verger for having left her and wanting to get back at him, has enlisted the aid of a lawyer In order to reach a financial settlement with Verger. Because this settlement turns out to be very unfavourable for him, and because Ellen is also still unwilling to divorce him, Verger becomes desperate at the thought that he may be tied hand and foot to Ellen for the rest of his life and that Laura will then be beyond his reach.
When Michael, after having finally found out that Verger and Laura are lovers, also starts to plague Verger, the latter loses his self- control, and he threatens to kill both Michael and Ellen if they do not leave him and Laura alone. This outburst of emotions badly feared by
215 Verger leads to hls feeling played out and to a kind of spiritual death, after which Holmes suggests that Verger Is ready to be reborn.
Walking through New York, noticing a "faint stir of spring...In everything" and watching a "little girl with dirty knees" draw "bright, crude Easter fish upon the pavements in yellow chalk" (p. 363), Verger suddenly realizes that "they would all live it out," and that beyond
the drama in which he has been involved there is still "the unsettled possibility of life" (p. 364):
Hie nerves, bis mind eased at that. A strange, Imperceptible shift occurred within him, and, though nothing had been decided, still he supposed that he would go on - that afternoon at five, the next day, for as long as it might take - and do the best he could do. And suddenly he could look back on the broil of his own thoughts, the twisting, the probing, the war of his mind against reality, and shake his head. He supposed that he would go on trying to follow his instincts, and worry about the consequences, and get angry, and tired, and despair, and grow cala again, but probably no longer punish himself for his human imperfections...That chilly idealization was not for him, for it had only led to another egoism - the egoism of virtue which, in the name of honesty, had corroded his honest heart, (p. 364)
After Ellen has dropped most of her financial claims on Verger,
also consenting to divorce him, and after Michael has resigned himself
to the fact that he has lost Laura to Verger, Daniel wonders whether he
and Laura have not been "fools" (p. 383), and whether it would not have
been better if they had been more decisive about leaving their
partners. But in the end neither Verger nor Laura regret the course
216 that they have taken. Verger feels that, for "the first time in [his] life," he has "done something the way [he] thought it should be done"
(p. 383). As far as she Is concerned, Laura agrees with Verger that, by having adhered to his moral code, their relationship will at least not be endangered by feelings of guilt towards Michael and Ellen, so that
they are now free to fully enjoy their love.
As Holmes suggests in "The Fifties," the financial success of Go
and his eagerness for more money, which made him accept hack work when he should have been concentrating on his new novel, were some of the
reasons for the artistic failure of Perfect Fools. From the moment that
he began writing the book, however, Holmes also felt that he was
afflicted with what he called "second-book problem," a malady which
according to him occurs "when the slackening of creative muscle
(Inevitable after your first book is published) makes you think that,
in some indefinable way, you have 'crossed over'": "There is nothing
more conducive to creative honesty than having nothing to lose, but
somehow on the second book you have something to lose, and you find
yourself writing to consolidate a position already gained, instead of
trying to take a new one.
Perfect Fools was rejected by three publishers towards the end of
1954. Still, it took Holmes some time to realize that, as he later put
it, his novel had been "seriously botched,"31 and that it had "a
serious structural defect which [he] couldn't seem to solve." In the
spring of 1955 Holmes abandoned Perfect Fools, because he was "so tired
from writing it that [he] just wanted to get away from it." While
over the years he sometimes returned to the novel, looking for a way to
straighten its flaws, it was not until the early seventies that he
217 thought that he would be able to make the necessary corrections.
Realizing that the book was "much too long," and that "the major character was not very likeable," he decided to "cut one hundred and fifty pages out of It" and to rewrite the bad prose. In this way
Holmes finally finished Perfect Fools "to [his] satisfaction,"^5 almost
twenty years after he had written the first version.
Although Perfect Fools now had a second chance to see the light, none of the eleven publishers to whom the book was offered between the
spring of 1974 and that of 1983 were very enthusiastic about It. As had happened with Walking Away from the War, some editors praised the
quality of Holmes's writing, but none of them felt that this positive
feature made up for what was generally found to be basically wrong with
the book: Its length and Its rather slow pace· As far as this last
aspect is concerned, John Martin of Black Sparrow Press was most
explicit, when he noted that "the characters and scenes are developed
at a snail's pace. D Although Martin looked for "some way to edit It
to quicken the pace," he concluded that "the very structure of the book
does not allow simple editing," and that "to quicken the pace you'd
have to rewrite it."3 The executive editor at Dodd, Mead and Company
also came to the conclusion that Perfect Fools "tended to go on too
long without sustaining the interest of the reader in the circumstances
of [the] characters,"" and in the opinion of other editors the book
"move[d] too slowly" or "seemed rather slow."*0 While the editor at
William Morrow was "not that taken by Daniel Verger, * a danger of
which Holmes had been aware when be rewrote the book, Scribner's also
thought that Perfect Fools "does not really draw the reader in. * This
last criticism was made at Dutton's as well, where it was felt that
Holmes's characters "don't seem to hold the reader's interest," and
218 that "their self-destructive behavior lacks a central theme."^J
Although Dutton was clearly interested in Holmes's work. Perfect Fools
was not considered saleable and, like the other publishers to whom the
book was offered. Dutton decided against publishing it.
The fact that Perfect Fools is somewhat long-winded, which is
suggested by the criticism of several editors, can hardly be denied and
is already illustrated by the beginning of the book, where it takes
Holmes some sixty pages to Introduce his principal characters and his
theme. Moreover, Holmes sometimes seems to have trouble finding the
right tone in Perfect Fools. This is the case, for instance, in his
description of the public survey office which employs both Stofsky and
Verger. Wanting to illustrate the dull atmosphere at the office by
having its "coders" lengthily discuss "pre-coded questions,"
"conceptual breakdown!s]," "Margin[sJ for Errorfs]" and the like
(pp. 61-62), Holmes overdoes the amount of terminology used in the
office, and ends up writing dialogue which is no longer convincing. A
lack of conviction also mars the passages which describe Verger
aimlessly wandering through New York after he and Ellen have separated.
In themselves these passages are among the best written in the book,
and Holmes's portrayal of the lives of "the friendless, the womanless,
the unwanted" (p. 243), who spend their days in lonely rooms,
lunchrooms and movie theatres, is very moving indeed. However, when one
realizes that Verger, who has always Laura to fall back on, can hardly
be compared to those who are really down and out, his pessimistic view
both of himself and of city life seems rather unwarranted. In fact, it
is not only In these passages, but also in Perfect Fools as a whole,
that Holmes is not really able to completely convince the reader of the
tragedy of Verger's plight. Verger's continually mulling over guilt and
219 goodness always keeps a slightly abstract quality, which falls to fully engross the reader In the story. It Is this failure which Is probably the basic flaw of Perfect Fools, a flaw that cannot be rectified by re structuring or shortening the book.
In spite of Its defects, however. Perfect Fools has a number of qualities that should not be overlooked. Very successful, for Instance,
Is Holmes's use of the Quixotic tradition In literature. That Holmes to some extent follows In Cervantes's footsteps Is already suggested by the quotation from Don Quixote which serves as epigraph to Perfect
Fools: "What thanks does a knight-errant deserve for going mad when he has good cause? The thing is to go out of my head without any occasion for It, thus letting my lady see. If I do this for her In the dry, what
I would do In the wet." This passage not only helped Holmes to the
titles for the two parts of Perfect Fools, It Is also an appropriate reminder of the fact that, like Don Quixote, Verger can be seen as a
somewhat deranged dreamer who wants to live morally In an Immoral
world, and who Is misled by his own Idealism. A further resemblance
between Perfect Fools and Don Quixote Is the very division of Holmes's novel In two parts, which Is alao a characteristic of Cervantes's book.
Moreover, as Is also the case In Don Quixote, generally speaking the
first part of Perfect Fools deals with the illusions of the
protagonist, while the second part concerns his gradual
disillusionment.
As he had done In Go, In Perfect Fools Holmes connects the
progression In the plot with the passage of the seasons. Just as In Go
this device Is very effective, linking the slow death of Verger's and
Laura's old relationships to autumn, the actual separation from their
former partners to the dead of winter, and the blossoming of their love
220 to spring and summer. It Is also true that, while stylistically Perfect
Fools is less successful than some of his other work, the book is sometimes suddenly enlivened by Holmes's good eye for detail. This is the case, for Instance, In his description of a quarrel between Verger and Ellen, when the latter, who has been sewing Verger's trousers, suddenly wants to throw them aside in anger, "only to discover that she had unwittingly sewn the cuff to her skirt" (p. 149). Another example of Holmes's gift for observation Is to be found in his loving description of Laura "musingly" drinking coffee, "touching the tip of her tongue to the lip of the cup before sipping - one of those unconscious personal idiosyncracles the outsider rarely notices until they occur in a moment heightened by emotion" (p. 12). Finally, as is the case in Go and Get Home Free, Holmes's psychological insight in
Perfect Fools is frequently remarkable. This applies in particular to his penetrating description of the slowly developing relationship between Laura and Verger, which does not stop at a portrayal of their mutual attraction, but which also takes into account the feelings of doubt, irritation and despair which can be the concomitants of a new and budding love-affair. However, Holmes's keen understanding of the way relationships develop is also to be found in his account of the ending of both Verger's and Laura's marriage, as can be seen In the following description of some of the changes Verger and Ellen go through before they finally decide to separate:
As so often happens when a relationship is coming to an end between two people, both of whom are basically sincere, there was a change of sides on issues of past contention. Ellen, whose pride had always been exacerbated and imperious, became almost
221 submissive, eager for him to be unreasonable about such things as bill-paying, getting clothes from the cleaners, and so forth - things which he had managed to get done before only as a result of continuous, ill- tempered prodding on her part· But now he did everything allotted to him with dispatch, rejecting the margin of arbitrariness and freedom she was offering- He acceded In everything, but without submission, making It coolly evident (to his own horror) that he was acceding In this single. Isolated thing, and that nothing else had changed. And all along he knew that she was probing, with desperate diligence, for a chink through which to re-establish their old life, If only for a moment· But he couldn't relent, and the sight of her baffled eyes, the strange feeling he had of absolute certainty about what she was feeling, ripped him up. (pp. 152-153)
In the last analysis. Perfect Fools, like The Transgressor. Is especially Interesting because of Its autobiographical content and because of Its relation to several of Holmes's other books, Go and Get
Home Free in particular. That Perfect Fools Is strongly autobiographical and based on Holmes's falling In love with Shirley
Allen, has been admitted by Holmes himself. In fact, before sitting down to write Perfect Fools, Holmes contemplated the Idea of calling
Its protagonist Paul Hobbes again, the name of Holmes's persona in Go.
He decided against this, however, because of "the tension Involved in the double separations" that he and Shirley had Just been going through, ' and also because he wanted "to feature in each of the books of the trilogy a character that was only a minor character in the other books."*' Consequently, the protagonist in Perfect Fools has become a
222 "conglomerate character"4' based on Holmes himself and on the character called Daniel Verger in Go, who In that book played only a minor role.
Although the chief person in Perfect Fools is in the first place reminiscent of Paul Hobbes and of Holmes himself, he has kept some characteristics of Go's Daniel Verger· This is the case, for instance, with the letter's tuberculosis, which the Daniel Verger of Perfect
Fools refers to in a conversation with a friend: "But then I once had a fatal case of ТВ...You remember that. How I used to bark like a seal?
And the day I turned up drunk and coughing at Agatson's and he said he wouldn't have me dying there?" (p. 49). This sctually refers to a scene in Go, in which Agatson, instead of helping Verger, who is at the end of his powers after having spent a night on the streets, calls him a
"leper," whom he does not want "to die on [his] bed."
Other links between Perfect Fools and G£ are established by
Holmes's use, in both books, of characters called Agatson and David
Stofsky. While Agatson is only referred to occasionally and in passing as "Verger's friend who had been killed in the subway" (p. 210), David
Stofsky is given more room in Perfect Fools, although by far not as much as in Go. Holmes's portrayal of Stofsky as a docile office worker was based on the period that Holmes "worked with Ginsberg polling public opinions about contemporary affairs for a research company" in the late forties, * and the striking change in personality between
Stofsky as described in Perfect Fools and the same character in Go is true to some of the changes Ginsberg went through after having been committed to a psychiatric clinic from May 1949 until March 1950.
Originally, the autobiographical character of Perfect Fools was also illustrated by Holmes's use of Gene Pasternak, the character based on Jack Kerouac which plays an important part in Go. In Perfect Fools
223 Pasternak did not appear In person, however, but only "In letters and so forth,"-'0 and when Holmes shortened his novel Pasternak disappeared from It. This did not happen with Janet and Peter Trimble, characters based on Susan and Roger Lyndon, friends of Cannaetra and Holmes In
the late forties. The Trimbles appear both In Go and In Perfect Fools, and although their role Is only marginal, In both books they are
present In Important scenes· At the end of G£ they are among Hobbes's
friends mourning Agatson In a waterfront bar; In Perfect Fools Janet and Peter, who Is described as "a physics professor at Rutgers"
(p. 210), witness the final throes of Daniel's and Ellen's marriage. It
is at the house of the Trimbles, where Daniel and Ellen look for
diversion In drink and the company of friends after having spent
Christmas separately, that the Vergers finally realize that their
marriage Is no longer worth saving.
Although the name of Richard Lensman, who appears both in the scene
at the Trimbles and elsewhere In Perfect Fools, suggests that this
character was based on Jay Landesman, It Is In fact Daniel's friend
Marc Queries who Is a fairly accurate portrayal of Landesman as Holmes
knew him In the late forties, and who Is a final reminder of the auto
biographical aspect of Perfect Fools. Like Landesman, Queries edits a
literary magazine In which topical matters are dealt with In a critical
and sometimes spoofing manner, as was the case with Neurotica. In fact,
Holmes's depletion of Queries frequently resembles his portrayel of
Landesman In "The Pop Imagination." This certainly holds good for the
description of Quarles's physical appearance, which mentions his "lean
body, all but flenkless, wiry es a long distance runner" and his "warm
black eyes...and faintly Ironical smile" (p. 16), while In "The Pop
Imagination" Landesman Is decribed as "a tall shambling man, who has
224 the warm, Inquisitive dark eyes and the self-mocking smile of a secret idealist."-'2 Furthermore, there are close resemblances between Quarles and Landesman as far as their extravagant way of dressing, and even their use of certain expressions are concerned. While Landesman according to Holmes had the tendency to turn up "In horrible candy- striped seersuckers and a string tie that hung down to his crotch, or sporting a denim sack suit In an advanced state of rumple," 53 about
Quarlee Holmes writes that "he had been known to Impulsively put on grey suede desert boots, crotch-tight Levis a-glltter with brass studs, and a floppy sweat-shirt (on which was emblazoned the legend, Dick
Diver Fan Club) to take In the first show at a 42nd Street movie house"
(p. 17). The pun "futility rites," coined by Landesman to describe the
aimless socializing of intellectuals in bars and other meeting places,
Is literally to be found in both Perfect Fools and "The Pop
Imagination." In the novel, however, the phrase is used by Verger,
albeit In the presence of Quarles. Finally, it does not seem too far
fetched to aurmise that In his description of Daniel Verger's rather
high-flown article for Quarles's magazine Gauge, Holmes may at least
have been partly parodying some of his own sometimes over-serious
essays In Neurotica (which, like Verger's article, on two occasions
were published under a pseudonym).
Although links between Perfect Fools and Go are abundant, the
connections between Perfect Fools and Holmes's later novel Get Home
Free are even more striking. To some extent this is due to Holmes's use
of the same names for some of the characters. While Agatson is only
referred to occasionally In Perfect Fools, in Get Home Free his role as
May Delano's ex-lover is somewhat more prominent. In both books, too,
David Stof sky is present, although in Get Home Free he, as well as Gene
225 Pasternak, ie only mentioned in a conversation between Paul Hobbes and
Hay, In which the latter Informs Paul that "Stofsky's gone to work -
bow about that? More important, of course, is the fact that both Get
ν Home Free and Perfect Fools feature Daniel Verger as one of the
protagonists· That Daniel Verger in both books la intended to represent
the same character is illustrated, not only by the psychological and
physical resemblance between the two protagonists, but also by the fact
that both in Perfect Fools and Get Home Free Verger is a researcher for
a public opinion survey, and by Holmes's mentioning Old Grafton in
Connecticut as Verger's home town in both books."
Although her role in Perfect Fools is certainly not as substantial
as It Is In Get Home Free, the other prominent character to be found in
both books ia May Delano. In Perfect Fools Holmes la very explicit
about her and Verger's common past:
For May and Verger had been lovers once Just before he went to Europe, and had shared the same apartment, and the same chaotic end of the Village-life, and he knew her nature down to its last foible. After he had gotten home again, and married, it had all seemed a little foolish to both of them. Whatever passion had burned between them once had found other objects, and they exchanged a few straight words about it, and thereafter became close In the warm, impersonal way of brother and sister, who get along without a thought and are no longer really essential to one another's emotions· (pp. 24-25)
In Perfect Fools May Delano is involved both with Marc Queries and
Michael Renzo· In fact, Michael's affair with May, which Daniel hides
from Laura even though his revealing it would have brought him and
226 Laura together much more quickly, Is rather essential to the book, because It gives Verger another reason to try and behave In a virtuous manner. Verger's wanting to be and do good also comes out In his tender behaviour towards May herself, who, although at the end of Get Ноше
Free she Is described as someone who Is leading a relatively stable life. In Perfect Fools has become a hopeless alcoholic. Another striking change between the May Delano of Perfect Fools and the same character as described In Get Home Free Is that, while In the last novel May Is virtually frigid, In Perfect Fools she Is depicted as a very sensual woman. For the reader of both novels this leads to a highly Ironical conversation between Michael Renzo and Daniel Verger.
When Michael tells Verger, who In Get Home Free separates from May mainly because of their unhappy sexual relationship, that May wants to make love with him 'on the floor, in the kitchen, on the coffee table"
(p. 79) and that, according to him, she has "just got the hots for love" (p. 77), Verger's surprising reaction Is, "Yes, it's her only flaw...I know her, remember?" (p. 77). Still, In spite of these differences. It Is clear that In both Perfect Fools and Get Home Free
May Delano Is expected to stand for the same character. This Is also underlined by the fact that In both books May holds the same job, that of employee In a talent agency, a job which she gives up at the end of
Perfect Fools, supposedly to go to California In order to be cured of her alcoholism.
After having read about both Daniel Verger and May Delano In
Perfect Fools, the reader of Get Home Free soon realizes that In
Perfect Fools Holmes continues their story from where, almost ten years later, he would leave It at the end of Get Home Free. Then It also becomes clear that the nameless woman whom Verger has befriended In the
227 last pages of Get Home Free, and to whom he refers In a conversation with May as "this girl I've been going out with,"56 Is actually his wife-to-be, Ellen Verger. This Is Illustrated by the fact that in both books the details of Ellen's life are strikingly alike. In Get Home
Free Holmes sums up some of these details In the following sentence:
"But she had a bad marriage during the war, her husband was killed In an auto accident while she was driving, she was drunk, and of course,
It was snowing, and so his family got the custody of their child - that sort of thing...." However, the essential elements In this description are already to be found In Holmes's portrait of Ellen In
Perfect Fools:
She was always losing In her fatalistic battle with her life, a battle that was epitomized for [Verger] In the framed photograph of her nine-year-old son that stood on the dusty mantle, all she had left of a brief first marriage that had ended, with tragic Irony, on V-J Day In an auto accident, her young husband killed, her son, born six months later, taken away from her because she had been driving the car, and was drunk - the son, Martin, Jr., whom she visited every two weeks at his father's sister's house In Hartford, only to return each time mad and saddened and weary, (p. 53)
Having established the close links between Holmes's books, both
published and unpublished, one may wonder If Holmes's use of the same
names for a small stock of characters Is always entirely successful. As
we have seen, the Paul Hobbes of Get Home Free Is In some ways as
radically different from the Paul Hobbes of Go as Is the May Delano of
Perfect Fools from that of Get Home Free. Also, reading about Daniel
Verger In Get Home Free and In Perfect Fools, one does not always have
228 the Impression that one Is dealing with the same character· It Is understandable that Holmes, because he felt that he was concerned with
"the same kinds of people, and in many cases the same people Indeed,"
saw "no reason to Invent new names and new characters and so forth" In
each of his novels: he always considered It "a convenience for a writer
If he does not conceive of books as completely standing alone, even
though each one Is supposed to, and If he Is able to use characters
with whom he Is acquainted."'" However, because his characters go
through changes that are sometimes so fundamental that they cannot be
attributed to any intervening periods of time. Holmes has not been able
to realize "the idea that was very much with [him] when [he] was
younger - that a writer could create a world, peopled with people as
Balzac's novels are, which you get to know better reading book after
book after book, than you do from reading any single book."59 what
remains Is the fact that, by using a limited number of names for his
characters. Holmes managed to let his books "resonate against each
other," the way he wanted them to.60 This gives his small body of work
a striking unity and coherence, which is an interesting achievement
that is valid enough in itself.
Ill
Given Holmes's strong reliance on fictional characters with which
he was already familiar, one reason why he was unable to complete the
third part of his trilogy may well have been his intention to build it
around a wholly new character. Some of the origins of this character
229 and of the third volume of the trilogy are already to be found In a number of journal entries which Holmee made In June and July 1952, when he was trying to concentrate on the writing of Perfect Fools. During that period, when the threat of a new war was very much In the air,
Holmes became strongly attracted to the figure of Gandhi and Gandhi's philosophy of non-violence and love· Having decided that he would write about a character based on Christ In the third part of the trilogy, a
reading of Louis Fischer's The Life of Mahatma Gandhi suddenly gave
Holmee a clue to the development of this new character, for whom he had
In mind the rather obvious name Christopher Josephs. On June 16 he
entered the following "Vision of the Paradiso" In his journal:
All In a flash today, while reading of Gandhi, I suddenly knew how I was to have my Christ-like man (In the Paradiso) die for us and for the world: how to crucify him. I shall have him, on some pretext to do with his "public ministry," fast himself to death. Of course, what he hopes to achieve by this fast will not come about, unlike every one of Gandhi's fasts. The West Is not yet ready for these measures, but Christopher Josephs will try them. Getheemane will come when he realizes that he is going to die; but his belief that his example will save this world will return and he will go on with it.
Although Christopher Josephs's character was still rather vague to
Holmes at that time, it was already clear to him that Christopher's
fast would be a public one, "meant to compel reason and decency and an
end of war and the 'imminent horror' (whatever I shall decide that to
be). 62 Holmes intended Christopher's fast against the threat of war to
last "perhaps thirty days (or even more)," and he also planned that it
230 would arouse "much controversy and talk,""3 in the middle of which
Christopher would keep insisting on his right "to give up life; not to commit suicide, but simply not to save himself the natural consequences of not eating." As a letter to Jack Kerouac shows. Holmes also
thought of linking Christopher to the Greenwich Village bohémiens to
whom Kerouac referred as "the subterraneans" :
My third book will be my Christ; I think about it continually· Of course, what you say about the Subterraneans is true. Certainly they never existed the way we dreamed them up. But it doesn't seem to me to be Important· They should have; our imagining of them had poetic accuracy, and literature deals in that sort of accuracy rather than the journalistic kind. They appear in my new book only as a kind of counterpoint. My Verger cannot reach them and could not Join them if he did. They are quietista, urban Thoreaus, contemplatives. Out of them comes my Christ in the third book.66
When, in August 1955, Holmes turned again to the third volume of
his trilogy. Perfect Fools had been completed and rejected by the
publishers. As the extensive notes which Holmes entered into his
Journal between August and October 1955 reveal, in the intervening two
years his ideas about the third book had become much more definite.
Instead of Christopher Josephs, he now wanted to call his principal
character Simon Calk, an appropriate name which is still reminiscent of
Christ (Simon, or Peter, having been the first among Christ's
disciples), and which also underlines Calk's mission as saviour of a
world about to explode (a "calk" being the part of a horseshoe that
prevents slipping, while one of the meanings of "to calk" is to make a
231 boat watertight by filling the seams). In the meantime Holmes had also decided on some of the other characters, several of which had already figured In his earlier books: "Characters for sure: Calk himself;
Stofsky, who promotes him; Verger, who wants to follow him but can't;
Hay, who tries to destroy him with her sex, and comes to love him and to change; Pasternak, his disciple; Melone, who sees him as a threat;
Laura, whom he makes dissatisfied." While most of these characters are, in different degrees, prominent in Go or Perfect Fools, or in both, the journalist Malone is only a minor character in Perfect Fools. in which he works for a magazine called The Week, which Verger denounces in his article as strongly lacking In the representation of spiritual and moral values. According to Holmes's Journal entries, he also planned to transpose a number of minor characters from Go to the third part of the trilogy. Thus, be thought of confronting Calk both with Stofsky's friend Jack Haters, and with Liza Adler.
As far as the plot was concerned, Holmes soon decided that he would
open the book, which he eventually titled The Good End of Simon Calk,
with a prologue, in which he would describe the political situation
that induces Calk to begin his fast. While America and Russia are
already caught up in a cold war, an actual war now threatens to break
out because a small ocean Island, "backward, sleepy" and "outside the
trade routes," is suddenly discovered to have "strategic importance" to
both countries. As the political crisis worsens almost every hour,
the United Nations headquarters in New York soon becomes the sole place
from which a solution, if It is still possible, can be expected. It Is
actually in front of the United Nations building that Holmes wants Calk
to die, but he planned to situate the first chapter In Stofsky's
apartment :
232 Perhaps the opening section could be a gathering of Stofsky and Pasternak, Verger and Laura, and perhaps others, on the night when he begins the fast· Stofsky calls Verger and asks him to come. Calk does not know they are coming. He does not In the beginning of the fast stay In front of the D.N. Building all the time, just during the day. He has no place to live and It Is on this first night that May gives him her apartment, planning to destroy him, she to be out of town or something. Stofsky has also called Halone, asking him to come, for publicity, unbeknownst to Calk, who disapproves. This scene would be enough to start the whole book and get all the characters and their positions down. Stofsky officiates, Pasternak is the "insider,'* Malone has come to "Interview," the others to observe. May for a "diversion."
In the nineteen chapters and the "postlude" that vere to follow the
first chapter. Holmes wanted to develop Calk's relationship with the characters introduced in the opening of the book, as well as with a number of other characters· To all of these Calk was to represent
something else: "Verger wants him to be a man; Stofsky for him to be a
God. Each will believe if they could see this in him. Malone wants him
to be practical; Pasternak to be utterly impractical. Stofsky and
Verger battle over his soul; Malone and Pasternak over his mind. Laura
and May battle, in a way, over his body." All of these characters are
counting on Calk to give direction to their lives, the way Jesus's
disciples relied on their leader (Calk is, like Jesus when he died, 72 "exactly thirty-three" ). Like the people who came Into contact with
Jesus, Stofsky and the others are changed by their relationship with
Calk. This was to be made clear especially in the case of May, who
first is cold and cynical towards Calk, but who later "opens in true
233 love for Simon, because he has broken down her shell, let out all the
Inverse care in her, which had festered on itself, and turned ironic." In a scene in which May first tries to seduce Calk, Holnes wanted to show that, because Calk is no longer interested in sexuality,
May cannot "lose her self in sensual flights with him, blind herself," as a consequence of which she is "forced back on herself, and really perhaps experiences love for the first time."
In Holmes's scheme for The Good End of Simon Calk David Stofsky
stood for "Judas, the doubter," who, "like the devil's advocate in proceedings for sanctification, ruthlessly searches for flaws, prides,
sins in Calk's life."75 Holmes wanted Calk to "love Stofsky, almost
more than the others," even though, just like Jesus was betrayed by
Judas, "Stofsky is the one, without really intending to, who betrays
him."76 Holmes Intended to refer to the Bible as well in a scene in
which, like Jesus In Gethsemane, Calk would be tempted not to see
through his mission, suddenly wishing to draw back from death because
he is "stunned by the incredible beauty of the world, with night over
it, spring aching in the air."77 The way Holmes saw it, the same scenic
beauty was already to be pointed out in the prologue to the book, which
he thought of opening "with an aerial view of the city, the beauty of
early spring; the dappling wash of afternoon light down the shining
sides of skyscrapers; the day unmarred but for the perpetual smudge and
haze over the Jersey marshes." In fact, in this same scene Holmes
planned to indicate even more clearly that The Good End of Simon Calk
was meant to be the follow-up to an Inferno and a Purgatorio, by
deciding to make the atmosphere of the opening, "as in Paradiso, one of и79 light, increasing, heightening, spreading outward.
The number and length of the journal entries for his projected
23A novel reveal Chat 1С Cook Holmes a long Cime to get down to the actual
writing of The Good End of Simon Calk. Holmes himself was painfully aware of this, as Is Illustrated by the opening of his entry for AugusC
22: "How I long for eloquence, for speed - for richness of producción,
and not this endless, careful, even frightened, nurturing of every Idea
that I get." As Holmes realized on Chac same day, It was especially
the characterization of Simon Calk that was causing him problems,
because he found it difficult "to grasp Calk, Co visualize him Co
myself: "In so much of Che maceria! that I have already sketched in he
serves as nothing but a sort of omniscience to reveal, develop and
change the others. This is, of -course, not what I intend for the
book.""1 Pondering how he could bring the slowly evolving drama of Calk
himself into Che book. Holmes Chen decided Co portray Calk as an ex-
airman. Calk's experiences in World War Two, when he was stationed In
Britain and took part In "the huge impersonal Chousand-plane,
saturación raids" over Germany, z were Co be made responsible for his
laCer behaviour and for his ulcimace decision Co fase himself Co deach.
In face, in Holmes's concepción of Che character, Calk could be seen as
already having suffered a spiritual deach during Che war, afcer which
he has become "eomething strange and rootless and almost mindless,"
searching for himself all over America and finally returning to New
York Co enter "the subterranean period. 3
After having overshot September 10, the ultimate date he had set
himself to really start writing The Good End of Simon Calk. Holmes
finally embarked on his Cask on October 4. Aiming aC Cwo chapters a
week and realizing chac he worked bese under pressure, he decided co
cresce a "sore of synchedc, sham pressure" by having each chapCer
"subjected to the outside eye immediately it is done, perhaps even
235 malled to some dead address, there to wait for me when I am finally done·" The Important thing was, as he put It, "to keep the flow
DC streaming OUTWAM)." For three weeks, In fact. Holmes managed to do this, completing two versions of the prologue and three chapters· By the end of the month, however, It was again the characterization of
Calk which made him enter the following passage In his journal:
Hysteria, depression, horror this morning...Who Is Calk, after all? What Is his tone? I have not got his Image In my head, and it le a waste to go on unless he drives the book, as Stofsky drove Go. I must get him, and I have thought all night and all morning of Just "who" he Is. I have made him too good thus far, too namby-pamby, a shell of righteousness. The crisis came In the flash-back where I realized I was writing about a husk, a vessel of ideas, or nothing at all. I have to get his Image, I have to bring him "down" so that when oc he rises towards the end. It will be moving, true.
Deciding to make one more effort to visualize Calk to himself. It
struck Holmes that In some respects Calk resembled Dostoevsky, who had
been such a strong Influence on Holmes's earlier work and who, as
Holmes put It, had "come to [his] aid so many times In the past·
Holmes now hoped that by thinking of Calk and Dostoevsky as one
personality, he would still manage to let Calk come alive on the page.
With this aim in mind, he even considered that it might help to copy
some of Dostoevsky's letters, "copy his style, his tone, even do a
00 Lotmey Handy preparation of copying, copying, copying..·. It was all
to no avail, however, and before the month was over Holmes realized
that he was unable to complete The Good End of Simon Calk:
236 Ну drive was to finish up in a reckless spurt, get a large enough advance to escape to Europe, and enter the fourth decade of my life quits with the first three. But this is a drive out of which no significant work can be done, and I got my comeuppance one rainy October afternoon, when I finally had to admit that this particular book was not yet ready to be written. I had gone ahead in a daze, working out of that baffled reflex that occasionally keeps a writer at it long after he should quit, and I stared at my 30,000 words like a man who has built a doghouse but forgotten to DO Include a door.
Since The Good End of Simon Calk is a book that was abandoned and, like The Transgressor, rejected by Holmes, it seems unfair to use the chapters that he was able to finish as a basis for criticism. Still, because the book was meant to be part of a trilogy, its completed chapters have a thematic relevance to Go and Perfect Fools, and in this respect at least a few words need to be said about them. This ia particularly true of the first version of the prologue, because in this piece Holmes definitely managed to illustrate that The Good End of
Sinon Calk was intended to be his Paradiso. In this first version of the prologue Holmes introduces a narrator who was once one of Calk's followers ("No matter which one"'") and who now, several years after
Calk's death, feels a personal need to commit to paper what he remembers of the events surrounding Calk's fast, because he has noticed that he has already atarted to forget certain things. Because of his defective memory, the narrator realizes that he "can only write a sort of montage, because [he] never thought to take down notes" (p. 13). In fact, the prologue itself is already a kind of montage, consisting of
237 two scenes leading up to the beginning of Calk's fast, of a physical description of Calk, and of an Impression of the "strange and violent age" (p. 16) in which Calk ended his life. This impression Is realized through an amalgam of news items, headlines and statistics, all related
to the political crisis that threatens to turn into a nuclear war.
It is especially in the scenes introducing Calk, as well as a number of his friends and followers, that Holmes brings forward the paradisal overtones that his novel was to have. This is apparent, for
instance, from hie description of the apartment which Calk shares with his followers, and even from the very name of the street on which the apartment is situated, Rose Street. The Introductory scene is,
significantly, set on a "clear April morning," in a "loft, cool and
shadowed, all the windows open; outside, the sun high and warm; the
sky, glimpsed through the large back window, the pale pure blue of a
small bird's egg; a few distant stately clouds standing motionless over
Brooklyn" (p. 4).
In these opening pages of The Good End of Simon Calk the frequent
references to parks also serve as small reminders of the paradise of
which the novel In its entirety was to be a representation. Sitting
around on Rose Street with Calk and some of the others, Gene Pasternak
suggests a visit to Prospect Park or Battery Park, to "find us some
trees somewhere" (p. 4). However, because Calk has more important
matters on his mind, he refuses to go, instead urging Pasternak and the
others to "try the Battery, because there ought to be one of those
great breezes down there today" (p. 6). In another scene, in which Calk
and his followers are approaching the United Nations building, they are
described as "loung[ing] through the vest-pocket park between 2nd and
1st Avenues on the south side of 47th Street, studying the leafless
238 trees on their Islands of earth In an uneven sea of paving stones"
(p. 2). Like Its trees, the small park Is seen as threatened by a surrounding desert of stone, which suggests that there Is not much left of paradise In modem society, and which gives a poignant relevance to the remark muttered by a nameless follower of Calk's: "It's the memory of Eden that's the real Expulsion" (p. 5). Finally, as Holmes had resolved to do while making notes for the book, In his description of
New York he gives the city a paradlsal quality by proposing that, "from an open bomb-bay at 30,000 feet, the rlver-glrdled Island of Manhattan would have looked like an elongated heap of quartz crystals on a mirror, sparkling In the clear mornings that were unmarred, horizon to horizon, but for the perpetual smudge over the Jersey marehes" (p. 16).
To make his point even clearer. Holmes adds that, "from that bomb-bay, the heart of the watcher might have quickened to see that fabulous
Island, glistening In another spring, and might. Just for a moment, have Imagined that the City of God, envisioned so long ago on the shadeless shores of Africa, had at long last arisen on the earth"
(p. 17).
The references to paradise In the Introductory chapter are subtle and successful, as Is, In view of the threat of war and of the fact that he wanted to portray Calk as an ex-alrman, Holmes's referring to a bomb-bay as a starting-point for his description of New York and of New
York life In this particular time of crisis. Somewhat less fortunate seems to be his decision to use a narrator who has already started to forget some of the things that are essential to his account. The searching, slightly hesitant attitude of the narrator In this respect results In a kind of prose that Is sometimes also rather hesitant and slow In coming to the point. In view of this defect. It Is not
239 surprising that In the second version of the prologue Holmes has done away with the nameless narrator and all of the preliminary material, focussing instead on the description of New York life, at the end of which he Introduces Verger, Stofsky and Calk. It is not dear, however, which of the two versions would have had Holmes's preference if his novel had reached a more definitive stage.
Although Holmes managed to complete three chapters of The Good End of Simon Calk, they are decidedly not definitive versions. Still, in these chapters he was able to realize to some extent the plans he made while plotting the book. Thus, the first chapter, entitled "First Day:
The Dreamer," introduces the book's principal characters the way Holmes had planned it in his Journal entry of August 3, 1955. The mood of this chapter, set in Stofsky's apartment, is frequently reminiscent of the parties described in Go, the first of which also takes place in
Stofsky's lodgings. However, Simon Calk Is no Hart Kennedy, who was a main source of life in Go, and "First Day: The Dreamer" soon loses itself in rather long-winded, abstract dialogues about such subjects as asceticism, pacifism and communism.
In contrast to the first chapter, "Second Day: The Crank," the second chapter, hardly contains any dialogue at all, and is only a third as long. Of the three completed chapters, "Second Day: The Crank" is the best written, giving an accurate and lively description of
Stofsky's changing attitude towards Calk, and of the plight of Daniel and Laura Verger, who had decided to leave New York and buy a house in the country, while the threat of war now makes Daniel feel that any change of scene will come too late· Especially in the pages devoted to
Stofsky, Holmes again shows some of his striking psychological insight, and there one also finds occasional flashes of humour that help to make
240 this chapter much more readable than the first· Interestingly, "Second
Day: The Crank" also contains a number of elements that reveal again that Holmes thought of The Good End of Simon Calk as his Paradiso. This comes out in particular in his description of some of Stofsky's memories of Calk in his apartment on Rose Street. From the first, it had seemed to Stofsky as if Calk was "a shepherd, or a botanist," and, as Holmes puts it, Stofsky always felt that Calk "lived a completely pastoral life down there," and he was convinced that, "if he'd had the money, or the energy, or whatever it is it takes, [Calk] would have gone and lived off nuts and berries in a glade, and dressed in rabbit skins, and rarely washed. 91
The third completed chapter, "Fourth Day: The Harlot," is again longer. It consists largely of a dialogue between Calk and May Delano who, after having lent her apartment to Calk, accuses him of being a self-righteous homosexual, and of being afraid of women. Although the confrontation between Calk and Hay, who tries to seduce him, is not without psychological interest, the dialogue is sometimes rather stilted, and in the end this chapter, like the first, is not entirely convincing.
It is purely a matter of conjecture whether The Good End of Simon
Calk, if Holmes had been able to complete it, would have been an achievement of great significance. Judging from the parts as he left them, it is understandable that he finally decided to discard the book.
However, Holmes may well have been right when, years later, he expressed the feeling that The Good End of Simon Calk "would have been a very popular book in the sixties, because it was the whole love generation idea - putting the flower into the barrel of the rifle, protesting against a national catastrophe by sitting down; it was the
241 92 whole civil right thing, except all embodied In one action.
242 Chapter Eight
HISCXLUHEOOS PROSE
While Holmes was not able to find a publisher for some of his books, throughout his career he was a prolific and successful contributor to a great number of literary magazines· In the late seventies he gathered together eight essays and eight stories, some of them unpublished, in an unprlnted collection entitled L.A. In Our Souls, which contained "all [he] wleh[ed] to save of almost three decades of journeyman-magazlne-vork."^ Because most of Holmes's earlier essays, and certainly the best of them, were published In Nothing More to Declare, Inevitably L.A. in Our Souls concentrates, as far as the essays In It are concerned, on work which was written In the late sixties and during the seventies. These later essays are all characterized by the strong, personal prose that Is also found In Get Home Free and Nothing More to Declare, and they deal with some of the same subjects that Holmes had already written about in his earlier essays: film, literature, politics, and his memories of a small number of friends. Still, although the essays in it sometimes reach the same high level as those of the earlier collection, it Is in the first place the eight stories in L.A. in Our Soul which merit our attention. These stories serve as another striking example of Holmes's progression from the use of a rather impersonal, imitative style in the late forties, to the emergence of a highly individual voice in his work of the sixties and seventies.
243 The oldest story in L.A. in Our Souls. "Tea for Two," is also the first story that Holmes published. It was written in 1947, and appeared the next year in the second issue of Neurotica. "Tea for Two" concerns the first meeting of a man called Beeker and a woman who remains nameless. Beeker is a white trumpet-player in a New York Jazz club, who deals in marijuana (the "tea" of the title). One day, during a session in the small hours, when Beeker is high and playing ecstatically, a woman enters the dub who makes a strong impression on the musician.
Although generally Beeker is not much Interested in women, in this case his curiosity is roused, and he strikes up a conversation with the visitor. During their dialogue, which takes up three quarters of the
story, Beeker first persuades the woman to smoke one of his marijuana
cigarettes, after which he introduces himself: "I float with the jazz
and play some trumpet when the feeling's on. My name's Beeker. Maybe
you heard.... But the woman, who reveals that she is a painter, is
unfamiliar with the jazz scene. She explains that she has recently
returned to New York from a long trip, and it is suggested that she has
just extricated herself from a period of hardship. When the two become
closer and Beeker suggests that they spend the night together, the
woman assures him that they will eventually sleep together because "it
always gets there like a one-way train" (p. 43), but she also asks him
to be patient. At the end of the story it is not quite clear whether
Beeker and the woman have really been able to reach each other.
Although they remain in each other's company, they are described as
"not together; her face strange and horrified and lovely, and he with
that long low smile and his patent leathers soaring somewhere up near
Mars" (p. 43).
As the last part of this quotation suggests, it is not so much the
244 plot of "Tea for Two," as Holmes's poetic use of the vocabulary of the jazz world which la particularly Interesting in the story. Holmes has stated that "Tea for Two" was "not uninfluenced by Bernard Wolfe's and
Mezz Mezzrow's Really the Blues,"3 a highly colloquial account of the white saxophone player Mezz Mezzrow's experiences as a jazz musician and drug addict. Even more than Really the Blues, which came out in
1946, "Tea for Two" is characterized by an almost unrelenting use of slang. This is the opening of the story:
This is a local fable and the boy is Becker. This guy was a Pekoe-man, and he blew himself out of the coils of a trumpet every night- He came on for culture, not for loot; so he passed the marijuana to his cohorts when the need was near. This tea-dispensing on the cuff brought In enough for bills, and the lad was living in a new era. (p. 36)
Although the amount of slang in "Tea for Two" is frequently
overwhelming, the story remains a striking attempt to find a new
language for the "new era" that Beeker, like Paul Hobbes In Go, feels
has recently begun. In this respect, "Tea for Two" can be compared to
George Handel's Flee the Angry Strangers, which it precedes by several
years. Another resemblance between Handel's novel and Holmes's story is
that In both Dixieland music has a prominent place. Whereas in Flee the
Angry Strangers bop also figures, the jazz dealt with in "Tea for Two"
is still strictly of the Dixieland variety. According to Holmes, the
story was written before he "had dug Bird, Diz and the full thrust of
bop": "It was a fanciful take on Max Kaminsky and the Condon-crowd at
Nick's-in-the-Vlllage."5 Clearly it has not been just bop, but jazz in
general which has served as a main source of inspiration for Holmes:
245 Jazz has always pierced through all ny character araor· Music does, all auslc does, but jazz In those days particularly. That Is, It evoked feelings In ae that I couldn't otherwise allow nyself to feel In those days. I Intellectualized everything. I couldn't Intellectuallze Jazz. It reached me too...in the guts. So that story was written In about a day and a half. It's a tremendous romance. It's a very romantic story. And possibly because I was using the jazz lingo, not my usual style. I was using poetic prose, and perhaps because I allowed myself to do that I also allowed myself to let It go all the way, anywhere It wanted to go. So it was very unconscious. I loved the Idea of the woman and the jazz musician and I didn't have any plane about the story.6
The extent to which Holmes was taken by the figures of the woman and the Jazz musician in "Tea for Two" can be deduced from the fact
that he returned to both of them in his later work. Ae Holmes has
pointed out, the destructive and complicated Diane in The Transgressor
originated from the enigmatic, anonymous woman in the story.' The
connection between "Tea for Two" and The Horn is more Immediately
obvious; not only is the protagonist In both the story and the novel a
Jazz musician, but in both Holmes also attempts to sketch a short
history of jazz. In The Horn this la done in the first "Riff," in which
Edgar Pool's drunken monologue about the hardships of being a jazz
musician makes his companion Cleo remember "the whole tribe of Jazzmen
(a mere sixty years wandering now),"" beginning with "Fate Harable and
his rlverboat caliope (Cleo seemed to recall), who had astonished the
landings between New Orleans and St. Louis with the wild, harsh,
skirling Gypsy music that wanderers have always brought to settled
246 places, and left there, echoing In the young and restless even as It dies off round the bend."' In "Tea for Two" Beeker traces the development of jazz at the Instigation of the woman he has fallen for:
"Well, you see...It comes out of the fields. If you take It very far back. That's years ago, and the colored cats singing while they ball. And then It gets Into the cat-houses where they have a band for the silver-customers and some gin on the side. Finally It comes up the river to ue, who are lapping It up In Chicago...Then It comes to this town on the wind, and we limp after it because a living can be made by playing." (p. 40)
As these quotations reveal, by the time that Holmes wrote The Horn his use of language had become much less Imitative and forcedly colloquial than It still Is In "Tea for Two."
In the stories that Holmes wrote during the fifties he began to use a more personal style. This goes both for "The Horn" and for "The
Argument," which were published In 1953 and 1957 respectively.1"
However, as "The Horn" would later become the first chapter of Holmes's second published novel and as "The Argument" Is essentially a fragment from Go reworked Into a short story, these stories need not concern us here.
Another story which found Its origin In the early fifties, although
It was only published In 1967, Is "The Next to the Last Time," an excellent story even though Holmes admitted that It "troubled [him] for years," that he "couldn't get It right," and that he "must have re written It six times."11 "The Next to the Last Time" is based on an
247 affair Holmes had with an older woman at the time when his first marriage had gone wrong. This older woman, called Ilka In the story, Is clearly to be recognized In one of the women to whom Holmes pays homage
In "The Forties." There she Is referred to by her Initials, E.L. (which rather resemble the name Ilka), and described as "older, trim-waleted, two bad marriages behind her, passionately optimistic In her belief In
'creativity.'"12 Holmes remembers "her dark, Berlin-like apartment, heavy Von Sternberg furniture, sad and trifling paintings aped from
Dufy, the good scotch always set out for me; she was there whenever I wanted to come. 13 Most of the elements making up this recollection, as well as the warm love that E.L. felt for Holmes and the feelings of
Inadequacy that Holmes attributes to himself, found their way into the
story.
In "The Next to the Last Time" Holmes describes an encounter
between Ilka, a painter like the woman In "Tea for Two," and her lover,
a man called Simon, who Is clearly Holmes's persona (Ilka tenderly
nicknames Simon "Sims," just as "E.L." had the habit of calling John
"Johnno," according to "The Forties"14). Simon arrives at Ilka's New
York apartment In bad spirits, because he has just had a quarrel with
his wife Anne, whose birthday it is, and because the idea of visiting
Ilka on Anne's birthday is "vaguely disreputable" to him. At the
beginning of the story It seems that Simon has made up his mind to
break off the affair with Ilka. However, watching Ilka talk on the
telephone, Simon realizes that he has grown genuinely fond of her, even
though she is twelve years older than he and has to use a hearing aid
because she is deaf. When Ilka gets off the phone and turns all of her
loving attention on Simon, he is unable to tell her that he plans to
leave her. The two gradually slip into making love, after which Ilka
248 pampers Simon by stuffing him with food and drink, while she is content
just to doze off alongside him. When Simon Introduces his decision to break up with her by claiming that his love is mainly based on
selfishness, Ilka retorts that love is always selfish. Simon then
realizes that it is perhaps best to postpone parting from Ilka until
the next time they will meet. But before he has made up his mind, Ilka has already clicked off her hearing aid, saying that "[tlhere's no
point in thinking about some things until the time comes...It always
comes soon enough as it is" (p. 36).
"The Next to the Last Time" uses the same opposition between
someone who lives in discord with himself and a person who is at ease
with the world, that is found in some of Holmes's other work. Like Paul
Hobbes and Daniel Verger, Simon suffers from an "odd distraction
between his mind and his body" (p. 30), as a result of which he is
always reasoning and worrying, and never able to take things as they
come. Ilka once lightly chides him for being "such a worrier" (p. 31),
but because she loves him she "let him sulk, and listened to his
monologues" (p. 29). These monologues that Simon continually engages in
are a means for him to try and come to terms with the strong but
useless feelings of self-reproach which he has both towards his wife
and towards Ilka, because he is unable to love either of them with all
his heart. Simon is aware that his guilt because of his wife Is ruining
his affair with Ilka, exactly as it has ruined earlier affairs, while
these affairs in their turn have ruined what is left of his marriage.
In spite of the fact that he keeps on talking about these matters, deep
down Simon realizes that words will never be able to solve his
problems. Once, in fact, he admits that he is using "too many words,"
and when he and Ilka start to make love, it is not, as far as Simon is
249 concerned, because he Is stirred by Ilka at that particular moment, but
"more a desire to break through the talk" (p. 30).
In contrast to Simon, Holmes depicts Ilka as someone who is able to give freely of herself, partly, as Holmes puts it, because she likes to
"give all of her affection to one man at a time" (p. 29), but especially because she is confident and complete within herself. Holmes makes it very clear that, unlike Simon, Ilka is "direct," "honest,"
(p. 31), "poised and natural" (p. 30). Because Simon always keeps himself "in reserve" (p. 31) and Ilka does not, she Is also much more able to enjoy their lovemaking, which always makes her feel "so renewed, so fresh, so clean again" (p. 30). When Ilka asks Simon if he ever feels the same way, he has to admit that he does not and that even
the best moments they share for him are still spoilt by feelings of guilt and by the anticipation that soon he will have to leave and hurt
her.
While the theme of "The Next to the Last Time," the conflict
between intellect and emotion, ranks it with some of Holmes's most
characteristic work, the style of the story has also become much more
personal than in "Tea for Two." Holmes is especially able to capture
Ilka'β spontaneous personality In the eager and joyful way In which she
talks, continually trying to put Simon at ease. Apart from Holmes's
skilful use of dialogue in "The Next to the Last Time," the story also
contains some nice touches of humour. One of these is to be found
towards the end of the story, when Ilka, whose hearing aid has a
tendency to break down, tells Simon that whenever her repairman says
that she has a "loose connection" (p. 190) she always wonders if he is
referring to Simon. Finally, Holmes's use of Ilka's hearing aid as a
symbol unobtrusively adds meaning to the story. While Ilka's deafness
250 accurately etresses the fact that she le a very self-contained woman,
when her hearing aid refuses to function properly this also seems to
Imply that, like the man and the woman In "Tea for Two," Simon and Ilka are not really able to reach and understand each other, as a
consequence of which In the end they are both equally alone.
Much less successful than "The Next to the Laat Time" Is "Of Joy
and Cadillacs: the Weldon Stowe Story,"a story that Holmes wrote In
the mid-fifties, and which was loosely based on his personal
experiences while writing a biographical article about the singer and
actor Burl Ives that was published in Holiday in 1956. The protagonist
In "Of Joy and Cadillacs" is Austin Melone, a young writer
whose first novel about a boys' school (universally recognized as Andover) had broken like a Roman candle over New York literary circles five years before, leading to the extravagant praise and exaggerated lionizing that seemed a little foolish and premature when three years went by with his second novel still unfinished, and who eventually went to work for The Week (a newsmagazine of prodigious circulation and influence) the way other men quietly start to drink too much.16
Although Holmes used a journalist called Austin Malone as a character
in Perfect Fools and in the first chapter of The Good End of Simon Calk
(in both Malone also works for The Week), it is clear that his
description of Malone in "Of Joy and Cadillacs" as "a reserved and
complicated young man.••etili wrankling over that mysterious blurring
of gifts that so often follows an early triumph" (p. 57) is a fairly
251 accurate portrayal of Holnes himself at the tloe that he was trying to write Perfect Fools.
In "Of Joy and Cadillacs" Holmes describes how Austin M alone sets out to write an article about the famous actor and singer Weldon Stowe,
"whose long rise from the dusty smalltowns of Oklahoma to the giddy circles of Broadway and Hollywood had been a triumph of what was called the Intuitive Approach to acting" (pp. 56-57). Just as In reality the editor of Holiday advised Holmes to "take Burl down to Me Sor ley's, get blm to tell you all those raffish stories,"1-7 Malone'a editor makes It very clear that he wants Malone's article to deal with "the whole man -
the Burton of the barrooms, the grassroots thesplan unspoiled by
Hollywood, the Jack London of American actors...Lots of raffish anecdotes" (p. 56). Feeling out of his depth about the assignment from
the beginning, Nalone soon discovers how hard It Is to find out
anything new or substantial about Stove who, when Melone finally meets him, seems anxious to live up to the completely stereotypical Image
that the media have created of him. It Is only when he starts to talk
about himself during an Interview with Stowe, that Malone succeeds In
letting the actor respond in a somewhat more personal manner. Malone
then realizes that he has something in common with Stowe, and that the
unexpected success of his first novel has forced him, like Stowe, to
live up to an image in which he is not really able to recognize himself
any longer. Becoming more and more confused by trying to write an
article that does not corrupt his own view yet also comes up to the
editor's demands, Malone finally has to admit that he is unable to say
which is the real Stowe, realizing that "he was no longer sure which
(the novelist or the journalist) was the real Malone either" (p. 78).
In the end Malone writes an article in which, as he explains to his
252 wife, be treats Stowe "as If he'd been victimized by success because, though he hasn't been corrupted by It, he has been changed...And also,
1 suppose, because that's the way I've felt In the last few years"
(p. 82).
Although In "Of Joy and Cadillacs" Holmes attempts an Interesting combination of self-examination and an analysis of some aspects of
American showbusiness, the story has a number of flaws that make It understandable why It has never been published. Its main defect Is that
Holmes does not really offer any new or striking views on showbusiness and the pitfalls of success. Moreover, Holmes's portrayal of Stowe at times relies rather strongly on some of the characteristics of Method actor Marlon Brando; this Is the case, for Instance, when Holmes refers to Stowe's wearing a "sweaty undershirt" on stage (p. 76), and when he describes how Stowe, In a love scene, "took to fiddling with the girl's kerchief right In the middle of the most tender line" (p. 75) (a similar and famous scene. In which Brando playfully refuses to hand back a glove to Eva Marie Saint, Is to be seen In On the Waterfront).
Finally, the style of "Of Joy and Cadillacs" Is definitely less lively than that of "The Next to the Last Time," and It almost seems as If the hackwork that Interfered with the writing of Perfect Fools also had a negative Influence on the very story In which Holmes wanted to put that hackwork to further use.
Much more strikingly personal again, both thematlcally and stylistically, is "A Little Early in the Day for Truth," written in
1958. In this story, which vas "based on an incident that had happened a summer or so before,"18 Holmes describee an episode in the life of a thirty-two-year-old intellectual who is "weary of the way he lived."1"
253 Although the protagonist remains nameless and although It is not mentioned whether or not he Is a writer, it Is clear that we are dealing here with another of Holmes's personae. The man is described as a "city-dissipate,'' whose "marriage, as well as his scotch, was
increasingly going on the rocks" (p. 197), as a consequence of which he
and his wife Anne have started to spend their weekends in Connecticut,
where they own a house on the beach, ir the hope that a change of scene
will also bring about a change in them:
He had been going to take long walks that summer. He had anticipated brooding on piers In dawntime fogs, or reading Zen poetry in old New England cemeteries. He had thought his brittle crust would soften in the July swelter, and he and Anne would turn to one another one day, suntanned and languorous, and find that it was all miraculously new. There was nothing really wrong with them or their marriage. They had simply been tagged by New York, and faithlessness, and too much liquor, and being too glib about too much too long. (p. 198)
At the beginning of the story the protagonist sets out in a canoe
to spend the day in an estuary near the house of acquaintances, where
his wife is doing some typing to earn a little extra money. Crossing
the river on which the house is situated and sipping the vodka that he
has brought along with some food and an anthology of Chinese poetry,
the leading character soon starts to recuperate from the hangover that
is bothering him. Letting the canoe drift along, the man is struck by
"the innocence of this place," where there is "no sign that all their
hectic foolishness - the day-long binges, the fifty-dollar lunches -
had ever taken place back there in the bedlam of New York" (p. 199).
254 Seeing a skiff with a man and a woman In It heading for an uninhabited
Island In the river mouth, he feels lonely as he Imagines that their
'hazy, languid fishing In the sun' might well lead to "delicious, uncomfortable love In the bottom of the skiff' (p. 200). Later, having
reached the Island, he actually comes across the same couple drowsing
In the sun, "he with his head on one of her half-parted thighs, his
lean, tanned body lax and a-sprawl, the tenseness of some consummation
slumbering In him; she, lying back, her head on a small log, large heavy breasts with nipples softened In the sun, her sex (like his)
quiescent for the moment' (p. 206). Although this spectacle makes him
want to masturbate, the protagonist ends up staring at the couple 'as
If staring Into the core of life" (p. 208), after which he returns to
his boat on the edge of the river, where he regains his composure by
reading poetry and drinking some more. Crossing the river again towards
the house where he has left his wife, the canoe almost capsizes when a
cabin cruiser passes too closely. Although in the turmoil the anthology
and the bottle go overboard, the protagonist is able to make it ashore,
where his wife finds him, "grovelling on his knees, both hands lifted
before his face, head bent low in a humble murmur - as if he was
sifting for something he had lost in the shallow water, or paying
obeisance to the river, and its Source" (p. 216).
In "A Little Early in the Day for Truth" Holmes describes the same
struggle for spiritual and physical harmony that underlies most of his
other work too. Although the protagonist is a "troubled soul" (p. 206)
who has been living in a manner that does not agree with him, he
absolutely believes in "the recuperative powers of nature," and that
"there were deep, Thoreau-like truths in it" (p. 197). Thus it is not
surprising that his mood brightens considerably as soon as he is out on
255 hls own In the open. An old, deserted cabin on the shore appropriately reminds him of a past "when men had come there to oil their guns in the cold October nights, and drink straight whiskey at dawn through long, silent, womanless weekends of communion with - what?" (p. 201). In spite of the fact that he leaves this question unanswered, the protagonist is aware that, in order to "enjoy things" again and to be
"as alert and centered on the moment as the hawks," his task is "to keep moving and not to think" (p. 202). Like Paul Hobbes, Dan Verger and the leading character of "The Next to the Last Time," the protagonist sees his mind as the main stumbling block that keeps him from living in accordance with the natural order of things:
He longed to get in step, and realized a strange knowledge all at once. Be realized that nothing but his mind was raging; nothing but his mind hungered for anything more than the way things naturally were; nothing but his mind cared a damn about the illusion of human perfection. Everything else was perfect, obedient and at peace, (p. 212)
Although in the end the "natural order of reality" becomes clear to
the protagonist, and although he reaches a state of mind in which he
"seemed to understand everything without thinking about it," growing
"quiet in his soul" (p. 210), Holmes has skilfully avoided the danger
of making his story too programmatic and predictable. In spite of his
temporary bliss, the protagonist has to keep on struggling to stay with
whatever harmony he has found. Thus, thinking "as he thought a Holy Man
might think, somewhere on the Ganges" (p. 209) or picturing himself as
a "Chinese poet" or a "Buddhist sage" (p. 214), he remains painfully
aware that he is always Imagining that he Is somebody else, a habit
256 that is not at all in line with his wanting to live in accordance with nature and with himself. At the end of the story too, when the protagonist not only pays tribute to the river but is already searching for "something he had lost" (p. 216), Holmes stresses the fragility Of all feelings of harmony. This makes "A Little Early in the Day for
Truth" very lifelike and convincing. Moreover, Holmes's careful use of comedy saves the story from becoming ponderous, something which Is apt to happen when a writer treats a semi-religious theme as the one dealt with here. An example of Holmes's fine sense of humour is to be found, for instance, in the scene in which, after the protagonist's anthology of Chinese poetry and his vodka bottle have gone overboard, he is described as seeing "Buddha drifting placidly away, followed by the bobbing bottle, slowly filling with water" (p. 215). All in all, "A
Little Early in the Day for Truth" is a successful story which thematlcally foreshadows both Get Hone Free and some of Holmes's later stories and poems. It Is regrettable that it has never been published.
II
In 1960 Holmes published the first of two stories with Western themes. While the first story, "A Length of Chain," is about America in the post-Civil War days, and while the second story, "The Manifest
Destiny of Mrs. Polk's Sudie," is even more clearly an allegory about
America, these stories are also strikingly personal. Although In "A
Length of Chain" Holmes first saw a connection between "the imagined lives of young, rootless drifters after the Civil War, any war" and the
257 "beat attitude" of many young people after World War Two, when assembling the typescript of L.A. In Our Souls he regretted that the story was "still associated with the Beats," claiming that It was "not meant to refer to them, nor to suggest a metaphor for their attitudes."20 He has stressed, In fact, that "A Length of Chain" was
"an Imaginative re-creation of a post-war mood that I knew In my own life. In my own wound," and has gone so far as to suggest that "the lamed protagonist of the story Is myself, spiritually wounded, but sympathetic to those more desperate or brave."2 2
"A Length of Chain" Is set In a small town In Nebraska where, after having been crippled In the Civil War, the protagonist of the story,
Jim, has gone to live with his Aunt Phoebe and her husband, the town doctor. One day towards evening the doctor is called away because there has been a shooting In a local saloon. When he arrives on the scene of
the Incident In the company of Jim, it turns out that a farmer called
Charley Billings has killed a young man, who lies bleeding on top of
the bar. Several witnesses reveal how earlier that afternoon the man
who is now dead had entered the saloon together with a companion, "two
unkempt, road-dirty punks, strangers to everyone there, looking as much
alike as all that kind of young drifter did, except that this one, the
dead one, seemed to be the leader, and the other one, the tall one In a
ripped range jacket, the follower."23 Soon the dead man, Bense, and his
friend, Whitney, had started to make fun both of the town and the
patrons of the saloon, especially of Billings. After they had provoked
the latter to the utmost, Billings had summoned the two men to leave
town and, when he had seen Sense's hand move suspiciously towards his
back pocket, he had drawn his gun and shot Bense, while Whitney had
disappeared in the confusion. Bense, however, had not been reaching for
258 a gun, but only for a "foolish length of chain,"" which Jim recognizes as the kind of chain that was used to manacle Confederate soldiers when they were taken up North as prisoners of war. Jim realizes that, like he himself, Benβe Is only another victim of the war and, after they have burled him and Jim is walking home with his uncle, he defends
Bense against the doctor's vehement attacks on the wayward behaviour of the young who have survived the war.
In "A Length of Chain" Holmes convincingly contrasts the destructive conduct of angry young men like Bense and Whitney to the conservative attitude of the doctor, Charley Billings and Aunt Phoebe.
While Aunt Phoebe is seen as the typical strong-willed woman pioneer
(who, as the doctor fears. Is going to give him and Jim "proper hell"" if they do not get home in time for dinner), and while Billings is depicted as "a man who only got into town once a week, and toiled alone, dawn to dusk, sober hands down in the dirt, the rest of the time, 1.26 it is especially the doctor who feels baffled by the course of events in Nebraska in recent years: "When I came out here fifteen years ago this was a virgin place, and decent folks like Charley Billings seldom shot a gun or even carried one, except to drive off wolves or to get their meat. And now kids like that, wandering all over, like packs of wild animals...What's happened anyway?" (p. 43).
What has happened of course is that the virgin land has been corrupted by civilization, a development which Holmes skilfully suggests by referring to "the picket fence with the palings" that Jim
"had finally fixed last week" (p. 13), and to "the coils of barbed wire" (p. 14) in front of the hardware store. An essential part of this corruption has been the Civil War, which helped to spoil the paradisal aspects of America and which made many men of Jim's and Sense's
259 generation lose their centre and their feelings of responsibility,
"flocking out here, not to get to anything, but to get away" (p. 43), as the doctor puts It, voicing the same criticism that many people levelled against the Beat Generation after World War Two. In contrast to his uncle, Jim is able to Identify with men like Bense and Whitney, because he has been "a lamed guard, who had taken a bayonet In the calf at Vicksburg, and gotten fever in the bound, and been good for nothing afterwards but shepherding them north to prison" (p. 43), which description seems to incorporate some of Holmes's oim experiences as a male nurse during the Second World War. It Is especially In the passages describing Jim's attempt to Identify with Sense, that Holmes's story takes on a very personal character and that his use of language really comes Into Its own. This is amply illustrated by Jim's reaction when his uncle emphasizes that their town "was a good place before
[Bense] came to it, and Charley Billings had a good life here" (p. 43):
"But, Uncle, he didn't. He had no future anywhere, it seemed to him." He had only the stinging immediacy of whiskey, sharpening the senses; the scented feigning of two-dollar, camisoled girls as lost as he; time's suspension in the steady lope, and the creak of leather, under him; time absorbed Into the lone immensity of widening space the farther west he went - beyond roads, beyond laws, beyond men if need be. Now, the moment: that was all the reality he could stand. And any settled place is always then, yesterday and tomorrow, the weed begetting stalks, the street begetting towns, love begetting children in long unagitated continuity. But there was no place in that for him. (p. 43)
260 The contrast between America's unspoilt West and the civilized East which Is hinted at In this quotation, as well as the theme of the westward moving frontier, are also the subject of Holmes's other
Western, "The Manifest Destiny of Mrs. Folk's Sudle." As Holmes has pointed out, this story began as a dream In 1964, "a dream I put down in a journal on awakening, the image of the huddled figures under the
77 squall-yellow twilight sky being the source.' For more than ten years
Holmes husbanded this idea, wondering whether he might be able to turn it into a novel· When he went through a sudden period of short story writing in early 1975, he finally wrote this story too. As had been the case with The Horn, with which it shares an almost mythical quality, the writing of "The Manifest Destiny of Mrs. Folk's Sudle" was without effort: "It came, the way some works come, at its own pace and with its own tone. There was no anxiety or worry. I followed it where it seemed bound to go with gratitude and trust."28 Like "A Length of Chain," "The
Manifest Destiny of Mrs. Folk's Sudle" reveals Holmes's Interest in
American history: "I read books on the period, on the Indian stuff, and couldn't sleep for the images. I wrote it in a new place, a Just recently-converted-into-a-studlo-bedroom, with a photograph of the final mountain-place towards which the characters were heading in front of me. «29 Holmes has called the story an allegory about America - Innocence, loss, duplicity, hope and despair''^"; it was published in
1977, and remained a personal favourite of his.'
In "The Manifest Destiny of Mrs. Polk's Sudle" Holmes relates what happens to four drifters and a young woman after they leave a town called Independence and head for the West. The four men are a Frenchman called Corbeau, an old trapper called Sam Doggett, a young Blackfoot
Indian called Joe-Jack (who Is the trapper's natural son), and a young
261 nan called Meets. Shortly before leaving town, Meeks has kidnapped Mrs.
Polk's maid, a sixteen-year-old girl called Sudle. This Is not to the liking of the old trapper, who realizes that in the uninhabited country which they are heading for there is no place for a woman. While Sudle herself first hopes that she will soon be able to work her way back to her home town, she quickly adjusts to her new situation, even though she is forced to sleep both with Mee'.-s and with Corbeau. As they progress into areas that gradually grow wilder, the group runs
increasingly into trouble. First, the Frenchman mysteriously disappears while he is hunting for animals that can serve as food. Then, when his horse falls on top of him, Meeks Is wounded and, when he begins to go crazy because of the pain. Is shot by the old man. Sam Doggett himself dies when, during a conversation with Sudie, he makes a rash move and
falls over the edge of an escarpment. Sudie, who has found out that she
Is expecting a child from either Meeks or Corbeau, then travels on In
the company of Joe-Jack, and they finally reach the place that they
were heading for, a big clearing on a lake surrounded by mountains.
Realizing that this Is a perfect spot to build a cabin for the winter,
Sudle relinquishes all hope of returning to civilization, and decides
to settle down with the Indian.
Although at first sight "The Manifest Destiny of Mrs. Polk's Sudie"
seems a rather superficial Western story, it is in fact a highly
successful, many-layered metaphor for Holmes's vision of America. As a
reference to "this war with the Greasers"32 reveals, the story is set
during the Mexican War of 1847-1848. This was an important period in
the history of America, when its "Manifest Destiny" had started to
fulfil itself by a pioneering advance westwards which encroached
gradually upon an ever receding line of wilderness. While the four men
262 in Holmes's story Illustrate the fact that America was and is a pluralistic society, they are in the first place accurately described as victims of a development which, in Holmes's representation of their bad feelings, "was bound to mean cows, and then plows, and then pianos
going across the mountains for Oregon, and then all that town shit
after that" (p. 110).
Of the four men in "The Manifest Destiny of Mrs. Polk's Sudie,"
Holmes's description of Sam Doggett is the most striking. Doggett is
the group's leader In their search for a virgin place where they will
be safe fron society, a place that only he knows about: "I was there
with Jed Smith, for Ashley, in '23, wasn't I? We wintered in one of
them valleys. Up In back, up in the Wlndrivers - shit, Blackfeet won't
even go in there" (p. 110). As this short quotation indicates. Holmes
saw to It that his story presented a historically correct view of life
in the West In the first half of the nineteenth century. Jedediah Smith
and William H. Ashley were in fact among the first of many mountain men
who, from 1822 onward, were drawn to the Rocky Mountains to trap Its
rivers for beaver, the fur of which was a costly commodity used for
making hats. In other respects, too, Holmes's portrayal of Sam Doggett
accurately reflects the kind of life led by the trappers. Thus, when
Holmes stresses the fact that Doggett "knew this goddamn prairie like
he knew his own ass hole" (p. 110), this is in line with the historical
fact that the trappers had an unparalleled knowledge of the geography
of the territory in which they had to eke out a living.
It is historically correct too that, like Doggett, the trappers
tended to adopt Indian clothing, habits, and customs, and that they
often even became "squaw men" by buying Indian wives. Although it Is
not clear whether Doggett actually bought Joe-Jack's mother, he is
263 clearly very proud of hie relation to the Indians: "[Joe-Jack's] Bother was a real fine woman, too. I laid with her a hundred miles north of here, up near the Bltterroot6...and I figure Manitou - that's the spirit of this land, see - must have come up through her from the ground and right on Into me" (p. 155). Especially the last part of this quotation seems to echo Washington Irving'β statement that "you cannot pay a free trapper a greater compliment, than to persuade him you have mistaken hla for an Indian brave."'' Finally, the complaints of Doggett and his companions about "the trade that was 'beavered out'" (p. 110) are In accordance with what happened around 1840, when "both the depletion of beaver and the switch in fashion from beaver to silk hats brought to a close the West of the mountain men."34 Some of the trappers either settled down or later served as army scouts or guides for official explorations; others, like Doggett, were left to make a painful effort to keep up their old ways.
Although the trappers have often been regarded as almost mythic heroes, and although their lives have frequently been romanticized
(sometimeβ by themselves). In reality hardship, frustration and daily grind dominated their routine. This last aspect Is accurately reflected by the family name which Holmes attributed to his trapper, Doggett.
Very suitable too, both as far as their psychology and as far as historical developments are concerned, are the names of Meeks and
Corbeau. The first name appropriately illustrates that Meeks is a mountain man of a later generation, and that he has lost much of the original wildness of men like Doggett. Meeks is, in fact, already much more a trader than a trapper, which is underlined by the fact that he considers Sudie as a piece of merchandise. According to him, the
"[d]amn town owes [them]" (p. 109), so he took Sudle "in payment"
264 (p. 146): "I wanna keep her awhile. They cheated us on the pelts, and
then they cheated us on this here piss-water whiskey, and I'm gonna get sonethln' back for this last tine" (p. 110). While Corbeau's name
Illustrates his practice of "getting neat" (p. 144) for the group, It
also seems to suggest an attitude towards the land which In the eyes of
the others Is too exploitative. This last aspect, apart from Implying
criticism of the Frenchman's habits In natters of love, nay In fact very well be hinted at by Meeks when, after Corbeau has suddenly
vanished, he adnlts that he Is not sorry about the Frenchnan's
disappearance, because he "never cottoned to his morals" anyway
(p. 149).
When, at the end of the story, the three white men have either died
or disappeared, this has mainly been due to Sudie's Influence, even
though she renalns blissfully unaware of the fact. Partly, In the story
Sudle represents America's growth towards a kind of society in which
there would no longer be a place for trappers; in this respect it is
sppropriate that her hone town is Independence, which already in 1820
was looked upon as "the boundary of civilization."35 Of the three nen
it is only Doggett who realizes that Sudle will have a pernicious
Influence on then, and that "[sjhe'd only ruin it when they got there"
(p. 110). However, long before they reach the uninhabited territory
Doggett has in nind, and in fact soon after they have left
Independence, Sudle starts to Impose her will on the trappers who used
to be completely Independent in the past. When, after two weeks in the
saddle, Sudle begins to smell herself, she forces the group to have a
rest so she can take a bath, complaining that the others "sll stink,
too" (p. 144). While she is bathing, Meeks and Corbeau start to argue
about the question who owns Sudle, and again it is her presence which
265 spoils a harmony among the men which was taken for granted In the past·
It is In the wake of this argument with Meeks that Corbeau angrily rides off, probably towards his death somewhere on the prairie.
The deaths of Meeks and Doggett can also be partly attributed to
Sudie's Influence. Because Meeks has to share hie horse with the girl,
It tires more easily· As a consequence, one day when they are "working up a sbaly stretch of high ground, and she was just thinking that she ought to get off and walk," the horse loses Its footing and pitches over, "throwing [Sudie] clear but pinning Meeks under its shattered shoulder bone" (p. 149). After the accident Meeks loses all confidence
In their effort to leave society behind. When he starts to threaten
Doggett, the old man finally kills him. Doggett's own death is even more clearly due to Sudie's presence. Holmes describes how, as they progress deeper into uninhabited territory, "the Old Man said less and
less, as If each mile between him and the last settlements were marked
by an abandoned word" (p. 144). Doggett's behaviour here is in line
with the fact that they are leaving civilization and its socialized use
of language behind. However, after Corbeau has disappeared and Meeks
has died, it is due to Sudle that Doggett suddenly grows voluble again.
After he has boastfully told Sudie about his relationship with the
Indians while they are standing on a steep slope, Sudie realizes that
she does not know his name and asks him for it. Although one would
think that for a trapper like Doggett a name would not be of any
consequence, Doggett decides to answer Sudie, and when he turns to do
so he rushes upon his doom:
He turned too rashly, chuckling, wry, and as he lost hie footing, he said, "Old Sam - Sam Dog-g-e-t-t," suddenly falling away from her down into the white,
266 swirling void below, his thin arms flailing for a hold that wasn't there, and the buckskin hat whipped off his head by the wind, the eagle feathers seeming to spread for an instant as it fluttered after him, like a shot bird, to land off in the spruce scrub, far down there, where he lay broken like a puppet on the rocks. (p. 155)
While Sudie is at first only a victim of circumstances, wondering why they are heading West because "there was nothing out here" and ironically complaining that "they weren't even following the main trail" (p. 110), It is also true that her personality soon begins to go through changes· Appropriately, these start to occur after her shoes have collapsed and Joe-Jack has "cut her a pair of moccasins out of
Ыаск-dyed buckskin" (p. 144). The bath that Sudie takes soon after could be seen as a kind of baptism that initiates her Into the rites of the West, and it is certainly true that when she has "stripped, humming a song to herself," she has to admit that "unaccountably her spirits had lifted" (p. 146). By having come in touch with the wild, Sudie becomes a more independent and assertive person than she was in her home town. This new-found assertlveness already comes out when Meeks and Corbeau are fighting over her, which makes Sudie cry out angrily,
"What about me? What about mei" (p. 148). Shortly after, she decides that, even if she would return to Independence, she "ain't goin' back into service neither; I've settled on thst" (p. 149).
Apart from the fact that from here on Sudie is able to hold her own against the men, Holmes also indicates that she is now "going by
Instinct" (p. 155). Because she Increasingly starts to rely on her instincts, even before she has found out that she is pregnant Sudie
267 starte to worry about Иеекв, In the end even addressing him as
"darlin·" (p. 150). After Meeks has died, Sudle feels as If she has
"gone as crazy as that Old Man" (p. 152), an Indication that In some respects she has become like a trapper herself. Sudle has reached a kind of harmony with life and death which was completely unknown to her before, and which Is revealed when she sees her pony die: "On the second day she watched when the pony went down on Its back legs, staring and gasping, then fell over Into a drift, and died before her eyes, thinking only, 'That's the way It Is. It always looks the same when It comes'" (p. 164). Soon after, when she bas reached the clearing with the Indian, Sudle experiences a kind of death herself and all negative traces of society finally leave her. Taking care to point out that "ber mind wouldn't work" (p. 164), Holmes describes this scene as follows :
She found herself sobbing but couldn't fasten on the reason. She held her feet In her hands, crooning to herself. She noted the Indian cutting branches and building a shelter and thought again, "He ain't human," and then thought, "Maybe I ain't human either," and heard an Idiotic laugh, and recognized It as her own, and passed Into sleep as she fancied creatures rightly ought to pass Into their death, (p. 164)
Sudle Is reborn, however, and wakes "to a sun that blinded the surface of the lake; to a sky as blue and unflawed as heaven Itself should be; to the woodpile the Indian had accumulated; to the delicate, small doe he had hung off a branch and dressed out; and to a ravenous hunger that she knew was life returning" (p. 164). Having finally reached a paradise away from society, Sudle realizes that "she couldn't remember
268 anymore what It was like to he scared. All that seemed so far away"
(p. 165).
Although "The Manifest Destiny of Mrs. Folk's Sudle" Is an allegory, which accounts for some Improbabilities In the plot, Holmes still managed to turn his subject Into a very personal story. This Is not In the first place due to Its style which, though lucid, Is not really representative of Holmes's most characteristic prose, but especially to his striking account of Sudle's growth towards self- sufficiency, which process puts her on one line with such typically
Holmeslan characters as Daniel Verger and the May Delano of Get Home
Free.
Ill
In two stories that he wrote during the seventies Holmes Introduced another character, Roger Ashe, who epitomizes some of his most essential themes. These stories, "At Pompeii" and "Night-Blooming
Cereus," deal with "the relationship between sexual and creative potency" that Holmes felt "is not yet fully explored."-^ Roger Ashe is a poet in his late forties who has had several "critical successes,"
"prestigous lectureships," a "verse play that ran for six months Off
Broadway," and a "succession of grants and awards that had culminated
In the Pulitzer two years ago."37 Feeling that his marriage with his wife of eight years, Miriam, is going wrong, and unable to finish a poem In progress entitled "Burnt Cities," a "long allegory on contemporary civilization as exemplified by the city-under-stress," 38
269 Ashe la atruggllng with an impotence of both a sexual and a creative nature. In this respect, as well as In view of the title of his poem,
Roger's last name la of course not without significance.
'At Pompeii," which came to Holmes "In half-sleep In Naples In
1967,"™ but which was written several years later. Is told from
Miriam's point of view. The story opens with a description of Roger and
Miriam walking through the streets of Pompeii, after having looked at
the famous erotic frescoes in the Lupanare. Having become sexually
aroused In a rather superficial manner, Roger suggests to Miriam that
they could return to their hotel "for a little folderol."*0 Miriam,
however, la put off by the casualnesa of her husband's proposal and
refuses, after which Roger decides to spend the night In the ruins of
Pompeii; this, as he puts it, "might be good for the poem" (p. 20).
After having taken leave of Roger, Miriam la accosted by a street
vendor who sells "cheap reproductions of the winged phalluses that had
obsessed the pleasure-pitched Pompellan Imagination before Vesuvius put
an end to everything" (p. 23). Realizing that the man enjoya having put
her in an embarrassing situation, Miriam decides to buy a particularly
large phallus for a Joke, to present It as a memento to Roger, but also
to disabuse the vendor of "his infuriating aaaumption of her
prudlshness" (p. 23). Back at the hotel Miriam goes to sleep, but she
dreams badly and It la only eleven thirty when she wakes up again with
a start. Thinking that some fresh air might dissipate her dream, she
decides to go out for a walk. Near the ruins where Roger is spending
the night she sits down on a marble bench In the moonlight which seems
to bewitch her and which makes her lie down on the ground, "opening to
the moon as to a lover" (p. 26). Having drifted into unconsciousness
again, she is awakened by the souvenir seller she had met earlier. At
270 first the man seems concerned, but when he realizes that there Is nothing seriously wrong with Miriam, he tries to force her to make love
with him. Although she first defends herself, the same mysterious force
that had made her lie down on the ground now makes Miriam give in.
The next morning, when Miriam and Roger meet at the gates of the
Lupanare and sit down on the same bench that Miriam had sat on the
night before, Roger tells her that he has had a strange experience.
Enthralled by the moonlight, like Miriam had been, he had felt a strong
need to undress and had walked naked through the ruins of Pompeii,
growing Increasingly sexually aroused. Because of what they have
experienced (although Roger does not yet know what has happened to his
wife), Roger and Miriam now feel more open and attracted to each other.
Thematlcally, "At Pompeii" describes again the development from a
feeling of being out of step with oneself to a new acceptance of life.
That Roger Is living in discord with himself is suggested not only by
his last name, but also by the fact that already In the first line of
the story be and Miriam are described as "bickering" (p. 19), and by
his being temporarily unable to write· However, as In the "Hobbee and
Little Orkle'-section of Get Home Free, in "At Pompeii" it is
especially the female protagonist's growth towards harmony which is
brought into prominence. At the beginning of the story, unable to
respond to Roger's advances, Miriam feels "depleted" and "wraithe-
like," regretting that she and Roger at the moment are unable to be
"engrossed, natural. In tune" (p. 24). It is only when she lies down in
the moonlight, shortly before she makes love with the street vendor,
that Miriam suddenly feels changed and renewed: "She felt as lucid, as
opened, as completed, as she had felt with Roger once or twice years
before when sex had smouldered between them" (p. 26). The change that
271 has cone over Miriam is corroborated by Roger's reaction, "but say, don't you look all new this nornlngl" (p. 28), when they meet after
Roger has spent the night in the ruins·
Having 'shed his identity" (p. 28) by taking off his clothes, at
the end of the story Roger is a renewed and happier person too:
He had made peace with Vesuvius. Standing In a westward-running street, it had come to him that the building of a city, and its burning, were not opposed phenomena, after all. The continuum was simply vaster than he had ever imagined. He sat in the Teatro Grande, and fancied he heard all the vanished voices, debating the creeds on which any city rises, seeing, beyond the walls, the southward-sloping earth back into which all cities must fall again. He felt a Joy without reason, he walked on like a spectre, he seemed to have sensed some Lucretlan rhythm, and the fret of tlme- conadousness ebbed away. (p. 28)
Roger's having changed is illustrated by Miriam's reaction to his
apology for rambling on about his own experiences, and not having asked
her yet what has happened to her in the meantime. Roger makes this
apology "with a sudden friendliness that was so different from his
usual solicitude that she pressed his hand" (p. 29). In Mirlaa'a eyes
Roger's suggestion to return to the hotel to make love is now also much
more natural and deeply felt than his proposal of the day before.
Miriam's response, "I got us a gift" (p. 29), is not only in line with
the fact she la now willing to comply with Roger's wishes, but It also
seems to suggest that Miriam holds her experiences of the previous
night responsible for the changes that have come over her and over her
husband.
272 Of the two stories that Holmes wrote about Roger Ashe, "At Pompeii"
is definitely the weakest. This is partly due to the fact that the almost complete transformation that Roger and Miriam go through Is not accounted for in a manner that is entirely convincing. To attribute
their metamorphosis to the influence of the moon or to the fact that
the events in the story take place on Halloween does not really shed a new light on the connections between creativity and sexuality that
Holmes wanted to examine In "At Pompeii." Moreover, Holmes's description of Ashe's writing life Is not always successful. At times
it Is rather hard to sympathlre with a writer who claims that he goes
through "gestation period[β)" (p. 20), whose creativity is looked upon, by his wife, as "the mystery of his work" (p. 20), and who, in the
ruins of Pompeii, is "after emanations, presences, the feel of it"
(p. 19). It Is true that In this last case Miriam's matter-of-fact
reaction, "all I feel Is absences" (p. 19), suggests that Holmes was aware of a certain pomposity in Ashe, but elsewhere that pomposity is
frequently not counterbalanced at all. Still, the writing In "At
Pompeii" has the same personal quality as that of Holmes's Italian
travel essays, which originate from the same period, and Holmes's use
of comedy Is sometimes very attractive indeed. In this respect one
could think of Miriam's turning a reproduction of a large phallus
"round and round, inspecting it as if it were a kitchen utensil"
(p. 23), which description again underlines a certain down-to-earthness
in Miriam that is very different from her husband's attitude, while
Roger's asking his wife if she has seen the moon (not knowing yet what
that very moon has done to her) lends the conclusion of the story a
nicely ironic touch.
273 According to Holmes, the second Roger Ashe-story, "Night-Blooming
Cereus," was written "out of a mood that all writers know - a sudden,
Inexplicable feeling of triste that seems to illuminate perfectly everyday things : "Tou stand in the midst of an afternoon's frivolity, everything urging you towards Joy, and you feel Inexplicably walled-off from It, as did Fitzgerald, prescient enough to admit his sadness because 'nothing would never be so good again."42 The story
came easily, as Holmes put it, except for a reference to Darwin which he felt to be "the pivot on which the story swings."44
In "Night-Blooming Cereus" Holmes describes a "swim and dlnner"- party at a summer house in Connecticut, organized by the lady of the house, Christina Helms, "In honor of her Night-Blooming Cereus - a plant that rarely flourished in Connecticut, and came to blossom no more than once or twice a aummer, and then only for an hour or so, which occurrence is expected to take place during the evening on which the story is set. Among the guests are Miriam and Roger Ashe,
Christina's twenty-three-year-old daughter Karen, and a number of
Connecticut summer-friends of both the Ashes and the Helmses. The story
is told from Roger's point of view and mainly deals with his reflections on and reaction to the events that take place around him.
Walking about among the other guests, Roger worries about the changes
for the worse that have come over him and Miriam, although he has to
admit that physically he is still In good shape, "considering his two
packs a day, his liquor bills, hie stalled marriage, and his 48 years"
(p. 9). One of the reasons why he Is feeling out of sorts is that, when
he and Miriam were getting ready for the party and she had touched him
with some of the intimacy that used to exist between them, he had been
"too distracted by the flabby Images of a poem that wouldn't come to
274 respond" (p. 9). Although Miriam's reaction to his lack of response,
"Not to worry...I'm no panting maiden" (p. 9), had not been alarming,
It had reminded him that there had been a time when his wife had been strongly physically attracted to him; the very fact that that Is no longer so Is only another reminder to Roger of the changes that he regrets but cannot mend. Flirting with the beautiful Karen Helms opens
Roger's eyes still further to the fact that he Is growing old and Is In fact only Interesting to a young woman like Karen because he le a somewhat famous personality-
It Is only when he has become completely entranced by the flowering of the Night-Blooming Cereus that Roger starts to feel better. Because he wants to change Into the warmer clothes that he has put there, Roger enters the bedroom of Christina, whose lover he was for a short period some years before. While he is standing naked in front of a mirror,
Christina, also naked, unexpectedly enters the room. Although the two are first embarrassed, Roger's spirits are further lifted by the warmhearted conversation he has with Christina, after which he decides to take another dip in Christina's swimming pool. Standing naked on the diving board Roger Is sexually aroused by the soft breeze blowing on his body. When he realizes that Miriam is watching him he suddenly feels "like a youth about to show off before a girl he doesn't really know as yet," and does "a perfect Jackknlfe into the pool with his erection" (p. 20).
As in "At Pompeii," the opening of "Night-Blooming Cereus" is dominated by a feeling of sexual and creative impotence. Already In the first line of the story we learn that Roger Ashe is obsessed by the feeling that "his death was closer to him today than it had been yesterday" (p. 8). Ashe soon discovers, however, that it is not so much
275 the fear of death which Is troubling him, but a feeling of utter uselessness:
The heart-panics, the secret rehearsing for the moment when the cancer-verdict was delivered, the long, long thoughts at the funerals of college friends: he knew all that well enough. You lived your death a thousand times after forty, you came to accept It the way you came to accept a boring weekend guest by Sunday afternoon, and eventually you could forget It for months on end. No, this was different. This was like realizing that you had been trekking across a desert, bewitched by the mirage that relentlessly receded ahead of you, while a sandstorm obliterated your tracks behind, (p. 10)
Connected with the feeling of futility expressed In these lines Is
Ashe's temporary lack of sexual Interest In his wife, while Holmes also
stresses the creative crisis that Is bothering his protagonist. In
fact, after mentioning that Ashe has not "written a line with any
muscle in It for almost six months" (p. 10), Holmes clearly links
Ashe's sexual Impotence to his creative sterility when Roger, musing on
his unfinished poem and drunkenly citing to himself lines like "Burnt
cities, oppressive as neglected chances...the ashes quarreling with
God," comes to the conclusion, "Wet wash·..Limp as a - But he side
stepped the Inevitable simile" (p. 11).
Part of Ashe's problem, as It Is for most of Holmes's protagonists,
Is the fact that he Is bothered by a too one-sidedly intellectual
attitude that frustrates his every effort to feel attuned to life: "He
was so damnably inward these days. He seemed to be always speaking out
of some private dialog with himself and remembered his Boston
276 grandmother's famous line - something of a family motto, 'The Lowells may talk to the Cahots, and the Cabots talk only to God. But the Ashes quarrel with him" (p. 15). Although Ashe cannot really communicate with Karen Helms, she Is at least able to draw him out a little, which may partly be due to the fact that Karen prefers not to think, but to meditate, to "Just breathe and do a mantra" (p. 14).
Much more than Karen, the flowering of the Night-Blooming Cereus Is responsible for putting Roger back on the right track. As had been
Soger's conversation with Karen, Holmes's description of the opening of the flower Is of a distinctly sexual nature. By specifying that the flower "had decidedly altered in shape during the twenty minutes that
Ashe had spent with Karen" (p. 16), Holmes suggests that there is a connection between Roger's flirting conversation with Karen and the flowering of the Night-Blooming Cereus. Ultimately both Karen and the plant are Influential in Roger Ashe's finding a new and badly-needed sense of life. While the other guests at the party are quipping slight sexual jokes about the flowering of the plant, Roger remains, as his wife puts it, "night-blooming serious" (p. 18). When the plant Is finally "swaying now as if in the throes of giving birth, as if something primordial and almost obscene was happening within it, a disembodied force of nature urging it to flower," in a sense Roger is also reborn, and It Is clear that his astonished remark about the plant, "the goddamned thing's alive, after all" (p. 16), applies to himself as well.
As in "At Pompeii," at the end of "Night-Blooming Cereus" Roger
Ashe has found a new sense of harmony. Exclaiming to the other guests at the party that "[w]e ought to read Darwin on the earthworms" because
"we're all trapped in the same process, and we don't know anything
277 about it" (p. 17), Roger feels at last part of that process again and no longer an outsider. This feeling is accompanied by a return of his sexual appetite, as becomes clear in the scene in Christina Helms's bedroom when, standing close to Christina,"[h]is penis stirred up a little against her stomach, as if some obstruction had freed itself
(p. 19). Stressing the return of Roger's sexual potency again in the concluding passage of the story, when Roger dives into the pool. Holmes gives a further illustration of his protagonist's new sense of belonging by having him walk towards the pool "with a delighted feeling
that his stride corresponded to a rhythm as primal as a heartbeat"
(p. 20).
"Night-Blooming Cereus" is superior to "At Pompeii" because it has
a more subtle characterization, and because the change that comes over
Roger is at least partly due to his conversation with Karen Helms and
the flowering of Christina's plant, and thus much more convincingly
accounted for than the rather unexpected metamorphosis undergone by
Roger and Miriam in the earlier story. Holmes's combination of serious
subject matter and a recurrent use of comedy is again very attractive,
as is the personal quality of the writing in "Night-Blooming Cereus."
This last aspect comes out, for Instance, In Holmes's successful and,
seeing that the story is set near a river, appropriate use of imagery
connected with water and with shipping. Thus Holmes not only describes
Roger and his friends as having been "heedlessly drifting on the flow
of the years" (p. 9), but is also able to suggest something about
Roger's desperate state of mind by having him observe "a
catboat...trying to sail smartly up to its mooring, missing it on tack
after tack" (p. 8). Later, feeling lost among the partygoers, Roger is
pictured as "safely anchored by the glass in his hand" (p. 12).
278 All In all, the creation of the character Roger Ashe led Holmes to write some of his best prose, and one can only be curious about the role Ashe was to have played In the "complex and difficult novel, called The Qulncy Girls/'46 that Holmes was working on in the late
seventies. In that book Ashe was the narrator and the son of one of
four sisters whose lives between 1900 and 1960 the book was meant to
cover. Holmes has described The Qulncy Girls as "a novel about money
and morals set against the backdrop of the calamitous changes - both
psychological and social - of this century, and, with the two Roger
Ashe-storles in mind, it seems regrettable that he did not complete
this ambitious novel.
IV
All of the eight essays In L.A. In Our Souls have been reprinted in
the three volumes of Selected Essays by John Clellon Holmes.
Outstanding among them is "L.A. in Our Souls," a long essay about Los
Angeles, written at the request of Playboy and published in that
magazine in 1972. The essay describes Holmes's last day of a two
weeks' stay in California, where he has come "to get a firmer
imaginative purchase on the milieu of a novel" based on the premise
that "whatever was going to happen in the America of the seventies was
happening already In Los Angeles."49 Although he tries hard to form a
detached opinion about the city. Holmes has to admit that his
objectivity Is sabotaged by his memories, because both as a boy and as
a young man he spent some time in Los Angeles. Having lived in Pasadena
279 when he was five, Holmes's "personal version of the Great American
Daydream of Innocent, bucolic boyhood" (p. 211) Is In fact centered around Los Angeles· Later, In 1942, after having spent a summer alone
In Los Angeles, the seventeen-year-old Holmes had returned to the East with the conviction that In California be had glimpsed "a new civilization - a leisure-oriented civilization of drive-ins, supermarkets, private pools and casual clothes - an Informal, almost
Mediterranean civilization that had come to him as a vision of Utopian proportions In the hard-nosed reality of wartime America" (p. 221).
However, although Holmes's memories of life in California are paradisical enough, already the earliest ones contain several
threatening elements:
To that boy, California was the voluptuous, bottom-of- the-well odor of an over-lush patio down into which the sun rarely reached, and the hot breath of the Santa Anas strumming the afternoon nerves to an awful pitch. It was a milkshake too thick for a straw, and bungalowed boulevards shimmering off under skeletal phone-poles all the way to the fabled world of Hollywood. It was the hairy legs of a tarantula come upon in a kitchen cupboard, and butter dripping out of a rolled tortilla over the fingers, and all the first stirrings of a body newly aware of its hungers and its ignorance, (p. 211)
This description clearly foreshadows the later corruption that, Holmes
feels, has almost completely concealed the Los Angeles he knew as a
boy:
But In the decades since, another Los Angeles had been super-imposed over this one: the Los Angeles of popular
280 myth - a space-age Sodom, a dream factory, a city that was the doom towards which all America was marching In lock step; a sprawling, smog-stifled, freeway-bisected urban jungle that was as vulgar as a Hawaiian sportshlrt worn outside the eultpants, as ecologically schizophrenic as an oil derrick In Eden, and about as cultured as an astronaut reading Love Story, (p. 212)
The tragic destiny of Los Angeles and the sense of doom and
foreboding of which Holmes la aware all through his stay In the city, are underlined by the threat of the major earthquake for which,
according to "even the most conservative seismologists" (p. 216),
Southern California has been overdue since 1957. Holmes describes how
two months earlier a minor quake had "killed sixty-four people and
dumped Fisher's Furniture Store Into the main street of San Fernando
ten miles away," and how "only six days ago the latest of over two
hundred aftershocks had Injured half a dozen more, tumbled pink cement-
block garden-walls all over Northrldge, and shaken me awake In my
aotel-bed In West Hollywood" (p. 216).
However, the apocalyptic feelings that seem to dominate life In Los
Angeles are for Holmes most clearly personified by Charles Manson,
"accused of complicity In the deaths of seven Angelenos," and
Lieutenant William Calley, "accused of murdering at least twenty-two
Asiatics," whose having been found guilty within hours of each other
had been, as Holmes puts It, the "climax of [his] downtown stay"
(p. 214). In fact, Holmes convincingly connects the threat of a
geological disaster with Hanson's crimes when he mentions how,
"squatting on the sidewalk outside the courthouse," Hanson's followers
are "quietly mad with the certainty that the great quake-to-come would
281 save Charley from the death chamber" (pp. 216-217), and when he describes Hanson as "an advance-agent of those vast psychic and geologic forces that were Inexorably building up towards the ultimate cataclysm" (p. 218). Still, It Is not Just Hanson's and Galley's offences against the law which make Holmes aware of the corruption of life In California, but also the reactions of the Californiana to their trials, whether they be "the outraged voices of Orange County (on a phone-In radio-show) demanding that Calley be awarded the Distinguished Service Cross," or the fact that at the Hall of Justice where members of Hanson's "family" had vowed "to immolate themselves with gasoline if he was convicted," Holmes had found "dozens of cameras at the ready but not a single fire-extinguisher" (p. 214).
The absurdity which is apparent In this last scene is an aspect of Californien life that Holmes comes across time and again during his stay In Los Angeles. It la to be found in the spectacular architecture of the city, for instance:
Fire and water being treacherous elements here, the canyonites had taken to the air, and their houses were cantilevered out over empty space, like those precarious castles that tease the imagination in the illustrations of children's books. On the other side of Mulholland, there was a huge, metallic flying saucer hovering motionless over two hundred feet of nothing. Ten-room chateaus and twenty-room cottages clung, mirage-like, to the sides of slipping arroyos. There were swimming pools that had less purchase on solid ground than the normal bridge, (p. 216)
Holmes notes traces of the same senselessness in the Los Angeles Free Press's "Swiftian proposal that Lt. William Calley execute Charles
282 Manson In the Los Angeles Coliseum on closed-circuit TV, the proceeds to go to charity" (p. 217), and In the encounter he has with two eighteen-year-old girls who are "taking a portable cassette-player to
Hermosa Beach for the day" (p. 226) to "work on their tans" (p. 228), and whom he gives a lift. Seated In the back of Holmes's rented car, the girls discuss "In an easy, casual, chatty flow" (p. 227) the fact that they have run away from home and their suspicion that they both may be pregnant. One of the girls has already had a baby once, having left It and her husband two weeks earlier:
"Oh, yes, I watched my afterbirth come out when I had Cheyenne," the taller one was reassuring the plumper one as we passed the massive, scum-green oil tanks beside the highway in El Segundo where gay borders of panales had been planted along the chain- link fences, and the air stank of chemicals. "It's kind of groovy really - the whole having-a-baby number." "This guy I'm with now is really beautiful," the plumper one replied, seeming not to notice the long pier in Manhattan Beach at the end of which the ominous tankers waited, or the sudden unearthly roar of the Jets climbing out of L.A. International, leaving an ugly-brown trail-stain behind them in the sea air. "But I won't stay with him after June. He's into too many weird scenes...! think I may have the baby, though," she added. "Don't you just dig babies?" (pp. 227-228)
In this scene the contrast between the girls' conversation and the scenery through which they pass, which itself includes strangely contrasting flowers and chain-link fences and sea air polluted by exhaust fumes, again effectively illustrates the absurdity of life in
Los Angeles. This absurdity comes out once more at the end of Holmes's
283 encounter with the girls, when, thanking him for the ride, they claim that it has been "real nice" (p. 228) talking to him, while in fact they have only been talking between themselves.
For Holmes the senseless character of Los Angeles is very much connected with Hollywood, where "the tourists gawked at 'sets' that had been carefully built to resemble real sets" (p. 233). As goes for Los
Angeles and for America in general. Holmes feels that at one time
Hollywood had an unspoilt quality, when it still was "the dream-factory of the twenties and thirties when America's aspirations were as
innocent and hopeful as a youth planning to marry Jean Arthur and
thinking of bedding Jean Harlow" (p. 236). Now, however, Hollywood has become
at once an Assembly-line of Sop, in the form of dozens of hours of inane situation-comedy ground out for TV like sausage meat each week, and the Capital of Raunch where, along Santa Monica Boulevard alone, you could paint a girl's nude flesh for a few dollars an hour, or study her crotch in full-color close-ups in movies made on the out-skirts of Burbank, or have her 'service' you in any one of two dozen massage parlors, or purchase glossy-paper picture-magazines of her eating or being eaten - by men and women and assorted animals, (p. 236)
Despite the absurdity that Holmes has come across everywhere in Los
Angeles, his essay ends on a positive note. Even though at the end of
his trip he has "no sense of completion" (p. 242), and even though the
"heavy, sweetish odor of night-time orange groves was long gone now,
and these days the splendid white beaches were fouled with gobbets of
oil and the carcasses of poisoned terns," Holmes finally has to admit
284 that he admires Los Angeles's energy, "Its gaucherie, lts honeyed nights and salad-dawns, Its very size that was commensurate with something un trammeled In the enormous continent Itself": "For what had built this most American of cities was nothing less than the unfettered and Impatient national genius that often seemed to be foundering In bitterness and confusion back East, and L.A. might turn out to be the last place where Americans had taken a stand and created a mirror-image of their peculiarly complex souls" (p. 243). In the last lines of his essay Holmes wonders whether it might not just be possible "that we could assume the human responsibilities of our own audaciousness," and he concludes by describing how "[э]omething - perhaps a waft of far-off
Pacific salts In the warm night-air - whispered: 'Why not?'" (p. 244).
The conclusion of "L.A. In Our Souls" Is reminiscent of the ending of Joan Didlon's essay "Los Angeles Notebook," in which the author takes a critical look at the quality of life in Los Angeles. After pointing out the apocalyptic character of the weather in Los Angeles and after having gone into various absurdities that are to be heard on the city's all-night radio shows, Didion describes how she is sitting in a piano bar, because "the oral history of Los Angeles is written in piano bars."50 The last lines of her essay are: "I go to a coin telephone and call a friend in New York. 'Where are you?' he says. 'In a piano bar In Encino,' I say. 'Why?' he says. 'Why not,' I say. *
The striking similarity between the ending of "L.A. in Our Souls" and that of "Los Angeles Notebook" suggests that Holmes may have had
Didion's essay in mind when he was writing his own account of life in
Los Angeles. "L.A. in Our Souls" can In fact be read as a reaction not only to "Los Angeles Notebook," but to Didion's essayistlc stance in general. As both the contents of her essays and their often fragmentary
285 structure reveal, Dldlon's main thematic concern Is the disintegration of life In California and America In the sixties and seventies, the
'evidence of atomlzatlon, the proof that things fall apart."5 Although
Dldlon knows that we "live entirely, especially If we are writers, by the Imposition of a narrative line upon disparate Images, by the
'Ideas' with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which Is our actual experience," she has come to "doubt
the premises of all the stories I had ever told myself""; -χ was meant to know the plot, but all I knew was what I saw: flash pictures In variable sequence. Images with no 'meaning' beyond their temporary arrangement, not a movie but a cutting-room experience.""* Dldlon's
Inability to come to terms with disorder lends her essays a sense of hopelessness that also informs the ending of "Los Angeles Notebook."
Dldlon's question, "Why not," is in fact not so much a real question as
a poignant admission of defeat.
The "Why not?" at the end of Holmes's essay, on the other hand, is
a genuine and even hopeful question. As the affirmative note on which
his essay ends suggests. Holmes is unwilling or unable to give up his
belief In a sense of order. Unlike Joan Didion and in spite of the many
absurdities he has witnessed in Los Angeles, Holmes still believes in
what Didion calls "the narrative's intelligibility."55 This is
illustrated by the structure of "L.A. in Our Souls," which is based on
a number of contrasts. Holmes sets off Innocence against corruption,
the paradisal Los Angeles of some of his early memories against the
"Paradise Lost" (p. 212) of today. Reflecting on the contrast between
past and present, in the course of his stay in California it becomes
clear to Holmes that Los Angeles is "a city of Now, a city without
tenses, on which the past exerted little or no drag" (p. 222).
286 Connected with this opposition of periods of time are the contrasts between mind and body, East and Vest, which are also frequently taken up In Holmes's essay. As one sun-bathing Inhabitant of Los Angeles,
"wearing a pair of portable stereo-earphones, with ten-Inch antennae, that made him look like a large nut-brown Insect, tuned Into the inaudible static of Interstellar space," puts It to Holmes: "You people back East are Involved with tomorrow, with the mind. We're involved with the body, with today" (p. 216). More or less the same contrast between East and West comes out in the statement of a sociologist, whom Holmes quotes as having said, "New Yorkers are ulcerous, Angelenos orthopedic...the difference between brooders and act-outers, mullere and maniacs" (p. 222).
The often painful discrepancy between mind and body that Informs most of Holmes's work. In 'L.A. in Our Souls" comes out In a strong concern to reach physical and spiritual wholeness. It is with a distinct sense of longing that Holmes describes the surfers of Los
Angeles, who
paddled out, waited, gauged the swell, missed it and waited again - finally to be rewarded by fifteen pure seconds of the surrender of the Self to a tidal rhythm, the body energized by its brief moment on the wave's crest, rushing downwards - loosed, free - towards the brink of a state before consciousness, that primal state we had lost when water ceased to be our element. (p. 229)
This aspect, as well as the essay's characteristic prose, lends a very personal quality to what Is also a searching and scintillating account of Callfornlan life. Frequently, in fact,"L.A. in Our Souls" reaches
287 the same high level of the best of Holmes's travel essays In Walking
Away from the War.
V
Among the seven remaining essays In L.A. In Our Souls Is "The
Huckleberry Party," a statement about America's national character
which Holmes began In 1958, finally completed In the Bicentennial year,
1976, but which was only published for the first time In Displaced
Person. In the essay, the title of which refers to Thoreau who,
according to Emerson, "[i]nstead of engineering for all America...was
the Captain of a huckleberry-party,"56 Holmes searches for what makes
up the American identity. As in his essay about Los Angeles, he reaches
the conclusion that what Is perhaps most typically American is the
sense of "limitlessness" (p. 255) that is expressed by the "essential
American question...'Why not?'" (p. 240). As a kind of "comic
embodiment" of that limitlessness Holmes regards the "recurrent and
mysterious line, 'I'm off to the Grampian Hills'" (p. 255), spoken by
the actor W.C. Fields in his film comedies.
Fields is the subject of another of Holmes's essays, "Uncle Willy,"
written in 1963 and 1964, and first published in 196Θ.57 Holmes had
already written about Fields in "A Decade of Coming Attractions," later
incorporated in Nothing More to Declare, and some passages are to be
found both in the earlier essay and in "Uncle Willy." This goes, for
Instance, for Holmes's statement that "Burroughs, in particular,
reflects the Fieldsian accent and point of view, and Naked Lunch Is
288 probably the «ay Fields would have rewritten 1984 had he lived."
However, while "A Decade of Coning Attractions," as this quotation also suggests, deals extensively with the Influence of film, and not just of
Fields, on the writers of Holmes's generation and the generation before him, "Uncle Willy" focusses on Flelds's life and on his sardonic world view, which Holmes sees as embodying an alienated but unsentimental and totally pragmatic attitude towards life that has "grown more potent In our minds since he, and It, have passed from the scène."" The very fact that In "Uncle Willy" he treated Fields as "a philosopher, rather than merely a comedian," according to Holmes delayed publication of the essay until 1968, when Fields had become a cult-figure and his qulrklsh view of life was finally regarded as "an accepted aspect of his eccentric genius."
Although both "The Huckleberry Party" and, especially, "Uncle
Willy" have fine qualities. It Is particularly In a number of essays dealing with literature that one la once more able to trace Holmes's development from the use of a relatively uncharacteristic style towards the creation of outstanding, highly personal prose. Both the personal and the impersonal aspects of Holmes's art are to be found in "The
Broken Places: Existential Aspects of the Novel," written at the request of the Chicago Review and published in that magazine in
September 1959. In this essay Holmes discusses the difference between religious and atheist existentialism, and investigates the Influence of existentialism in the work of such novelists as Hemingway, Sartre,
Nelson Algren and Jack Kerouac. As Holmes puts it, the "contemporary existentialist equation, according to Kierkegaard, might be crudely written thus: at the bottom of human life is meaninglessness; at the bottom of meaninglessness Is anxiety; at the bottom of anxiety is
289 despair. But at the bottom of despair is faith."61 Adding that in this equation Sartre would change the last word to freedom. Holmes claims that what is wrong in atheist existentialism is "a subtle change (at the crucial moment) from subjectivity to objectivity": "At the exact instant that despair gives rise to the longing for faith, the atheist existentialist pulls back and ceases to be a living man, philosophizing, and becomes a philosopher, studying life as if he was not, himself, embroiled in it" (p. 162). Consequently, Holmes feels that "Sartre's novels often seem brittle and contrived because he will not allow his characters to pass into the final phase of the equation"
(p. 163).
Holmes is of the opinion that Nelson Algren and Jack Kerouac are more relevant novelists than Sartre because they are less objective
Chan the French writer. "Algren'β books approach the last stage of the equation," Holmes writes and, referring to the protagonist of The Man with the Golden Arm, he adds that "Algren knows, as Sartre denies and
Hemingway won't admit, that there is nothing for Frankie Machine to do,
in his despair, but kill himself, or become a New Man" (p. 166). This
final phase of Kierkegaard's equation is even more exclusively dealt
with in Kerouac's novels, in which the characters, like Algren's,
"escape into sheer existentialist experience itself" (p. 170). However,
Holmes concludes that, unlike Hemingway or Sartre or even Algren, who
"stop short, or short-circuit the last connection," Kerouac remains
"subjective (and consistent) to the end: the realization that only
spiritual convictions will sustain a living man, and illuminate the
darkness of his life" (p. 170-171).
While writing "The Broken Places: Existential Aspects of the
Novel," Holmes decided "to hint rather than declare, to suggest rather
290 than to declaim. As a consequence of this approach, which seemed to him "the proper existentialist way to approach the subject," the
essay became a very Interesting combination of what Is still a
relatively objective, academic argument and Holmes's often extremely
personal comments· These comments, which alternate with the general
argument of the essay, consist of quotations from Unanumo, Allen
Ginsberg and Nljlnsky, but also of a very private admonition such as
the following:
Slogans over a writing-desk: Stand in humility before all human life. Stand loose in your artistic Jacket. Believe in yourself; for man, namely ourselves, Is all we really know. Everything else Is only rumor. Add dally to the heap. Address your sentences to a friend you trust. If you know any prayers, say them. (p. "0)
Interestingly, the combination of objective and subjective elements In
"The Broken Places: Existential Aspects of the Novel" Is very much in
line, not only with the argument of the essay, but also with Holmes's
development as a writer, which by 1959 was already moving in the
direction of a greater subjectivity.
Ten years later Holmes wrote an essay about the writer Seymour
Krim, whose development can in many ways be compared to that of Holmes
himself. Even though the two knew each other only superficially, Holmes
had been aware of Krim's activities as an essayist and anthologist ever
since Krim's emergence on the literary scene in the late forties. Krim
was born in New York City In 1922. After dropping out of the University
of North Carolina, he returned to New York and came in contact with a
group of Greenwich Village intellectuals who greatly Influenced his
291 thinking. In 1947 he started to review books for the New York Times
Book Review. Krim also wrote for such Journals ss Commentary, Partisan
Review and the Hudson Review, and for eight years he produced the highly formal, analytical literary criticism that was fashionable at the time. Increasingly, however, he found that this kind of writing was completely at odds with the strong need he felt to articulate his own experiences. After having recovered from a serious mental breakdown In
1955, and under the Influence of the then emerging work of the Beat writers, Krim began to write deeply personal essays that are all characterized by his belief In "the primacy of personal revelation and the need to raise to the level of art the journalistic description of real-life events."6* In 1961 Krlm's Views of a Nearsighted Cannoneer was the first collection of his more recent essays. The year before he had edited an anthology of Beat writing. The Beats, that also testified
to his preference for liberated writing and which Included "The
Philosophy of the Beat Generation" by Holmes, whom Krim characterizes
as "sort of conservative ballast to the high cats who walled the first
notes for the [Beat] movement," and as having brought "a New England
temperament to Harlem, so to speak."65 In the sixties Krim continued to
write highly Individual essays, mainly exploring the relationship of
the contemporary writer to America's moral and political climate. When,
In 1970, a collection of these essays was published, entitled Shake It
for the World, Smartass, Evergreen Review asked Holmes to review the
book, but to write In his article also about his "now-and-agaln
association with Krim, and about the cultural scene In New York In the
1960s."66 Holmes's review was published under the title "From One
Smartass to Another" in July 1970; In Passionate Opinions Holmes titled
the same essay "The Mailer Decade: Seymour Krim Reporting."
292 In hls article Holmes first takes a look at Krlm's development as a writer. For Holmes, Krlm's Views of a Nearsighted Cannoneer has become
"a landmark of sorts," because "[t]o some of us, »ho schemed and tolled on the literary scene In the late forties and fifties, no more de- mythologlzlng account of those bleak and muffled years has so far been written."^ Claiming that the "Intellectual scene In those days had all the constipated grace of a heel-and-toe-er who has been over-tollet- tralned," and referring to the reaction of the early Beat writers to the artistic climate, Holmes writes that "[sjome of us fled to the streets for relief - to Harlem and Times Square, to jazz clubs and movie balconies, to the pads of hipsters and crazies and junkies: anywhere that a free, vivid, dangerous, and authentic lifestyle was still unfolding" (p. 233). Krlm's first book made Holmes aware that
"Krim, too, had been living a double life during that time," and that
[i]nslde the critic Krim, who wrote for most of the accredited reviews, there had been another Krim all along, a sort of nlghtslde Krim who stole off to 125th Street bars to score for various kicks, who knew the glossy-photo dene along 42nd Street where out-and-out prurience was your ticket to the show, whose growing Inability to play any of the accepted roles of the time led to his 'actual goodbye-world fllpout In 1955,' and who finally managed to get free of his personal and Intellectual hells long enough to fling down dense, word-mad, often maniacally-Insightful accounts of various aspects of New York's psychic tenderloin. (pp. 235-236)
It Is especially Holmes's description of Krlm's "double life" that is reminiscent of Holmes's own development. Holmes's depletion of Krim
293 as "a troubled and perceptive man, whose appetites and nerves were entirely too avaricious and too tense to endure the cautious snobberies and deadening hauteurs that characterized pre-Beat literary life in New
Tork" (p. 236) is a description that could be applied to the young
Holaee as well. Moreover, like Krim, Holmes had been "wrestling with himself for years" (p. 236) to find an individual writing style, and
the discrepancy between the earlier, objective, and the later, much
more subjective and personal Holmee Is a contrast that distinguishes
Seymour Krim too:
...all the time that he had been turning out those intelligent, well-crafted, thoughtful essays on Dreiser, Wolfe, Whitman, and others (a radical enough enterprise at a time when the young critic was supposed to cut his teeth on the long-meatless bones of Eliot, James, and Kafka), he had been bursting to vault right out of his own overstuffed head, to howl like an Indian instead of mewling like a cowboy, to break through the cadaver-like rigidity of a style that could embalm its subject but not resurrect it in the reader's life, and somehow sink a hook into the real red meat of his own personal New York nights and days: all that fierce mix of madness, jazz, erotic fantasy, ego-bruise, exacerbated Jewishnees, and fevered ambition that constituted the larger reality in which he had been making his theretofore timid plsy. (p. 236)
The eagerness to enter "reality" and "life, the streets, the
tangible, random world" (p. 236) which Holmes sees as characteristic of
Krim, is an aspect of Holmes's own personality as well, and one that is
found in some of his most typical characters. It was this same
eagerness which, when he noticed it in Krim upon meeting him for the
294 first time at a publisher's party for The Beats In 1960, Immediately attracted Holmes to Krim, whom he describes as "an observer hungry to participate" (p. 238). It is well-nigh Impossible to think of a better phrase to sum up Holmes's own personality as a writer and that of some of the key figures In his books.
Stylistically, 'The Mailer Decade: Seymour Krim Reporting" is one of Holmes's most excitedly written and risk-taking essays. This may partly be due to Holmes's affinity with Krim and his work. Some of the
"word-mad" (p. 236) quality of Krim's prose, which Holmes aptly typefles as "a frenetic, neon-lit, fly-now-pay-later prose" (p. 239), is definitely to be found, for instance, in Holmes's description of the literary magazines of the late forties and early fifties:
For the most part, the little magazines were graveyards In which larger and more ornate headstones were erected every month over the empty graves of long-dead writers, and the political dialogue in the leftist journals Induced the eerie feeling that one was overhearing Macbeth's three witches simultaneously reading different chapters from Marx's Anti-Diihrlng in eighteen feet of mushroom soup. (p. 235)
However, both here and elsewhere in his review, Holmes stays on the safe side of a stylistic freedom that sometimes endangers the readability of Krim's own prose. Consequently, despite a possible liberating influence of Krim on Holmes, "The Mailer Decade: Seymour
Krim Reporting" is still a very personal essay, not only as far as its contents are concerned, but also in view of its style. In fact, its fluid use of language accurately fits both the subject matter and the subjectivity that Holmes had reached in his work during the sixties.
295 The typescript of L.A. In Our Souls contains three Beat-related essays. "The Beat Poets: A Priser" was written In 1974 at the request of the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts; It was printed that same year In the museum's catalogue for an exhibition Illustrating the relations between
the various arts In the fifties and early sixties. The essay Is a
valuable short Introduction to the origins, the development and the
nature of the literary work of the Beat Generation. Even though Holmes
never once refers to himself In the entire essay, "The Beat Poets: A
Primer" once more reveals his affinity with the Beats, especially with
their aiming at "the re-connection of broken circuits," and with their
insistence on the notion that "body, mind, and soul are enmeshed. °
Holmes's strong connection with the Beats also comes out in "Neal
Cassady: The Gandy Dancer."69 This short memoir was written in late
1979 at the request of Ken Kesey, who asked Holmes if he would write an
article or story about Neal Cassady for a special issue about Cassady
of Spit In the Ocean, a seven-issue literary journal published
intermittently by Kesey and Ken Babbs.'" The notion to write about
Cassady, about whom "[s]o much had been written, so much
apostrophizing," did not please Holmes at first, and he had "no
Intention of analyzing a vivid memory of two decades before." One
day, however, he "sat down and started to wing, In sequence, the
important times with Neal. 72 Because at the time he was away from his
house in Connecticut, Holmes had no Journals or correspondence to which
he could refer, but "the piece started to flow, and I followed it.
In "Neal Cassady: The Gandy Dancer" Holmes returns to some episodes
which he also dealt with in Go and which concern his first meeting Neal
Cassady between Christmas and New Year's Eve of 1948. However, while in
296 Go Holmes places the events surrounding Cassady'в arrival In New York
In summer. In the memoir he sticks closer to the facts. Moreover, while some of the events, such as Cassady's Immediately borrowing money from
Holmes and hie finding work as a parking lot attendant, found their way both Into the novel and the memoir, In the latter Holmes also describes some other occurrences In Cassady's life. These Include
Cassady's first meeting with his second wife, Diana Hansen, his first trip to California In the company of Jack Kerouac, and, after Kerouac had returned to New York, his reappearance In the city to pick up
Kerouac for another trip across the country. (Holmes's piece ends with an evocation of Cassady's death from overdose and exposure on a lonely stretch of railroad track In Mexico In 1967.) All of these episodes are also dealt with In On the Road, and consequently "Neal Cassady: The
Gandy Dancer" offers an Interesting alternative to Kerouac's presentation of the same events. This goes In particular for the difference between Kerouac's and Holmes's reaction to Cassady and
Cassady's way of life. While Kerouac, as On the Road shows, was able to respond to Cassady's spontaneity and his frenetic hunger for new experiences. Holmes was always "a little 111 at ease" with Cassady, as
If the latter was "woo[ing]" him "towards a breakthrough I was uncertain of." As his memoir reveals, there was an Irreconcilable difference between Holmes's "more settled. Inmost character" (p. 205) and the personality of Cassady, whom Holmes describee as "so absolute a connection between mind and body that the room vibrated with the schemes he needed to elude the Big Drag that might be catching up"
(p. 202).
Despite the unbridgeable gap between Holmes and the archetypal Beat hero, "Neal Cassady: The Gandy Dancer" Is Holmes's only real, and
297 successful, attempt at combining Kerouac's spontaneity and Ginsberg's catalogues of associations, each Introduced by the word "who" as "a base to keep measure, return to and take off from again onto another streak of Invention."75 At the ваше tine, however, Holaes's own voice and personality are clearly to be detected throughout this aovlng tribute.
The last essay In the typescript of L.A. In Our Souls is "Gone In
October," an article about Jack Kerouac's death and funeral that was published In Playboy In 1973. In 1985 Holmes collected this essay
together with three other essays and a роев about Kerouac in a small book, entitled Gone In October; Last Reflections on Jack Kerouac. Apart froa the long title essay, the book includes "The Great Rememberer," reprinted froa Nothing More to Declare, and the shorter essays "Hocks
In Our Beds" and "Tender Hearts In Boulder."'" In "Rocks In Our Beds"
Holmes takes a look at his and Kerouac's common New England background.
He reaeabers their discovery that, alles apart and unbeknownst to each other, they once walked along two connecting rivers (Holmes along the
FeBlgewasset River, Kerouac along the Merrimack) on the same night after the big 1936 flood that Inspired Kerouac's Doctor Sa», α
coincidence that later strengthened the bond between them.'' However,
referring to a letter from Kerouac in which he (inaccurately. Holmes
feels) compared himself to Thoreau and his friend to Emerson, Holmes
also points out once more the essential difference between Kerouac and
hiaself: "Like Emerson, he had a taste for the arcane and mystical;
like Thoreau, I had an equal taste for logic and clarity. He was given
to pithily-stated apothegms like Emerson. I tended to see things,
7Я0 Thoreau-like, in terms of irony."' "Tender Hearts in Boulder" is a
lively impression of the Kerouac Conference at Boulder, Colorado in
298 1982, which celebrated the silver anniversary of the publication of On the Road. These two essays open and close Gone in October. In his
Introduction to the book Holmes explains that the order In which the essays are presented Is deliberate, and meant to reflect the long process of resigning himself to Kerouac'в death.
After returning from Kerouac'e funeral In October 1969 Holmes wrote an entry In his Journal, "simply recording the simple facts of those days,"7' that would ultimately become the title essay of Gone In
October and, next to "The Great Rememberer," the most striking piece In the book. Originally the journal entry was almost twice as long as the later published version. Holmes sent copies of the entry to a few friends, but at the time he did not really consider turning It into an essay. However, when In the early seventies the myths surrounding
Kerouac and the "bad reportage" about him accumulated. Holmes
Increasingly felt the need to "clear the record."80 In the spring of
1972 he finally turned the journal entry Into the essay as It was published: "It was painful. I bad loved the man, and love doesn't die along with its object. I cut a lot of details, and added some perspective. I tried to trim It to Its bone and yet preaerve the emotional flow."81
"Gone In October" describes, In moving detail, Kerouac's funeral and the feelings of loss and bewilderment among his family and friends.
The first of the essay's three parts concerns the day after Kerouac's death, when Holmes and his wife drive down to New Haven to attend a poetry reading by Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso and Peter Orlovsky at
Yale University, after which they all return to Holmes's house In Old
Saybrook to spend the night. Although Holmes's account of Ginsberg's reading and of the reaction of the students to Kerouac's death Is
299 certainly of Interest, what Is Boat striking In this part of the essay
Is the old contrast that It suggests between Holmes and his more
"genuinely beat" friends, which contrast Is Illustrated by the eye catching difference in their outward appearance. Ginsberg, for
Instance, has a "ringleted, Karl Marx beard spread out benignly on
[his] chest," while his "done of balding forehead" gives him "the look of a worldly Talmud scholar who had retired to the Negev.
Furthermore, "Gregory squatted on his heels In an enormous, George Baft overcoat, working on a tumbler of sherry, and Peter, now become a grizzled wrangler of bitter winters In upstate New York, stared silently out from under the three-Inch brim of a hat of day-glo red"
(p. 158). In contrast to Corso and Orlovsky, Holmes Is much more conservatively dressed, and when Ginsberg comes over to greet Holmes, significantly standing somewhat aside, he says: 1 hardly recognized you In your tweedy-professor disguise" (p. 158), which seems to suggest a difference between himself and Holmes that goes deeper than the
clothes themselves. As If Holmes resents this distance between himself and the other Beats, In his essay he protests against Ginsberg's
description, claiming that "actually [he] had on a red flannel shirt
and a corduroy suit" (p. 158).
In the second part of "Gone In October," which deals with the
preparations for Kerouac'β funeral In Lowell, the bond between Holmes
and his Beat colleagues has been firmly re-established. Now, In fact,
there seems to exist a contrast between the group consisting of Holmes
and his friends on the one hand, and on the other Kerouac'β relatives,
especially those of his Greek wife, Stella Sampas. While the Sampases
are able to give In to their need "to weep, to laugh, to touch, to
help,"Holmes experiences both his own and hie friends' reactions to
300 Kerouac'β death as very Inadequate; to him their "Individual attempts at understatement seemed a pathetic psychic orphaning" (p. 172). The same contrast between spontaneous emotion and the controlling mind Is suggested when Instead of freely enjoying the food that Is generously and copiously offered them by the Sampases, Holmes and his friends remain "occupied with the thought that we hadn't thought of flowers"
(p. Π2).
"Gone In October" ends. In Its third part, with a description of
Kerouac's funeral, at which, as he has been the previous day. Holmes Is disturbed by those who keep suggesting that he will be the right person to write Kerouac's biography. The Idea of writing an objective and critical study about his friend actually revolts Holmes and It Is
Immediately clear to him that he will never write such a book. Still, as "Gone In October" shows time and again, Holmes sometimes needs only a few lines to capture the essence of Kerouac's life and art. What the essay also reveals once more, In very personal terms. Is the enormous
Impact that Kerouac has had on Holmes, both as a friend and as a writer.
301 Chapter Nine
POKTRT
Even more clearly than In his prose, Holmes's development towards a personal style Is to be detected In his poetry. Like many authors, he started to write poems long before he began to attempt to express himself In prose. According to Holmes himself, he wrote his "first
poeas of any Interest at all when [he] was thirteen," even publishing
"one or two in local New Jersey newspapers." After he had enrolled at
Columbia University in the fall of 1945, he not only began work on a
first novel that was never completed. Rites of Spring, but also
continued to write poems, "sometimes at a rate of one per day."' These
early poems owe a great deal to Yeats and, under the influence of the
New Criticism, they are highly formal and cerebral, strongly affected
by Elizabethan and metaphysical poets such as Wyatt, Donne, Nicholas
Breton and Christopher Smart. In this respect, although Holmes was more
skilful at the use of orthodox metres and rhymes, his early poems are
not unlike the poems that Allen Ginsberg wrote before 1950, which have
been described as "decorative, overwritten, full of conceits and poetic
diction...all in the style of the sixteenth and seventeenth century
•л mystics and sonnetteers.' However, while around 1950 under the
influence of William Carlos Williams's aesthetics Ginsberg gave up
trying to use an Elizabethan voice and was able to relax into a more
spontaneous style, the much more cerebral Holmes was unable to do so
for some time to come.
302 The cerebral, objective quality that characterizes Holmes's early poems already typefles his first poem to come out In a well-known literary magazine, "To Frau Von Stein, My Brother's Keeper," which was written In early 1948 and published In Partisan Review In May of that year. As Holmes has stated, the title of this poem refers to the woman with whoa Goethe had "a long and Intimate correspondence" that was not unlike the epistolary relationship Holmes himself had In the late forties with a woman whose Initials were M.B.K., "which accounts for the second phrase of the title."* This woman, whose first name was
"Mira" according to the dedication of the poem, was also the model for
Liza Adler In Go. In "The Forties" Holmes described the same woman as
...that girl student, that dark-browed Nastasya Phllllpovna, but once removed from rickety Russian village stiles, in plaid slacks on Morningslde Heights (stockings on under the slacks, a fact on which I brooded hungrily), her moist slash of mouth full of the words of a passionate, quirky mind, full of dialectics and transferences, who was 'sick' and couldn't walk through the streets anymore, whose 76th Street door I haunted through a chilly postwar winter (married though we both were).
Although, as both £o and "The Forties" reveal, Holmes's relationship with Mira was deeply emotional, in "To Frau Von Stein, My
Brother's Keeper," his attitude is extremely detached. This aloof quality is Illustrated by the fact that, as the title already indicates, the narrative voice in the poem is supposed to be that of
Goethe, who refers to Holoes as "my brother," and who addresses Mira as
"you." As a consequence of this device. Holmes himself Is alluded to In the third person, which thoroughly distances him from the experiences
303 underlying the poem:
Some postman rings but never sees you either. Tou pick up letters, then take coffee or a class, reading the« on a step soaevhere who keep my brother
when you read. Tou carefully wade his nerve's morass, seeking an upland in the words, a solid stone, but reach no neural bog you cannot deftly pass.
As suggested by these first two stanzas of 'To Frau Von Stein, My
Brother's Keeper," which goes on to investigate Holmes's relationship
with Mira, the poem was written in terza rima, the verse form composed
of iambic tercets rhyming aba beb, etc. that was invented by Dante for
his Divine Comedy (which was to have a strong thematic influence on Co
and its sequels) and that in the twentieth century has been used, among
others, by Auden, another poet who heavily influenced Holmes's early
work. Although, by using terza rima here, Holmes could objectify his
private experiences even further, be was not able to come up to the
great demands of the form throughout the entire poem. It is in fact
only the first line that is in complete accord with the form as
introduced by Dante· In the next two lines and in those of the
remaining seven stanzas, as well as in the concluding line of the poem,
Holmes generally uses more than the eleven syllables which terza rima
allows. Moreover, as the two stanzas quoted above also show. Holmes
sometimes seems to have trouble finding rhymes (which can be attributed
to the fact that English is less rich in rhyme than Italian), and
throughout the poem he repeatedly resorts to assonance and consonance
instead of pure rhyme. These impure rhymes, which are to be found in
several of Holmes's early poems, provide some relief from the tight
304 structure of the poem, however, and they certainly do not harm it.
Unfortunately it is less easy to be positive about the rhythmical quality of the poem. While its metre is predominantly Iambic, the second line of the seventh stanza, for instance, seems to have an oddly forced quality:
Or are you what you are - the simple cool remark encased In understanding that he rav'nously reads and angers at or loves, which leaves its medical mark?
One could still make a case for this line, however, as the elliptical
"rav'nously" aptly underlines the greediness with which Holmes awaits
Mira's every single word. On the other hand, the unevenness of lines such as
you water whimsy and digest the purgative pun and, from the poem's first version,
He thinks you wishfully up when passion makes him plead' does not seem functional at all. In fact, in the later version of "To
Frau Von Stein, My Brother's Keeper," Holmes changed the last line to:
He conjures you when passion makes him plead which suggests that he may have been aware of some of the defects of his poem.
In spite of its defects. Holmes valued "To Frau Von Stein, My
Brother's Keeper" highly enough to incorporate it In Death Drag, a
305 selection of hls poems, both early and late, that came out In 1979, while the two other poems that he published In literary magazines In
19A8, "Fear In the Afternoon" and "Love and Chemistry," appear neither
In Death Drag nor In Skinning £ Deer, a typescript which Holmes put
together in the early eighties and which contains all of his poems up
to that time that he cared to retain. Still, in some ways "Fear in the
Afternoon" and "Love and Chemistry" are more contemporary and relevant
than "To Frau Von Stein, My Brother's Keeper."
According to Holmes's comment on the poem in Richard Ardinger's An
Annotated Bibliography of Works by John Clellon Holmes. "Fear in the
Afternoon" is, like "To Frau von Stein, My Brother's Keeper," also
related to his love for Mira: "Married, going to Columbia on the G.I.
Bill, I was in love with somebody else's wife - M.B.K. in fact. The
triste of the times - of post-war get-along - was in me· Also I'd
discovered internal rhyme. "Fear in the Afternoon," which was written
in 1947, also consists of three-line stanzas (three, to be precise),
the end rhyme of which is even more consistently impure than that of
"To Frau Von Stein, My Brother's Keeper":
Watched and sleeping all the sodden afternoon, Listened until the creeping song began to moan And sleeping stealthy sang along but did not mean.
And the slow blinds so drawn against the sun, Or the sly yawn that signifies one's really sane, And the clouds that fawn on sky and gather soon.
All this blots out the ancient ruined wall, The twilight flute, the incense, and the Druid wail, And this is NOW, and all, though final, still is well.9
306 This poem, which is rather cryptic but revealing of Holmes himself
as well, has the same objective and impersonal quality of "To Frau Von
Stein, My Brother's Keeper." As in that poem, this impersonal aspect,
partly due to the fact that the poem Is not written in the first or
third person, is in line with the poem's content, which in "Fear In the
Afternoon" concerns the creation of a defence against new, disturbing
experiences· The unsettling character of these experiences is
effectively emphasized by the consonance of the end rhyme, and
connected with "the ancient ruined wall, / The twilight flute, the
incense, and the Druid wail" which are mentioned in the third stanza.
However, in the first stanza these elements are already announced by a
"creeping song" that begins to "moan." Instead of wholeheartedly
responding to this song, the person described in the poem only sings
along furtively; he does not "mean," but guards himself by drawn
blinds, a sly yawn and gathering clouds. This armature allows him to
hold on to the present, and gives him the illusion that everything,
even though "final," is still all right.
Although the impersonal character of "Fear in the Afternoon" makes
it a hazardous undertaking to explain the poem completely in
biographical terms, seeing the defence of the self it deals with one
can hardly avoid a connection with the character armour that, for
instance, Paul Hobbes in Go is both battling against and dependent
upon, as it shields him from the lifestyle of his Beat friends, which
is at the same time threatening and attractive to him. When Holmes
wrote "Fear in the Afternoon," he had not yet met either Kerouac or
Ginsberg, and both the poem's form and its subject matter show that in
1947 he was not at all prepared for the "Druid wail" that would
characterize the later work of such a typical Beat poet as Ginsberg
307 (whose "Howl" was in fact re-tltled "Wall" by Kerouac In The РЬагша
Вше).
The same conflict that Informs "Fear In the Afternoon," a conflict
caused by a liberating force from outside trying to enter a place where
frustration and restriction rule. Is also found In "Love and
Chemistry·" This poem, however. Is much less objective, both because of
Its use of a definite, first person narrative voice, and because Its
setting has become more naturalistic:
The water on the circular rings of the electric plate Bolls and on the pan the moisture springs In clots Pellucid. Outside the rain Is rivers in the lots.
Watching it, love simmers in my heart, corrodes my loin, But as I make the tea I see the heated stain Of steam upon the wall, and on the window, rain
That once was steam and once, unoxidized before That, water. Now my fingers, adding sugar, pore, Each weighted with a kind of love that cares to care.
Cerebral longing, seeping to my nails, congeals. The limp tea-sack spreads tannic like an oil In rusty bubbles and the water, left there, boils.
The scene in this poem is clear; while making tea and watching the
rain that is "rivers in the lota" outside, the poet feels an upsurge of
love that is expressed both in spiritual and in physical terms. This
wave of desire Is Immediately checked, however, when the poet becomes
aware of the restrictions (the wall, the window) that surround him, and
Instead of a love that is as freely flowing as the rivers of rain
outside, he can only feel "[e]crebra1 longing," "a kind of love that
3 08 cares to care." The sense of frustration that le the result of the repression of the poet's Initial feelings also finds expression In the sexual connotation of the "Hup tea-sack," as well as In the circular structure of the poem, which In the first line Is already announced by the "circular rings" of the electric plate on which the poet Is boiling water. Moreover, the Impure rhyme of one line In each of the poem's four stanzas also effectively emphasizes the sense of disappointment and defeat dealt with here.
In "Love and Chemistry" It Is not only Holmes's use of the conceit which reveals his Indebtedness to the metaphysical poets, but also his dependence on irony. In a discussion of his early poems, Holmes has in fact claimed that irony was part and parcel of the time in which he started to write:
So often In these poeas I was talking about what I then perceived as a cultural problem. Something that was very much in my mind then was that ours seemed to be an age where there wasn't any possibility of tragedy or nobility even. And again, when reading and thinking about these poems, never forget that one of the dominant emotions or mental states behind so many of them was an overriding sense of irony...The damning Ironies that were all around us, seemed, in a sense, to be the only source of tragedy, by emphasizing the irony, by pushing it. And in poetry then, irony was the dominant tone, started by people like Auden. And what I was trying to do was to take that tone far enough so that it could perhaps tip over into real seriousness... I was trying to find a way to speak directly. I mean, just by looking at "Love and Chemistry" - this is filled with that Auden-esque irony: "Now my fingers, adding sugar, pore, / Each weighted with a kind of love that cares to care." That's a silly line
309 really· It's an Auden-esque line that Is trying to
imply something serious without the poet risking
impassioned statement-
While both "Fear In the Afternoon" and "Love and Chemistry" are thematically already decidedly Holmesian, it is clear that in these poems Holmes is still a long way off from breaking into an authentic, personal voice. This also applies to some other poems that he wrote In
1948, "Scoble and Helen" and "Theorem of Paradoxes," of which the
second is an adaptation of a poem by the Elizabethan poet Nicholas
Breton. Still, these poems are of interest because they suggest, as
"Love and Chemistry" also does to some extent, that Holmes is becoming
Increasingly aware that any authenticity, both in his life and in his
writing, is dependent on the linkage of mind and body, head and heart.
This development is still least clearly to be detected in "Scoble
and Helen," which takes its title from the names of two characters in
Graham Greene's novel The Heart of the Matter.12 Reminiscent in theme
and tone of "To Frau Von Stein, My Brother's Keeper," "Scoble and
Helen" Is the analysis of a love affair which, like that between
Greene's characters and like the one between Tristan and Isolde (after
whom the poem was first titled), is destined to end In
disappointment. In "Scoble and Helen" the poet starts out by addressing
his loved one in the second person, the way "Goethe" addressed "Frau
Von Stein" In the earlier poem:
Your thought was words: "The strangest thing is that you haven't kissed me yet.'
After making another Goethean reference and comparing himself to
310 Werther, in the opening of the second stanza the poet contrasts his own attitude to that of his beloved:
His words were thoughts he spoke.
As in the story "The Next to the Last Time," it is the woman who is able to express herself directly and spontaneously, while the man can only show a delayed reaction. The man's cautiousness is an enormous obstacle to genuine feeling, and it is not surprising that, after he and the woman have finally kissed, the latter wonders, "Why 1 choose / people who are, for me, impossible?'' However, as "Scobie and Helen" shows, this cautiousness is in fact very much wished for and a consequence of the same longing for permanence and safety that also characterized "Fear in the Afternoon":
He was safe, allowed to love and lose along a way that was impassable.
It was not the journey but the map he wanted; just the secret speculation, so delicious to be vainly loved when all the consequences are removed.
Thematically, "Theorem of Paradoxes" represents an important break through because in this poem, as Dana Burns Westberg has suggested,
"the notion that safety is to be prized above all else is refuted.'
Whereas in "Scobie and Helen," as well as in "Fear in the Afternoon,"
Holmes regards the mind as the main source of safety from unsettling emotions, in "Theorem of Paradoxes" he comes to the realization that, in order to have any safety at all, there must be a firm connection
311 between the head and the heart· Nevertheless, the beginning of the poem still shows Holmes to be wary of feelings, and clearly more inclined to
trust the Intellect:
We'd have more safety if we had less love; hearts are provincial, heads will let us move.
In the last two stanzas, however. Holmes has advanced to the strong conviction that, If there is to be safety, it is necessary to allow emotions into one's life, even if these emotions may not always be
completely harmless. Holmes now claims that it is only possible to
fulfil oneself by taking the risk of establishing a link between the mind and one's feelings:
Then for our safety we must learn to love, the cautious head to let the swift heart move. And in our time improve our Innocence till we can care, yet heal the wounded sense.
So those are only safe who can feel love, whose heads are only free when their hearts move, who punish time and still have innocence, and care for wounds, and nourish every sense.
In spite of the fact that the message of "Theorem of Paradoxes" is
decidedly different from that of some of Holmes's earlier poems, the
closed form of the poem is still very traditional and at odds with the
poem's contents that so clearly stress an open attitude to life. In
fact. Holmes could hardly have picked a more intricate poem to Imitate
than Breton's "I Would Thou Wert Not Fair," which is elaborately
structured around only four essential words that are used in a very
312 strict order (In Holmes's poem these words are "safety," "love," "head" and 'heart')· Themaclcally, "Theorem of Paradoxes" and "I Would Thou
Wert Not Fair" are not really related, and, as Holmes has suggested, It was exactly because formally he restricted himself to an Imitation, that It was easier to bring a personal meaning Into his poem:
In a peculiar sense, because I was really speaking In Breton's voice not ay own, I could make statements like.••"who punish time and still have Innocence" - which is a pretty un-Audenesque kind of conceit...Because I hadn't found my own voice, really, or didn't dare speak In my own voice in the poems, I think I did better. Ironically...when I was working with someone else's conceit...! could say things that I really meant because they were supposedly based on someone else.
That the breakthrough of "Theorem of Paradoxes" was only thematic and still rather superficial can be seen in one of the first poems that
Holmes wrote in 1949, "Epitaph for a Faustlan Man," which found its origin In two lines by Wyatt. In this case the reference to Goethe is connected with the fact that Faust, torn between knowledge and soul, mind and feeling, was willing to sell his soul to the Devil in order to obtain more knowledge. As far as the conflict between mind and feeling is concerned, the poet of "Epitaph for a Faustlan Man" finds himself In the same situation as Faust. Comparing himself to a fragile seismograph, he tries to maintain the same safety ("surety") which is a recurrent subject in most of Holmes's early poems, and which here is threatened by disruptive experiences that might very well destroy the armour that the poet has built around his heart and the feelings it
313 contains:
For fear of falling once, I stood not fast Lest in ny surety this earthquake earth Shatter ny heart in shuddering its cast Of gilt belief that muffled loving's breath, Preserving trifles that were once of worth. A seisnograph is delicate and snail: I stood not fast for fear that I would fall-
in the second stanza Holmes reveals that the delicate balance he tries to preserve is based on a strict separation of the heart and its "rage for soul," and the mind, which the poet refers to as his "inner eye" and as a "hill of ants" that must "organize or die":
My inner eye was traitor to my heart, Its means on chaos won an ordered end. As rage for soul finds whole consuming part And luat for reason violates a friend, My system took what sympathy would lend. The hill of ants must organize or die: My traitor-heart was sinner to my eye.
As the third and last stanza of "Epitaph for a Faustian Man" shows,
Holmes has not really heeded the message of "Theorem of Paradoxes."
When feeling and mind, "earthquake" and "anthill," finally clash and the poet falls, he realizes that this is because he "never let the heart betray the eye":
For fear of falling then, I stood not fast, The traitor eye harsh to the inner heart. The earthquake and the anthill locked at last And their antithesis was torn apart
314 For truth and love are platonlsts In art- I stood unfast and fell, and this Is why: I never let the heart betray the eye.
"Epitaph for a Faustlan Man" Illustrates convincingly, as "Theorem
of Paradoxes" had also done, that In a very short time Holmes had
acquired a striking skill In versification. At the same time, however, his technical dexterity was also a stumbling block that continued to
interfere with the expression of his personal voice. According to Dana
Burns Hestberg, who for a long time was the only one to have dealt
extensively with Holmes's early poetry, a second poem that Holmes wrote
early in 1949, "Poseidon," is another major poem of his early phase,
and one that, somewhat like "Theorem of Paradoxes," "forecasts the fall
of the artful and the fashionable" that characterize most of Holmes's
early verse. In this poem Holmes contrasts Poseidon, the mighty god of
the sea, and Daedalus, the skilful artisan who contrived the labyrinth
for the Minotaur in Crete, and whose son Icarus fell to bis death when
he and his father were flying to Sicily on two pairs of wings that
Daedalus had made for them. In "Poseidon" Daedalus comes to a bad end
himself too, when Poseidon spears him with his prongs so that, like
Icarus, he falls and drowns. The powerful quality of Poseidon is
convincingly illustrated by the movement of the first of the poem's
three stanzas, and by Holmes's use of alliteration:
Poseidon roars a chanty and hie prongs are three. He oars the water with them, and the trades, Winding about him, lashed beyond his sight, Polish the moon until Poseidon sees. His flushing cavalcades of breath break bright Upon the capes, he swallows up the sea
315 And spews It out, and as his breathing fades And floods, he watches Daedalus In flight.21
As Dana Burns Westberg has pointed out, and as the subject matter of the poem Itself amply suggests, "Poseidon" can be read as another
Illustration of the Holmeelan conflict between feeling and Intellect.
If one Interprets the poem In this way, Poseidon stands for
Impulsiveness, and the fact that he finally kills the weakened Daedalus suggests another breakthrough towards a greater spontaneity In Holmes's person and work. Of these thematic aspects Holmes himself was also very much aware:
When I wrote that poem, yes. It was the Idea of the figure underneath which I was really trying to become and also trying to unleash. I was of two minds about it. I felt that there were dark forces in all of us that were at once the most creative things in us, but potentially also the most destructive and disruptive - disruptive of the order, the Intellectual order that I'd made for myself but with which I was becoming increasingly anemic.
Even better than by "Poseidon," Holmes's growth towards a greater
freedom of expression is Illustrated by "Tom O'Bedlam: A Mad Song,"
another poem written in 1949, based on a poem in Percy's Reliques of
Ancient English Poetry. In the poem Tom o'Bedlam, escaped from the
madhouse, has taken the place of Poseidon, "roaring" like a "demon" at
the poet who is ensnared and frustrated by his very sanity and reason,
"encrossed" on "the trinity of tenses."¿^ In the second stanza the poet
confronts "that hid thing," Tom o' Bedlam, who assures him that it Is
possible to free oneself:
316 One pitching night I heard the dog-star bark and Inside everything that hid thing bayed: "Rejoice, accept, give up, be glad - Infinity's not good or bad; a lunatic Is very like a lark whose flight Is Godward," and I am nade to glimpse the antic Tom o' Bedlam, mad I
In the third stanza It becomes clear that the poet's Intellectuality, so very different from Tom's madness. Is only a pose, and one that has caused him to feel hopeless at that· Against such hopelessness, which
Is the result of a longing for safety that Is "clever" but never
"pure," Tom cherishes a sense of vlldness with which he tries to Imbue the poet:
He apes my pose and look, and to my face's hopeless hopes, he seems a witless child: "Now Is forever, and It was before, and Care Is clever but It's never pure. So forge - burned-out by time, a geek of Grace - still farther on than God - Into a wild. Poor Tom Is come into the world once more!"
The fourth and last stanza takes up a connection between Tom and the poet that had been introduced In the first stanza, where the poet described himself as a prisoner. At the end of the poem the "jester- prophet" Tom, "[n]o longer captive in a stave of bars," seems to have been able to have passed on at least some of his sense of freedom to the poet. This development is accurately underlined by the movement of the verse, which has a highly rhythmical and exuberant quality that cannot even be undone by Holmes's customary strict adherence to metre
317 and rhyme.
The same notion that a breakthrough has been reached, which one finds In "Tom O'Bedlam: A Mad Song," Is also to be detected In "St.
Francis' Notes at a Dead End," one of the last poems that Holmes wrote
In 1949. As Its title already suggests, the poem describes. In the first person, some of St. Francis's reflections at a turning point In his life. Most of the holy man's considerations are close to Holmes's own concerns, and It Is clear that St. Francis serves as Holmes's persona In the poem. "St. Francis' Notes at a Dead End" pictures Its protagonist at the moment when he has "given over ethics that are strong / and to be righteous bathe the world In wrath."^ As a result of this rejection St. Francis has reached "a strange beatitude / that breathes in Care, and lives beyond Its death." This beatitude can be compared to the sense of harmony that Holmes was all the time looking for In his life and In his work; his identification with St. Francis Is so strong, in fact, that the description of the Saint's state of mind which closes the poem Is at the same time a moving expression of
Holmes's own need for liberation:
My soul's dies irae - moral solitude athlrst too long - dies in a last desire that has a first desire's magnitude:
to love all things, all ways, adore, aspire, accept the song within the song as sure; then pure with my forgiveness, as with fire,
Columba says the world will lust no more.
Although there are many connections between Holmes's earlier poems
318 and "Tom 0' Bedlam: A Mad Song" and "St. Francis' Notes at a Dead End," the latter two poems stand out from the others in that they suggest a growing influence of Ginsberg and Kerouac, If not on the form of
Holmes's poems then at least on their subject matter. Behind "Tom 0'
Bedlam: A Mad Song" one feels the presence of the young "jester- prophet" Ginsberg as he Is described in the opening chapters of Go. -* and the very word "beatitude," used in "St. Francis' Notes at a Dead
End," Is of course reminiscent of Kerouac's use of the word "beat" and its connotation "beatific." As far as the poem about St. Francis is concerned. Holmes has in fact acknowledged the influence of Ginsberg and Kerouac:
I got all that from Ginsberg and Jack. I mean that whole idea that all life is holy, and sentient life mustn't be tampered with and so forth. I was crying for that. My nature responded immediately to that but I'd never been able to get it into my poetry before, until I met them. Allen and I worked together on poems. As I would write poems he would read them; and I would do the same. We had that sort of close collaboration, all three of ua really. It gave me some sense that I could say those things without making myself vulnerable.
It remains striking that, unlike Ginsberg and even though the changing subject matter of his poems sometimes begs for it, at this time Holmes was unable to break into the use of more open forms. Even in "On the Murder of Bill Cannastra by the BMT," an unpublished poem about the death of William Cannastra, Holmes uses classical references and models his verse on a stanza by Christopher Smart (which In view of both Cannaβtra'β and Smart's "madness" is of course not entirely
319 Inappropriate). ' There Is one early poem of Holmes's, however. In which the formal aspects do not Interfere at all with a highly moving
subject matter. This Is the sonnet "Petition Concerning the Death-
Wish," written In 1951. In this poem, which finds Holmes longing for
the very security which In his earlier poems he was trying to escape
from, metre and rhyme are effectively used to counter and control the unsettling presence of death In the world around us:
God of the World, all dread things suddenly make as harmless to our life as tears at school; uncoil the rope, deracinate the snake - reveal him as a yawning, lovely fool. Then dredge the danger from the brackish pool and show It shallow, lllled and opaque. Bemove the fatal glitter from the tool, and when we dream of falling let us wake. For all our mortal world has got so cruel that we are constantly afraid we'll break our anxious Image staring from the lake: bring all these natural things beneath Your Rule. Convince us there Is nothing sure at stake. 2β Give back to us a safety to forsake.
In "Petition Concerning the Death-Wish," which is probably his
finest early poem, Holmes's own voice, despairing and longing for
relief, is clearly heard, and in this respect the poem foreshadows his
more recently published verse. Unfortunately that personal voice became
much weaker again in the poems that he continued to write In 1951 and
1952. These poems, including a number of love lyrics to Holmes's second
wife, were again highly formal, intellectual, and ironic. While Kerouac
and Ginsberg were "really talking about freedom of being, feelings
320 rushing out, candor and honesty," It was especially the Ironic tone of his own work with which Holmes grew Increasingly disenchanted:
That's why I stopped writing poetry. Because I couldn't get out of that tone...which was terribly constricting...The last poem that I wrote then before I started again was a poem about Christ...And I wrote a poem about Jesus Christ...in the tone of W.H. Auden - who'd already done It many times. And I decided, "Fuck this shit man. If you can't find a way to talk out, then you'd better shut your fucking mouth."30
The poem to which Holmes refers here Is entitled "Good Friday." It was
written In 1952 and, although Its striking use of consonance attests
once more to Holmes's great skill at versification, It Is In fact one
of his most objective and Impersonal poems. "Good Friday," which
Holmes himself has termed "perfect and empty," made him decide not to
write another poem until "emotion overcame craft."3
II
Holmes did not write poetry again until the autumn of 1959. In
August of that year his father had died of Injuries sustained In an
automobile accident on the New Jersey turnpike, which was "more of a
blow" to Holmes than he had anticipated, because "only In the last
years had we been really close."-'-' When, In a letter to either Kerouac
or Ginsberg, Holmes found himself unable to describe how he felt
about his father's death, It became clear to him that his feelings
321 "seemed to demand a more heightened expression," and he tried to articulate them in a long poem to and about his father, "Too-Late Words to My Father (1899-1959)." Although, during the seven years of
"dismantling metric fixation to achieve breath-length"36 that had gone by since 1952, Holmes had decided to do away with metre and rhyme, he still discovered that he had trouble using freer forms, mainly because he found his head "still jammed with the pentameter [he] had hammered
into it years before."3 A year or so later Holmes attempted the same poem about his father again, "cutting and adding, and trying to find
the proper 'measure,' as Williams called it."38 However, although it
"got better, tighter, with a more laconic tone," he still was not
satisfied with the poem, and he kept on working on it, off and on, all
through the sixties. During that period he wrote many other poems as
well. In these poems, no longer influenced by Auden and Yeats but,
apart from Williams, by Gary Snyder, Ezra Pound, Theodore Roethke and
"particularly the T'ang poets of China, and certain of the Japanese,"
he was finally able to use the open forms he was striving for. In the
early seventies Holmes reworked most of these poems into the versions
in which, from 1974 onward, they started to appear in literary
magazines both in America and in Great Britain.
Holmes finally completed "Too-Late Words to My Father" to his
satisfaction in the spring of 1974. By the beginning of February of
that year he had started to rework, "between other chores," the version
of the poem he had on his hands then:
It started to shape itself into uneven stanzaic patterns, I chopped away at the rhetoric, trying to build the emotions as deep into the lines as I could. The little tags at the end of each stanza gave me a
322 direction to move towards, and they also reminded me of the gradual shorteninshortenlng of lines toward the bottom of 40 New England headstones
The extent to which Holmes was able to do away with rhetoric and to write clearly and directly can be seen by comparing the first and the final draft of the stanza that opens the February 1974 version of the first of the poema's five parts. In the first draft Holmes sets the scene of the poem In the following manner:
Camden nights heavy with dire honeysuckle / back-of-hospital streets, / shrouded stoops murmurous with secret sunmer voices, / night-baseball on TV. / An Interloper, walking and whispering to myself, sucking peppermint In that ugly, alien town. Those nights, I carried, clicking In my pocket plastic tubes of nerve-pills, / sleeping-pills, aspirin, oil of camphor against toothache - / all of which came anyway. Prepared against myself, but Ill-prepared for long Tolatolan [vigils / for death-watches In south Jersey shipyard Negro night / and the Irony of turnpike accident that brought you there, 41 my urbane father.
In Its published version the poen is much more straight-forward:
Camden nights dire with honeysuckle, back of hospital streets, stoops murmurous with baseball - Sucking peppermints in an alien town, I carried plastic tubes of sleeping pills, aspirin, iodine, and oil of camphor - prepared against myself but ill-prepared for vigils
323 In South Jersey shipyard Whitman night, or the Irony of turnpike smashup that brought you there, my urbane father.*2
It is especially In the second and longest part of "Too-Late Words
to My Father," which Holmes called "probably the best poem I've ever
written," that it becomes an expression of all the things he never
said to hie father In life, "the recognition of his Inherent value as a
man and a father, the too-late tribute of a grieving son. The value
Holmes attributes to his father is Illustrated by the fact that he
feels that It Is because of the Influence of hie father that he became
a writer:
Now you won't read to me again though I write stories and this poem because you read me Dickens before sleep -*5
The same stanza, however, also suggests some of the antagonism that,
according to the poem and to remarks made by Holmes in interviews,^
clearly existed between the poet and his father:
From you, I caught a taste for language, never to confess It In our wrangles. Though proud of me, the use I put It to left the Jeffrey Farnol In you speechless.
The essential difference between Holmes and his father comes out
too when Holmes compares his own kind of courage with that shown by his
father on his deathbed:
324 Beloved enemy, more beleaguered than I knew, more flesh courage than I knew, no Idea of courage, went away.4 7
In these lines we find again the opposition between mind and body that
Informs so much of Holmes's work. Not only does his father show more courage than Holmee had expected, that courage Is also a "flesh courage" that Is very different from the Intellectual kind of courage
(the "Idea of courage") which the poet feels capable of. Connected with this difference In attitude to life between father and son, Is the fact that even on the verge of death Holmes's father Is more open to new experiences than his son who Is, as always, hindered by the workings of his mind (here represented by the glasses that he wears):
You nade contacts even among bedpan carriers - more than I could do with my enormous glasses, fogged with memory's montage of dada Imagery.
The word "dada" In the last line le a lucky find which Holmes came upon only In a relatively late stage of the poem. In the third and fourth draft of the poem's last version he still described his glasses as being fogged with, respectively, "memory's colliding Imagery" and
"memory's ambiguous Imagery." Only after having typed out a sixth draft did he hit upon the adjective "dada," and even then, as the typescript of the final draft reveals, he was hesitant about employing It and thinking of using the phrase "with memory's montage of Imagery" only.
Fortunately he later Incorporated the word "dada" in the text anyway, as the adjective can hardly be more appropriate not only In Its
325 suggestion that the Images that concern Holmes sre connected with his father, but also because In Its reference to the Dadaist movement
(which had It heyday In Holmes's father's youth, which Holmes Is writing about In this part of the poem) It Implies that the Imagery In
Holmes's mind Is as unrelated, Illogical and perhaps even as nihilistic and absurd as the Imagery that was characteristic of Dadalsm.
The highly effective phrasing of the first two parts of "Too-Late
Words to My Father" also characterizes the rest of the poem, in which
Holaes describes his recent reconciliation with his father and the letter's funeral, and In which, In the poem's fifth end last part, he
returns to a scene at his father's deathbed. The description of that
scene reveals that, as the quotations from the poem have already
suggested, the poem's poignancy Is to a large extent due to a mixture
of grief and toughness on the part of the poet· This striking
combination comes out very well In the lines In which Holmes describee
his father's "thin fleet meatless legs learning / something new to do
In bed at sixty."49 These lines, which refer to Holmes's father's
having to adapt himself to the new situation of being confined to a
hospital bed, take on a very moving quality when one realizes that
elsewhere In the poem, as well as In at least one Interview, Holmes has
described his father as having always been very much a ladles' man.
Moreover, the unsentimental accuracy of suchlike lines allows Holmes In
other places to give free rein to the formulation of his deepest
feelings, such as those expressed In the concluding lines of the poen:
I talked on with awful polntlessness, embarrassed by my breaking voice. But I spoke out of time and Its ego - the shame of somethlng-more-to-lose -
326 And end this now, become your son at last.
Although "Too-Late Words to My Father" Is a very fine and successful poem, It Is not necessarily Holmes's best. Among the poems that he started to write from 1959 onward there Is a considerable number that easily equal It In quality, while the long sequence The
Bowling Green Poems, written In the seventies, Is probably even superior. Again, most of these poems deal with the conflict between
Intellect and emotion, and many of them describe a situation in which the poet moves from a feeling of disharmony to a sense of being, at least temporarily, at one and at ease with the world. This definitely holds for "North Cove Revenant," an excellent poem in four parts that
Holmes started to write In November 1959 and which, like "Too-Late
Words to My Father," he finally completed in the late spring of 1974.
In the opening of the poem, in fact. Holmes seems to refer to his father's death, with which late in 1959 he was trying to come to terms:
Create against death and its contagion - After a death, a poem - clove-apple of the mind.52
The extent to which the poet feels out of tune at the beginning of the poem is convincingly expressed by the opening part's next, and last, five lines, whose tapering off Is reminiscent of "Too-Late Words to My
Father":
327 But I an nothing again, and nothing comes out of the dank well· I am nothing, and search reality to redeem my nothingness In its appearances.
The course of action proposed In these lines Is carried out In the
second part of "North Cove Revenant." Walking about In the watery North
Cove area, Holmes Is like the swans that cruise the shore, "looking for
life to eat." The swans, however, "are arrogant, / knowing their element," and especially In this last respect they are completely
unlike the poet at this particular juncture. Holmes Is aware that one
reason why he has trouble entering reality Is the fact that, even
though there are "Ln]o secrets In reality - / only happenings, /
accidents, / fortuitous events, / going unrecorded endlessly," he Is
bothered by a strong urge to "hold" these events, "to arrest - / the
barren Itch of our mortality." Still, as the following lines reveal, by
confronting reality the poet Is able to at least weaken the hold death
had on him In the opening of the poem. What these lines also show,
especially the last three. Is Holmes's sharp eye for detail and his
fine use of metaphor:
I'm nothing again but the smell of death Is blown away by November riverwind. Scavenger gulls look down, silvered minnows dart like filings to a magnet
In the third part of the poem the source of Holmes's feeling
328 separated from reality Is more specifically connected with the workings of the mind. Holmes considers the "[ujpheaved Connecticut fences, / pickets sentineled against the Devil, / the orchard fortressed by old stone" as "benchmarks of our refusals" that "scar reality," as
"projections of a Faustlan Intelligence."56 Therefore, the poet suggests that living In the water might be preferable to life on land, because, although "It Is vlnterdark out there / in the water that has no color," at least "the sky's blank reflected back on it." After taking his cue from these lines and wondering whether "swallowing the cove / could drown this thirst," "maybe to swim - to fly -," Holmes comes to what is in this poem the most explicit statement of his need to be in touch and in tune with reality:
I seek to lose myself, which means my Self poisoned with the idea of duality. What habit of the mind imagines we are incomplete? We are alone - why dream aloneness? Nothing can be achieved, everything is here already. What cleaved us from our simple meat?
Very striking in a passage such as this Is the rational tone, which Is sometimes reminiscent of the poetry of D.H. Lawrence who, as Holmes has se admitted, always exerted a strong influence on him. The intellectual quality of his poetry is stressed again by Holmes when, in the last stanza of the third part, he returns to the comparison of poems to
"clove-apple[s] of the mind," an analogy introduced in the first lines of the poem. Hearing "[n]oon whistles blow," the poet realizes that
329 "the world feeds Itself / without fret," while he himself keeps
"hungering" after poems, after "apples of certainty / grueled in the
brain / Into a miser's sustenance." However, the poet is aware that,
while he Is taken up by the need to write, "[g]race goes down [his] gullet every day," and when he himself sits down to eat too, he Is
finally able to ease Into a feeling of acceptance which is balm to his
soul and which, at least temporarily, loosens the hold his mind has on
him:
Here there is fish to my mouth, punkins, candle flicker, bread - the soul is fed.
That the cerebral quality of Holmes's poetry does not preclude a
certain subdued lyricism is illustrated in the last part of "North Cove
Revenant," especially by the first three lines of the following
quotation:
Late autumn Is lead-heavy here, shot-through with copper mouldering to rust. No jewels in autumn here, only rubble in the underdark gnawed by Miltonic moles -
Essentially, the last part of "North Cove Revenant" is a recapitulation
of the earlier parts. Even though, at the end of the third part, the
poet had reached a state of harmony as a consequence of which he is now
aware that "we're no more rational than mice, / scuttling the wainscots
to keep warm," he finds himself still unable to enjoy the "homely
330 beauties" hinted at In the last quotation. Again Holmes blames this
Inability on a "hankering after certitude, / continuance, / clove- apples hard as shrunken heads ~ / omnipotence of impotent desire." As
this third reference to poems as clove-apples reveals, the poet's
attitude towards the writing of poetry as a way out of a painful state of mind has now become even more negative than it already was in the
third part of the poem. In this respect, Holmes's comparing the apples
to "shrunken heads" Is highly effective, turning the writing of poetry
Into a "deadly" occupation and the poet himself Into a headhunter. It
is hardly surprising that, although in the poem's first stanza Holmes
had stated that he wanted to write a poem to "[cjreate against death /
and its contagion," he now feels that "death is not assuaged by
death"" (which conclusion also refers to the fact that, as had already
been Indicated in the second part and as the ending of the poem also
reveals, throughout the period covered in the poem duck hunting Is
going on in the North Cove area). Still, even though there does not
seem to be a remedy against death, and even though towards the ending
of the poem Holmes claims once more that he is "nothing again," he is
now "content to wait / on April's brevity / of crocuses." Moreover, in
the last lines of the poem, which place the hunters among the minnows
and the ducks, Holmes has not only become aware of the essential unity
of everything that lives, but he has also gained a sense of belonging
that was foreign to him before:
There go the swans, the gulls, the minnows, hunters, ducks -
331 And I am down to earth among them.
Of course this last line is highly ambiguous; It does not only
Illustrate Holmes's new-found feeling of being at peace with the world, but It also seems to Imply that the poet Is really "nothing again," and
In fact "down to earth" among the ducks that have been killed. It la this striking use of ambiguity, found also In the title and elsewhere
In the poem, as well as Its direct language and Impressively sustained use of Imagery, which makes "North Cove Revenant" one of Holmes's most
Interesting and effective poems.
The thematic aspects that characterize "North Cove Revenant" are
also found In many of the poems that Holmes wrote since. In several of
them the poet, though painfully longing for a life In tune with
himself. Is unable to rise above feelings of failure and frustration.
This Is the case, for Instance, In "Women In A.M.," originally written
In 1961. This poem, short enough to quote In full, successfully and
movingly contrasts the poet's disturbing objectivity and the more
harmonious subjectivity that Holmes ascribes to women:
Women drowse through mornings, nurturing life. Some women never rouse except by twilight. They save the real expenditures for dark. Drowsing In dream-peopled beds, no anguish In their mornings, only the flesh-warm linen, the whlsh of rain, the soul at sleep. They are Ingathering, they are In root, and I'm unhappy to be up and writing It.
The same sense of being out of step and out of season Is found both
332 in "A Bad Turn" and in "Maine September." In "A Bad Turn," conceived in
1964 and completed in February 1974, Holmes describes how he "gingers" his car across a river-bridge during a snow storm in Connecticut·
Although the poet is aware that he once successfully drove through a
blizzard in Nebraska, he can only think of the "old failures" that have
given his life the "bad turn" of the poem's title· In fact, even though he is able to cross the bridge and even though he tries to comfort
himself by claiming that "Yeats wasn't good till forty / not yet
himself," the poet still feels that he has reached a dead end both in
his life and in his work:
But I am sick of counting other men's dates on bitten fingernails.
So many snow squalls moving away 62 over a stalled life.
More subdued but as unequivocal as in "A Bad Turn" is the poet's
sense of being at odds with himself and the world in "Maine September,"
begun in 1973 and completed on the same day as "A Bad Turn." While
the latter poem Is characterized by a prevalence of short vowels, which
appropriately underline the poet's disgust at himself, the slower
movement and longer vowels of "Maine September" give this poem, in
spite of a subject matter which is basically the same, a much more
melancholy quality:
Chekhovian blear - birches evanescent as his Russia - faded light of early autumn - some elusive triste to late morning, as of hangover's ashes in the mind.
333 In the second half of the poem the long vowels and the slow movement of the verse effectively Illustrate the sleepiness of the scene described and the nostalgia of the poet who, In contrast to the files and Dodger
(Holmes's cat). Is unable to be content merely living In the present:
The radio violin bows the nerves, files buzz, Dodger sleeps, trace of salt In the tepid air. I fancy October afternoons here, nostalgic for tomorrow, and the smoulder of the year's decay -
living, as always, elsewhere.
As these poems show, Holmes Is a master at creating valid and moving art out of a keen sense of defeat. However, as "North Cove
Revenant" already suggested, many of his poems. Instead of being merely descriptions of a "stalled life," also deal with a development towards relief and harmony. Thus, In "Year's End," originally written In 1964 and revised ten years later, Holmes relates how "[l)n the quiet, In the snow, / this Sunday before Christmas, / tired and diligent too long, / a knot In the heart relents."65 Thinking of "the gypsies of the Var," he Is aware of "a longing for tribes again, / for human units familial enough / for the affections to enclose." Unlike tbe gypsies, however,
Holmes himself le a loner, who can only make do with "my company on my walls": the pictures of "spirits sympathetic to his work." Still, the poet realizes that a change in him has resulted in the awareness that
"something is broken," and that the heart has prevailed once more over the head:
334 I am not the same as I was before· Some armature is broken.
I am glad I was serious enough to be broken.
An Identical growth towards healing and acceptance as the one dealt
with In "Year's End," Is found In "Go with the Snake" and "Chinese
Poets." Both poems, written shortly after each other In 1973, are In
fact admonitions In which the poet tries to put fresh heart Into himself. In "Go with the Snake," the weaker of the two poems because It
stays too close to prose cut up rather arbitrarily to resemble poetry,
Holmes describes how one day in his garden he came across a garter
snake that lay, "like a broken rubber band," in the "batting paws" of
his cat.66 Holmes took the snake on the tine of a pitch-fork to a
nearby pasture, and the animal "eddied away into the grass, / self-
saved, to mend himself"; and Holmes concludes by encouraging himself to
"(d]o as much."
The subject as well as the loose style of "Go with the Snake" are
again reminiscent of Lawrence's influence on Holmes. "Chinese Poets,"
on the other hand, reveals the enormous impact that Chinese poetry has
had on him. The first stanza of the poem is a perfect example of this
oriental Influence:
Clouds stand lordly over Fenwlck In September air, lucid as water. Distant sounds of hammering, summer houses closing up. I walk my old three-miler to the lighthouse and the esplanade as clouds of wrens erupt
335 from lavender reeds, tall as me.
In the rest of the poem Holmes describes how he, 'a middle-aged man making resolution·," is mending "from last week's poisons·" It is especially his thinking of the Chinese poet Tu Fu which opens Holmes's
"clenched throat / to the actual, suspirant world," and which makes him note "new houses, a floppy awning / for a cancelled dance, golf- carts, / men watering the billiard greens, / Bluejays vagrant as gulls
far out." A line of another Chinese poet. Chu Wan, who a thousand years ago wrote, "The Empire of Ch'in has passed away," makes Holmes feel even more at peace ("My belly eases with this knowledge"), after which
he ends his poem with an admonition to himself that resembles the one
at the end of "Go with the Snake," but which, like "Chinese Poets" in
its entirety, is much more compelling than the conclusion of the
earlier poem:
Walk like a heron, swim like a fish. Whatever moves, moves through everything.
While the poems dlscuseed until now went through many revisions and
sometimes only reached their definite form years after he first
conceived them, by 1975 Holmes had found his own, characteristic and
highly personal poetic voice, which from that time on enabled him to
write his poems down in a form that was almost immediately satisfactory
to him. Thus, in April and May 1975, he wrote a nine-poem sequence. The
Bowling Green Poems, which upon its publication in 1977 was justly
claimed to be "the strongest sequence he has had published to date. 68
As Holmes explains in a brief introduction to the sequence, at the time
of writing these poems he was "living in a northwest Ohio college town
336 as a visiting writer, taking stock of his life and work, both
temporarily stalled."" As he admits, it was "a dim time" for him,
which was not made easier by the fact that he missed dead friends such as Kerouac and Walker Evans, as veil as his wife, who could not come
with him. However, a trip to Hartford, Connecticut enables him to spend a weekend with her, and after he has returned to Ohio and has a chance
street-encounter with one of his students, "the log-jam In his spirit
breaks."70
The first and by far the shortest of the nine Bowling Green Poems,
which introduces the setting of the sequence, can be regarded as a plea
for inspiration:
My bachelor house in order, tapes and dishes shelved, I putter and make a drink waiting to be used, waiting to expend myself - a gypsy scrivener, haranguer of fraternities; a winter woodchuck in his burrow, nostrils quivering for spring.
In the following three poems the poet takes stock of the situation in
which he finds himself in Ohio. In the introduction to the sequence
Holmes had alreadly admitted that the landscape in that particular
state did not "stir" him. In reality, this is still an understatement
for his completely negative attitude towards the Ohio countryside, as
the opening of the second poem of the sequence immediately makes clear:
Light of empty morning, pickle factories in an old bog,
337 homely Anderson phone-poles· Sense of a frozen sea, muds coagulant to the eye's lift, vital movement contravened· '
In the next two poems Holmes keeps referring to the "mud" and "loam" that are for him the most striking characteristics of "these villages" that "break the will-to-form." 7 ì Ohio is for him a landscape 7 A "inhospitable / to visions," and in the beginning of the third poem of the sequence Holmes describes himself as "a sea-crab / in an inland swamp." The ultimate put-down of Ohio comes, however, in the ending of the fourth poem, where Holmes writes:
God put this place underwater then some boring asshole went and drained it to build a filling station.76
In view of the poet's low opinion of the area in which he temporarily has to live, it is hardly surprising that, in the last line of the second poem, which describes "an idle screen door flapping," he even seems to begrudge the wind its "going elsewhere." Stuck between
"the night's void" and the "fissureless day ahead," Holmes can only, like the sea-crab he referred to earlier, pace "a half-dark room, / waiting out the TV-news. Still, as the third poem goes on to reveal,
Holmes is aware that it may yet be possible to find a way out of the fix in which he has found himself in Ohio. This part of the poem also clearly shows that what holds Holmes's poetry together is not so much a fixed metre, as an unobtrusive use of interior rhyme and a delicate reliance on alliteration, while the phrase "a stay of sentences," in
338 the second to last line. Is again characteristically ambiguous:
God knows the maples will enleaf again, the sentience of wrens among them, and consciousness relent. God knows time has its lucky accidents no more explicable than birds Best into bed at evening with someone else's book to drowse despite the six-packs of the neighbor boys, and Halter Cronkite - the great world of the ambitions promising another morning, a stay of sentences, birdsong, and no blame.7 9
After, in the fifth and sixth poem, reminiscing about Walker Evans and
Jack Kerouac, In the seventh poem Holmes can finally describe the change he anticipated in the quotation above. In this seventh poem, which marks a turning point in the sequence. Holmes writes about the time he Is able to spend with his wife in Hartford, where he has travelled to deliver a lecture about Kerouac and the Beats. The first lines of the poem immediately reveal a striking contrast in mood and tone to what has gone before:
And if there can be love again between such wearied people there can be oysters soiling in their shells, en Franz Kline, cold marts, bouzouki music.
339 This joyful nood and Ite concoaltant affirmative tone are sustained in the rest of this part of the sequence. Holmes's brief reunion with his wife has brought them a 'return of the old sensual fevers / resting the expended parts of us," as a consequence of which "life's got savor now - / there's grace In It." It is especially the revelation that there could be "flesh-love again" between Holmes and hie wife, "hand- colloquies in hotel-bede, / worde become tongues," which at least for the moment resigns the poet to his fate, and which shows that there may yet be an end to the "soldiering-through" that Holmes describes in the greater part of the eequence. The poet's having become in tune with
reality again is perhaps most aptly Illustrated In the third and last
stanca of this poem, in which Holmes refers to a well-known Zen parable
about the nature of enlightenment:
1 kissed you in the marriage-places, grounded again. There'e nothing more to lose. The old Zen cannlness occurred - mountains were mountains once again. Й1
Although the affirmative tone of the seventh poem later becomes weaker,
it also Informs the last two poems of the sequence, despite the fact
that in these Holmes has to confront himself again In circumstancee in
Ohio that earlier were far from agreeable to him. Now, however, the
poet is able to "[w]ork on in the faith / that the corner will be
turned" and, in "simple hope of heaven," to perform the rituals of his
art and to "work down through the circles / towards new light." The
last and longest poem of the eequence is In fact clearly an
Illustration of the discovery in the seventh poem that "memory" can be
340 "tougher than despair."82 Walking down the streets of the town he
temporarily Inhabits, appropriately on Memorial Day, Holmes
Interestedly takes In the scenes he passes:
Women move air across their chests, Iced glasses bead porch railings, α fat man wheezes on s mower-cord, anarchic urges lurk behind the Jalousies - α King's How vision of mldsuaaer lassitude.3
After, In the aecond stanca, having thought back to his childhood, when he "pedaled root-heaved pavements In July, / scaled newspapers towarda
these porches," the poet Is suddenly shaken out of his daydreams by an
unexpected encounter with one of Ыв female students. Holmes then writes:
and I'm astonished to discover the porches of my past are peopled by Imagination, the troubled man befriended by the ghostly paperboy"
and what Is striking again is Holmes's successful use of ambiguity
here. We find this In the last two lines of the quotation. In which the
"troubled man" not only stands for the "fat man" mentioned earlier and
who turns out to be as Imaginary as the young poet delivering papers,
but in which Holmes also seems to suggest that he himself Is a troubled
man who, through a confrontation with his own past, has now reached a
certain measure of harmony.
In view of the Intense personal struggle that Holmes described
earlier In The Bowling Green Poems. It Is understandable that the poet
341 Is now reluctant to let go of the peace of mind he has found by immersing himself In the past. Consequently, when his student offers him coffee and Holmes finds that his image of the past "is contracting like an offed-TV," he makes excuses and walks on, preferring his boyhood memories based on the 1942 movie King's Row mentioned In the first stanza:
Ann Sheridan skinny in the ice-house, bike-pumps blowing up the world of glum, rebellion born of too much love to give.
Because of the poet's temporary rejection of the present. In the last two stanzas he Is able to preserve his optimistic mood, even though be regrets "coffee under Karen's shade-cool ceilings - / at least for the time it takes / for fancy to resume its archeology."85 While he walks on down the street, "freed from machinery, / on holiday," the poet's happiness is aptly illustrated when, like a boy, he kicks "a clattering
Strohs / into the street·" The final and complete letting go of all painful thoughts is described in the last stanza, in which the line "I become a taste" is reminiscent of Holmes's earlier reference to Zen
Buddhism in this sequence:
As sugar settles under Ice cubes in tea as tart as licking rust, a flash of bliss irradiates me, and I dissolve to sweetness, I become a taste, and consciousness relents.
In The Bowling Green Poems we find Holmes at the height of his
342 poetle powera, and It 1s regrettable that the sequence has drawn so
little critical attention. Of course this is to a large extent due to
the fact that it was published only in a very limited edition of two- hundred-and-fifty pamphlets and not Included in Death Drag. It should be noted, however, that the attention that the pamphlet did receive was of a positive nature. Jim Burns'β review of The Bowling Green Poems In
Palantlr, for Instance, was very perceptive and to the point. After
taking into account that 'some critics (especially of the academic variety) would say that they are the kind of poems a novelist would
write," Burns accurately characterized them as "extremely evocative''
and as having "a highly individual tone": "The content is important,
the form unobtrusive, the language clean and direct with occasional
lyrical flickers. They are very readable and some of the images stay in
the mind so that one relates them to experiences or events In one's own
life."86
The sure touch that 1· typical of The Bowling Creen Poems
distinguishes many of the poems that Holmes wrote after 1975, while
these poems also show a striking adherence to the thematic concerns of
Holmes's earlier verse. Thus, for example, a strong desire to "wake
new" informs "Fayettevllle Dawn (2)," written in 1977, In which Holmes
is looking for "an exit from Self attainable / after these years of
fret·"8' Likewise, In "A Late Love," written two years later, due to
his having fallen In love with a much younger girl the poet finds
himself, "[f]or the first time in years, outside himself, / open to
feelings he had reasoned to control," In the last line describing
himself as "a worn-out orchard, suddenly in fruit again."88
In Holmes's later poems the most moving evocation of his longing
for transformation Is to be found in "Northfork October Return,"
343 written between October 14 and November 1, 1982. This poem, perhaps
the strongest of Holmes's more recent verse, can be regarded as a
companion piece to "North Cove Revenant," with which it shares its
theme and a similar kind of setting, while even the titles of the two
poems resemble each other. Although, as In the earlier poem. In
"Northfork October Return" Holmes also tries to "[c]reate against
death, the presence of death Is much more threatening and personal
now, because Holmes wrote "Northfork October Return" In an effort to
come to terms with the after-effects of his first bout of cancer. The
poem describes how, "after the tumor of July, the radiation-August, /
the long depression of September,"'0 In the hope of finding new
strength Holmes returns to the place where he used to spend his summers
as a boy, to one of the Long Island beaches "where the curse / or
blessing took place long ago." In Interior Geographies: An Interview
with John Clellon Holmes, two years before writing "Northfork October
Return," Holmes had already reminisced about the summers he spent on
Long Island:
We summered far out on the North Fork of Long Island at Peconlc - BLT's on the rocky beach for lunch, waiting the prescribed-hour before I could dive off two special rocks, and, when brave, swim down deep and ginger through their barnacled-separation, over-hearing talk of Hitler from a second cousin, Margie, just back from a year In Germany, reproducing the fanatic rant of his voice In a language I couldn't understand, but understood. Spain, read about In the pages of the Herald Tribune (bought at a little grocery In town), and somehow knowing, even at 10, that something dire was loose in the world. My father called me Yo in those days, short for Johann Sebastian Bach; others called me
344 Buddy. Some severance, some wrenching, happened to me there. I was spanked by my mother with a rugbeater I had retrieved from the tide-line, and I became a bore that late-August with the litany of "Nobody loves .e -.-91
While in 19Θ0 Holmes's memories of his summer holidays on Long Island were not entirely positive, at the time of writing "Northfork October
Return" the North Fork area had come to symbolize for him the safety, strength and health that were taken for granted when he was younger, but that now are painfully lacking. Consequently, It is with a poignant sense of regret that Holmes addresses himself to the scenes of his youth:
Lost boyhood haven, still salt-worn as cloudy bits of bottle glass. was it for this 1^ was preparing? The dream of harbor swamped so fast by chance gusts of an easterly?"^
Alternating with descriptive fragments, in which Holmes pictures himself as fighting "assaults of panic, curdling to self-pity" when
"the cove he'd hoped for prove[s] phantom," "Northfork October Return" contains two more passages in Italics, like the one quoted above. In the first of these the poem becomes a highly moving prayer to the sea at North Fork, to help the poet regain some of the safety he has lost:
Sea-sleep, he begged in secret, come and ease my heart, kedge-anchored still off Ногton's Point with no way in. Cold petrel spirit of these tides, excuse me for & little. 1^ was innocent
345 believed life's risks without a^ tab. who now, an anxious, aging scold, must make a final fight or bitter-over - Scud this sprung dory to some berth.
After an atteapt to follow the ezanple of the gulls that "persisti]
Into stiffening wind, / coasting Its shoals and currents in the sun / to Greenport's fish-rich jetties east," and after trying "to find a long down-draft / to take hin also out beyond / Feconic's headlands to the empty beach," the poet addresses the rocks in teras that can be compared to those In which he appealed to the sea:
Stay with ae till 1^ »end, you rocks, the ragged teeth of that bedraggled coast, bear up a coward's weight until toaorrow's fresh with resolutions, cheap tears turned as tough as brine. 93
In the end the poet's prayers are answered and, following the saae developaent that is found in nany of Holaes's other poene, the last stanca describes how he finds at least temporarily soae of the peace he knew at North Fork when he was a boy:
The second morning there, it came while he was blank, distracted - a settling below the heart. Amid the ebb-drained strew that dawn, three fragile scallop shells, chaste ss their absent Venuses, lay in his empty hand and eye. He hunkered down, boy-wrapt, to ponder their fluted edges perfect as the poem already forming in the tide's return.
346 While In lts definitive version "Northfork October Return" Is still one of Holmes's most personal poems. Its private character Is even more apparent In the first two of the eight drafts that Holmes wrote for It.
In these early versions the poem was not only entirely written In the first person, but It also contained traces of a very understandable but
still formless despair that, had the poem been printed then, would probably have overstressed Its Intimate quality. This goes, for
Instance for Holmes's Foundlan description of himself as "gone In the
teeth" and for his plea "sweet Jesus, let my heart too come home I, "^
which were later particularized to "Irradiated to the last eyetooth" and "Scud this sprung dory to some berth." Apart from the fact that,
beginning with the third draft, the descriptive parte of the poem were
written in the third person, Holmes further objectified and
universalized his personal experiences by employing the ambiguity on
which he also relied in some of his earlier verse. Thus the "berth" in
the supplication quoted above can also imply the rebirth that Holmes
eagerly awaits in "Northfork October Return." The same ambiguity is
found in the "return" of the poem's title, which not only refers to
Holmes's having come back to one of the scenes of his youth, but which,
as the last line of the poem suggests, also stands for the turning of
the tide that brings Holmes some of the peace of mind he had lost, as
well as the poem itself.
"Northfork October Return" can serve as a final and clear example
of Holmes's great abilities as a poet. It is in fact not only as a
novelist and essayist, but also as a poet, that he deserves a much
wider audience.
347 Chapter Ten
CHKLDSIOa
During his last year Holmes was baffled by the irony that, for the first time In two decades, somewhat larger publishing houses began to take a new Interest In his work. Still, It must have been some comfort for him to know that most of that work would soon be available again· When hie three novels were reissued, notices in the press were quite favourable. These notices, however, like most of the articles that appeared on the occasion of Holmes's death, heavily stressed his connection with the Beat Generation. While, as this study has also shown, that connection undoubtedly exists. It sometimes seems to be In the way of a clear view of Holmes's position as a novelist. In order to freely assess his strengths and weaknesses as a writer of fiction. It Is perhaps best to temporarily forget most of what one knows about the Beat Generation.
This Is probably hardest In the case of Go, of which one outstanding virtue Is precisely the fact that it offers such a lively and accurate early portrayal of life among the artists who would come to be known as the Beat Generation. Better than Chandler Brossard's Who Walk in Darkness, John Home Bums'в A Cry of Children, George Mandel'β Flee the Angry Strangers, and before Jack Kerouac wrote On the Road, Go succeeds in capturing the alternative lifestyle and attitudes of a substantial group of young Americans in the late forties and early fifties. Because, unlike Brossard, Burns and Mandel, Holmes was not so
348 much Influenced by the writers of the Lost Generation, but rather by
Dostoevsky, paradoxically the style of Go is at the same time more
traditional and more contemporary than that of Who Walk in Darkness, A
Cry of Children, or Flee the Angry Strangers, and Holmes's language, in
spite of certain flaws, has definitely dated much less than that of the pre-Beate. To some extent, the originality of Go is also the result of
the subtle way in which Holmes depicts the troubled relationship between Go's protagonist, Paul Hobbes, and Hobbes's wife, Kathryn.
Despite the criticism raised by some that Holmes did not do Justice to
the role of women in Go, his female characters are actually much more
lifelike than, for Instance, those found in the work of Kerouac, who
usually portrays women in a sketchy and stereotypical manner·
Although occasionally some of the jazz musicians Holmes portrays in
The Horn are dangerously close to becoming stereotypes, on the whole
the characters In Holmes's second published novel come fully alive.
This is all the more remarkable as Holmes modelled them both on a
number of contemporary jazz musicians and on some outstanding 19th-
century American writers. Perhaps because of the book's somewhat
artificial foundation, Holmes's use of language in The Horn is
sometimes rather stilted and less spontaneous than one would expect in
a novel about a kind of music that strongly relies on improvisation. It
is striking, for instance, that the descriptions of jazz performances
in The Horn are usually less compelling than comparable scenes in Go.
Still, Holmes's description of the jazz world of the forties and
fifties is very convincing, and The Horn may well be the best novel
about jazz ever written.
While in The Horn Holmes sometimes strains too hard to connect his
story with American culture, in Get Home Free he successfully
349 Incorporates several themes that are essential to American literature.
Thus, the book not only deals with man's longing for regeneration In
paradlsal surroundings away from society, but also with the search for
a father figure and with the contrast between American Innocence and
European corruption. In spite of Its references to literature, however,
Get Home Free Is also, like Go, an outstanding novel about the pitfalls
of love and relationships, In which Holmes Is fully able to employ his
frequently impressive insight into the psychology of both man and
woman. As far as this last aspect is concerned, it must be admitted
that Holmes's telling part of Get Home Free from a woman's point of
view is not always entirely convincing. On the other hand, however,
Holmes's third novel introduces some very effective animal Imagery, and
an attractive use of comedy that Is relatively new to him.
In several ways, Holmes's three published novels present a striking
unity. Reading them in sequence, one senses In the first place Holmes's
struggle to find his own voice. In this respect, there is an undeniable
development from the objective, relatively Inconspicuous style of Go,
through the lyrical, more experimental prose of The Horn, to the clear-
cut, highly characteristic language of Get Home Free, when Holmes has
really come Into his own. Holmes's striving for a personal style is
also to be found in his short stories; a discriminate choice from these
would constitute a welcome addition to the body of Holmes's work that
is now available. As far as their stylistic merits are concerned,
Holmes's two unpublished novels, as well as the first and only written
chapters of The Good End of Simon Calk, can probably best be considered
as frequently Interesting, but on the whole unsuccessful steps on the
way to individuality.
Thematlcally, Holmes's unpublished manuscripts are definitely
350 pertinent to a discussion of hls work, because also as far as his use of subject matter and characters is concerned that work shows a marked
coherence. Not only is Holmes's fiction built around a relatively small
cast of characters, his themes too are amazingly constant. One theme,
the search for home, is for instance found in all of Holmes's three
published novels: in Go, which not only stresses the homelessness of
many young Americans during World War Two, but which literally leaves
Paul and Kathryn Hobbes, standing at night on the Hoboken ferry,
searching for their home among the lighted buildings of New York; in
The Horn, In which all through his disintegration Edgar Pool keeps on
looking for a way to go back home; and especially in Get Home Free, In
which Dan Verger and May Delano return home to their separate roots
and, freed from what stood between them before, home to each other.
The search for home can in Holmes's work be put on a par with a
longing to be in tune with life, that is shared by many of his
protagoniste. This longing characterizes not only the Paul Hobbes of
Go, continually trying to embrace the new experiences that present
themselves to him, it also runs through Cleo'a relationship with Edgar
Pool in The Horn, and is perhaps most movingly evoked in May Delano's
almost desperate urge to finally enter reality in Get Home Free.
As his poems so admirably show, Holmes himself also "hungered to
participate.'* It is true that the somewhat isolated and removed
position in which he frequently found himself, helped to make him one
of America's most distinguished postwar essayists, with a good eye for
societal changes and for what usually remains hidden beneath the
surface of everyday reality. At the same time, however, several of his
very essays, as well as some of his letters to Kerouac, reveal that
what motivated Holmes to a large extent was his longing to be part of a
351 circle of writing friends, and to he an artist of worth hlnself.
Holmes's lasting friendship with writers as diverse as Kerouac and Jay
Landesman convincingly Illustrates that, as far as the first aspect Is concerned, he was clearly successful. It has been the object of this study to show that Holmes also succeeded In the realization of his second aim.
352 NOTES
All unpublished manuscripts referred to In the notes. Including those of letters from and to John Clellon Holmes, are In the John Clellon Holmes Collection, Mugar Memorial Library, Boston University. Those letters addressed to the Sterling Lord Agency are in the archives of the Sterling Lord Agency, New York.
Notes to Chapter One
* Norman Mailer, Advertisements for Myself (London: André Deutsch, 1961 [1959]), p. 282. 2 John Clellon Holmes, Passionate Opinions: The Cultural Essays (Fayettevllle, Arkansas: University of Arkansas Press, 1988), p. 53. я The term seems to have been used for the first time by George Mandel In Beatvllle U.S.A. (New York: Avon Books, 1961). Arthur and Kit Knight, Interior Geographies: An Interview with John Clellon Holmes (Warren, Ohio: The Literary Denim, 1981), p. 14.
Notes to Chapter Two
1 Calendar pages In the John Clellon Holmes Collection (Box 1). John Clellon Holmes, Go (Mamaroneck, New York: Paul P. Appel, 1977 [1952]), p. 9. Ibid., p. x. First draft of Go, John Clellon Holmes Collection (Box 1). 5 Second draft of Go, John Clellon Holmes Collection (Box 1). Arthur and Kit Knight, Interior Geographies: An Interview with John Clellon Holmes (Warren, Ohio: The Literary Denim, 1981), p. 17. 7 John Clellon Holmes, Go, p. x. 8 Ibid.. p. xi. 9 Ibid.. p. xii. 10 Author's interview with John Clellon Holmes In Old Saybrook, Connecticut, July 21, 1983. 11 John Clellon Holmes used the terms "old group," "old crowd," and
353 "new group" in his interviews with Dana Burns Westberg, parts of which have been incorporated in Westberg'e unpublished B.A. thesis, "The Curious Case of John Clellon Holmes" (Amherst, Massachusetts: Amherst College, 1976). 12 In This Is the Beat Generation," New York. Times Magatine (November 16, 1952), 22, Holmes writes as follows about Baearov (usually spelled with a "z"): "The literary hero of the Lost Generation should have been Bazarov, the nihilist in Turgenev's 'Fathers and Sons·' Bazarov sat around, usually in the homes of the people he professed to loathe, smashing every icon within his reach. He was a man stunned into Irony and rage by the collapse of the moral and intellectual structure of his world." Second draft of Go. 14 Author's interview with John Clellon Holmes, July 21, 1983. 13 John Clellon Holmee, Go, p. xv. Joyce Johnson, Minor Characters (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1983), p. 79. John Clellon Holmes, Go, pp. ix-x. Joyce Johnson, Minor Characters, p. 79. 19 John Clellon Holmes, Go, p. x. 20 Author's interview with John Clellon Holmes, July 21, 1983. 21 John Clellon Holmes, Go, p. x. 22 John Clellon Holmes, Passionate Opinions: The Cultural Essays (Fayettevllle, Arkansas: University of Arkansas Press, 1988), ppquote. 54-55d in. "The Curious Case of John Clellon Holmes," p. 129. 2 John ClelloClellonn HolmeeHolme,e "Thiin as n iIsintervie the Beawt Generation,with Dana "Burn News YorWestbergk Times, Magazine (November 16, 1952), 10. ?4 Gerald Nicosia, Memory Babe: A Critical Biography of Jack Kerouac (New York: Grove Press, 1983), p. 252. 26 Jack Kerouac, On the Road (New York: Signet Books, 1959 [1957]), p. 11. 27 Author's interview with John Clellon Holmes, July 21, 1983. 28 Arthur and Kit Knight, eds.. The Beat Journey (California, Pennsylvania: The Unspeakable Visions of the Individual, 1978), p. 148.
354 29 D.G., "A Sad and Sorry Lot," Denver Post (December 7, 1952) 18. 30 Frederic Morton, "Three A.M. Revels," New York Herald Tribune Book Review (October 12, 1952), 33. 31 Ihab H. Hassan, Radical Innocence: Studies In the Contemporary American Novel (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961), p. 92. 32 Kenneth Rexroth, "When the Joints Were Jumping." Saturday Review (August 2, 1958), 11. 33 John Clellon Holmes, Go_, p. x. 34 Author's interview with John Clellon Holmes, July 21, 1983. 35 John Clellon Holmes quoted In Dana Burns Westberg, "The Curious Case of John Clellon Holmes," p. 101. 36 Author's interview with John Clellon Holmes, July 21, 1983. 37 John Clellon Holmes, G£, p. x. 38 Ibid.. p. xiv. 39 Ibid.. p. xiii. 40 A list called "Ideas for Titles," according to Holmes probably written in September 1951, Is in the John Clellon Holmes Collection (uncatalogued material).
Notes to Chapter Three
1 Holmes to Kerouac, February 3, 1950. Ibid. Holmes to Kerouac, May 28, 1952. John Clellon Holmes, The Horn (Berkeley: Creative Arts Book Company, 1980 [1958]), p. 1. Richard Ardinger, An Annotated Bibliography of Works by John Clellon Holmes (Pocatello. Idaho: Idaho State University Press, 1979), p. 198. Holmes to Hiram Haydn, March 7, 1958. Ibid. Arthur and Kit Knight, eds., The Beat Journey (California, Pennsylvania: The Unspeakable Visions of the Individual, 1978), p. 152. Holmes to Kerouac, May 28, 1952.
355 10 Dana Burns Westberg, "The Curious Case of John Clellon Holmes" (Amherst, Massachusetts: Amherst College, 1976; unpublished B.A. thesis), p. 163. 11 Holmes to Hiram Haydn, March 7, 1958. 12 Richard Ardlnger, An Annotated Bibliography of Works by John Clellon Holmes, p. 4. 13 Arthur and Kit Knight, ede., The Beat Journey, p. 153. 14 Ibid-, p. 152. 15 Holmes to Hiram Haydn, March 7, 1958. 16 Ibid. 17 Ibid. 18 Ibid. 19 Ibid. 20 Cf. Chris Challls, "The Recognizable Pseudonym In the Novels of John Clellon Holmes," Moody Street Irregulars: A Jack Kerouac Newsletter 12 (Fall, 1982), 7-8. 21 Richard Kirk Ardlnger, "John Clellon Holmes," In The Beats: Literary Bohemians in Postwar America, ed. Ann Charters (Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1983), p. 252. 22 Kerouac to Holmes, June 3, 1952. 23 John Clellon Holnes, The Horn, pp. li-lii. 24 Holmes to Kerouac, June 9, 1952. 25 Ibid. 26 Dana Burns Westberg, "The Curious Case of John Clellon Holmes," p. 152. 27 Draft for an introduction to The Horn, John Clellon Holmes Collection (Box 2). 28 Richard Ardlnger, An Annotated Bibliography of Works by John Clellon Holmes, p. 4. 29 Draft for an introduction to The Horn. 30 Holmes to Hiram Haydn, March 7, 1958. 31 Holmes to Kerouac, May 28, 1952. 32 Draft for an introduction to The Horn. 33 Richard Ardlnger, An Annotated Bibliography of Works by John Clellon Holmes, p. 5. 34 Arthur and Kit Knight, ede., The Beat Journey, p. 151. •" Kenneth Rexroth, "When the Joints Were Jumping," Saturday Review
356 (August 2, 1958), 11. 36 Whitney Balliett, "Happily Ever After, with Footnotes," New Yorker (September 6, 195Θ), 126. 37 Gene Baro, "A Novel Centered in the World of Jazz," New York Herald Tribune Book Review (July 20, 1958), 3. З Nat Hentoff, "The Jazz Life," Nation (November 15, 1958), 366. 39 Theodore M. O'Leary, "Jazz Horn Hero from Kansas City," Kansas City Star (July 19, 1958), 8. 40 John Clellon Holmes, The Horn, p. ill. 41 Ibid.. p. ii. 42 Arthur and Kit Knight, eds., The Beat Journey, p. 153. 43 Draft for an Introduction to The Horn. 44 Author's interview with John Clellon Holmes, July 21, 1983. 45 Kerouac to Holmes, June 17 or 19, 1952, in The Beat Diary, eds. Arthur and Kit Knight (California, Pennsylvania: The Unspeakable Visions of the Individual, 1977), p. 137. 46 Kerouac to Holmes, June 3, 1950. 47 Holnes to Kerouac, February 3, 1950. 48 Ibid. 49 Ibid. 50 Richard Ardinger, An Annotated Bibliography of Works by John Clellon Holmes, p. 5. 51 John Clellon Holmes, The Horn, p. ii.
Notes to Chapter Four
Arthur and Kit Knight, eds.. The Beat Journey (California, Pennsylvania: The Unspeakable Visions of the Individual, 1978), p. 154. John Clellon Holmes, Nothing More to Declare (London: André Deutsch, 1968 [1967]), p. 247. Notebook No. 1, John Clellon Holmes Collection (Box 6). Richard Ardinger, An Annotated Bibliography of Works b£ John Clellon Holmes (Pocatello. Idaho: Idaho State University Press, 1979). p. 6. John Clellon Holmes, Get Home Free (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1964),
357 p. 132. Stanley Edgar Нуman, "The Fat Knight and the Thin Knight," New Leader (April 27, 1964), 24. Leslie A. Fiedler, Love and Death in the American Novel (New York: Stein and Day, 1975 [I960]), p. 351. 8 Ibid., p. 181. 9 Ibid.. p. 339. Washington Irving, The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1978 [1819-20]), pp. 40-41. Melvin W. Askew, "Quests, Cars and Kerouac," in Jack Kerouac, On the Road: Text and Criticism, ed. Scott Donaldson (New York: Penguin Books, 1979), pp. 388-389. 12 Malcolm Cowley, ed.. The Portable Hawthorne (New York: The Viking Press, 1967 [1948]), p. 62. 13 Ibid., p. 64. Leslie A. Fiedler, Waiting for the End (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1967 [1964]), p. 26. In Marcus Cunliffe, The Literature of the United States (London: Penguin Books, 1986 [1954]), p. 366. 16 Journal entry, December 31, 1960. 17 Richard Ardlnger, An Annotated Bibliography of Works by John Clellon Holmes, p. 6. ι α Haskel Frankel, "How Time Arms Us Against Itself," New York Times (May 3, 1964), 23. 19 Stanley Edgar Hyman, "The Fat Knight and the Thin Knight," 24. 2 Charles Boewe, "Bedding and Boozing," Saturday Review (June 6, 1964), 41. 21 Haskel Frankel, "How Time Arms Us Against Itself," 23. 22 Edward Field, "Wheeeeeeeeeeeeet," New York Herald Tribune (June 7, 1964), 13. Arthur and Kit Knight, eds.. The Beat Journey, p. 155. 24 Ibid. 25 Lawrence Lipton, "Beatniks in the Disenchanted 60s," Los Angeles Times (September 3, 1964), Part IV, 6. 26 Richard Ardlnger, An Annotated Bibliography of Works by John Clellon Holmes, p. 6. 27 Charles Poore, "Books of The Times: New Barricades for Avant-Garde
358 Novelists," New York Times (April 9, 1964), 29. Charles Boewe, "Bedding and Boozing," 41. 29 Arthur and Kit Knight, eds., The Beat Journey, p. 155. 30 Stanley Edgar Hyman, "The Fat Knight and the Thin Knight," 24. Lawrence Lipton, "Beatniks in the Disenchanted 60s," 6. 32 Arthur and Kit Knight, eds., The Beat Journey, p. 155. Richard Ardinger, An Annotated Bibliography of Works by John Clellon Holnes, p. 6. W Ibid.
Notes to Chapter Five
1 "Forty Danes," Poetry LXXI, 6 (March, 1948), 339-341. 2 Neurotica 1 (Spring, 1948), 3. John Clellon Holmes, "Introduction," in Neurotica 1948-1951 (London: Jay Landesman Ltd., 1981), p. 12. John Clellon Holmes, Nothing More to Declare (London: André Deutsch, 1968 [1967]), p. 11. John Clellon Holmes, Passionate Opinions: The Cultural Essays (Fayetteville, Arkansas: University of Arkansas Press, 1988), p. 55. Norman Maller, Advertisements for Myself (London: André Deutsch, 1961 [1959]), p. 294. John Clellon Holmes, Passionate Opinions: The Cultural Essays, p. 55. 8 John Clellon Holmes, Representative Men: The Biographical Essays (Fayetteville, Arkansas: University of Arkansas Press, 1988), p. 25. 9 Ibid.. p. 64. Ibid.. p. 88. Ibid., p. 116. Ibid.. p. 231. John Clellon Holmes, Passionate Opinions: The Cultural Essays, p. 116. John Clellon Holmes, Nothing More to Declare, p. 182. John Clellon Holmes, Passionate Opinions: The Cultural Essays.
359 pp. 45-46. John Clellon Holmes, Nothing More to Declare, p. 243. Richard Ardlnger, An Annotated Bibliography of Works by John Clellon Holmes (Pocatello. Idaho: Idaho State University Press, 1979), p. 7. 18 Ibid. 19 "A Few Loves, A Few Deaths: 1945-1951," Contact XIII, 2 (July- August, 1962), 69-73. "Farewell to a Bad Decade," Nugget VIII, 2 (April, 1963), 41-42, 66-67. 20 "The Вооге and I." Nugget VII. 4 (August, 1962), 62-63.
Notes to Chapter Six
1 Author's interview with John Clellon Holmes in Old Saybrook, Connecticut, August 22, 1985. 2 According to dated typescripts in the John Clellon Holmes Collection at Boston University, the essays in Walking Away from the War were composed in the following order: "Escape" and "Taking the Wound to Yeate Country," which originally formed one essay, between March 20 and June 23, 1968; "Venice About Which Everything Has Been Written -," between December 2, 1968 and January 16, 1969; "See Naples and Live," between February 21 and April 9, 1969; "A Wake in the Streets of Paris," between July 24 and August 12, 1969; "Whispering in the Pubs," between September 5, 1969 and August 10, 1970; "Flesh and the Machine: Thanksgiving in Florence," between November 21, 1970 and January 17, 1971; "Awake in Rome," between September 16 and November 8, 1972; "London: Games, People, Play," between November 9, 1970 and February 14, 1973. 3 Typescript Walking Away from the War, p. 2. John Clellon Holmes Collection (uncatalogued material). * John Clellon Holmes, Displaced Person: The Travel Essays (Fayetteville, Arkansas: University of Arkansas Press, 1987), p. 17. 5 William R. King, "Michael McClure," in The Beats: Literary Bohemians in Postwar America, ed. Ann Charters (Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1983), p. 383.
360 6 Ibid.. p. 391. 7 Peggy Brooks at E.P. Dutton to Holmes, September 12, 1969. 8 Burroughs Mitchell at Charles Scrlbner's Sons to the Sterling Lord Agency, September 11, 1973. 9 Typescript Walking Away from the War, p. 3. 10 Typescript of "Notes for opening note" for Walking Away from the War, dated November 30, 1972. John Clellon Holmes Collection (uncatalogued material). 11 Typescript Walking Away from the War, p. 3.
Notes to Chapter Seven
In a letter of January 4, 1949, beginning "Dear friends" and probably addressed to Alan Harrington, Holmes mentions Greene's novel Brighton Rock In an account of the progress he Is making In the composition of The Transgressor: "Brighton Rock, which I have been purposefully dragging out, has helped me with the accent a lot, and is, of course, a marvelous book, tackling a subject so difficult that it would paralyze me, but handling it superbly." Letter, addressee unknown, April 13, 1949. Typescript The Transgressor, p. 6. John Clellon Holmes Collection (uncatalogued material). Author's interview with John Clellon Holmes in Old Saybrook, Connecticut, August 22, 1985. John Clellon Holmes, Go (Mamaroneck, New York: Paul P. Appel, 1977 [1952]), p. 288. Author's interview with John Clellon Holmes, August 22, 1985. John Clellon Holmes, Passionate Opinions: The Cultural Essays (Fayetteville, Arkansas: University of Arkansas Press, 1988), p. 54. 8 John Clellon Holmes, Go, p. 36. 9 Ibid.. p. 194. 10 Ibid-, pp. 43-44. 11 Letter beginning "Dear Howie and Dellie," February 7, 1949. 12 Journal entry. May 27, 1949. 13 Ibid.
361 Author's Interview with John Clellon Holmes, August 22, 1985. Letter, April 13, 1949. Oedipus the King was written by Sophocles. Ibid. Richard Sorge (1895-1944) was a German press correspondent who headed a successful Soviet espionage ring during World War Two. In 1941 he was arrested by the Japanese. Jozsef Mlndszenty (1892-1975) was a Roman Catholic cardinal who personified uncompromising opposition to fascism and communism In Hungary. In 1949 he was convicted on charges of treason. 18 Holmes to Ginsberg, December 12, 1950. 19 Ibid. 20 Ibid. 21 Journal entry, October 31, 1951. 22 Ibid. 23 Journal entry, November 15, 1951. 2* Journal entry, October 31, 1951. 25 Holmes to Kerouac, October 22, 1952. 26 Holmes to Kerouac, October 24, 1952. 27 Ibid. 28 Author's Interview with John Clellon Holmes, August 22, 1985. 29 Typescript Perfect Fools, p. 2. John Clellon Holmes Collection (uncatalogued material). 30 John Clellon Holmes, "Farewell to a Bad Decade," Nugget VIII. 2 (April, 1963), 42. 31 Ibid.. 66. 32 Arthur and Kit Knight, eds., The Beat Journey (California, Pennsylvania: The Unspeakable Visions of the Individual, 1978), p. 157. 33 Ibid. 34 Ibid. 35 Ibid. 36 John Martin at the Black Sparrow Press to the Sterling Lord Agency, June 24, 1983. 37 Ibid. 38 Allen Klots at Dodd, Head and Company to the Sterling Lord Agency, March 15, 1976. 39 Laurie Graham at Charles Scrlbner'e Sons to the Sterling Lord
362 Agency, October 11, 1976. 40 Hlllel Black at William Morrow to the Sterling Lord Agency, October 2, 1974. 41 Ibid. 42 Laurie Graham at Charles Scrlbner's Sons to the Sterling Lord Agency, October 11, 1976. 43 John Macrae, III at E.P. Dutton to the Sterling Lord Agency, April 16, 1974. 44 Author's Interview with John Clellon Holmes, August 22, 1985. 45 Dana Burns Westberg, "The Curious Case of John Clellon Holmes" (Amherst, Massachusetts: Amherst College, 1976; unpublished B.A. thesis), p. 149. 46 Author's Interview with John Clellon Holmes, August 22, 1985. 47 Dana Burns Westberg, "The Curious Case of John Clellon Holmes," p. 149. 48 John Clellon Holmes, Go, p. 199. 49 Richard Kirk Ardlnger, "John Clellon Holmes," In The Beats: Literary Bohemians In Postwar America, ed. Ann Charters (Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1983), p. 250. 50 John Clellon Holmes in an interview with Dana Burns Westberg, quoted in "The Curious Case of John Clellon Holmes," p. 148. 51 According to a list of characters in the second draft of Go, John Clellon Holmes Collection (Box 1). 52 John Clellon Holmes, Representative Men: The Biographical Essays (Fayetteville, Arkansas: University of Arkansas Press, 1988), pp. 53-54. Ibid., p. 55. John Clellon Holmes, Get Home Free (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1964), p. 169. 55 Cf. Get Home Free, p. 49, and Perfect Fools, p. 219. 56 John Clellon Holmes, Get Home Free, p. 251. 57 Ibid.. pp. 251-252. 58 Author's interview with John Clellon Holmes, August 22, 1985. 59 Ibid. 60 Ibid. 61 Journal entry, June 16, 1952. 62 Ibid.
363 63 Ibid 6 Journal entry, July 2, 1952. 65 Cf. Jack Kerouac, The Subterraneans (New York: Grove Press, 1958). 66 Holmes to Kerouac, October 24, 1952. This passage Is an Interesting example of the mutual influence and interdependence among the Beat writers, who frequently borrowed ideas, scenes, titles and phrases from each other. In The Subterraneans, which was written exactly one year after Holmes wrote this letter, Kerouac attributes the origin of the term "the subterraneans" to the character representing Allen Ginsberg in that book, Adam Moored, who also claims that the subterraneans are "very Chrlstllke" (p. 1). Holmes's term "urban Thoreaus" was also incorporated by Kerouac into The Subterraneans (p. 15), in which it is ascribed to Balllol MacJones, Kerouac's pseudonym for Holmes. Finally, the phrases "moaned for man" and "the Forest of Arden," which Holmes also uses in his letter to Kerouac, are reminiscent of On the Road and The Subterraneans, respectively. At the end of On the Road the narrator, Sal Paradise, is admonished by "a tall old man with flowing white hair" to "Go moan for man" (On the Road was published in 1957, but Holmes had already read the manuscript in 1951); in The Subterraneans "the Forest of Arden of the World" (p. 46) stands for the physical and spiritual harmony which the narrator, Leo Percepled, is looking for in his relationship with Mardou Fox. 67 Journal entry, August 2, 1955. 68 Journal entry, August 22, 1955. 69 Journal entry, August 11, 1955. Journal entry, August 3, 1955. 71 Ibid. 72 Journal entry, August 9, 1955. 73 Journal entry, August 31, 1955. 7A Ibid. 75 Journal entry, August 12, 1955. 76 Journal entry, August 31, 1955. 77 Journal entry, August 22, 1955. 78 Journal entry, October 4, 1955. 79 Ibid. 80 Journal entry, August 22, 1955.
364 81 Ibid. 82 Journal entry, August 23, 1955. 83 Journal entry, August 22, 1955. 8 Journal entry, October 4, 1955. 85 Ibid. 86 Journal entry, October 25, 1955. 87 Ibid. 88 Ibid. "Lowney Handy was the woman, with whom [James] Jones lived, who had the nerve to 'teach' him about writing. One of her dictums (and not a bad one, either) was that he should copy (literally, on the typewriter, word for word) great novels. For Instance, he copied all of War and Peace, if you can Imagine. She was a good influence on Jones in that part of his career, but he eventually had to break from under her influence, which was emotional as well as intellectual. I don't know what happened to her. She ran a sort of atable of young writers out there in Southern Illinois - several of them were published, most of them disappeared after a few years." (Holmes to author, February 7-8, 1987) 89 John Clellon Holmes, "Farewell to a Bad Decade," 66. 90 Typescript of the first version of the prologue to The Good End of Simon Calk, p. 4. John Clellon Holmes Collection (uncatalogued material). 91 Typescript of the second chapter of The Good End of Simon Calk, p. 6. John Clellon Holmes Collection (uncatalogued material). 92 John Clellon Holmes in an interview with Dana Burns Westberg, quoted in "The Curious Case of John Clellon Holmes," p. 151.
Notes to Chapter Eight
Arthur and Kit Knight, Interior Geographies: An Interview with John Clellon Holmes (Warren, Ohio: The Literary Denim, 1981), p. 12. John Clellon Holmes, "Tea for Two," Neurotica 2 (Summer, 1948), 39. Typescript L.A. in Our Souls, p. 235. John Clellon Holmes Collection (uncatalogued material). In the version of "Tea for Two" in the typescript of L.A. in Our Souls Holmes's use of slang is even more predominant, as the first
365 sentences of the story Illustrate: This Is a Village fable, and the cat Is Beeker. He was a Pekoe-man, and he blew himself out of the colls of a trumpet every night. He came on for culture, not for loot; so he passed the marijuana to his cohorts when the need was on. This tea-dispensing on the cuff paid no price, but still the lad was like that - a lamp, if not Aladdin, (p. 236) Richard Ardinger, An Annotated Bibliography of Works by John Clellon Holmes (Pocatello. Idaho: Idaho State University Press, 1979), p. 10. John Clellon Holmes In an interview with Dana Burns Westberg, quoted In "The Curious Case of John Clellon Holmes" (Amherst, Massachusetts: Amherst College, 1976; unpublished B.A. thesis), p. 49. Ibid. John Clellon Holmes, The Horn (Berkeley: Creative Arts Book Company, 1980 [1958]), p. 26. 9 Ibid. 10 "The Horn," Discovery 2 (August, 1953), 84-103; "The Argument," Nugget II, 2 (March, 1957), 52-53, 78. These stories are not included in the typescript of L.A. in Our Souls. 11 Typescript L.A. in Our Souls, p. 174. 12 John Clellon Holmes, Passionate Opinions: The Cultural Essays (Fayetteville, Arkansas: University of Arkansas Press, 1988), p. 32. 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid.. p. 33. 15 John Clellon Holmes, "The Next to the Last Time," Escapade XII, 6 (September, 1967), 29. 16 John Clellon Holmes, "Of Joy and Cadillacs: The Weldon Stowe Story," in typescript L.A. in Our Souls, p. 56. 17 John Clellon Holmes, Nothing More to Declare (London: André Deutsch, 1968 [1967]), p. 224. 18 Typescript L.A. in Our Souls, p. 194. 19 John Clellon Holmes, "A Little Early in the Day for Truth," in typescript L.A. in Our Souls, p. 197.
366 20 Typescript L.A. In Our Souls, p. 305. 21 Ibid. 22 Richard Ardlnger, An Annotated Bibliography of Works by John Clellon Holmes, p. 13. 23 John Clellon Holmes, "A Length of Chain," Nugget V, 4 (August, 1960), 14. 24 John Clellon Holmes, "A Length of Chain," In typescript L.A. in Our Souls, p. 319. The version published in Nugget simply reads "piece of chain." According to Holmes, In a letter quoted from by Ardlnger on p. 13 of his An Annotated Bibliography of Works by John Clellon Holmes, "A Length of Chain" was "severely edited from the original version. Most of the best lines were taken out." Although the editorial changes mainly amount, as here, to a slight toning down of Holmes's prose, it Is regrettable that the original, tragicomic ending of the story was cut before publication. In that ending Jim realizes once more that, unlike Bense and Whitney and even though he sometimes pretends otherwise, he will never free himself from the bonds of society, but will always resign himself to Aunt Phoebe's giving him and his uncle "proper hell, no matter what" (typescript L.A. In Our Souls, p. 326). 25 Cf. note 24. 26 John Clellon Holmes, "A Length of Chain," Nugget V, 4 (August, 1960), 21. 27 Richard Ardlnger, An Annotated Bibliography of Works by John Clellon Holmes, p. 18. 28 Typescript L.A. In Our Souls, p. 276. 29 Richard Ardlnger, An Annotated Bibliography of Works by John Clellon Holmes, p. 18. 30 Ibid. 31 Typescript L.A. In Our Souls, p. 276. 32 John Clellon Holmes, "The Manifest Destiny of Mrs. Folk's Sudle," Penthouse VIII, 1 (February, 1977), 110. 33 Frank Bergon and Zeese Papanlkolas, eds., Looking Far West: The Search for the American West in History, Myth, and Literature (New York: New American Library, 1978), p. 149. 34 Ibid.. p. 145. 35
367 36 Typescript L.A. In Our Souls, p. 137. 37 John Clellon Holmes, "Night-Blooming Cereus," Black Warrior Review 4 (Spring, 1978), 9-10. 3Θ John Clellon Holmes, "At Pompeii," Black Warrior Review 7 (Spring, 1981), 20. 39 Typescript L.A. In Our Souls, p. 137. 40 John Clellon Holmes, "At Pompeii," Black Warrior Review 7 (Spring, 1981, 19. 41 Typescript L.A. In Our Souls, p. 99. * Richard Ardlnger, An Annotated Bibliography of Works by John Clellon Holmes, p. IB. 3 Typescript L.A. In Our Souls, p. 99. 44 Richard Ardlnger, An Annotated Bibliography of Works by John Clellon Holmes, p. 19. 45 John Clellon Holmes, "Night-Blooming Cereus," Black Warrior Review 4 (Spring, 1977), 8. 46 Arthur and Kit Knight, Interior Geographies: An Interview with John Clellon Holmes, p. 30. 47 Ibid. 48 "L.A. in Our Souls" is the final title of the essay. In Playboy it was called "In Search of Loe Angeles," in the typescript of LA in Our Souls. "Los Angeles: City of the Present Tense." 49 John Clellon Holmes, Displaced Person: The Travel Essays (Fayetteville, Arkansas: University of Arkansas Press, 1987), p. 210. 50 Joan Dldion, Slouching towards Bethlehem (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1979 [1968]), p. 182. 51 Ibid. 52 Ibid.. p. 11. 5 Joan Dldion, The White Album (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1981 [1979]), p. 11. 54 Ibid.. p. 13. 55 Ibid. 56 John Clellon Holmes, Displaced Person: The Travel Essays, p. 251. 57 "Uncle Willy" was published twice as "Uncle Willy and Us." It was first printed in the Audience 'Pilot Issue' (Spring, 1968), 4-9, and reprinted in Audience 1,1 (January, 1971), 12-19.
368 58 John Clellon Holmes, Representative Men: The Biographical Essays (Fayetteville, Arkansas: University of Arkansas Press, 1988), pp. 223-224; John Clellon Holmes, Nothing More to Declare, p. 98. 59 John Clellon Holmes, Representative Men: The Biographical Essays, p. 215. 60 Typescript L.A. in Our Souls, p. 83. 61 John Clellon Holmes, Passionate Opinions: The Cultural Essays, p. 162. 62 Typescript L.A. in Our Souls, p. 159. 63 Ibid. 64 Joseph Wenke, "Seymour Krim," in The Beats: Literary Bohemians in Postwar America, ed. Ann Charters (Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1983), p. 318. 65 Seymour Krim, ed., The Beats (Greenwich, Connecticut: Fawcett, 1963 [I960]), p. 13. 66 Typescript L.A. in Our Souls, p. 217. 67 John Clellon Holmes, Passionate Opinions: The Cultural Essays, p. 235. 68 Ibid.. p. 228. 69 In the typescript of L.A. in Our Souls the title of this piece is "And Here Comes Neal - 1948-1951"; in Spit in the Ocean 6 the subtitle of the article is "(New York, me-Sl)." 70 The first issue of Spit in the Ocean came out in 1974; its seventh and last issue has yet to see the light. 71 Typescript L.A. in Our Souls, p. 327. 72 Ibid. 73 Ibid. 74 John Clellon Holmes, Representative Men: The Biographical Essays, p. 202.
75 Allen Ginsberg, "Notes for Howl and Other Poems," in The Poetics of the New American Poetry, eds. Donald Allen and Warren Tallman (New York: Grove Press, 1973), p. 318. "Rocks in Our Beds: The New England Beats" was first published in 76 Stony Hills 10 (1981), 1, 9, 15; "Tender Hearts in Boulder" first came out in the Review of Contemporary Fiction III, 2 (Summer, 1983), 61-63. 77 In "Rocks in Our Beds: The New England Beats" as published in Stony
369 Hills Holmes has the year right; In the version of this essay as printed in Gone In October, as well as elsewhere in that book and In Displaced Person: The Travel Essays, Holmes claims that the flood took place In 1937. 78 John Clellon Holmes, Displaced Person: The Travel Essays, p. 6. '' Richard Ardlnger, An Annotated Bibliography of Works by John Clellon Holmes, p. 16. ВО Typescript L.A. In Our Souls, p. 339. 81 Richard Ardlnger, An Annotated Bibliography of Works by John Clellon Holmes, p. 16. 82 John Clellon Holmes, Representative Men: The Biographical Essays, p. 158.
Notes to Chapter Nine
Dana Burns Westberg, "The Curious Case of John Clellon Holmes" (Amherst, Hassachusetts: Amherst College, 1976; unpublished B.A. thesis), p. 7. Ibid., p. 21. Paul Portuges, The Visionary Poetics of Allen Ginsberg (Santa Barbara, California: Ross-Erikson, Publishers, 1978), pp. 26-27. Richard Ardlnger, An Annotated Bibliography of Works by John Clellon Holmes (Pocatello, Idaho: Idaho State University Press, 1979), p. 10. John Clellon Holmes, Passionate Opinions: The Cultural Essays (Fayetteville, Arkansas: University of Arkansas Press, 1988), p. 12. John Clellon Holmes, Death Drag: Selected Poems 1948-1979 (Pocatello, Idaho: Llmberloet Press, 1979), p. 20. Clellon Holmes, "Frau Von Stein, My Brother's Keeper," Partisan Review (May, 1948), 548-549. This version of the poem bears no dedication. Furthermore, the title apart, in four other places it is phrased differently than the version published in Death Drag. In the later versions of his early poems Holmes usually also preferred lower case to most of the capital letters that, in the early versions, are consistently used at the beginning of each line.
370 ® Richard Ardlnger, An Annotated Bibliography of Works by John Clellon Holmes, p· 10. ' Clellon Holmes, "Fear In the Afternoon," Poetry LXXII, 4 (July, 1948), 181. Clellon Holmes, "Love and Chemistry," New Mexico Quarterly Review XVIII, 4 (Winter, 1948), 442. John Clellon Holmes In an interview with Dana Burns Westberg, quoted In "The Curious Case of John Clellon Holmes," p. 32. In an annotation on the typed second draft of "Scobie and Helen, Holmes has explained the origin of the poem's title. This second draft Is In the John Clellon Holmes Collection (uncatalogued material). The second draft of Scobie and Helen was originally titled "Tristan and Isolde." In pencil Holmes later changed this title to "Scobie and Helen." Between brackets he also added the subtitle "vers de société," which was later dropped. 14 Clellon Holmes, "Scobie and Helen," Wake 9 (1950), 105. 1° Dana Burns Westberg, "The Curious Case of John Clellon Holmes," p. 45. 16 Death Drag, p. 33. First published In Voices 137 (Spring, 1949), 40. In Norman Ault, ed., Elizabethan Lyrics (New fork: Capricorn Books, 1960 [1925]), pp. 294-295. 18 John Clellon Holmes In an Interview with Dana Burns Weetberg, quoted In "The Curious Case of John Clellon Holmes," pp. 46-47. Clellon HHolmeso , "Epitaph for a Faustian Han," Voices 143 (Autumn, 1950), 24. 20 Dana I Dana Burns Westberg, The Curious Case of John Clellon Holmes," p. 37. 21 Death Drag, p. 13. First published In Western Review XIII, 3 (Spring, 1949), 160. Exceptionally, the poem as It Is printed In Death Drag still has the capital letters that open each line of the poem as It first appeared. 22 Dana Burns Westberg, The Curious Case of John Clellon Holmes," p. 38. 23 John Clellon Holmes, "Tom 0' Bedlam: A Mad Song," In typescript Skinning a Deer, p. 17. John Clellon Holmes Collection
371 (uncatalogued material). 24 Death Drag, p. 10. First published In Voices 143 (Autumn 1950), 25. 25 The somewhat different version of "Tom O'Bedlam: A Had Song" which Holmes Included in Dire Coasts (Boise. Idaho: Llmberlost Press, 1986), does in fact bear the dedication: "for Allen." 26 Dana Burns Westberg, "The Curious Case of John Clellon Holmes," p. 89. 27 On the Murder of Bill Cannastra by the BMT" Is Included In the typescript of Skinning a Deer, pp. 65-66. Cannastra's death is also the subject of a very traditionally phrased early poem by Allen Ginsberg, "In Memoriam: William Cannastra 1922-1950," in Allen Ginsberg, The Gates of Wrath: Rhymed Poems 1948-1952 (Bolinas, 28 California: Grey Fox Press, 1972), pp. 38-39. 29 Death Drag, p. 37. Dana Burns Westberg, "The Curious Case of John Clellon Holmes," 30 p. 57. 31 Ibid.. p. 32. "Good Friday" is Included in the typescript of Skinning в_ Deer. 32 p. 34. Arthur and Kit Knight, Interior Geographies: An Interview with John 33 Clellon Holmes (Warren, Ohio: The Literary Denim, 1981), p. 5. Richard Ardlnger, An Annotated Bibliography of Works by John 34 Clellon Holmes, p. 17. 35 Ibid. 36 Ibid. 37 Death Drag, p. [1]. Richard Ardlnger, An Annotated Bibliography of Works by John 38 Clellon Holmes, p. 17. 39 Ibid. 40 Ibid. Ibid. 41 All seven drafts of the February 1974 version of "Too-Late Words to My Father (1899-1959)" are In the John Clellon Holmes Collection (uncatalogued material). 42 Death Drag, p. 51. First published in New and Experimental Literature (Texas Center for Writers Press, 1975), 61-65. 43 Arthur and Kit Knight, Interior Geographies: An Interview with John
372 Clellon Holmes, p. 7. 44 Ibid. 45 Death Drag, p. 53. 46 See, for Instance, Interior Geographies: An Interview with John Clellon Holmes, p. 6. 47 Death Drag, p. 52. 48 Ibid.. p. 53. 49 Ibid.. p. 56. 50 See Interior Geographies: An Interview with John Clellon Holmes. p. 6. 51 Death Drag, p. 56. 52 Ibid.. p. 5. First published in The Southern Review XIII, 2 (April, 1977), 338-342. 53 Ibid.. p. 6. 54 Ibid., p. 5. 55 6. 56 57 Ibid.. p. 7. 58 See, for Instance. Interior Geographies: An Interview with John Clellon Holmes, p. 5: "Lawrence remains, for me, the protean artist and thinker of this century - thorny as a briar-hedge, a man I'm secretly glad I never knew (difficult as he was), but a writer who pioneered territories of consciousness the rest of us are only now starting to glimpse, much less map." 59 Death Drag, p. 7. 60 Ibid.. p. 8. 61 "Women in A.M." is included In the typescript of Skinning a Deer. p. 44. 62 Death Drag, p. 30. First published in Columbia Review LIV, 1 (Winter 1975), 11. 63 The, dated, final drafts of the two poems are in the John Clellon Holmes Collection (uncatalogued material). 64 Death Drag, p. 45. First published in The Beat Book, Arthur and Glee Knight, eds. (California, Pennsylvania: The Unspeakable Visions of the Individual, 1974), p. 149. 65 Death Drag, p. 36. First published in Our Poets's Workshop 22 (July, 1974), unpaged.
373 66 Death Drag, p. 38. First published in Palantlr 4 (November, 1976), 39. 67 Death Drag, p. 57. First published in Palantlr 4 (November, 1976), 40. 68 Richard Kirk Ardinger, "John Clellon Holmes," in The Beats: Literary Bohemians in Postwar America, ed. Ann Charters (Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1983), p. 260. 69 John Clellon Holmes, The Bowling Green Poems (California, Pennsylvania: The Unspeakable Visions of the Individual, 1977), p. [4]. 70 Ibid. 71 Ibid. p. [7]. 72 Ibid. pp. [7-8]. 73 Ibid. p. [8]. 74 Ibid. p. [11]. 75 Ibid. p. [9]. 76 Ibid. p. [12]· 77 Ibid. p. [8]. 78 Ibid. p. [9]. 79 Ibid. p. [10]. 80 Ibid. p. [15]. 81 Ibid. p. [16]. 82 Ibid. p. [15]. 83 Ibid. . P· [17]· 84 Ibid. , p. [18]. 85 Ibid. , P· [19]. 86 Jim Burns, untitled review, Palantlr 8 (May, 1978), 74. 87 Death Drag, p. 12. 88 Ibid., P- 25. 89 Ibid.. Ρ- 5. 90 John Clellon Holmes, Dire Coasts (Boise, Idaho: Limberlost Press, 1988), Ρ- [И]· 91 Arthu r and Kit Knight, Interior Geographies: An Interview with John Clell on Holmes, p. 2. 92 Dire Coasts, p. [11]. 93 Ibid., P- [12]. 94 All e ight drafts of "Northfork October Return" are in the John
374 Clellon ВоIneв Collection (uncatalogued material).
375 I PRIMAHY SOURCES
1. Books
Go. Mamaroneck, New York: Paul P. Appel, 1977 [1952]. The Horn. Berkeley: Creative Arte Book Company, 1980 [1958]. Get Home Free. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1964. Nothing More to Declare. London: André Deutsch, 1968 [1967]. The Bowling Green Poems. California, Pennsylvania: The Unspeakable Visions of the Individual, 1977. Death Drag: Selected Poema 1948-1979. Focatello, Idaho: Llmberlost Press, 1979. Gone In October: Last Reflections on Jack Kerouac. Hailey, Idaho: Llmberlost Press, 1985. Displaced Person: The Travel Еаваув. Fayetteville, Arkansas: University of Arkansas Press, 1987. Passionate Opinions: The Cultural Essaya. Fayetteville, Arkansas: University of Arkansas Press, 1988. Representative Men: The Biographical Essays. Fayetteville, Arkansas: University of Arkansas Press, 1988. Dire Coasts. Boise, Idaho: Llmberlost Press, 1988.
2. Contributions to books and periodicals: fiction
"Tea for Two," Neurotica 2 (Summer, 1948), 36-43. "The Horn," Discovery 2 (August, 1953), 84-103. "The Argument," Nugget II, 2 (March, 1957), 52-53, 78. "A Length of Chain," Nugget V, 4 (August, 1960), 13-14, 21, 43. "The Next to the Last Time," Escapade XII, 6 (September, 1967), 28-31, 36. "The Manifest Destiny of Mrs. Polk's Sudie," Penthouse VIII, 1 (February, 1977), 109-110, 144, 146, 148-150, 152, 155, 164-165. "Night-Blooming Cereus," Black Warrior Review 4 (Spring, 1978), 8-20.
376 "At Pompeil," Black Warrior Review 7 (Spring, 1981), 19-29.
3. Contributions to books and periodicals: nonfiction
"This Is the Beat Generation," New York Times Magazine (November 16, 1952), 10, 19-20, 22. "A Few Loves, A Few Deaths: 1945-1951," Contact XIII, 2 (July-August, 1962), 69-73. "The Booze and I," Nugget VII, 4 (August, 1962), 62-63. "Farewell to a Bad Decade," Nugget VIII, 2 (April, 1963), 41-42, 66-67. "Rocks In Our Beds: The New England Beata," Stony Hills 10 (1981), 1, 9, 15. "Introduction." In Neurotica. London: Jay Landesman, Ltd., 1981, pp. 7- 13.
4. Contributions to books and periodicals: poetry
"Frau Von Stein, My Brother's Keeper," Partisan Review (May, 1948), 548-549. "Fear In the Afternoon," Poetry UtXII, 4 (July, 1948), 181. "Love and Chemistry," New Mexico Quarterly Review XVIII, 4 (Hinter, 1948), 442. "Scobie and Helen," Wake 9 (1950), 105. "Epitaph for a Faustian Man," Voices 143 (Autumn, 1950), 24.
II. SECONDARY SOURCES
1. Books
Ardlnger, Richard. An Annotated Bibliography of Worka by John Clellon Holmes. Pocatello, Idaho: Idaho State University Press, 1979. Ardlnger, Richard Kirk, "John Clellon Holmes." In Ann Charters, ed. The Beats: Literary Bohemians in Postwar America. Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1983.
377 Askew, Meivin W., "Quests, Cars and Kerouac." In Scott Donaldson, ed. Jack Kerouac. On the Road: Text and Criticism. New York: Penguin Books, 1979. Ault, Norman, ed. Ellgabethan Lyrics. New York: Capricorn Books, 1960 [19251. Bergon, Frank, and Zeese Papanikolas, eds. Looking Far West: The Search for the American West In History. Myth, and Literature. New York: New American Library, 1978. Cowley, Malcolm, ed. The Portable Hawthorne. New York: The Viking Press, 1967 [1946]. Cimllffe, Marcus. The Literature of the United States. London: Penguin Books, 1986 [1954]. Dldlon, Joan. Slouching towards Bethlehem. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1979 [1968]. Dldlon, Joan. The White Album. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1981 [1979]. Fiedler, Leslie A. Love and Death In the American Novel. New York: Stein ani Day, 1975 [1960]. Fiedler, Leslie A. Waiting for the End. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1967 [1964]. Ginsberg, Allen. The Gates of Wrath: Rhymed Poems 1948-1952. Bolinas, California: Grey Fox Press, 1972. Ginsberg, Allen. "Notes for Howl and Other Poems." In Donald Allen and Warren Tallman, eds. The Poetics of the New American Poetry. New York: Grove Press, 1973. Hassan, Ihab H. Radical Innocence: Studies in the Contemporary American Novel. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961. Irving, Washington. The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon. Gent.. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1978 [1819-20]. Johnson, Joyce. Minor Characters. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1983. Kerouac, Jack. On the Road. New York: Signet Books, 1959 [1957]. Kerouac, Jack. The Subterraneans. New York: Grove Press, 1958. King, William R. "Michael McClure." In Ann Charters, ed. The Beats: Literary Bohemians in Postwar America. Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1983. Knight, Arthur and Kit, eds. The Beat Diary. California, Pennsylvania: The Unspeakable Visions of the Individual, 1977.
378 Knight, Artur and Kit, eds. The Beat Journey. California, Pennsylvania: The Unspeakable Visions of the Individual, 1978. Knight, Arthur and Kit. Interior Geographies: An Interview with John Clellon Holmes. Warren, Ohio: The Literary Denim, 1981. Krim, Seymour, ed. The Beats. Greenwich, Connecticut: Fawcett, 1963 [1960]. Mailer, Norman. Advertlaemente for Myself. London: André Deutsch, 1961 [1959]. Mandel, George. Beatvllle U.S.A.. New York: Avon Books, 1961. Nicosia, Gerald. Memory Babe: A Critical Biography of Jack Kerouac. New York: Grove Press, 1983. Portuges, Paul. The Visionary Poetics of Allen Ginsberg. Santa Barbara, California: Ross-Erlkson, Publishers, 1978. Wenke, Joseph. "Seymour Krim." In Ann Charters, ed. The Beats: Literary Bohemians In Postwar America. Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1983.
2. Periodicals
Balliett, Whitney. "Happily Ever After, with Footnotes," New Yorker (September 6, 1958), 124-127. Baro, Gene. "A Novel Centered in the World of Jazz," New York Herald Tribune Book Review (July 20, 1958), 3. Boewe, Charles. "Bedding and Boozing," Saturday Review (June 6, 1964), 41. Burns, Jim. Untitled review of The Bowling Green Poems, Palantlr 8 (May, 1978), 74. Cballls, Chris. "The Recognizable Pseudonym In the Novels of John Clellon Holmes," Moody Street Irregulars: A Jack Kerouac Newsletter 12 (Fall, 1982), 7-8. Field, Edward. "Wheeeeeeeeeeeeel," New York Herald Tribune (June 7, 1964), 11, 13. Franke 1, Haskel. "How Time Arms Us Against Itself," New York Times (May 3, 1964), 23. D.G. "A Sad and Sorry Lot," Denver Post (December 7, 1952), 18. Hentoff, Nat. "The Jazz Life," Nation (November 15, 1958), 366. Hyman, Stanley Edgar. "The Fat Knight and the Thin Night," New Leader
379 (April 27, 1964), 23-24. Lipton, Lawrence. 'Beatniks In the Disenchanted 60s," Los Angeles Times (September 3, 1964), Part IV, 6. Morton, Frederic. "Three A.M. Revels," New York Herald Tribune Book Review (October 12, 1952), 33. O'Leary, Theodore M. "Jazz Horn Hero from Kansas City," Kansas City Star (July 19, 1958), 8. Poore, Charles. "Books of The Times: New Barricades for Avant-Garde Novelists," New York Times (April 9, 1964), 29. Rexroth, Kenneth. "When the Joints Were Jumping," Saturday Review (August 2, 1958), 11.
3. Other
Westberg, Dana Bums. The Curious Case of John Clellon Holmes. Amherst, Massachusetts: Amherst College, 1976. Unpublished B.A. thesis.
380 SAMEBVATTIBG
John Clellon Holmes (1926-1988) is ook in de Verenigde Staten nog steeds een tamelijk onbekende schrijver, wiens grotendeels tussen 1945 en 1970 ontstane werk pas onlange opnieuw is uitgegeven. Als men zijn naam al kent, wordt hij meestal in verband gebracht met de groep alternatieve Amerikaanse schrijvers uit de Jaren veertig en vijftig, die als de Beat Generation bekend is geworden. Holmes was inderdaad al vroeg bevriend met Jack Kerouac en Allen Ginsberg, en zijn werk vertoont verschillende overeenkomsten met dat van de Beats· Om hem als schrijver van romans, essays en gedichten recht te doen, zou het evenwel goed zijn om Holmes' relatie met de Beat Generation wat minder te benadrukken.
Dat laatste ligt het minst voor de hand in het geval van Holmes' eerste roman. Go, die een levendig beeld geeft van de Beat Generation aan het eind van de Jaren veertig· Hij verscheen in 1952, in hetzelfde
Jaar als drie andere romans die hetzelfde milieu beschrijven: Who Walk
In Darkness van Chandler Brossard, к Cry of Children van John Home
Burns, en Flee the Angry Strangers van George Mandel. In tegenstelling
tot deze, later als "pre-Beats" bestempelde, schrijvers, werd Holmes niet beïnvloed door de schrijvers van de Lost Generation, maar veeleer door Dostojewski. Aangezien het taalgebruik van Holmes ook minder modieus is dan dat van de "pre-Beats," is zijn stijl weliswaar
traditioneler, maar tevens minder gedateerd dan die van Brossard, Burns
en Mandel. Voor een deel vloeit de originaliteit van G£ ook voort uit
Holmes' subtiele beschrijving van de problematische relatie tussen de
hoofdpersoon in het boek, Paul Hobbes, en diens vrouw, Kathryn. Hoewel
381 men Holmes heeft verweten dat de vrouwelijke personages In Go te schetsmatig zijn, slaagt hij er Juist In om vrouwen levensechter te portretteren dan, bij voorbeeld. Jack Kerouac, wiens vrouwelijke karakters dikwijls weinig meer zijn dan stereotypen.
Ook de personages In The Hom (1958), waarin Holmes een beeld geeft van de Amerikaanse Jazzwereld, komen volledig tot leven. Dat Is des te opmerkelijker als men zich reallzeert dat die personages niet alleen gebaseerd zijn op hedendaagse jazzmusici, maar ook op een aantal belangrijke Amerikaanse schrijvers uit de vorige eeuw. Misschien als gevolg van deze kunstgreep die aan The Horn ten grondslag ligt. Is
Holmes' taalgebruik kunstmatiger en minder spontaan dan men zou verwachten In een boek waarin geïmproviseerde muziek zo'n belangrijke rol speelt. Niettemin Is The Hom wellicht de beste roman die over jazz is geschreven.
Terwijl Holmes In The Horn soms te krampachtig probeert om zijn verhaal voor de gehele Amerikaanse cultuur te laten spreken, lukt het hem om In zijn derde roman, Get Home Free (1964), moeiteloos verschillende thema's te Integreren die kenmerkend zijn voor veel
Amerikaanse literatuur. Zo behandelt hij niet alleen het verlangen naar regeneratie In een paradijselijke omgeving ver van de beschaving, maar tevens de tegenstelling tussen Amerikaanse onschuld en Europese corruptie, en het zoeken naar een vaderfiguur. Get Home Pree is echter ook een voortreffelijke roman over liefde en relaties, die duidelijk maakt dat Holmes veel Inzicht heeft in de psychologie van zowel man als vrouw, al is zijn poging om het boek deels vanuit het perspectief van een vrouw te vertellen niet geheel geslaagd.
Holmes' werk vertoont In meerdere opzichten een opmerkelijke samenhang. Zo vindt men één belangrijk thema, het verlangen naar een
382 thuis, In alle drie de romans die hij publiceerde. Dit verlangen ligt
In wezen op één lijn met de behoefte om, tenminste tijdelijk, In harmonie te leven, een wens die kenmerkend Is voor veel van Holmes'
personages, en die ook ten grondslag ligt aan de vele treffende
gedichten die hij heeft geschreven. Als men zijn romans In volgorde van
publlkatle leest, valt bovendien op hoezeer Holmes op zoek was naar een
eigen geluld. In dit opzicht Is er een onmiskenbare ontwikkeling van de
objectieve, tamelijk onopvallende stijl van Co, vla het lyrische, meer
experimentele proza van The Horn, naar het heldere, zeer persoonlijke
taalgebruik In Get Home Free. Dezelfde ontwikkeling treft men aan In
Holmes' korte verhalen, waarvan een aantal het zeker verdient om in
boekvorm uitgegeven te worden.
Het laatste kan niet gezegd worden van de twee ongepubliceerde
romans die Holmes heeft nagelaten, en van het fragment van een roman,
The Good End of Simon Calk, die verder ongeschreven bleef. Toch Is ook
Holmes' ongepubliceerde werk onze aandacht waard: het Is niet alleen
een boelende Illustratie van zijn groei naar individualiteit, maar het
vormt tevens een geheel met zijn gepubliceerde werk, omdat Holmes zijn
romans opbouwde rond een beperkt aantal, in verschillende boeken
terugkerende, personages.
Holmes werd dikwijls geplaagd door het gevoel buiten het leven te
staan, en het is zeker waar dat hij de nelging had om gebeurtenissen -
ook het door de Beat Generation veroorzaakte tumult - van een afstand
gade te slaan. Deze eigenschap maakte hem één van de opmerkelijkste
essayisten die de Amerikaanse literatuur na de oorlog heeft
voortgebracht, met een scherp oog voor maatschappelijke veranderingen
en voor wat de alledaagse realiteit meestal aan onze waarneming
onttrekt. Net als enkele van zijn brieven aan Kerouac, tonen Holmes'
383 essaye echter aan dat hij ook sterk gemotiveerd werd door de wens om deel uit te maken van een groep schrijvende vrienden, en om zelf een authentiek kunstenaar te zijn. Dat die laatste wens uitkwam. Is het uitgangspunt, en de conclusie, van dit proefschrift.
384 cmsicDum ГЫЕ
Jaap van der Bent was born in The Hague on September 14, 1948. He was educated at the Tweede Vrijzinnig Christelijk Lyceum and the Waldeck
H.B.S. In The Hague. In 1975 he began his studies of English language and literature at the Catholic University of Nijmegen, graduating cum laude In 1981. The academic year 1979-1980 he spent at Nottingham
University. His book reviews and articles on modern American literature have appeared in, among others, NRC Handelsblad, Vrij Nederland, De
Cids, BZZLLETIN. Small Press Review, and The Kerouac Connection.
Presently he is coordinator of American Studies at Nijmegen University.
385
STELLINGEN
behorend bij J.W. van der Bent,
A Hunger to Participate: The Work of John Clellon Holmes 1926-1988.
te verdedigen op 4 december 1989, om 13.30 uur
1. Door zijn latere gedichten, nog meer dan door zijn romans, ie John
Clellon Holmes een schrijver die onze aandacht ten volle waard is.
2. Norman Podhoretz's levenslange blinde haat Jegens alles wat met de
Beat Generation te maken heeft, ontneemt hem veel
geloofwaardigheid als literair en sociaal criticus.
3. Niet On the Road en The Pharma Bums, maar Visions of Cody en
Doctor Sax zijn de boeken waarin het talent van Jack Kerouac zich
volledig ontplooide.
4. Truman Capote's kritiek uit 1959 op het werk van Jack Kerouac,
"That's not writing, that's typewriting," is in het tijdperk van
de tekstverwerker nog onzinniger dan destijds.
5. Sommige van Allen Ginsberg's recente gedichten laten op
ontroerende wijze zien dat aan elk revolutionair elan een eind
komt.
6. De afschaffing van de verplichting om stellingen aan het
proefschrift toe te voegen, zal ertoe bijdragen dat het
proefschrift zelf aandachtiger wordt gelezen.