NOTHING MORE TO DECLARE

by John Clellon Holmes ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 8, 1967

Pasting up one's own Hall of Fame is a popular literary pastime. Scott and Ernest virtually created the '20's, Isherwood's Lions and Shadows sketched England's frolics of the '30's, and now the New York underground of the last decade bows handsomely in a multi-level, hi-fi memorial, John Clellon Holmes' rich, rashly nostalgic essays devoted to our so-called cultural heroes, the Beats and the ""angel-headed hipsters."" The beatnik sensibility tending toward a mystic, communal passivity, and the hipster embodying a more aggressive, existential stance, drew the scorn of the Establishment: know-nothing ""primitivism"" being the usual sniffy comment. Holmes, a partisan, intimate chronicler, wraps up most formalist objections with a red-ribboned invective of his own, which unfortunately short-circuits any real grappling with the aesthetic validity of his brew: whether dealing with buddies Kerouac or Ginsberg or the ethos of free-wheeling sex, drugs, jazz, and ""immediacy,"" the underlying defense (the passages on Paul Goodman or the confessional ""Raw Materials"" are notable exceptions) is pretty much the old Blakean one of purification through excess, or the anti-rational cliche about hot reponses to the zeitgeist-positions, moreover, already ear-splittingly trumpeted in Mailer's Advertisements for Myself. But Holmes' summing-up is explosively engaged writing, full of the kicks, sports, and inner doubts of a period which has fathered the Mod Generation.

Pub Date: March 8, 1967

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Dutton

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1967

Categories: NONFICTION