GO

New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1952. First Edition. If Kerouac was "the principal avatar" of the Beats, the man who paved the way for all Beat writing was John Clellon Holmes...the 1952 social realism novel Go, with jazz-infused sketches of private lives that became very public - Burroughs, Lucien Carr, Cassady, Ginsberg, Herbert Huncke, and Kerouac" (Belletto, The Cambridge Companion to the Beats, p.139). There are various claims on who wrote the first Beat novel (from Kerouac's The Town and the City in 1950 to Chandler Brossard's 1952 novel Who Walk in Darkness), though Holmes considered Go as the first Beat novel since it was the first to focus entirely on characters based on Beats, and it was the first to use the phrase "beat generation." An attractive copy of a book normally found well-worn. First Printing, one of 2,500 copies. Octavo (21.5cm); red cloth, with titles stamped in blue on spine; dustjacket; [viii],311,[1]pp. Some wear to spine ends and lower corner tips, mild discoloration to heel, and a faint stain to upper front cover; contents clean; Very Good+ or better. Supplied dustjacket is unclipped (priced $3.50), showing a single tiny tear and some light wear to crown, else a bright, very Near Fine example.