American novelist, essayist, travel essayist, poet, and biographer.
Holmes is best known as a chronicler of the Beat Generation, a term he introduced to the world in 1952. His novel Go (1952) is acknowledged as one of the first fictional accounts of the Greenwich Village bohemian scene that revolved around such writers as Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, and Neal Cassady. Holmes’s novels are marked by vivid characterizations and a meticulous, poetic prose style, and his essays on the Beat Generation are respected for their objectivity and lucidity in explaining the ethos of the movement.
Holmes was born on March 12, 1926, in Holyoke, Massachusetts, the son of John McClellan Holmes, a sales representative, and Elizabeth (Emmons) Holmes. His father’s job required constant relocation, and Holmes grew up in various New England states and in California. Partly because of the frequent moves and school changes, Holmes quit high school, but enrolled in summer courses at Columbia University in 1943. In 1944 he was drafted and entered the Navy. After completing boot camp he married Marian Miliambro. He was discharged from the Navy for medical reasons in 1945 and returned to Columbia University.
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