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GO_

                                   March 11, 2004

Looking for Joan Vollmer in the pages of
"Go" by John Clellon-Holmes (1952):                   The first published
                                                      novel of the Beats
It doesn't appear that a Joan Vollmer                 (though not quite a
figure is on stage, however it seems                  "beat novel" itself).
that the narrator is conducting an
unrequited affair by mail with someone
much like her:

    It was in one of these classes that he met Liza
  Adler, a fiery, neurotic girl of twenty-four.
    Unhappily married to an officer still in Japan,
  she had an integrated insolence toward everything
  which made her insights seem the more brilliant and
  audacious, and her insistence on the fragility of
  all human relationships profound.  Hobbes was at the mercy
  of his thirst to comprehend "large problems" and was
  wandering form attitude to attitude, searching for
  what he referred to as a "proper, rational world-view."
  Liza was an alarming experience for him, a fascinating and
  sickly plant that thrived on the stifling atmosphere of
  argument over coffee and the student's tendency to analyze
  everything and reduce it to a "manifestation" of something
  else.  She was, on top of this, a violent Marxist with
  a quick, destructive tongue and a mental agility that
  was new to Hobbes in a woman.
    She battled with him in class, mocked him to his face,
  asked him openly to have meals with her, attacked him
  for his "unconscious fascism," doused all his ideas in
  the cold water of logic, and finally made a class
  confederate of him.

                   p. 33 (Thunder's Mouth Press edition)


There are also some pretty
funny depictions of
pseudo-intellectuals:

                                                    We're told that
Georgia:                                            Georgia was speaking
                                                    on "the corruption,
  "Nothing's *really* healthy anymore, and,         depravity and
  I must confess, I'm just as glad.  What a         general neuroticism
  bad sign if it was!  I suppose you'll             of modern life --
  think that I'm morbidly attracted to evil         the favorite topic
  like the Baron du Charlus.  But even he           of the tyro at
  was a moralist of this new kind I was             intellectual parties"
  speaking about, Gene... Well, I don't deny
  it.  I'm afraid I like things that                   It's a good thing the
  are... oh, flushed down the drain, if you            narrator makes it
  see what I mean."     p.24                           clear that these women
                                                       are not to be taken
                                   (The flushed        seriously, or else
                                    generation?)       their patter could
                                                       easily be confused
An anonymous "girl at the bar":                        with the Allen
                                                       Ginsberg figure.
  ... and a girl at the bar was berating two boys
  for what she called "the lust for absolutes."
  There was contempt in her voice, the same
  scathing contempt that roiled back and forth
  across the room.  The boys, ill dressed bohemians
  who wanted to talk about art, had been involved
  in the subject of "absolutes" against their will
  and sat sullenly, only half-listening.   p. 96


May:

  Now [Dinah] chatted with the affected May,
  who answered in a shrill voice:
    "Oh yes, I'm living next door with a
  girl friend, you know.  I really don't
  mind the neighborhood because I think
  everyone should have their year of
  bohemianism -- although, of course, my
  mother would be horrified if she knew
  I was living in Spanish Harlem. ... "   p. 133


You might notice that these are all women.
There are no male examples like this.

The one example of a genuine female
intellectual is off-stage, a
ghostly presence...  Joan Vollmer?


                There are a number of nice touches
                scattered through out "Go". It
                focuses heavily on the intellectual
                journeys of the young Allen
                Ginsberg (here called "Sposky").

                While "Go" is a novel of the
                beats, it has classical
                structure.  Throughout, they
                use looking for Ancke as an         Ancke =
                excuse for scrambling around        Herbert
                town, ostensibly in search of       Huncke
                dope.  Ancke actually turns
                up on Spofsky's doorstep late
                in the novel, and he's
                effectively been living on
                the street, strung-out,
                coming down, his feet are a
                mess from continual walking.
                He's got nothing for anyone.


                    Except for Ginsberg, he's got
                    wisdom of a sort: he rambles on         A very beat
                    about the death of the ego, and         wisdom, at that.
                    helps Ginsberg understand a bit
                    about how his own polemics have
                    been bound up in his own ego...




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