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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 Skofsky'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, and rambles on
about the death of the ego; and
perhaps helps Ginsberg understand
a bit about how his own polemics
have been bound up in his own ego...
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