Gone in October: Last Reflections on Jack Kerouac

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On the July 4th weekend of 1948, John Clellon Holmes (1926-1988) met Jack Kerouac (1922-1969) in New York City for the first time, and the two became lifelong friends. As a young, ambitious novelist, Holmes knew Kerouac as a mentor and comrade in a literary movement eventually known as the Beat Generation. They shared New England roots and shared the same birthday (March 12; Kerouac born in 1922, Holmes in 1926). They were characters in each other’s novels, and they fed each other encouragement over the years through letters and get-togethers at Holmes’s home in Old Saybrook, Connecticut, until Kerouac’s untimely death at age 47, on October 21,1969.

In four essays first published under one cover by Limberlost Press in 1985, Holmes writes about the influence of their common New England roots ( Rocks in Our Beds ), about his genuine friendship with Kerouac ( The Great Rememberer ), about going to Kerouac’s funeral with poets Allen Ginsberg and Gergory Corso ( Gone in October ), and about atttending the 1982 Naropa Institute 25th anniversary celebration of the 1957 publication of On the Road as a last hurrah.

This new edition of Gone in October comprises a deeply heart-felt remebrance of literary friendship and personal loss, reprinted with permission of the Estate of John Clellon Holmes in honor of the Jack Kerouac centennial in 2022.