Call Number:

F0974

Repository:

University of Delaware Library Special Collections

Extent:

8 item (14 pages)

Language:

English

Preferred Citation:

MSS 0099, F0974, Holmes, John Clellon, Epistolary diary : typescript, Special Collections, University of Delaware Library, Newark, Delaware.

Date:

1974 may 18-27 (inclusive)

Creator:

Holmes, John Clellon, 1926-1988

Form:

Letters (correspondence)

Abstract:

Consists of a sequence of correspondence written by John Clellon Holmes to his wife, Shirley, between May 18-27, 1974, and form a personal journal recording his reflections and experiences during a solitary trip to a family cabin in Maine.

A fascinating sequence of correspondence from writer John Clellon Holmes, written for and sent to his wife, Shirley. The letters span a period of nine days and form a personal journal, of sorts, sent by Holmes to his wife during a solitary trip to a family cabin in Maine, touching on the daily routine of practical matters, observations about his own health and mental state, his reading, his writing and painting, his responses to the music to which he's been listening, and observations about the world and his friends and contemporaries. His topics range widely, from the mechanics of opening up the cabin and the extrication of his vehicle from a muddy bog, and comments on wildlife and the weather, to far more reflective matters, punctuated with skirmishes with a painful tooth and the "Zen of Mysteriously Malfunctioning Machinery." The daily record continues with an extended account of a late October visit to Provincetown, with mentions of Kerouac, Weldon Kees, and Allen Ginsberg, and some exceptional comments about his affection for New York bars in previous years, and the ghosts that haunted them. The diary presents a lucid and spontaneous record kept during a few days of isolation, with frequent glimpses of self-analysis and literary reflection by the Beat novelist, essayist, and intimate chronicler of his contemporaries and friends: Kerouac, Ginsberg, Cassidy, et al.