As a writer of novels, essays, short stories, and poems, John Clellon Holmes has remained an important figure of the Beat movement because of his unique ability to describe the questions and psychological dilemmas which plagued his generation and the driving forces behind the ideologies of the movement. As one scholar has noted, Holmes is seen lately by some as a Beat Generation Boswell because of his hospitality, uncanny generosity, and candor toward those who continually seek a better perspective on the Beat Generation. Though his collection of essays Nothing More to Declare (1967) was to be his final statement on the subject, hundreds of pages of transcribed interviews with Holmes since then have proved otherwise. The impressive range of his vision establishes Holmes as a valuable resource because of his ability to place the literature of the Beats in its proper historical perspective as one of the most...