Go, Part 1,The Days of Visitation, Chapters 1 and 2 Summary

Go, by John Clellon Holmes, portrays an urgent quest for new experiences and a thirst for meaning among a young group of writers and poets in Manhattan in the early 1950s, who came to be known as the Beat Generation. Based loosely on real people, several of whom later became famous, the book shows them in their early days of unformed ideas, drug use, partying, and even occasional crime.

As the novel opens, Paul Hobbes, a young man living in New York City, is writing a breathless and confused letter to someone. Hobbes seems a little annoyed with a friend, Gene Pasternak, who is sleeping late after spending the night at Hobbes' apartment. Pasternak has written a manuscript of a novel, and Hobbes is struggling with his own novel...