John Clellon Holmes; Chronicler of ‘Beat’ Life Style

John Clellon Holmes, 62, a novelist who created or shared with Jack Kerouac the distinction of describing the youth of the 1950s as a “beat” generation. Holmes was a companion of Kerouac, Allen Ginsburg, William Burroughs and other chroniclers of the “beat” life style in New York City after World War II. His first novel, “Go,” published in 1952, was about the beat world and was published before Kerouac’s more popular beatnik novel, “On The Road.” Holmes, a Holyoke, Mass., native, who was also a poet and a critic, wrote more about the period and its philosophy in “Nothing More to Declare,” published in 1967. “Displaced Person: The Travel Essays of John Clellon Holmes” was published earlier this month. In Old Saybrook, Conn., on Wednesday of cancer.