Herbert Huncke
Herbert Huncke (born January 9, 1915 in Greenfield , Massachusetts , † August 8, 1996 in New York City ) was a subculture icon, beatnik , author and pioneer of the gay movement .
Life
Although the only child in a middle-class family, Huncke never received the attention he wanted from his parents. He later described his father as always dissatisfied and his mother as a beautiful, hysterical woman who mourned her youth. William S. Burroughs wrote in the foreword to Huncke's autobiography: “The protagonist is thrown into the water to sink or swim. So he learns something about the water ” (Eng. The protagonist was thrown into the water to sink or swim. So he learned something about the water. ).
At the age of twelve he ran away from his parents' house and from then on lived on the street. He made his first experiences as a male hustler and used various drugs. After a few years of aimless wandering, New York City began to settle in 1939 , which he had seen for the first time ten years earlier. The Times Square was his home, the 42nd Street "his" street and he her unofficial mayor. He hung around the city's jazz clubs, was friends with Billie Holiday , Charlie Parker and Dexter Gordon , with whom he was once arrested in a car theft.
The first Beat Generation writer who Huncke met was William S. Burroughs in 1944, whom he only thought was an undercover agent when he approached him about buying drugs. The group around Burroughs, Jack Kerouac Allen Ginsberg and Charles Plymell were fascinated by Huncke, so he served Burroughs as the main character in his novel Junkie , in Kerouacs On the Road he is embodied by the fictional character "Elmer Hassel". According to Kerouac, the word "beat" first came from Huncke.
It was only the beatniks around Ginsberg who encouraged Huncke to publish his writing, which he did for the first time in 1965 with Huncke's Journal .
Others
Huncke is also mentioned in Frank McCourt's most recent memoirs Day and Night and in Summer (2005). There Huncke shows up at school during class time and asks McCourt for change, which slipped him 10 dollars.
Works
- Huncke's Journal . Poets Press, New York 1965 (illustrated by Erin Matson)
-
The Evening Sun Turned Crimson . Cherry Valley Editions, New York 1980, ISBN 0-916156-43-5 (with a foreword by Allen Ginsberg ).
- German: Bickford's Cafeteria . Metro, Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-928282-00-X .
- Guilty of Everything. The Autobiography . Paragon House Publishers, New York 1990, ISBN 1-55778-044-7 .
- Benjamin G. Schafer (Ed.): The Herbert Huncke Reader . Morrow, New York 1997, ISBN 0-688-15266-X (with a foreword by William S. Burroughs )
literature
- Alfred Hackensperger: "I am beat". The life of the hipster Herbert Huncke and his friends Burroughs, Ginsberg, Kerouac (Rotbuch-Zeitgeschehen). Rotbuch-Verlag, Hamburg 1998, ISBN 3-88022-506-0 .
- Hilary Holladay: American Hipster. A life of Herbert Huncke. The Time Square hustler who inspired the Beat Movement . Magnus Books, New York 2013, ISBN 978-1-936833-21-4 .
- Herbert Huncke . In: Matt Theado (Ed.): Dictionary of Literary Biography , Vol. 237: The Beats . Gale Group, Detroit, Mich. 2001, ISBN 0-7876-4654-7 .
- Herbert Huncke . In: Ann Charters (Ed.): Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 16: The Beats. Literary bohemians in postwar America, Vol. 1: A-L . Gale Research, Detroit, Mich. 1983, ISBN 0-8103-1148-8 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Contains u. a. The Evening Sun Turned Crimson and Huncke's Journal .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Huncke, Herbert |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American writer, subculture icon, beatnik, writer, gay movement pioneer, drug addict, and petty criminal |
| DATE OF BIRTH | January 9, 1915 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Greenfield , Massachusetts |
| DATE OF DEATH | August 8, 1996 |
| Place of death | New York City |