Customer Reviews

The Herbert Huncke Reader

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There are few authors I feel everyone should read but no matter who you are Herbert Huncke should be read. He is one of the best storytellers/writers I have had the privilege of reading. His stories of sex, streets, drugs, life and friends bring a humanity to what may be considered by many obscure, degenerate, or just plain disgusting, but Hunckes stories I believe are non of these. They are filled with love, beauty, pain and always truth. He takes the reader into a world they dont always want to enter but when the story is finished we are glad we made the journey and had someone like Huncke by our side as a companion.

Herbert Huncke was the true beat. As WS Burroughs wrote, in The Herbert Huncke Reader, "Huncke had adventures and misadventures that were not available to middle-class, comparatively wealthy college people like...me....Huncke had extraordinary experiences that were quite genuine." The sad true is that Huncke was the type that Burroughs wrote about, but didn't like much. He was real. Burroughs was living on trust-fund money for decades (remember that the $200 a month WSB received from family in the 1950s was equal to thousands of dollars a month now-not a bad way to live). Huncke lived the life that others wrote about, but never live. While Burroughs ate steak and drank fine booze, Huncke was still wandering around Times Square. Read the original beat. He makes the other `beat' writers seem like the middle-class dilatants that many of them were. Huncke never fought for the fame, the fortune, and the boys. He was just a "junkie on the prow." This book is truly hip.

Herbert Huncke's off-the-grid desperado lifestyle caused him much discomfort over the years, but the rest of us can only benefit from the writings of a man who rode the rails with the yeggs and, grifters of another era. I once asked Huncke if the Salvation Army stations made you pray before you got food in the old days. "No man, the Sallys were great. They fed your ass, gave you a cot and some clean clothes to replace the rags you walked in with. The Sallys were nothin' but good." If you're seeking inside information on the lean years from a primary source, you can skip Professor Flotsky's long-winded textbooks and go right to The Man.The Huncke reader is more of the same; straight talk from a guy who's fallen, dusted himself off, and climbed right back on the rods for another ride to Wherever.

I have read a lot of beat literature and was glad to get back to an original source.As a long time associate with William S Burroughs and Jane Vollmer,aka. Mrs. Burroughs,the woman he shot and killed in Mexico it was great to get some insight into their circle of friends. Anyone who aspires to keep a journal of their life and times will dig the outside interpretations that Huncke lays down here.I highly recommend this book to people who are interested in sociology and urban anthropology .This book will turn you on to another world and kick you in the teeth.No holds barred.

This reader blows away any of Kerouac's work, in my opinion. Huncke was the first to coin the phrase "beat," and also the first to turn on Burroughs to morphine. He's really where Beat started. The book is very interesting, especially in the fact that it is composed mostly of journal-type entries. He writes as he probably spoke: full of slang terms of the time that other authors leave out.

Previously known for using the word "beat" to the fullest, thus inspiring Kerouac for an appropriation of a very hip literary movement, there was more to Huncke than just a "jive" talker. As we know, Huncke was a full time junky (what a rhyme!) who had more of an affect on Burroughs than any other beat writer. Likewise, Huncke spent most of his life helping out on the Burroughs' cannabis farm and taking care of Bill's wife Joan who harnessed a difficult benny habit. In Huncke's early years, growing up in Massachusetts and NYC, he used to entertain the boys at local cafeterias with his succinct yet street jargon-fulled stories; clearly he had a talent for story telling. This story-telling is pretty much what makes up the Herbert Huncke Reader. Starting with Huncke's journal, Herbert gets his feet wet with short-story writing, particularly focusing on introspective work-outs and clever anecdotes. Then the books moves to The Evening Sun Turned Crimson, another introspective composition altho mainly concentrating on structural pieces depicting street life, hanging with the beats, and drugs. Next to Reader introduces Guilty of Everything, a comprehensive series of interviews plus outtakes from other journals. Finally the book closes with Previously Uncollected Material, the chapter says it all. Sometimes moving other times raw and scatological, Huncke writes with a unique style that is easy to comprehend and is inspiring. Although not as transcendent as his contempoaries (Burroughs, Ginsberg, Corso), Huncke's writing should not overlooked as "writings of a drug addict," or "a subordinate Beatnik." Huncke did have talent (most notably with recitations) and has definitely worked to the fullest by publishing what he could, despite his painful heroin addiction and ostracization. In my opinion he's a second Neal Cassady (more of a inspiring icon) and definitely had a major affect on the foremost Beat's writings despite his own sparse collection; that's why I think this Reader is important.

I have read a lot of beat literature and was glad to get back to an original source.As a long time associate with William S Burroughs and Jane Vollmer,aka. Mrs. Burroughs,the woman he shot and killed in Mexico it was great to get some insight into their circle of friends. Anyone who aspires to keep a journal of their life and times will dig the outside interpretations that Huncke lays down here.I highly recommend this book to people who are interested in sociology and urban anthropology .This book will turn you on to another world and kick you in the teeth.No holds barred.

This is a wonderful glance into Huncke's world and the workings of his singular, unique mind.

straight ahead...no b.s.a kick in the pants to any autho

I always liked Huncke....in the same way I liked Neil Cassady - they were real ! They went about their lives in their own inimitable style ...I always got the impression that a lot of the so called 'Beats' were just middle class dudes slumming it and when some-one came along with credibility they got up close and and emulated them . I read 'The Evening Sun Turned Crimson' when I was living in South London in the late '70s and my life style was very questionable so of course I identified with Huncke he was a kindred spirit . My ears always pricked up when Burroughs talks about him in his books and I take my hat off to him and Neil ( and don't let us forget Charles Plymell....read his 'Last of the Moccasins ' for a literary treat ! )This is a wonderful collection of his writings if you haven't got it and you've read so called 'Beat Generation' literature you are missing out big time.....
Jams in Oz