Herbert Huncke | The Beat Generation | The Beats | William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg
Foreword by William S. Burroughs. (NY: Paragon House,
1990.)
Book review
by Rob Couteau.
Published in:
The Paris Free Voice. Feb.
1991.
(Paris, France.)
All text Copyright © 2006-2007 Rob Couteau
Not
Missing a Beat: Guilty of Everything. The Autobiography of Herbert Huncke.
Foreword by William S. Burroughs. (New York: Paragon House, 1990.)
One definition of literature has it as that which “entertains and instructs.” Yet there’s also a kind of literary endeavor that offers an instruction too raw and too bleak to be considered entertaining–and it’s into this category that the present confession falls. Written in a flat first-person style that sounds as if it was first tape-recorded and then transcribed and edited, Huncke relates a series of grim (and often banal) tales of survival. A runaway turned dope addict, dealer, and thief, he scammed his way through Times Square, always on the lookout for a cheap fix or a “drunken bum” to roll. He survives by writing fake morphine prescriptions and dealing to the local prostitutes. Or by stealing. Or by manipulating his friends, hoping to get something for nothing.
As with any chronicle that touches on the raw nerves of the human condition in such a way that we are shocked at how horrible, indeed, life and the living of it can be, this memoir leaves one with a feeling of profound unease. It is a feeling, for instance, that runs throughout the work of Hubert Selby Jr. Selby’s pain, portrayed in a masterly style, rattles us and becomes our pain. We are buoyed neither by a happy ending nor by a literary affirmation of the human condition, but, rather, by his artistry in transmitting such pain into art. Although Huncke’s work is not the stuff of high literature (and it’s unfair to Selby to draw such a comparison), the content (if not the style) of his memoir fascinates in similar ways and produces similar feelings of woe.
Although he was later propelled to notoriety by his involvement with what he calls the “so-called Beats,” Huncke’s down-and-out lifestyle intrigued the far less beaten William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg well before either of them had achieved recognition. Columbia-educated Ginsberg and financially comfortable Burroughs (according to Huncke, “He was a member of the Burroughs adding machine family, and the family in general had money”) each viewed Huncke as a “character” who was more streetwise than either of them and, at various times, they offered Huncke financial or emotional support. Huncke introduced Burroughs to shady characters and experiences (“I gave Burroughs his first shot”), and he was later described in Burroughs’s first book, Junkie.
Years later, fragments of Huncke’s journals were assembled and published as Huncke’s Journal and The Evening Sun Turned Crimson. Yet, throughout his life, Huncke envisioned himself not as a writer but rather as someone who merely enjoyed an association with those who led creative lives. Therefore, his importance was mainly as a behind-the-scenes figure. Indeed, had he not been associated with the Beats, this book would never have been deemed important enough to publish.
If one can judge a life by such a narrative, Huncke’s autobiography is composed of a nearly meaningless, aimless “drift.” The portrait that emerges is one of a hustler gamboling from scene to scene, from girlfriend to girlfriend or from boyfriend to boyfriend, and using others or allowing himself to be used, as well. Viewed as a kind of social / historical document, one could commend its honesty and its ability to further reveal a world normally inaccessible to outsiders. It serves to de-romanticize the Beat legend, illustrating some of the gloomier, unseemly sides of a group that was not always–as Kerouac coined it–”beatific.”
