A lifelong drug user, Herbert Huncke was a key cult figure in a New York that no longer exists. His writing consists of unflinching tales drawn from his experiences. Guilty of Everything: The Autobiography of Herbert Huncke is no exception. Scraping by, bohemian, and rubbing elbows with everyone from an amphetamine-shooting warlock to a Hungarian countess, Huncke drifted. He drifted for more than forty years.
Subculture in the 1930s
"Right from the very beginning I was prepared for surprise," he recounts, "ready to have everything swept up from underneath me." In search of nothing in particular other than the intensity that life sometimes offers, he left Chicago as a teen during the Depression. He jumped freight cars and quickly ended up in New York.
New York and Burroughs
New York felt like home. Huncke explains, "Then I began to meet people who were very hip, so to speak..." He lived there on and off for the rest of his life. His city hustling was interspersed with time spent working on a ship bound for Hawaii, a long stay with William S. Burroughs and his wife Joan on their farm in Texas, and several prison sentences.
New York and Ginsberg
Huncke's existence in New York was itinerant and often frantic. His daily searches for junk and the money to get it kept him moving. He fell in and fell out with partners – some business, some romantic, some both. He moved in and out of hotel rooms and tenement apartments. He crashed at friends' places: Allen Ginsberg took him in and Huncke ripped him off.
Literature from the Margins of Society
Huncke relates his exploits in a hard-boiled voice, and his prose is sprinkled with lingo from the demi-monde he inhabited. A code of ethics from criminal subculture is often invoked, too. Yes, he stole Ginsberg's belongings, he concurs. But Ginsberg bought used items from him that he surely knew were stolen goods, so he had it coming. "It's very strange...how many people that have been taken off are only too delighted to pick up something when it's their turn to buy," Huncke comments.
Herbert Huncke, Retired Criminal
Living by his own set of rules and knowing when enough was enough, Herbert Huncke endured. He was fascinated with life and not afraid to explore its gritty realities. His addiction to heroin and repeated stays in prison, however, increasingly felt like a waste to him. He quit drugs at the end of his life, and told tales of what he'd survived. Huncke was eighty-one when he died.
Anyone interested in Beat literature or mid-century New York underground culture will find Guilty of Everything: The Autobiography of Herbert Huncke an enlightening read. Published in 1987 by Hanuman Books in paperbook edition (ISBN 978-0937815083) and in 1990 by Paragon House press (ISBN 1-55778-044-7) as a hardcover, the title is out of print but copies are for sale online. Excerpts can also be found in The Herbert Huncke Reader (William Morrow & Co., ISBN 978-0688152666).
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