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Herbert Huncke
Herbert Edwin Huncke (/ˈhʌŋki/ HUNK-ee; January 9, 1915 – August 8, 1996) was an American writer and poet, and an active participant in a number of emerging cultural, social and aesthetic movements of the 20th century in America. He was a member of the Beat Generation and is reputed to have coined the term.
Born in Greenfield, Massachusetts, and raised in Chicago, Herbert Huncke was a street hustler, high school dropout, and drug user. He left Chicago as a teenager after his parents divorced and began living as a hobo, jumping trains throughout the United States and bonding with other vagrants through shared destitution and common experience. Although Huncke later came to regret his loss of family ties, in his autobiography, Guilty of Everything, he states that his lengthy jail sentences were a partial result of his lack of family support.
Huncke hitchhiked to New York City in 1939. He was dropped off at 103rd and Broadway, and he asked the driver how to find 42nd Street. "You walk straight down Broadway," the man said, "and you will find 42nd Street." Huncke, always a stylish dresser, bought a boutonnière for his jacket and headed for 42nd Street. For the next 10 years, Huncke was a 42nd Street regular and became known as the "Mayor of 42nd Street."
At this point, Huncke's regular haunts were 42nd Street and Times Square, where he associated with a variety of people, including prostitutes (male and female) and sailors. During World War II, Huncke shipped out to sea as a United States Merchant Marine to ports in South America, Africa, and Europe. He landed on the beach of Normandy three days after the invasion.
Aboard ships, Huncke would overcome his drug addiction or maintain it with morphine syrettes supplied by the ship medic. When he returned to New York, he returned to 42nd Street, and it was after one such trip where he met the then-unknown William S. Burroughs, who was selling a sub-machine gun and a box of syrettes. Their first meeting was not cordial: from Burroughs' appearance and manner, Huncke suspected that he was "heat" (undercover police or FBI). Assured that Burroughs was harmless, Huncke bought the morphine and, at Burroughs' request, immediately gave him an injection.[citation needed] Burroughs later wrote a fictionalized account of the meeting in Junkie. Huncke also became a close friend of Joan Adams Vollmer Burroughs, William's common-law wife, sharing with her a taste for amphetamines. In the late 1940s, he was invited to Texas to grow marijuana on the Burroughs' farm. It was here he renewed his acquaintance with the young Abe Green, a fellow train jumper and in the early beatnik scene, a regular reciter of spontaneous poetry. Despite his comparative youth, Green was often referred to by Huncke as "Old Faithful." Huncke valued loyalty and it is thought that Abe Green was of "inestimable assistance" to Lucien Carr and Jack Kerouac when it came to the concealment of the weapon used to kill David Kammerer some years later.
In 1942, Huncke was recruited to be a subject in Alfred Kinsey's research on the sexual habits of the American male. He was interviewed by Kinsey, and recruited fellow addicts and friends to participate. Huncke had been an unpublished writer since his days in Chicago, and he gravitated toward literary types and musicians. In the music world, Huncke visited all the jazz clubs and associated with Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker, and Dexter Gordon (with whom he was once busted on 42nd Street for breaking into a parked car). When he first met Allen Ginsberg, Kerouac, and Burroughs, they were interested in writing, and they were unpublished too. They were inspired by his stories of 42nd Street life, criminal life, street slang, and his vast experience with drugs. Huncke was immortalized in Kerouac's On the Road as the character Elmo Hassel.
In the late 1940s, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Melody and Vickie Russell were apprehended after flipping a car in Queens, New York, trying to run-over a NYPD motorcycle cop. Huncke was picked up simultaneously as he was living with Allen Ginsberg. Herbert Huncke was sentenced to a five-year term in the New York State Prison System. "Someone had to do the bit," Huncke recalled. Allen Ginsberg, a student at Columbia University, was sent to a mental hospital for six months. Vickie Russell's (a.k.a. Perscilla Arminger) father was a judge in a neighboring state and took custody of her, relieving her of jail time. Jack Melody's mother was associated with the Brooklyn mafia and she took custody of Little Jack.
When Herbert Huncke was released from prison on parole Little Jack's family set him up with a job in an ornamental glass company in Manhattan near 23rd Street. Allen, initially, refused to see Huncke upon release on the advice of Allen's psychiatrist.
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Herbert Huncke
Herbert Edwin Huncke (/ˈhʌŋki/ HUNK-ee; January 9, 1915 – August 8, 1996) was an American writer and poet, and an active participant in a number of emerging cultural, social and aesthetic movements of the 20th century in America. He was a member of the Beat Generation and is reputed to have coined the term.
Born in Greenfield, Massachusetts, and raised in Chicago, Herbert Huncke was a street hustler, high school dropout, and drug user. He left Chicago as a teenager after his parents divorced and began living as a hobo, jumping trains throughout the United States and bonding with other vagrants through shared destitution and common experience. Although Huncke later came to regret his loss of family ties, in his autobiography, Guilty of Everything, he states that his lengthy jail sentences were a partial result of his lack of family support.
Huncke hitchhiked to New York City in 1939. He was dropped off at 103rd and Broadway, and he asked the driver how to find 42nd Street. "You walk straight down Broadway," the man said, "and you will find 42nd Street." Huncke, always a stylish dresser, bought a boutonnière for his jacket and headed for 42nd Street. For the next 10 years, Huncke was a 42nd Street regular and became known as the "Mayor of 42nd Street."
At this point, Huncke's regular haunts were 42nd Street and Times Square, where he associated with a variety of people, including prostitutes (male and female) and sailors. During World War II, Huncke shipped out to sea as a United States Merchant Marine to ports in South America, Africa, and Europe. He landed on the beach of Normandy three days after the invasion.
Aboard ships, Huncke would overcome his drug addiction or maintain it with morphine syrettes supplied by the ship medic. When he returned to New York, he returned to 42nd Street, and it was after one such trip where he met the then-unknown William S. Burroughs, who was selling a sub-machine gun and a box of syrettes. Their first meeting was not cordial: from Burroughs' appearance and manner, Huncke suspected that he was "heat" (undercover police or FBI). Assured that Burroughs was harmless, Huncke bought the morphine and, at Burroughs' request, immediately gave him an injection.[citation needed] Burroughs later wrote a fictionalized account of the meeting in Junkie. Huncke also became a close friend of Joan Adams Vollmer Burroughs, William's common-law wife, sharing with her a taste for amphetamines. In the late 1940s, he was invited to Texas to grow marijuana on the Burroughs' farm. It was here he renewed his acquaintance with the young Abe Green, a fellow train jumper and in the early beatnik scene, a regular reciter of spontaneous poetry. Despite his comparative youth, Green was often referred to by Huncke as "Old Faithful." Huncke valued loyalty and it is thought that Abe Green was of "inestimable assistance" to Lucien Carr and Jack Kerouac when it came to the concealment of the weapon used to kill David Kammerer some years later.
In 1942, Huncke was recruited to be a subject in Alfred Kinsey's research on the sexual habits of the American male. He was interviewed by Kinsey, and recruited fellow addicts and friends to participate. Huncke had been an unpublished writer since his days in Chicago, and he gravitated toward literary types and musicians. In the music world, Huncke visited all the jazz clubs and associated with Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker, and Dexter Gordon (with whom he was once busted on 42nd Street for breaking into a parked car). When he first met Allen Ginsberg, Kerouac, and Burroughs, they were interested in writing, and they were unpublished too. They were inspired by his stories of 42nd Street life, criminal life, street slang, and his vast experience with drugs. Huncke was immortalized in Kerouac's On the Road as the character Elmo Hassel.
In the late 1940s, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Melody and Vickie Russell were apprehended after flipping a car in Queens, New York, trying to run-over a NYPD motorcycle cop. Huncke was picked up simultaneously as he was living with Allen Ginsberg. Herbert Huncke was sentenced to a five-year term in the New York State Prison System. "Someone had to do the bit," Huncke recalled. Allen Ginsberg, a student at Columbia University, was sent to a mental hospital for six months. Vickie Russell's (a.k.a. Perscilla Arminger) father was a judge in a neighboring state and took custody of her, relieving her of jail time. Jack Melody's mother was associated with the Brooklyn mafia and she took custody of Little Jack.
When Herbert Huncke was released from prison on parole Little Jack's family set him up with a job in an ornamental glass company in Manhattan near 23rd Street. Allen, initially, refused to see Huncke upon release on the advice of Allen's psychiatrist.