Memoirs of a Bastard Angel - Softcover

Norse, Harold

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0747507562 ISBN 13: 9780747507567

Publisher: Trafalgar Square, 1990

Synopsis

By the author of 12 volumes of poetry and the novel "Beat Hotel", this autobiography describes the life of a man who was for over 50 years at the centre of creative culture and homosexual subculture in three continents. Friend and secretary of W.H.Auden in 1939, he became an intimate friend of James Baldwin and lived with Tennessee Williams during the writing of "The Glass Menagerie". He spent time at the Beat Hotel with William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, in Tangier with Paul and Jane Bowles, in Spain with Robert Graves, and in Greece with Leonard Cohen. In the late 1960s he moved to California, where he formed a literary alliance with Charles Bukowski and did bodybuilding with Arnold Schwarzenegger. He presents vivid portraits of the great writers of his time.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

Norse ( Beat Hotels ) immerses the reader in bohemian and gay subcultures in this freewheeling, name-dropping autobiography. In the early, slightly acrimonious chapters, W. H. Auden steals his lover, Chester Kallman, who became Auden's lifelong companion. Norse dispenses an abundance of stories: he read James Baldwin's first novel in an early draft; he shared a cabin with Tennessee Williams in Massachusetts; William Carlos Williams was a mentor of sorts; Jackson Pollock and Dylan Thomas were his drinking buddies. He spent time in Paris with William Burroughs; lived in Rome; practiced Buddhist meditation in Spain; made the Venice, Calif., "scene" in the late 1960s. Among the friends and acquaintances here are Anais Nin, Ezra Pound, Charles Bukowski, Paul Bowles and John Cage. Yet some of this memoir's most powerful scenes occur far from the glitter, as when Norse recounts his squalid Brooklyn childhood or describes how, while working in a WW II shipyard, he witnessed a black man beaten to death. Photos.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal:

Gay poet and artist Norse is one of those guys who inhabited several literary communities across the globe, from New York's Greenwich Village to Paris, and, as a result, knew everyone and slept with most of them, too. Norse was acquaintanced with writers ranging from W.H. Auden, James Baldwin, Tennessee Williams, William Burroughs, and Allen Ginsberg to Charles Bukowski and Ezra Pound. He recalls them all in this 1989 memoir.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Trafalgar Square
• Publication date: 1990
• ISBN 10: 0747507562
• ISBN 13: 9780747507567
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 448