Memoirs of a Bastard Angel - Harold Norse

 I have read Bukowski's appreciation for Harold Norse's poetry for decades but never picked up anything of his until now. This, however, is his memoirs, not poetry, so I'm not sure if this is really the place I should have started, but it is what I easily found, so here I am...

Norse truly was a bastard child - the son of an unwed mother who had been European royalty but, with the death of her father, the rest of the family fled penniless to America. While he was a smart child with a gift for writing, he remained poor for quite some time, as his writing career was slow to begin.

A proud homosexual at a time when this could be a death sentence, the beginnings of these memoirs are almost exclusively made up of his sexual exploits, including many escapades with so-called straight men, making it sound like people were more open minded back in the 20's and 30's than they are now. These days I don't really care about anyone's love life and so this can become a bit tedious, even if he does write with some wit and charm. But even in his early days he has encounters with famous writers, often with a sexual nature, but I do enjoy his descriptions of the writer and artist scenes of the times and his interactions - such as being the first person to read the manuscript of the then-unknown Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie!

He does do quite a bit of name-dropping, but it is somewhat fascinating how many people he met before they were famous - these stories are all captivating and reveals how New York was a true epicenter for all kinds of art at the early days on the 20th century. His literary gossip is far more appealing that his sexual conquests and he dwells less on the sex aspect as the book moves on, although he is not one for a strict chronological timeline, which can be a bit confusing at times.

From New York he went to Europe and moved around, with long periods in Italy (Rome and Florence) and Paris, where he eventually lived at the "Beat Hotel" and lived to tell the tale (and tell it he did, in a book by that same title). His work evolved in Europe and he found his own voice and his place among the Beats - Burroughs and Corso were living in the hotel at the same time, among many others, of course. And, of course, in that crowd, drugs were involved, but also some of his greatest successes - in writing as well as painting, which he did not continue to explore.

Lots more travels, more name-dropping (he hung out with pre-musician Leonard Cohen in Greece and met many more famous people), before an eventual move to Venice, California to be near his mom (where he spent some time with Bukowski and, oddly, Arnold Schwarzenegger!) and then to the Bay area, where he moved around but still remains.

It's a wild tale with some of the most famous names on the Beat scene mixed with musicians, actors, painters, royalty, hustlers, drug addicts, street urchins and innumerable others. Definitely absorbing!