The Times Square Underworld and the Beat Generation
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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William Burroughs had long had an interest in experimenting with criminal behavior, and gradually made contacts in the criminal underground of New York, becoming involved with dealing in stolen goods and narcotics and developing a decades-long addiction to opiates. Burroughs met Herbert Huncke, a small-time criminal and drug-addict who often hung around the Times Square area.
The beats found Huncke a fascinating character. As Ginsberg put it, they were on a quest for "supreme reality", and felt that Huncke, as a member of the underclass, had learned things they were sheltered from them in their middle-class lives.
Various troubles arose from this association: In 1949 Ginsberg was in trouble with the law (his apartment was packed with stolen goods; he had been riding in a car full of stolen goods; and so on). He pleaded insanity and was briefly committed to Bellevue, where he met Carl Solomon. When committed, Carl Solomon was more eccentric than psychotic. A fan of Antonin Artaud, he indulged in some self-consciously "crazy" behavior, e.g. throwing potato salad at a lecturer on Dadaism. Ted Morgan also mentions an incident where he stole a peanut-butter sandwich in a cafeteria, and showed it to a security-guard. If not crazy when he was admitted, Solomon was arguably driven mad by the shock treatments applied at Bellevue, and this is one of the things referred to in Ginsberg's poem "Howl" (which was dedicated to Carl Solomon). After his release, Solomon became the publishing contact that agreed to publish Burroughs' first novel Junky (1953), shortly before another episode resulted in his being committed again.
