Twentieth-Century Boy: Notebooks of the Seventies

by Duncan Hannah

A rollicking account of a celebrated artist’s coming of age, f ull of outrageously bad behavior, naked ambition, fantastically good music, and evaporating barriers of taste and decorum, and featuring cameos from David Bowie, Andy Warhol, Patti Smith, and many more.

“A phantasmagoria of alcohol, sex, art, conversation, glam rock, and New Wave cinema. Hannah’s writing combines self-aware humor with an intoxicating punk energy.” — The New Yorker

Painter Duncan Hannah arrived in New York City from Minneapolis in the early 1970s as an art student hungry for experience, game for almost anything, and with a prodigious taste for drugs, girls, alcohol, movies, rock and roll, books, parties, and everything else the city had to offer. Taken directly from the notebooks Hannah kept throughout the decade, Twentieth-Century Boy is a fascinating, sometimes lurid, and incredibly entertaining report from a now almost mythical time and place.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Music, Art, Biography, New York, Autobiography

497 pages, Paperback

Published March 26, 2019

Reviews

[Tosh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although a few years older than me, and the fact that we never met, until I had him sign his book at a public event, I feel somehow I know Duncan Hannah. I first discovered his artwork through Dennis Cooper's fantastic blog, and his paintings just spoke to me directly. First of all, I have a thing for illustrations from the mid-century, especially drawings from the various titles of the Hardy Boys, and somehow Hannah's work reminds me of that type of work. But done on a plane that's serious art but still humorous. In that blog I saw various photographs of Hannah, and it struck me as a dandy who lived in harsh circumstances, yet, kept his chin up and his hair marvelously cut. His sense of style and some of the artwork reminded me of this dandy art duo David McDermott and Peter McGough, who not only dressed from the past but also their artwork went back to the 1920s or even earlier. But their work has a contemporary edge, just like Hannah's paintings. I should have been surprised, but reading Hannah's book, he was or is a friend of McDermott.

Still, this is not imitation, but the meeting of the minds at work here. Hannah was born straight and foppish. It's in his nature and this is why his notebooks of the crazed 1970s in New York City so thrilling. In essence, he has character, or I should say, if I were a movie producer, he has that "It" quality. The reason why I feel like I know or should know him is that it's uncanny we have the same taste in literature and music. I know, because he lists all his listening and reading material on a regular basis in this book. Which is not tedious to read, but essential to know, because his taste is very much what is Duncan Hannah. The fact he paints portraits of his literary and cinematic heroes is another self-expression. I suspect that these works are self-portraits more than anything else. And I say that not as a criticism, but as praise.

"Twentieth-Century Boy" is Hannah's journal, and it's not a memoir. It reads like one is experiencing these adventures at the instant it happened, and his reflection is only seconds or hours after the incident. Sexual in nature, and always curious about an adventure, Hannah from the very beginning had or still has high standards. His sexual fun is enticing, and a joy to read, but also his encounters with the great from Bryan Ferry to Bowie to Dali to Warhol to Debbie Harry, and beyond, to the various artists who lived and operated in Lower Manhattan during that era are excellent co-stars in his book.

What's surprising is that he very much led the life of a desperate alcoholic, yet, by his photographs, he didn't look drunk. He was always well-dressed and has an exceptional self-awareness. Perhaps he's blessed. Nevertheless, he's a hero of mine. I don't have a brother, but in my head, he's the older brother to look up to. Praise Duncan Hannah and his book "Twentieth-Century Boy."

[John Spiller · Rating 3 out of 5]

For some inexplicable reason, I am obsessed with the New York art and music scene post-WWII to the mid-80's. So when I saw "Twentieth Century Boy" by Duncan Rathbone Hannah, I snapped it up and consumed it feverishly in a weekend. Hannah was there, man, Zelig-like. Attended Bard and Parsons in the early 70's. Lower Manhattan habitue, residing in a weird intersection of art/music/drink/depravity. He used his David Cassidy good looks to curry favor with gay men who thought they just might be the one to turn him. Women loved him; men loved him; Lou Reed wanted to take him home and do unspeakable things with him.

I suspect that "Twentieth Century Boy" will be polarizing because there is a lot to love and hate. On the plus side, Hannah provides plenty of great stories. On the negative side, 1970's Duncan Hannah was an asshole. To his credit, Hannah doesn't sugar coat or excuse his behavior. If you're like me, and the NYC art and music scene of the 70's is a source of endless fascination, then "Twentieth Century Boy" is definitely worth a read. If you prefer your memoirs to be populated with relatable, salt of the earth folks, don't be fooled by the "Tiger Beat" cover -- this will not be your cup of tea.

[Jennifer Ozawa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Slight, breezy autobiography by a guy who drank and slept around a lot.

[Charlie Lincoln · Rating 5 out of 5]

New York, Minneapolis, art, sex, rock and roll, alcohol, debauchery, style, beauty, love, and life.

Just fantastic. Didn’t want it to end. His love of beauty and life itself is so vivid and inspiring. I hope the rest of his diaries are published.

RIP Duncan Hannah, a life cut way too short but lived absolutely to the fullest

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Artist Duncan Hannah began keeping a journal when he was 17, living with his parents in Minneapolis and in constant pursuit of sex, drugs and the budding punk rock scene. "I'm writing these journals to capture my youth," he confesses. "I'd like to fulfill a dream and become a pop star, but I can't sing!" By the end of these journals (1981, at age 28), the transplanted New Yorker's oil paintings were earning him lasting fame.

Like Patti Smith's JUST KIDS, Hannah's TWENTIETH-CENTURY BOY captures the raw, exciting, boozy and sensual times, coming of age among budding New York artists in the 1970s. Strikingly beautiful and amazingly well-read, Hannah attracted a lot of attention from both men and women. Although he was a voracious heterosexual, he admired the gay artists surrounding him. While finding himself as a painter, he worked as a print model and even co-starred in two underground films with Debbie Harry. Amid the rampant drinking and drugs, it's amazing Hannah kept such detailed and evocative journals. At one point, he complains, "I smell like booze all the time now, but it's expensive booze for a change.... I'm living faster than I can write." One boozy night out with Andy Warhol, David Bowie and Bryan Ferry ends with a bouncer tossing him into the gutter. "Just like in the movies," he writes. "The famous gutter that I've heard so much about. I made it!"

Hannah captures the exuberance and flamboyance of budding artists set free in the sexually permissive, drug-fueled art world of 1970s NYC.

Artist Duncan Hannah's raw, exciting and boozy journals chronicle his coming of age among other budding artists in New York City during the 1970s.

[Jim Chevallier · Rating 4 out of 5]

I went to Bard College, and not too long before Hannah, so certainly part of my interest was in seeing how he portrayed our alma mater. Which, for a certain type of student, would be accurately enough. He quite credibly spent a lot of time having, or trying to have, sex and manages to make what is not after all a very original experience interesting, not least because of his own mixture of naiveté and eagerness. Given the level of decadence he later sometimes describes (a famous rock singer inviting him to use his mouth as a toilet), it's rather cute to see how wide-eyed he was at college and notably still very attached to old friends back home in the Midwest, where he had already managed to resist come-ons from both Allen Ginsberg and Janis Joplin before even leaving high school. Yet for a long time he was dating a virgin. This mix of down-home boy and intrepid explorer of new sensations gives the book much of its charm. A major theme here is how beautiful he was (as photos confirm) and the entrée this gave him into different worlds - not to mention all the attention he had to fend off (including one very-near rape). In this sense, a beautiful woman might have written a similar book, giving glimpses of all a stunning person gets to see for no better reason than that they ARE stunning. It's interesting on the other hand to compare it to Patti Smith's "Just Kids", which largely describes the same period and world, given that Smith herself is certainly not a conventional beauty, yet managed to intrigue some high-profile lovers. So there is more than beauty to such entry into new worlds. All the while, he really was trying to be an artist (and ultimately would succeed) while also drinking so much that it ultimately became a problem he had to solve. (His father, pouring them both drinks before sitting him down to lecture him on his drinking, couldn't have helped - nor his beautiful but often-soused mother.) His name-dropping is very off-handed and nowhere near as obnoxious as it could be. It helps that in editing his journals, he left his first impressions, say, of CBGB's as "a biker's bar" and Julian Schnabel as an aspiring painter working as a cook who gave him and his friends a free side. In this sense, the book's lack of structure and usually focus actually becomes a quality, as if we were on a boat drifting down a canal in a tunnel where at one moment one sees the Mona Lisa, another a stripper thrusting what she's got into the viewer's face, another a couple entwined in the most tender love-making, another a manic and colorful crowd, only for the boat to move on, with no regard for the relative value of all these sights. It certainly helps that from early on Hannah had a writer's love of evocative details and memorable snatches of dialogue; the book, however casually, really was WRITTEN and not just a careless mind dump.

[Andrew Careaga · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not a big fan of the diary/journal genre, so at the outset I wasn't sure what to make of this book. I decided to give it a listen (audio book, read by the author) at the suggestion of a friend who shares my taste for the pre-punk demimonde of New York and because the book title is borrowed from one of my favorite songs by '70s-era glam rocker T-Rex.

Author Duncan Hannah, a well-to-do Minnesota kid-turned-New York City bohemian/artist, documented his life and times in journals he kept from his high school days in the late 1960s through through the early 1980s. These journals, unedited, form the chapters of this book. Through the lens of Hannah's writings, we see the 1970s unfurl before us -- starting with the concert and party scene of the author's youth through his college days at Bard and into the seedy underground art and music scene of NYC in the '70s. Hannah describes encounters with the famous and the infamous from that era: Lou Reed, Patti Smith, Debbie Harry of Blondie, Andy Warhol and his Factory gang, Richard Hell of Television, the New York Dolls, et. al. And he describes his descent into debauchery and dissolution, as well as detailed lists of books read, movies seen, concerts attended.

It's hard to imagine someone so dissolute having the discipline to journal his experiences so thoroughly and with such detail and discipline. But somehow, Duncan Hannah managed to do so. Anyone interested in the underground art and music scene of 1970s New York should find "Twentieth-Century Body" of interest.

[Blane · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely LOVED this book! Obvious touchstones have been mentioned in other reviews ('Andy Warhol Diaries', 'Just Kids', 'Catcher In The Rye'); another (for me, anyway) is Sebastian Horsley's 'Dandy In The Underworld'. What makes this collection of Hannah's notebooks/journals special is that they are presented (so he claims) in relatively unedited form and in chronological order...written from when he was 17 through about 28. We get a glimpse of what it is like to be those ages where most of us feel completely free and infallible. Of course, most of us have lived through that college-early adult period of our lives, but we tend to look back on it through a gauzy lens; Hannah presents it in real time. Disclosure: Philistine that I am, I knew nothing of Duncan Hannah before reading this book; I saw it on display at the library & was immediately intrigued. This one could be a classic.

[Maureen Stanton · Rating 4 out of 5]

A precocious talented art school student is lost and found in the demimonde of NYC art scene in the 1970s. This compilation of Hannah's diaries from the decade is compelling even as it remains somewhat superficial (as many diaries of young people are). But like the diaries of Sylvia Plath, Hannah is a gifted writer, and he is an acute observer, even if the starry-eyed name dropping is sometimes too much. This book makes me crave a memoir from Hannah, wherein 40 years later, he adds that layer of reflection and wisdom about these experiences (especially how he moved away from a deeply self-destructive drinking and drug habit), akin perhaps to "Just Kids," the brilliant memoir by Patti Smith (who is name-checked in Hannah's book).

[Ray · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book although I barely knew who the author was beforehand. If you were a teenage rock n roll fanatic in the late 60's to late 70's- read it. This comes from his journals, with detail that brought back memories of teen life in NJ and NYC. Got a cheap thrill knowing that we were at the same T.Rex show although I was in the balcony while he was hanging out with the stars. And I was two tables behind him and Andy Warhol at an early Talking Heads show at CBGB's. Great anecdotes about Patti Smith, Television, Lou Reed and many other art world hipsters/legends.

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like oral histories, New York in the 70's, music, movies, books and art so this book of journal entries by artist & scenster Duncan Hannah was pretty perfect for me.

[Jason · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don’t ordinarily dumpster dive for reading materials, but when I looked into a recycling bin outside a grocery store and saw a bunch of copies of this one, I thought I’d better check it out. Duncan Hannah’s 20th Century Boy is a memoir from the 1970s art and music scene, mostly taking place in New York City. That much alone was enough to pique my interest and after opening it and leafing through a few pages, I saw it had photographs of Debbie Harry, Richard Hell, the Talking Heads, Andy Warhol, and a few other notables of the underground scene. I knew I was in territory that was both familiar and interesting.

Artist and sometimes actor Duncan Hannah kept journals from his high school years and through his twenties. He extracted the most interesting bits and put them together for this collection which captures the feel of aimless bohemian living at the margins of the art world. The first thing that caught my attention is his writing style. Hannah writes in short, no-frills sentences that recall the simplistic prose of Hemingway. I find Hemingway to be a bore though. Hannah largely succeeds in writing this way. He writes with a flow and consistency that I always found absent that other writer’s style. Reading Hemingway is like trying to drive a car with the emergency brake on; reading Duncan Hannah is like zipping in and out of fast-moving traffic on a finely tuned motorcycle.

Then the content is something else. The author starts this book as a teenager in Minneapolis just when the sexual revolution begins to blossom. He sleeps around with a lot of girls, does a lot of drugs and alcohol, plays in a band, and has ambitions to become an artist, all while his parents fret over the possibility of him becoming a permanent screw-up. He becomes an art student at Bard college located in downstate New York, continuing on a similar course until he finally winds up in Greenwich Village where he continues his studies.

One night at a concert, he catches the attention of Danny Fields, the rock band manager who signed The Doors, MC5, and The Stooges to Elektra records. Hannah is a good-looking boy with a sense of fashion and the two hit it off immediately. Danny Fields introduces him to a lot of rock stars and artists and Hannah easily adapts to the in-crowd at Max’s Kansas City among other places.

One of the exciting things about this book is all the rock concerts and related parties the author goes to. Most of this involves the proto-punk and glam scene of the early 1970s. He sees some of the earliest performances of Patti Smith and Television. He probably also sees more New York Dolls shows than anybody else in history. He even gets to meet Iggy Pop backstage and then watches him come on stage with The Stooges too loaded to stand up, let along sing. Iggy falls on the drum set then falls off the stage before they carry him out on a stretcher, leaving the band to play an all-instrumental set to the audience’s disappointment.

Then there is the sex, the drugs, and the parties. Hannah snorts up what must be most of the cocaine in Peru and a huge cargo of whatever came out of Colombia, Ecuador, and Bolivia too then tempers his highs with gallons of liquor so that, aside from being popular, he also earns a reputation for being a hardcore lush. This never stops him from getting laid though. Despite going through life being alcoholically challenged, he still manages to get it up with women and maintain long-term relationships. Duncan Hannah gets more ass than a toilet seat. And then there are the men. You see, Hannah is a cute, androgynous prick-tease so he gets hit on by every gay man who can’t keep his hands to himself, but since he is straight, he always disappoints them and one even gets violent when rejected. Overall, it’s a wild and exciting life, one that most people never get to live let along survive. In the latter half of the book, he is much more engaged with his art.

A typical day for Duncan Hannah goes like this. “I woke up at 11:30 AM with a poisonous hangover, not sure if I slept through one night or two. I went down to the corner where I saw Patti Smith hanging out so we got some breakfast. I did some coke, spent a couple hours painting then went to visit a gallery uptown. I took my girlfriend out to dinner where Tom Verlaine and three members of Blondie were sitting at nearby tables. We all got drunk then I had sex with my girlfriend in the bathroom. I went off to watch a French movie starring Alain Delon, headed uptown to a Roxy Music show, said hi to Johnny Thunders in the concert hall, and got invited to party where I tried to talk to David Bowie and Andy Warhol. I smoked a joint with Jim Jarmusch, did a few lines of coke and a hit of acid and ended up in bed with some girl who smelled bad but had a nice body. Anita Pallenberg came in and told us to get out of her bed and Mick Jagger stepped on my toes as I made my way out the door. I hope I can sell some paintings tomorrow.”

This is the kind of book that could suffer from redundancy, but it moves along at such a fast pace that it never slows down or gets dull. The copious amounts of name-dropping can be a little annoying at first; it’s like listening to some nobody trying to impress others by talking about all the important people they know, but Hannah’s encounters with this legendary crowd are persistently interesting and he does have some good conversations and experiences with them. Besides, he fits in with them and never sounds fake or pretentious.

While I am not a huge fan of Duncan Hannah’s paintings, I find 20th Century Boy to be a fascinating chronicle of New York’s downtown scene in the 1970s, probably the best decade the city has ever seen for its exploding music scene and dynamic social life. It was a time when New York was still affordable, fun, and stylish, a time when the greatest social asset one could have was simply to be an interesting person. New York, and America in general, just aren’t like that anymore. As a document of glam, punk, the drug culture, the Sexual Revolution, old New York, and the lives of starving artists, this book can’t be beat.

[Jason Béliveau · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ce portrait du New-York punk et artistique des années 70 par le peintre Duncah Hannah, mort en juin dernier à 69 ans, a été une pure drogue. De petit crotté saoul qui pense juste aux filles au dandy néo-romantique (qui pense encore beaucoup aux filles), c'est un coming of age brillant (il s'agit de ses journaux intimes) où s'entremêlent T-Rex, les New York Dolls, Patti Smith, le CBGB, Andy Warhol et les Talking Heads. Seule constance : son amour pur et sincère pour l'Art, les toiles, les livres, les films. Je le recommande de tout cœur à celles et ceux intéressé.e.s par cette époque.

[Edward Champion · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wildly enjoyable (and surprisingly erudite for a kid in his early twenties) journal of Hannah as a young man, with some memorable bits on the crowd at Max's and elsewhere. How Hannah was able to paint and read so much while doing so much drinking and drugging is a testament, I suppose, to his fortitude.

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

A completely charming and entertaining read. A fun and gossipy account of downtown New York in the 1970s with a lesson to learn at the end. Duncan Hannah is charismatic, maddeningly frustrating, and ultimately irresistible.

[Carolin · Rating 2 out of 5]

what the fuck was this?
I mean, it sort of was what it said it would be but also not...it's probably just me but nothing he was rambling on about was of any interest to me. it sounds like he was absolutely insufferable tbh.

[Ben Robinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fabulously indiscreet chronicle of boozed-up promiscuity among the privileged 70s NYC artworld in-crowd. I loved this to bits and I bet he did too.

[David Sahr · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a story of wine, women, and song in 1970s America (primarily New York City and Minneapolis with significant excursions to London, Paris, Naples and Washington DC) based on the diaries of a young man in his late teens and twenties. Despite his apparent openness to imprudent adventures and risks in the pursuit of pleasure and rubbing shoulders with celebrities, it also highlights Duncan Hannah’s abiding interest in art, culture and music and ambition to become an artist. But the main interest of the book for the general reader has to be getting to know vicariously the music, art and party scene of 1970s New York. By the end of this period, Duncan’s awareness of his own mortality, and the early death of literary and musical heroes, as well as his own ambitions, lead him to cut back on his unhealthy activities just as his own artistic career starts to take off. It is to be hoped that his story will be continued based on later diaries, although sadly he himself left the scene in June 2023 at the age of 69.

Duncan Hannah gives thanks to a guardian angel for having survived the 1970s. The book documents numerous alcoholic benders where Duncan admits in his diary to having no memory for up to three days at a time. In one entertaining story, he wakes up in an empty room in Harlem with no idea of how he got there or where he was upon awakening. Marijuana, opium and barbiturates also populate the diaries. Interestingly, it appears he imposed some limits on his drug abuse. For example, while he asserts he took psychedelics numerous times in high school (and indeed was expelled from private school in the 10th grade when it was discovered that he had sold LSD to another student), he describes one very intense experience in 1970 that, he says, caused him to swear off psychedelics for life. In addition, there is no indication in the diaries that he experimented with heroin or other similarly dangerous drugs. As the years pass, he asks himself in his diaries if he is an alcoholic. To a layman reader, it seems quite obvious he is.

Girls are another big part of these diaries. Duncan was always the cutest boy in the room, with a highly developed taste in clothes. Given his friendliness, intelligence and flair for adventure, it is not surprising that many girls flocked to him both in Minneapolis and later in New York City. Protecting their identities with pseudonyms, he shares with us both his intimate encounters and his observations on the personalities of his successive girlfriends. As the years pass, his relationships tend to last longer but get no less interesting.

Song is huge in this book. Music was one of Duncan’s lifelong loves. From the beginning of the diaries, he maintains lists of the records he purchases (mostly rock and roll and jazz). He also details concerts he attended in Minneapolis and New York City. He himself played the drums from an early age. But he seemed to figure out early on that being a musician was not his destiny. He recounts how the Hurricane Boys, a band made up of close high school friends, fired him as the drummer. At college first at Bard and then at Parsons, music performance does not come up. When Tom Vereine of Television had second thoughts about their current drummer, he asked Duncan to audition for the role. He did not get the job. At one point in the diaries, he bemoans that he can’t sing. But as a consumer of music, he was voracious and always on the cutting edge. Among his heroes were David Bowie whom he later met in New York. He was also very independent in his musical tastes: at one point he recounts how his peers rejected the new Fleetwood Mac in favor of the original band under Peter Green and Jeremy Spencer’s leadership. And yet he would not deny that he liked the new song Dreams.

Art is his vocation. It is the main focus of his two years at Bard College, where he attempted to push back against the drumbeat of his teachers that only abstract art was worthy of production. He then transferred to Parsons in New York City where he found a broader art program, although still one that put abstract art on the pedestal. Since high school Duncan had been drawing cartoons and doing posters, and he slowly began to generate a small income from such projects in New York, including a poster for John Lennon for which he received a check from Yoko Ono of $75. While at Parsons and after, he began building his own portfolio. Having been introduced to David Hockney and taking him around Manhattan, Duncan obtained his feedback on his portfolio. Hockney pushed him to paint what he wanted to paint, not what he thought others expected him to paint. As the book nears its end, he finally gets his first solo show.

Literature also plays a big role in Duncan’s life. English was the only course in school other than art which appealed to him. Despite his mind-bending adventures and sexual dalliances, he seems to have kept up a steady course of reading, usually in the mornings. He maintained a running list in his diaries of the books he is reading. Almost all are fiction, ranging from classics through contemporary novels and detective stories (Raymond Chandler being one of his favorites). One of his favorite books was Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. It would seem that while he was living the high life literature had some benefit in keeping him somewhat grounded in reality: in particular, he records that Jack Kerouac, an alcoholic, died on the floor of his mother’s basement. This was a fate that Duncan realized he wanted to avoid.

Movies were another of his great loves. Here again he periodically lists the movies he has seen. He was a huge fan of the French new wave. Alain Delon and Jean-Paul Belmondo were particular favorites of his. He also details his own performance in two “wanna be new wave” films directed by the American Amos Poe.

Duncan’s personal life is of great interest, but certainly the biggest appeal of his diaries to the reader today are the numerous stories concerning the New York art, music and party scene populated by cultural celebrities of the day. Hockney, Bowie and Television have already been named. Others he got to know include Andy Warhol and Pattiy Smith. His stories of his interactions are often peppered with observations on the character of these well-known individuals. He also has numerous brief interactions with stars whom he did not come to know but whose brief appearances are humorous or otherwise noteworthy. These include Salvador Dali, Keith Moon, John Lennon, Tom Rundgren and many others.

How did an admittedly dissolute young man from Minneapolis get to know or meet with all these people? Because of his love for art, movies and literature, he was hugely ambitious to be where the action was; indeed, this is why he was in New York in the first place. One reason he maintained his diaries was he realized someday they could be important. But one crucial factor in his success was the gay community in New York City. Duncan states he was not gay but the pretty boy with the fine taste in clothing was very appealing to middle-aged gay men who were successful in the music and art industries in New York City. They befriended him in hopes of enjoying physical pleasures. According to Duncan, he had no desire for gay sex and repeatedly rebuffed the approaches of his admirers. Although rebuffed, many seem to have continued to like him, and opened many doors that Duncan was very happy to enter. Indeed, several of these men appeared to take on almost a mentoring role for Duncan.

Duncan was not a typical boy of the 20th century, a century marked by two world wars, a depression and rapid change. Duncan is aware of this. What emerges is an individual who was both quite willing to get off the beaten track but also was driven by ambition. His diaries frequently note the reaction of his parents to his behavior and this gives some insight into Duncan’s course in life. On the one hand, his parents had high expectations. His father, the valedictorian of Duncan’s private high school and a graduate of Harvard, wanted Duncan to excel as a lawyer and become a corporate leader. He had a difficult time adjusting to Duncan’s path but seems to have accepted it by the end of the 1970s. On the other hand, based on the diaries, it seems both parents drank to excess and had personal problems they had never resolved. These characteristics might have put Duncan off of pursuing a “straight” path, and indeed might have given him some self-justification for the path he did take. We must thank him for the discipline he showed in recounting his life in his diaries. His parents and teachers would ultimately have been pleased.

[Martha Wilkie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Highly entertaining, makes my wayward youth seem positively unadventurous.

[Peter Landau · Rating 4 out of 5]

Equal parts drunkalogue, art history and scene report all told in the enthusiasm of youth that is hardly recognizable to me anymore.

[Supineny · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, I always wondered what those other kids were doing, those ones on the downtown scene who seemed to be out every night getting wasted, dressed up as if in costume and being inexplicably connected to everybody and everything going on around them. Duncan Hannah's book affords a lurid look into his scene - what was he doing? Well, it seems like he was going through all the usual young artist meandering and confusion, except he took phenomenal quantities of liquid courage. The book is filled with the sort of entertaining details one would hope for in this territory -- his social life is endless, filled with cameo appearances ranging from ongoing friendships with the likes of Richard Lloyd of Television, to chance encounters with Bowie, Ferry and Lennon. And filled with a sense of where the city's rock scene was going as the underground scene evolved from the New York Dolls, through the CBGB era, and on to the No Wave era.

He is forever getting beaten up, tossed in the gutter, waking up after blackouts, and having delirium tremens. But, somehow, he never seems to suffer from any other health problems, he always have attractive girls throwing themselves at him, and he seems to have developed a way of courting and managing the many gay men who might take some sort of interest into this dandified pretty boy.

I can't quite imagine what this book would seem like to a reader who was no, more or less, of Hannah's generation, or who did not live in New York during the 70s. It seemed like a fun romp down memory lane. The Soho Weekly News. New York Rocker. Club 57. He gets a cat from Patti Smith. He auditions, unsuccessfully, to replace Billy Ficca as drummer in Television. His girlfriend towards the end of the book is Terrance Summer, the bikini'ed dominatrix on the cover of 'Buy the Contortions'.

The thing about the diaries, is that they were written to be read. While there are some journal-keeping entries -- the ongoing lists of records, books and films he's interested in at the time -- you get the sense that they lack the flat earnestness of many a diary. And they feature an awful lot of juice -- god knows what was edited out of the final book, but basically if he wasn't fucking some amazing or crazy woman, if he wasn't running around seeing cool bands and meeting scenesters, if his drunkedness wasn't frighteningly over the top, it doesn't seem like it made it into the book. On top of that, there is an ongoing theme of seeing ghosts, which has the air of peppering the book with a tall tale or two. And if the ghosts are fictitious, what else is? Lord only knows.

His relationships with women are interesting and generally a bit lurid -- there's a lot of feverishly described young love and lust early on, followed by a period in which we are hearing an awful lot about how much he's drunk and precious little about sex anymore. One is not surprised when his live in girlfriend moves on sometime after a particularly pathetic drunk episode in the bedroom, involving piss, broken glass and lots of blood. The book comes to a kind of climax as he describes the story of his life with his girlfriend, Terri. She is a dominatrix by trade, his sweetheart in her leisure time and, he notes casually in passing, it seems like she writes a whole lot more than he does. That affair comes to an end with a colorful set piece involving a flying mayonnaise jar than nearly kills Hannah, and his near-murderous response.

I found myself reaching for Google time and again to find out who people really were. Like Terri, the once wonderful, eventually too crazy girlfriend, seems to have been fairly well known on the scene herself, and her books on S/m well received (Terrence Summer, if you want to pry a bit.)

After the storm, finally, is AA, a nice girl, and apparently he lives happily ever after painting unfashionable paintings. We're happy for him -- it's a happy end. Reasonable. And it's an odd feeling to sense that it was my prurient interest that kept me captivated for so long by his diaries. I'm not really that interested, I have to admit, in the tale of a chastened and reasonable young man learning to paint conservative paintings. Now that irresponsible, younger version of that young man, the one constantly flirting with death -- now that was a story!

[Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well, this was a fun read. Curated from the journals that Duncan Hannah kept during the 1970s, this book sweeps the reader along in the author's rollicking teens and twenties. The book starts when naughty-boy Duncan Hannah (born 1952) leaves his country-club family in Minnesota behind and barrels towards the East Coast to attend, first Bard College, then Parsons.

His aim was to be a painter, an artist - but in the meantime, there was his young life to be enjoyed! Blessed with exceptional good looks and the stamina of youth, he lived a burning-the-candle-at-both-ends lifestyle in Manhattan in the 1970s that could very well have come to a bad end... but that he reined in just in time.

I just had to smile as I read about our uninhibited hero attending parties, concerts, art openings. He meets everyone, from the New York Dolls to Larry Rivers. David Hockney gives him painting advice. Patti Smith confides in him about her love life. Andy Warhol vaguely proposes some type of collaboration. There is talk of him modeling for Salvador Dali. A pattern emerges: our good-looking boy tags along with a group of friends, is introduced to others at a party or in a bar, and attracts the attention of older gay tastemakers. He is allowed, even encouraged, to hang around for a while, which he does with gushing fanboy enthusiasm. Alas, at some point those wannabe mentors expect some favors in return, which our energetically heterosexual boy is not willing to offer. So he's dropped, sometimes after a difficult scene - but no matter, there are always more people to meet, more punk rock stars to hang out with, more parties to attend. In between attending art school and partying, Duncan Hannah finds time to read, watch lots of movies, and attend a staggeringly long list of concerts. Overall the effect is that of a real zest for life, a fascination with pop culture and those who create it. In the introduction the author states something to the effect that that while teen diaries are typically associated with girls writing out their fears and frustrations, he wanted to write from a place of enjoyment and delight, and that's exactly what he did.

The book is not just name-dropping, though. Duncan does reflect (from time to time) on his relationship with his staid parents and protective older sister, and on the parade of girls who move in and out of his life.

Nothing lasts forever... at some point Duncan graduates from Parsons and has to make his way in the world. His frequent alcoholic blackouts are beginning to affect his friendships - is he simply less fun than he used to be? There is also a whole new generation of artists (think Keith Haring and Basquiat) and it becomes clear that he can't keep on being the fresh-faced tagalong forever.

The diaries end in 1980. Duncan Hannah did stop drinking and did become a successful artist, albeit one whose work never really fit into the Zeitgeist. I don't know much more about his later life (he died in 2022).

In summary, this is vicarious fun. There are armchair detectives, there is armchair travel - this book offers armchair bad behavior!

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

It caught me by surprise how much I enjoyed Duncan Hannah's diaries from the seventies. He was between 17 and about 28 or so during this time. Duncan lived the kind of life many of us probably dreamed we could step into when we were in our twenties. He did all the drugs, drank all the booze, slept with too many people. He saw Bill Evans play the same week that he saw the Stooges (if my memory serves). He hung out with Danny Fields and Nico and shared a cab with Andy Warhol, Bowie, and Bryan Ferry. Duncan isn't notable for one chief talent or achievement, unlike many of the celebrities with whom he rubbed shoulders; instead he has a sort of social genius - a combination of good looks and good taste, easy access to daddy's money, and innate optimism, openmindedness and sense of adventure. He seems to benefit from no sexual inhibitions and no neuroses. The lesson is oddly comforting: missing out on all the fun during our twenties wasn't a matter of one small lack or another; it was a matter of not being a totally different person. That is, it never could have happened. And it's so nice that Duncan seems to relish in his blessed existence - he accepts both the benefits of bohemia with the punishments. Despite being repeatedly beaten up, robbed, contracting well-deserved infections and unwanted pregnancies, scraping by with no money, almost getting raped and murdered, living with all the nasty side effects of acute alcoholism, he never complains. The good with the bad.

One other benefit: Duncan was born in the same year as my parents. Reading these diaries gave me a more interior sense of what things were like for them-how they moved around, found out about bands and movies, etc-then documentary sources or even their own hindsight recollections. There's a contemporaneous feeling that's quite evocative.

[loser · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Nothing creates a Bohemian faster than a steady check from Bourgeoisie parents” - George Bernard Shaw


This book is a timeless relic. Duncan Hannah, in a SINGLE lifetime, became a renowned and successful painter, went shoe shopping with John and Yoko, ate KFC with Janis Joplin, starred in movies, went to drag bars with David Bowie and Bryan Ferry, fucked a pile of dirt, became a muse to both Andy Warhol and Salvador Dalí, joined the punk scene, was propositioned by Lou Reed and Nancy Spungen (and just about every other person in New York City), dated a dominatrix, and did just about everything humanly possible. He did ALL THAT and couldn’t even figure out a way to become my sexy time-traveling 70’s boyfriend...

In all seriousness, though, Hannah’s journal are hilariously entertaining, and read easily enough: a sleazy seventies hedonist recounting his Odyssey around the New York underground scene. Mirthful anecdotes, artistic ambition, and a splash of alcoholism. Yet reading it makes you feel completely surreal; it feels like you are alongside Hannah in his life, living through the rise and fall of music genres, subcultures, art movements, counter-cultual clashes, etc. It makes me wish I could live through something exactly like it.

[Malcolm Frawley · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had no idea who Duncan Hannah was but his memoir/diaries of the 1970s caught my eye. It helped immensely that he was (he died in 2022) exactly the same age as me but I found his adventures in becoming a respected artist immensely enjoyable, even though drugs & alcohol play an all-too tedious & predictable role. Hannah seems to have been blessed with being in the right place at the right time & managed to meet, be-friend, or even sleep with, an array of major personalities from the era. These include authors John Berendt & Peter Straub, musicians Patti Smith, Blondie, Talking Heads, Television et al, & artists such as Andy Warhol & David Hockney. I grew up in working class Sydney & eventually pursued my own path into the arts, finally getting a novel published in 2024. If only I'd rubbed shoulders with those people available to Hannah in New York at the same time, who knows where I'd be now. Smiley face, I'm pretty happy where I am now. Recommended for Baby Boomers with an interest in the arts. Highly recommended.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Duncan Hannah was a bit of a scamp He was an admitted alcoholic with an incredible recall to capture various misadventures hilariously and vividly, a young man In love with art, wanting to experience everything RIGHT NOW. The stories of his early years were written with a typical youthful lust for life, albeit with a lot more erudite euphemisms for the word vagina than your average teen. The book really picks up when he stumbles (literally in some cases) into the downtown NYC music and art scene of the 1970s. His writing expresses his fascination and joy at being part of this wild tribe of creators and misfits while trying to find his artistic voice. Prior to his passing in 2022 pieces covering events in his life (finding sobriety and the evolution of his work) were published and I hope at some point a follow up book is released. Rest in peace Mr. Hannah, you delightful rascal. Thank you for your service.

[Jan Ayers · Rating 4 out of 5]

I came to NYC two years after him, but was in the same milieu. Interesting to get his perspective and hear his particular stories. I knew who he was and later met him. Some of the books he read and movies he saw, places, people, the excitement, the alcohol, drugs, parties, etc. resonate. I got lost in his stories and then Duncan really died a few weeks back and I had to stop reading for awhile. But glad I returned to finish up. A nice complement to other writings of the period. The decade of the seventies in NYC was an incredible period for young artists, writers, actors, dancers, musicians....rents were cheap and there was a looseness and free exchange that somehow survived despite the drugs and disappointment and the cynicism feeding upon itself.

[Bill Arning · Rating 5 out of 5]

what a wonderfully described period in arts and culture, as well as untreated alcoholism and drug addiction. (Hannah hints toward the very end of the book that sobriety was around the corner. As the rare heterosexual in a very gay milieu he gets hit on by a guy every other page and one has to enjoy them explaining how well he would do as a gay. His shenanigans which end up in cars with rock stars and pissing on Francesco Scavullo's hat are all stunningly described. All in all very fun and it makes me deeply regret he died before finishing the sequel.

[Jay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting look into the 70's through the eyes of a kid coming up, trying to figure himself out. Fun cameos by all kinds of folks on the art and punk scene in 70's NYC. Surprising well written by someone so young, especially at the beginning when he was only 17. The sex talk, in a modern context, can sometimes read a little creepy, but it's not like he's writing it now looking back. It was written at the moment. All in all sounds like Duncan Hannah has a pretty sweet dong.

[Tia · Rating 4 out of 5]

These are unvarnished journals and while it's fascinating to tag along through his debauched high school years in Minneapolis, and college years and beyond in New York, you can feel the toll of the alcohol and substance abuse, and feel for the sad girls who throw themselves his way. To his credit, you also get a sense of the artist and the dedication to his work. He seems quite aware of the advantages that came his way thanks to his upbringing and his appearance.