Homeboy

by Seth Morgan

"Mr. Morgan mocks the limits of language to create an unnerving and uterrly persuasive rendition of hell, one that affirms him as an important new novelist."
- The New York Times Book Review

Homeboy, Seth Morgan's stunning novel, is a gritty, ribald, and frenetically lyrical odyssey through the Strip of San Francisco - a netherworld of whores, pimps, dealers and junkies - to the hell of Coldwater Penitentiary. After a high-priced hooker is killed and one of the world's biggest diamonds is stolen, Joe Speaker, a strip-joint barker and dope addict, stumbles onto the missing jewel, is hunted down and put away for murder. In prison, he finds that his troubles are just beginning.

"Hail the conquering literary hero!...Homeboy, a big beast of a novel with a beating and evolving human heart at its center...is full of the reality of human suffering."
- Los Angeles Times Book Review

"Seth Morgan makes the ugly streets of San Francisco's Tenderloin...into mythical characters and places, much larger than life and highly colored."
- Washington Post Book World

Genres: Fiction, Crime, Literature, Novels, Drugs, Mystery, Literary Fiction

390 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1990

About the author

Seth Morgan (1949-October 17, 1990) was an American novelist, the author of Homeboy, published in 1990.

Morgan was the son of George Frederick Morgan, heir to the Ivory Soap fortune. who was a poet and the co-founder and long-time editor of The Hudson Review. Seth briefly attended Berkeley. After dropping out he began a relationship with singer Janis Joplin and was her fiancé at the time of her death in 1970. Their connection first became public knowledge in Joplin's obituary in Time.

Morgan's only title published was Homeboy, a tale of heroin addicts and convicts. In it Morgan used several experiences from his own life, including time spent as a barker at strip clubs in San Francisco and 30 months spent in jail for armed robbery in the mid 1970s. While incarcerated Morgan won the P.E.N. essay contest for convicts.

In 1986-1987, Morgan mostly managed to keep his demons at bay and was living in New Orleans in the Lower Garden District at 1232 St. Andrew Street, a rental property owned by Metairie resident Marcel Jaffe. During this time, Seth was sober, spending his time writing, going to AA/NA meetings, working out at the Lee's Circle YMCA, and hanging out at the Hummingbird Grill, a legendary New Orleans greasy spoon that has since closed.

In the spring of 1990, the publication of Homeboy led to positive reviews and book-signing engagements for Morgan in several cities, including San Francisco, where 17 years earlier he had impaled a bystander's hand with a knife during an armed robbery. Morgan told Suzie Groover, who accompanied him on the publicity tour, that he was afraid of getting arrested on outstanding warrants from years earlier.

On October 16, 1990. Morgan was arrested in New Orleans for DUI. The next day, Morgan left a New Orleans bar, boarded his motorcycle with girlfriend Suzy Levine, and crashed into a cement embankment below a New Orleans bridge. According to their autopsies, both had high blood-alcohol levels and significant amounts of cocaine in their systems.

Seth Morgan has been cited as a major influence on the works of Craig Clevenger and Will Christopher Baer.

Reviews

[Dave · Rating 5 out of 5]

This novel is a literary tour through the drug alleys and strip clubs of San Francisco's North Beach and Tenderloin. With an amazing descriptive verbosity slightly reminiscent of Wolfe's Electric Kool-Aid and a sense of hellish despair that has been likened to William Burroughs, Morgan has peopled this novel with the most unforgettable and tragic characters like "Rings And Things" who acquired her nickname after a three day drug addled sojourn with a motorcycle gang, only to wake up with every inch of her tattooed and every orifice and protrusion pierced and adorned with jewelry. The story centers around a vicious killing and how one strip show barker by the name of Joe Speaker accidentally got involved. And about how he found himself swallowed into the prison system like Jonah being swallowed by the whale.

It is an intimate portrait of drugs and prostitution and crime and those who fell into the life and never found their way out. It is also a chilling portrait of life inside California's notorious prisons and how Joe managed to survive doing his time day by day.

There are almost no books to compare this one to because it is so unique. But it is powerfully good and really takes the reader into this strange world.

Unfortunately, Morgan who was a character in his own right, will never produce another novel. The former fiancé of Janis Joplin, who worked as a strip show barker and did hard time in prison, killed himself and a woman he was with after drinking and driving in the Big Easy.

This is a thick, dense book and is just an amazing work.

[Patrick O'Neil · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was in New York, on 6th Ave, over by the Village, and my girl friend Jennifer was, well, she was shopping because… ahhh, because it's New York and that's what she does when we're in NYC. And I was like, "no, no, no, not another trendy-ass boutique, you're on your own." And she goes, "look, it's one of the real housewives of NYC, the cool one." Only I didn't know there were any cool ones, nor did I really know what the hell she was talking about, because when she goes all project runway and real housewives this and that she might as well be talking in tongues and I don't know or care what the hell she's going on about as I don't watch that kinda bad tv and I'm always suspect of her that she does. Except when I turned around to say something to that affect she'd already gone inside and I was all by myself standing on sidewalk wondering which overly dressed trendy woman was the "cool one" because, well, I don't fucking know why? Only then there I was in front of a table full of used books and this tubby Rasta dude was smiling at me.

"Hey," I said, because I felt awkward and I'm slightly socially challenged.

"Buy dis book, mon," he said, handing it to me, never ceasing his huge smile.

I looked at the book in his hand, it was Homeboy by Seth Morgan. I'd never heard of it, but when I opened it and read the inside jacket flap: "From a unique new voice on the darker side of American fiction comes a remarkable debut novel of California's mean streets and prison yards." I was totally sold.

"How much, bro?"

"Five dolla, mon."

And yeah, it was NYC and he was selling used books on the street and I could've bargained him down a buck or two, but I just said yeah and handed him a five.

"Wha-da-ya got?" Asked Jenn.

"Bought a book," I said.

And that was it until about four months later and I was home in LA. And I was reading some book review my buddy Craig Clevenger posted on the internet about this guy Seth Morgan, and I was all, "hey, that's the book I bought in New York!" Uh huh. I really did. Well, books get me excited. But I still didn't read it as I was all wrapped up in another book, and it was in a series and, well, yeah. Segue to two weeks ago and I'm back in LA and I'm tired of reading books on my iPad. I mean it's great for travel and all, but I'm home, I want to feel paper and turn pages, and… so yeah, I looked in my book shelf and found Homeboy.

Now there are books with their own languages. Like Anthony Burgess' Clockwork Orange, and James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake, the later of which I must confess I've never been able to read, and hell, Patrick Sean O'Neil and all, I'm Irish enough to brogue with the best of the thick micks. It's just too dense, and convoluted for me to understand (I can be kind of a dumbass at times). But what I'm getting at here is Morgan's Homeboy is in itself in another language, only I know this one well, because I speak it. It's like Morgan's singing my tune. And then on further inspection I discover it's about San Francisco. And he's included the top food groups: heroin, strippers, crime, North Beach, jail, prison, and love - that were the mainstay diet of my quarter century SF experience.

I mean like Morgan's got it down. Jailhouse patois, junkie chit-chat, cop/criminal interactions, and the craziness that only two addicts in love can provide. It was like he'd been there with me. Only Morgan's version is definitely a story – plots, and sub-plots, and full dimensional characters. How I'd never heard of this book before is beyond me. But I'm really glad I didn't go into the boutique with Jennifer that day in New York. I might have missed this book, which is truly special. And I don't say that about too many books.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

HOMEBOY, the only work by the sadly tragic writer (he was Janis Joplin's last boyfriend) Seth Morgan, is a wonderful, warped, wild foray into the drug-addled, sex-infused, violence-ridden criminal world of 1980s San Francisco and the penitentiary system of California during the AIDS explosion. Writing about what he knew---drug addiction, strip-club barking, robbery, and prison life---from personal experience, Morgan crafted a tough, eye-opening look at a world few would want to visit, and even fewer would wish to become trapped in. Morgan's prose cannot be sprinted through though; it is best bitten off in chunks and chewed. At times his words come together in beautiful rhythms, paragraphs that frankly are spine-tingling, while it can also become weirdly cramped and slang-filled. And he loves his alliterations, almost too much, like it was some sort of addiciton itself. No doubt the book was meant to shock, although in these jaded times there is little here that will startle anyone but the most isolated or overprotected (though certainly I would refrain from giving the book to anyone under 21). A colorful cast of cavorting criminal characters---including prostitutes, addicts, pimps, dealers, gamblers, convicts, brutal prison guards and thugs, lawyers, strippers, homosexuals, and just about anything you can think of from the denizens of vice---populate these purple pages of pain [Yeah, you see what I am doing! He is guilty, ad nauseum, of this prose, a wild poet gone amuk at times]. The basic story follows the convoluted tale of a small-time barker (Joe) who accidentally steals a diamond during a robbery. The rock was formerly in the possession of a brutal prostitute-killing pimp bent on using it for blackmail, and the pursuit of the stone by (among others) a single-minded hardboiled detective determined on putting the bastard on death row. Unfortunately, Morgan died not long after the publication of this book, and the world most likely lost some amazing literature had he lived to craft more tales, but this effort crackles with energy, opens doors on alternative lifestyles, and questions penal institutions. A brave book. I recommend it for those wishing a challenge, with an open mind to human behavior in all its cravings and perversions, but who also like an interesting tale, well told.

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

A manic, lurid, hallucinatory romp through the sleazy streets of '70s San Francisco and the blood- shit- and jizz-spattered cellblocks of various penal institutions. The comic-book plot involves a robbery gone wrong and the search for a stolen diamond, but you're not here for the story, you're here to revel in the author's gift for description, way with simile, and knowledge of underworld cant. This is a balls-to-the-wall ride, where it's best to just make sure your seat belt's fastened, hang on tight, and trust that the driver isn't as fucked up as he appears be. Over-the-top violence, pornographic sex, and a gaggle of the most depraved characters ever to appear to appear in print -- you get all that -- but then, suddenly, in the midst of the meanness and gore, you come upon passages that knock you on your ass with their poetry and heartfelt emotion. This is a one-and-done novel, the author dying in a motorcycle crash in the same year he published the book, but you get the feeling he gave it his all.

[Nicholas Gordon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Holy fuck this book is nuts. And crazily good too.

This is a dense poetic smut-edgy street prison noir novel of the highest and most demanding order. I loved it and struggled with it in nearly equal measure. While the book’s tone is largely one of jovial chaos, it’s not the breeziest of reads with its thickets of slangy-outre vernacular prose pinballing and slingshotting helter-skelter among it vast canvas of Tenderloin fuckhead crackpots—whores, gangsters, pimps, slumlords, convicts, gamblers, killers, corrupt cops, bookies to name but a few.

Three major things lie at the center of this many-layered convoluted tale: a stolen diamond called The Blue Jager Moon; the soulful stripclub barker junkie-convict, Joe Speaker, who stumbles upon and hides the diamond before going to prison; and prison life itself, the many details and moods of which can only be the work of one who lived it.

The apocryphal tale of the diamond’s journey—which includes princes and princesses, potentates, spies, sheiks, tzars, tycoons, counts, exotic dancers, explorers, and tribesmen from the African bush—is a perfect showcase of the author’s unique sensibility, a ribald screwball cocktail of Berkeley academic bonafides mixed with the subversive, irreverence of a gifted druggie’s nonchalant fondling of his talents. Indeed there’s something DFW-like in Morgan’s effortless hopscotching among registers, gutter punk snidery one moment, ironic intellectual heft the next, transcendently beautiful nature writing imbued throughout. (For the record the book is definitely funny at times but not as profoundly uproarious as say Infinite Jest).

The descriptive imagery in the book is just stunning.

Here’s what we get when an unsuspecting fisherman pulls up a severed head in his fishing net:
‘The object broke free tumbling to the deck with a soggy crack, and the fisherman cried out. It was a human head, a girl’s head from its profusion of matted black hair cut in bangs and the bloated and garishly made up face.
The fisherman staggered back, the trawler’s pitch rolled the head after him. It rocked to a rest at his boots, ogling him with bulged eyes ringed with grease. Her cheek had been eaten by fish, baring teeth in a howl that echoed the cries of the helixing birds and the fisherman’s imprecations.’

A stripper at last revealing her breasts:
‘She stood stock still for one of those suspended intervals that could have been a millisecond or a millennium, who could tell under the spell of those vast and shimmering meringue globes radioing lust into the dark.’

A dope addict feels her hit like ‘a warm petalfall in her belly, a soft kiss on her brain.’

A crushed skull is ‘spurting brains like pulp from a burst fruit.’

The morning sun ‘spears up behind the Sierras, bloodying ribbed clouds.’

Pigeons taking flight is ‘a pale liquid brushstroke against a Chinablue sky.’

A heavy rain comes from ‘a sagging night sky showering silver dollar wishes in puddles swirled with gasoline’.

Dawn coming upon the city: ‘the sky feathered rosy and yellow behind downtown towers, with the light rising like candy-colored steam in the purple canyons.’

And Joe Speaker gazing at the enormous prison: ‘It was a thing to be strongly smelled and tasted and felt, reminding him of the great pyramids, the nearly palpable power of their mystery. But the penitentiary was more, it was a numinous malignancy he had dreamed within it so long that he and it were conjoined as much as if he were turning to stone and it, to flesh and blood.’

If only we had more books from Seth Morgan, a slumming angel scribe if ever there was one.

[Gillian Brownlee · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really don't know what to say about this book. There were a lot of really great moments, but overall I just don't think I understood most of it. The writing style was hard to get into, and I had a difficult time keeping track of some of the characters.

I can definitely see why people like this book. It shines a light on a seedy underbelly that we don't see a lot, and it doesn't shy away from how bad it can be. Also, the scene where the cop runs to save Rings 'n Things was weirdly wholesome. And Baby Jewels' end was perfect.

Anyway, this was an interesting read for sure, I just don't know if it was for me.

[Greg Latanick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well written and gruesome.

[Beer Bolwijn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this book through reading Janis Joplin's wikipedia page, encountering her fiance Seth Morgan, and reading his wikipage.

"Spoilers"

What a read! The human condition in the streets is so much like the jungle. This guy lived through it with the mind of a literary genius, and a watchful eye for the intimate intricacies. Compared to say, "The White Van", this is a masterpiece of junkiness. Wow. And it's a huge book as well! My edition had over 400 very large pages dense with text. But never did it seem like it was draggin' on and on.

I was glad I had listened to the "Ear Hustle" podcast over the last few years, because I recognized a lot of terminology from that ("kites", for instance). This is a book that will take you to jail but not break you. It is what it is. It led me to look up just how much the prison population was booming in the 80s- WTF!

A lot of the chapters are relatively short, which allows the author to bring a whole opera house of characters onto stage. The pieces of the story are scattered all over the place, gradually you can pick them up and piece it all together. I think it could have been even more fleshed out, but oh well. What a genius this guy was! It's in my top 10 list together with Bob Stone's "Dog Soldiers", Hunter Thompson's "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" and others. Hope you will read the book if you read this far, it's so beautifully literate and moving.

[Foetuseater · Rating 4 out of 5]

Героин, сутенёры, шлюхи, зэки, гангстеры и украденный алмаз. Автор в теме жизни "на дне", достаточно проверить его биографию (и некролог). Очень сочный, образный и живой язык (слэнгу не мешают "книжные" слова и наоборот), куча колоритных персонажей и жесткого действия - в общем, хорошее чтение с приличным объемом.

[Brenna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Half the book is written in slang or word play. Not an easy or pleasant read, actually rather gruesome. But unique, creative, and lyrical.

[Luke S · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow, what a trip. This book was The Confederacy of Dunces for the seedy and down and out. I expected a serious, uber-gritty bildungsroman piece from the real-life criminal/addict Seth Morgan (think "Cherry", only 28 years sooner), but what I got was a celebration of the absurd a la Tom Wolfe, but with pimps instead of stock brokers, and prostitutes in place of lawyers, and junkies, always more junkies.

In this book are some of the most brilliant, one-paragraph summations of the ludicrous, real-life types of people whom we've all seen shitfaced walking headlong down the street and grimacing in the wind.

Allegedly the original manuscript was 1100 pages, and lets give a cheers to the editor who pared it down to 390 pages. Really, he should've shaved off another 90 to be safe. Morgan is an incredible wordsmith. He's a dazzler, verbose as hell. However, he opts for too much of a good thing over and over. His sentences are sometimes brilliant and perfectly encapture his subjects and their ludicrous existence. But very often they're over-stuffed sausages with ground meat pouring out both ends, spilling all over the plate. They distract from the action. They're too self-aware. And he'll settle for corny alliteration and juvenile turns of phrase when a little restraint would've served him well. But alas, Morgan is all in, and there's no choice but to ride along or throw yourself out the moving car.

It makes sense that Morgan's writerly instincts matched his earthly appetites: excess and more excess. The guy had one speed. It's just a shame he took that poor woman on the back of his motorcycle when he ran out road.

PS: Rings N Things ended up being entirely unnecessary to the story, right? Change the ending or nix the character.

[Lawton Mock · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a lyrical sleazy slither through the world of the Homeboy: pimp, hustler, lout, neer-do-well, and sometime ethical hustler working the streets of pre-Katrina N'awlins, you'll be rootin' for the Homeboy, knowing he's on a downward spiral, but rootin' nonetheless for him, his hopeful Homegirl, and Ring'sNThiings, who'll remind the reader-and her johns-that '...it's just a piece a gut-you cain't wear it out." Yet the plot wraps around this tattooed pro-slut and her determination to survive. Morgan's one and only book, due to fact that he took his advance and put it to immediate use with a sorta-new Harley, a better-class slut on the pillion, and an unfortunate meeting with an unrelenting telephone pole. Sic Transit Seth-and the unfortunate Ho'. Read it, asshole; his estate needs the money.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was a sin against God that Seth Morgan had to die just after publishing his first novel, an epic of crime and punishment, good and evil and every shade of gray in between them. An escort's hideous murder, a stolen diamond, a corpulently evil mobster/pornographer, a cop with a guilty conscience - all these elements of HOMEBOY are tropes. But what can't be imitated is the vision and the knowledge of hard living that Morgan earned as a biker, pusher, addict, and prison inmate.

And then there's the language. Holy hell. It is something else, like a mescaline Joyce crossed with Gil-Scott Heron. I can't sample it adequately for you but you deserve to know it for yourself. Another unsung masterpiece (I've read a lot of those lately).

[Adrian Bloxham · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought and read and reread then lost this book years ago, I rebought it last year and have just got round to reading it again, the lives of the broken, brilliant writing and story

[Stuart Ayris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Homeboy is the only novel Seth Morgan wrote in his short but extraordinary life which saw him engaged to Janis Joplin at the time of her death, being imprisoned for armed robbery, working around the strip clubs of San Francisco and meeting his demise in a drug and drink fuelled motorcycle crash when working on his second novel.

Seth Morgan makes no concessions for the reader and never lets up in his prose style which is full of local jive talk, back alley slang and dripping with (perhaps an overabundance of) similes. He fleshes out the somewhat basic tale of hoodlum with a heart with a plethora of astonishing characters many of whom he kills off without warning. Whisper Moran is one such example - a truly memorable character who deserves a book of his very own.

Overall, I found Homeboy to be somewhat erratic but when it is good it is absolutely phenomenal.

[Eric K · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wanted to read a book with a setting matching my vacation in Northern CA, last September (didn't end up getting to the book until the following summer, but I digress.. ) ended up choosing this one over Steinbeck's Cannery Row -- the dust jacket's mention of a diamond heist and a journey through the seedy underbelly of San Francisco's Tenderloin made the decision for me.

Morgan's hyper-specific vernacular style prose took some getting used to, but after the first chapter I was in. With great character development and gritty descriptions the book cruises through the first act, gets a bit mired in the 2nd before finding it's way again in the 3rd. Was not expecting the majority of this book to take place in prison, but as an ex-con, that was Morgan's (and antihero protagonist, Joe Speaker's) life for a period of time. A shame this is his only work.

[Ilena Holder · Rating 5 out of 5]

one of those books you will never forget. the author was an heir to the Ivory soap fortune. he wouldn't buckle under to his father's demands to act like a rich young man should. He ended up a drug user, went to prison, even was a New Orleans barker on Bourbon street. was killed in a motorcycle accident with his girlfriend. You can read up on him on the Internet, what an unusual life. the book is unique and brilliantly written.

[Graham · Rating 4 out of 5]

Found this book down a Wikipedia hole.

Author was fiancé of Janis Joplin and born into wealth. Great work of ribald fiction. Has a strong feel of a noir comic book, though occasionally the ridiculousness of the humor breaks that down.

[Philipp · Rating 4 out of 5]

Re-read it a second time after twenty years. As with most books, I liked it better the first time. Morgan's writing is breathtaking, but quite arabesque... Sometimes I wished he would also write sentences with less than 50 words. Still, quite a read and a vernacular time capsule from the late 80s.

[Sean · Rating 5 out of 5]

The blurb on my copy compares the author to Miller and Burroughs. I'd agree, but I'd throw in some Dickens and Fielding too. Not sure how this one flew under the radar (especially since the author was once engaged to Janis Joplin), but it's a classic that's also a blast to read.

[Pat Wagner · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favorite book. Seth Morgan was gone way too soon.

[Katelyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this years ago and still think of it as one of the most accurate depictions of the life you live when you need to hustle for drugs everyday, along with that it has a good storyline too.

[Big Hard Books & Classics · Rating 3 out of 5]

Man? Seth died way too fucking g soon . . .

[Annemarie Carlson]

DNF

[VermilionBanditofHillhurst · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars, poetic, pulpy and fun

[Darren · Rating 5 out of 5]

Utterly fascinating

[tamarack · Rating 4 out of 5]

i meant to save this book for an upcoming plane journey, but i kept eating into it and was done long before lift-off. homeboy is written in a slang particular to the hollywood strip where the story takes place. i can only guess, but to me it feels authentic. i can't imagine this tale without the pretzeling language which i now find seeping into my sleep. this is a well woven story with a multitude of Characters (note the capital “C”): joe speaker, the junkie; kitty litter, the dancer/hooker; baby jewels moses, the fat jewish pimp-mobster; and lieutenant tarzon, the demented vigilante cop headline in morgan's adventure. wikipedia tells me this was morgan's only published work *and* that he was affianced to janis joplin. but gossip aside, this is a happenin' read.

[Alex · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was introduced to this novel, oddly enough, by Seth Morgan's obituary. This was a man who was with Janis Joplin when she died, who had done his 'finding himself' journey across America on a Harley Davidson.

'Homeboy' is a tale of prison, heroin addicts, perverts, strippers, pimps and corruption. If that makes it sound depressing, believe me, it's not. It's a journey into a world that most of us will never see, but it's written so well that you almost want to.

The entire thing shows what a talent Morgan had, and it's just a pity that Homeboy was his only work ever released.

[Kit Fox · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a native San Franciscan, I'm terribly ashamed that I didn't know about this pulpy yarn, set in the seedy, scummy, slutty, smutty streets of the Tenderloin and North Beach neighborhoods. Morgan's prose is rich, shocking, refreshing, and downright Paul Schrader-ish in its detail and subject matter. It's really a damn shame that he only cranked out this one novel before giving up the ghost. And, as always, I love adding new words from good books to my daily vocabulary. I'm now rather fond of exclaiming "shitfire" whenever possible--which is pretty much the tag-line for the main character's stripper girlfriend.

[Printable Tire · Rating 5 out of 5]

Now this was a great, if utterly disgusting, first novel. Lovers of more graphic crime fiction will love it. The plot was weak enough to show the author was a first-time writer, and it is more or less a "slice of life" tale, but I enjoy such tales, and the claustrophobic portrayal of prison life is probably the best I've ever seen.

Unfortunately the author is dead. He was the last boyfriend of Janis Joplin, I believe. The book, in its way, is like a gritty Kris Kristoferson song.