the mid-sixties he was one of the most gifted young writers in America. As of 1965, appeared in his second novel “Midnight Cowboy”, he was practically an overnight Star: James Leo Herlihy, Born in 1927, wanted to the shackles of the Detroit working class milieus, in which he blow up grew up and where he suffered, with Writing
with his 1960-published debut Novel “All fall Down” had Herlihy set a first exclamation mark. And, five years later, his story came out about the Albuquerque-born naive Narcissus Joe Buck, the break up boots with a hat, leather jacket and cowboy into the dark heart of New York, in order to make between Times Square, Broadway, and freedom to be happiness statue as a male prostitute, seemed to be projects successful: The book was Herlihy famous overnight, and the young author was suddenly next to greats such as Carson McCullers and J. D. Salinger as a literary promise.
Herlihy, gay, and since College times closely with Tennessee Williams, a friend, stand at once under observation, and the question was: What is he gonna type next? He can be in “Midnight Cowboy” is more than just semi-full Potential?
The question is quickly answered: no. Herlihy staggered, lost his voice. Because four years later, John Schlesinger’s gripping film adaptation of his negative rags legend in the cinema (in Germany under the title “Asphalt Cowboy”), and newcomers like Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight became the protagonists of the new Hollywood cinema of those years, in those years, the images in the film of his novel suddenly, in a comprehensive manner.
His Name faded, Herlihys a long sad flight began in the fall. Schlesinger received, in 1970, three Oscars for his Film, Dustin Hoffman excelled in the role of the devious small swindler Enrico “Ratso” Rizzo, came in for a world career. Since Herlihy, 43, fought, for a long time with depression and alcohol, and torn by self-doubt and suicide fantasies.
James Leo Herlihy
“My man his full potential was ever more important to me to be as a writer,” he said later, defiantly. But the fact is, he had nothing really Important to the paper, and his former literary ambitions, meanwhile, finally, in the dogged fight for the rights of Gays and lesbians to be buried.
Herlihy died in 1993, a 66-year-old from an Overdose of sleeping pills. He did it in the Ruch of the so-called “One-Shot-Author”, much like Joseph Heller, Creator of the novel “Catch-22”, or the author of probably the best Boxing novel “Fat illegal bahis City” by Leonard Gardner, to the sad legend from the handsome fool Joe Buck, nothing permanent is really a literary end created. The self-rescue, which had hoped Herlihy for a long time from Writing, he was not successful.
armies of loners
Now his novel is published in a timely retransmission of the Berlin essayist and Translator Daniel Schreiber, after the book, in 1968, under the rather uninspired title of “Rodeo night” had been published for the List publisher. And it shows, what an exquisite writing Talent James Leo Herlihy had, so you have to wonder: What would have brought in the obsessions and self-rescue fantasies of the little losers of America-Loving well-even on paper, would be left to him of the curse of the film adaptation of his novel, with all its to him the negative consequences of saves?
Because only a few of its narrative generation Herlihy had Downed a precise, compassionate, and kitsch-free views of those in the canyons of large cities, the American dream is looking every day and night in the Form of a painful nightmare fantasies home.
In the figure, the broken-down, limping Schlitzohrs Ratso Rizzo, the accompanied fighting the urban Don Quixote, Joe Buck, true to his large-scale urban windmill, has he given to the type of small American loser literary expression. His Protagonist is Joe Buck experienced the example of his grandmother, Sally, who gives herself indiscriminately always new men, the interchangeability of human emotions. That Herlihy with this figure, a veritable families and development of novel, succeeded, found in his previous reception little attention.
DISPLAY James Leo Herlihy:
Midnight Cowboy
From the American, and with an afterword by Daniel Schreiber
distanz-Verlag, Berlin, 2018; 316 pages; 20 Euro
link to Amazon. In the case of Thalia order.
So Herlihys novel plunges us back into that neurotic New York of the sixties, in the armies of loners, driven by crude salvation and self-redemption fantasies, Times Square is mistaken in search of a compassionate soul that is calling to you: “It’s all good!” Joe Buck is on his way.
Why us his story today still something? Because that’s what you negotiated, is of great concern to us unchanged, namely, the hunger, the fear, the longing for belonging, Rebellion and disillusionment of life. The character of Joe Buck has lost none of its fascination, because it is unchanged from what Bob Dylan is everyone’s son and brother “called, in one of his Songs.”
