Harry Hooton
Henry (Harry) Arthur Hooton (9 ottobre 1908- 27 giugno 1961) è stato un poeta e commentatore sociale australiano la cui scrittura ha abbracciato gli anni 1930-1961. Fu descritto da un biografo come un precursore del suo tempo, o meglio "del suo tempo, mentre la maggior parte degli artisti e pensatori progressisti in Australia erano rimasti indietro" . Inizialmente socialista e Wobbly", in seguito professò l'anarchismo e divenne un associato della Sydney Push negli anni '40, con legami con molti altri scrittori, cineasti e artisti australiani. L'atteggiamento costante di Hooton e lo stile letterario erano stravaganti, provocatori e esplicitamente oltraggiosi.
Henry (Harry) Arthur Hooton (9 October 1908— 27 June 1961) was an Australian poet and social commentator whose writing spanned the years 1930s–1961. He was described by a biographer as ahead of his time, or rather "of his time while the majority of progressive artists and thinkers in Australia lagged far behind". Initially a socialist and "Wobbly", he later professed anarchism and became an associate of the Sydney Push during the 1940s, with connections to many other Australian writers, film makers and artists. Hooton's constant attitude and literary style was extravagant, provocative and explicitly outrageous.
Early life
Hooton was born in Doncaster, Yorkshire, England His father was Levi Hooton, a railway shunter, and his mother's maiden name was Margaret Lester-Glaister. He had an older brother, Frank.At the age of 16 he arrived in Sydney on 28 October 1924, on the ship Demosthenes as part of an Empire scheme, the Dreadnought Trust, with fifty-nine other boys. After humping his swag around much of New South Wales and Queensland through the Great Depression, in 1936, just as his first pieces of writing were being published, Hooton was introduced to the poet Marie E. J. Pitt living in Melbourne and carried on a correspondence with her for the next eight years.
Literary development
Hooton's first book of poetry, These Poets, appeared in 1941, published at his own expense in a small print run of up to 400 copies, most of which Hooton either gave away or swapped. It struck a chord with readers, receiving much critical acclaim.In 1943 Hooton met the authors Nettie Palmer and Miles Franklin while they were travelling through Newcastle. Through Miles Franklin he was introduced to the writings of Carl Sandburg and the American literary scene. Moving to Sydney in 1943 Hooton submitted a book of poems titled Leave Yourself Alone to a publisher without success. Later he self-published Things You See When You Haven't Got A Gun. In a new magazine, untitled, unpretentious and called simply No. 1., the poetry of Hooton, A. D. Hope, and Gary Lyle was featured. Hooton and Hope also featured in No. 2.
Hooton's Things You See When You Haven't Got A Gun was reviewed by Max Harris in one line in the Ern Malley issue of Angry Penguins, 'Our anarchist bull careers madly through his intellectual fog.'
"Sydney Push" milieu
In Sydney after World War II, Hooton was drawn to the intellectual circles of Sydney University, the Sydney Push and the wider artistic society of the Lincoln:pp.6–10 coffee lounge, described by Richard Appleton as the "Mecca of the Australian arts",:p.5 and the Tudor Hotel. Appleton and others have noted Hooton's opposition to the generally favoured realist philosophy of Professor John Anderson and its activist offshoot, the Libertarian Society.When Anderson's realist philosophy held intellectual sway at Sydney University, Hooton attacked vehemently philosophy and universities (he claimed sometimes that Anderson was his main enemy, although he defended Anderson when he thought he was being wrongly attacked). To a literary world influenced by people such as Joyce, Yeats, Pound and Eliot, Hooton decried them as anti-artists, philistines and charlatans. He admitted only a few people as poets, including Whitman, Wilde and Henry Lawson.:p.30Appleton explained: "Hooton held that polemic was an art form and that all poetry should be didactic", an obtuse view which, coupled with his paradoxical debating style, brought Hooton into conflict with Libertarians (who especially revered Joyce's Ulysses) and with more puristic poets such as Lex Banning, James McAuley and A.D. Hope.:pp.39–40 Yet his presence was compelling and characteristically welcomed by those who would otherwise be in disagreement. Many years later, Germaine Greer noted his influence on her:
...Harry, the utopian anarchist who had admired her red stockings, who believed people were perfect and who was not weighed down by the tremendous forces the anarchistic pessimists felt bore down on them all the time. "Alas, I understand him much better now," she said, twenty years later. "... but I think a lot of the things I've done since I've done out of a desire to please Harry Hooton..."While Hooton was living a very bohemian life in Sydney, he was connecting with literary people in Japan, India, Greece, South Africa, England, France, New Zealand, and the USA. Hooton had corresponded with counter-culture figures in California, and with Tuli Kupferberg who would later form the rock group The Fugs. He contributed to many periodicals and journals in addition to those he brought out himself. "He has published not only in Australia but in London, San Francisco, Chicago, New York, etc, and has had some material translated into Greek. He is far better known overseas than he is here".:p.30
Anarcho-technocracy
Hooton argued that man should have power over things, including machines, but never over other men, applying to himself the term "anarcho-technocrat".:p.39 "He regarded the age of man as passed, and sees the age of the machine as the proper object of pursuit... In his quest for power over machines, Hooton is a technocrat, and in his opposition to power over men, he is an anarchist.":p.30Hooton never completed his philosophical treatise, titled Militant Materialism, although he did complete six of its eight chapters. His ideas were magically simple. Leave man alone, man is perfect. Concentrate instead on matter. He formulated what he called Anarcho – Technocracy : 'The Politics of Things'.
Hooton saw proof copies of the last book published during his lifetime, It Is Great To Be Alive, published by Margaret Elliott (Margaret Fink), just before he died of cancer in 1961.
An 83-minute experimental film, Harry Hooton – Outsider Poet was made by Arthur and Corinne Cantrill in 1969. In the soundtrack, Hooton outlines his social philosophy in a series of recordings made shortly before his death in 1961.
Bibliography
- These Poets (Poetry collection), R. G. Pogonoski, Newcastle 1941
- Things You See When You Haven't Got a Gun (Poetry collection), W.A.Cooney, 1943
- It is Great To Be Alive (Poetry collection) Margaret Elliott, Sydney 1961
- Anarcho – Technocracy. The Politics of Things(four-page pamphlet) 1953
- The Politics of Things Essay published in 21st Century: The Magazine of a Creative Civilization, September 1955
- Power Over Things(Collection), Inferno Press, USA, 1955
- Poet of the 21st Century – Collected Poems – Harry Hooton. Edited by Sasha Soldatow (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1990) ISBN 0-207-16646-3
Further reading
- Hooton, Harry Anarcho–Technocracy The Politics of Things (Précis, from 4-page pamphlet, c.1953) At Radical Tradition, Takver.com
- May, James Boyer "Concerning a Maker" Essay on Hooton in Selected Essays and Criticism, London 1957
- Soldatow, Sasha Hooton, Henry Arthur (1908–1961) Australian National Dictionary of Biography, 1996]
- Hooton, Harry Geometry for Beginners (It is better to prefer than to prove) & It'll Be All Wrong in the End (Two poems published in Beloit Poetry Journal, 1953, 1954)
- Hooton, Harry Poetry or Not Essy published in The Australian Quarterly Vol. 15, No. 3 (Sep. 1943), pp. 87–96
- Hooton, Harry Poetry and the New Proletariat Essay published in the Australian Quarterly Vol. 18, No. 2 (Jun. 1946), pp. 96–104
- Hooton, Harry The Dictatorship of Art Essay published in The Australian Quarterly Vol. 21, No. 1 (Mar. 1949), pp. 61–71
- Coombs, Anne "Sex and Anarchy: the Life and Death of the Sydney Push", Viking, Ringwood, Victoria, 1996.
- Harcourt, Bill,"The Push", The National Times, 3 February 1975.
External links
- Harry Hooton: The Outsider Poet Description of 1970 film at ACMI
- Leser D. Margaret Fink: Her wild, wild ways Australian Women's Weekly, Jan 2007 (Download from Davidleser.com)
- Hooton, Harry Biography and other information at AustLit, The Australian Literature Resource (Full access requires subscription)
- Hootonics Research & Archival Website for The Harry Hooton Project (est. 27 June 2016)
YouTube
Harry Hooton "Poems Containing Exactly Nothing" Poem animation
Problems are flowers and fade
In philosophy and art humanity is no
longer worthy of our enquiry or representation. Philosophy as an
attention to human problems must yield to science dealing with
mechanical masses of non-human material. The questions of medicine,
hygiene and psychology are being relegated gradually to physiology. Art
no longer attempts to mirror man, or the things in nature as seen by
man, but depicts unrecognisable patterns which are like nothing on
earth—lines, cubes, inhuman designs. The art of representing visible
likeness is relegated to the science of photography. The philosophies
and arts of one age are the exact sciences of the next. Philosophy,
searching for what is true, and art, searching for what is new, may be
discovered as being always out in front of society, in the vanguard;
while the sciences and industries—the more utilitarian and moralistic
activities—may be considered as forming the main body of the army,
moving into the positions the spearhead establishes. This division of
labour is rarely seen operating on a large scale, but viewing the world
as a whole it will be seen that the humanism which has inspired so many
of the great philosophers and artists of the past is a goal attained. We
have arrived at humanity; there is work for science, enormous work—but
the vanguard has to look to new goals ahead. — Harry Hooton, excerpt from "Problems are Flowers and Fade," from Things You See When You Haven't Got a Gun, self-published booklet, 1943.
Over the last few months, Harry Hooton has been on my mind. His name
has been mentioned a number of times as I have progressed through this
archival project, and on my first visit to Amanda Stewart's house she
lent me a copy of Poet of the 21st Century: Harry Hooton, Collected Poems,
selected and introduced by Sasha Soldatow and published by Angus &
Robertson in 1990. I didn't open the book until I knew I could take it
to bed and read it entirely. My gut told me Harry and Sasha would eat
me, my night, my bed, effortlessly. And they did!Harry Hooton was born in England in 1908 and sent to Australia at sixteen, during a campaign that relocated young people to healthier colonies. Not much is known of Hooton's earlier years in Australia, though it is suggested that he had family in Maitland, NSW, and ended up in Newcastle, north of Sydney. In Newcastle, he became active: identifying initially as a Trotskyist, then getting involved with the Internationalist Industrial Workers of the World, and later with the Peace Pledge Union. Hooton was a pacifist anarchist with no money: landing him in gaol for an unarmed robbery, which in turn named his second self-made booklet, Things You See When You Don't Have a Gun. His first, These Poems, was a collection of parodies, critiquing bourgeois, boring, self-important, politically anaemic, overwrought, nationalist and parochial poetries (of which I am quite certain there will be no shortage, ever, to critique).
Hooton was critical of modernism (he takes every opportunity to shank Joyce and Pound), and especially so of its nascent local branches that were grafted onto a suspect foundation of Australian nationalism. Hooton's auto-select poetic predecessors were Lawson, Shelley, Whitman, Wilde and Sandburg. He also, evidently, read Epicurus, Spinoza and Wittgenstein. He named his politico-philosophical investigations "Militant Materialism," and "Anarcho-technocracy":
Anarcho-technocracy is the theory of Direct Action on Things. It is anarchist, insomuch as it states that all government over men must be replaced by the administration of things; it is technocratic, in that it contends this administration can be encompassed, in this era of increasing technological complexity, only by the technicians. It comprises the other political theories, which in reality, if not avowedly, all have the same end in view. In particular, it comprises and furthers democracy, our own brand of political theory.Later in the essay, Hooton recognises that the fear inherent in his programme is the fear of a ruling class of technicians: this is something that must be resisted, he says, for no one need be ruled. Collective campaigns to organise and move matter, under the direction of technicians (those who can "make a pot, grow a turnip, open an atom" (p.90)), will manifest the modern utopia: an industrial co-operative democracy.
Democracy is not the rule of the majority of people over a minority, which inevitably becomes the rule of a minority over a majority, a rule over the people; it is not self-government, the rule of the people over the people, which is a physical impossibility--it is the rule of all the people, over something else, something other than and outside the people. There is only one thing outside the people to be ruled--that is their material enviroment, that part of that enviroment transformed in industry, the machines. Democracy becomes inevitably Industrial democracy. In doing this it transforms political terms, methods, institutions. It transforms politics itself--from politics, which is a matter of the government of men, into technics, which is a matter of the Government of Things. ("Anarcho-Technocracy: The Politics of Things, c. 1951, reproduced in Poet of the 21st Century, p.88)
Hooton's politics is a toughnut. His futurist, tech-fetishist materialism, combined with his thoroughly Romantic conviction in an abstract, prior-to-the-social, perfection of "man" (unforch HH is very attached to this gendered subject), combined again with his reification of the Thing AND his call for human domination of the non-human, produces a confusing polemic that doesn't quite fit anywhere. (An aside: Soldatow tells a great story of Hooton defending his use of the word "man" to Miles Franklin at a party: he tries to argue that he uses the word "man" to signify a certain subject in a certain power relation who might be the only chance for emancipation, that is to say, the freedom of both men and women. He follows this up by assuring that he's a feminist; Franklin is unconvinced.)
But all this confusion must surely be precisely what he means by anarcho-technocracy: incommensurable, unfalsifiable, methods for arranging and rearranging relations between things (but not the things themselves?) that will come to replace the structural institutions that have acquired, naturalised and enforced relations at the level of the state, the military, the economy, the school, the family. If you could imagine what graphic representations of these methods might be, Hooton seems to say, then you can see them already appearing in modernist art: "The whole tendency of recent works is an endorsement of my thesis that the focal point of modern art is the inhuman world. Cubes, vortices, cylinders, lines are the ‘unconscious’ selection of subject matters as far as possible outside man’s mind that I posit as worthy only of our attention." (Hooton, cited in Soldatow's introduction to Poet of the 21st Century, p. 14) It is here that Hooton aligns himself with a modernist conceit, but his broader programme is clearly one of the twenty-first century, and not of the twentieth. Writing in 1955, in the first issue of '21st Century: The Magazine of the Creative Century,' Hooton declares:
We are sick of the past. London, Paris, New York, Moscow, are dead. Like Rome, Athens, Babylon, they have had their day. The sun has indeed gone down on the west, and on the east. You could knock on the doors of the old world with a new idea till your knuckles were red-raw and bleeding, through all eternity; they would not hear you—there is no one at home. (p.22)How much of Hooton's tongue was jammed tight in his cheek at any one time is unclear. What is clear is that Hooton's speculative intuitions about the possibilities for anarcho-poetic take-ups and distributions of "things" are apt. Hooton was a hacker. And though there's a lot of devastating tripe in this century that would have kicked holes in all of Hooton's weak spots, I want to honour his conviction that it is the poet -- the one who is invested in the construction of language events in the most minor circumstances -- who might both exemplify and interrogate the possibilities of acting on matter, acting on matters. When the smallest unit turns on the smallest unit, there's action: the consequences are never neutral. Are poems bit torrents? No doubt.
--
When the students of syntactics stop worrying about
subjective things like communication, meaning,
interpretation, and look at words OBJECTIVELY we will
have some logic. Words have weight, move. Grammar is
dynamic or at least mobile. One can observe and measure a
thing moving. What does a thing do when it means—
wriggle, flap wings, quadrepedally locomote? When we
replace to mean by to move we shall be scientific. A scientist
is not concerned with the essence of a thing—the thing in
itself—a static entity; he is concerned with motion—the
relations of things—events, processes. He does not want to
know what a thing is; he wants to know where it is going.
No thing is going to itself—it is there already. There are no
instransitive verbs, all things are in transit. No thing just
goes, it always goes somewhere. That somewhere is other
things. To speak grammatically, and that is to speak
logically, a subject moves to an object. What I wish to point
out is that the OBJECT OF MAN’S EXISTENCE IS NOT
MAN—IT IS SOMETHING OTHER THAN MAN, IT IS
NON-HUMAN. In the sentence I am forming, man, the
subject doing something, does not move to man, he moves
to something different, the OBJECT. I call it the world. What
is important is to realise that the subject does not move to
the subject. One word does not make a sentence.
(From "Very Words (NOT A POEM)", Proems in Pose, first published in Number Two, 1944, collected in 21st Century Poet p.79-80)
Bob Cumming i Harry Hooton (dreta)
- Harry Hooton: El
27 de juny de 1961 mor a Syney (Nova Gal·les del Sud,
Austràlia) el poeta,
escriptor i filòsof anarquista Henry Arthur Hooton, conegut
com Harry Hooton, un dels fundadors
de
l'anomenada anarcotecnogràcia.
Havia
nascut el 9 d'octubre de 1908 a Doncaster (South Yorkshire,
Anglaterra). Sos
pares es deien Levi Hooton, guardaagulles ferroviari, i Margaret
Lester-Glaister,
i tenia un germà major, Frank. Estudià a la
socialista Sunday School i entre 1922
i 1923 al Christ's College de l'East Finchley de Londres. El 28
d'octubre de
1924, amb 16 anys, arribà a Syney (Nova Gal·les
del Sud, Austràlia) a bord del Demosthenes,
formant part, amb altres 59
infants, del «Dreadnought Trust», pla
econòmic de l'Imperi britànic consistent
en enviar infants del Regne Unit a Austràlia per a la seva
formació com a
treballadors rurals qualificats --son germà Frank va ser
enviat al Canadà. El
juny de 1925 fugí de la Government Agricultural Training
Farm (Granja Agrícola
Governamental de Formació) d'Scheyville, a prop de Syndey,
amb un petit
robatori i va fer de rodamón per la zona nord de Nova
Gal·les del Sud i
Queensland. Declarat culpable de «robatori sense
armes», va ser condemnat a
vuit mesos, que purgà a la presó de Maitland
(East Maitland, Nova Gal·les del
Sud). A la garjola l'únic llibre que pogué llegir
fou la Biblia i això el
va influir de valent. En sortí va canviar de
domicili i de feinetes en diferents ocasions. Es va
instal·lar a Newcastle, on
el 3 de novembre de 1936 es casà a l'església
anglicana de Saint John amb
l'empleada Thora Zilma Isabel Hatch, que donà a llum
bessonada (Frank i Valerie).
Després de canviar de domicili en diverses ocasions, la
parella se separà. En
aquesta època treballà del que va poder: venen
fotografies a domicili, com a
obrer de fàbrica, fent de pastor, jugant al billar, vivint
d'ajudes públiques, etc.
En 1936 la poetessa anarcofeminista Marie E. J. Pitt el va introduir en
el món
de la literatura, però la seva relació
només fou epistolar. D'antuvi acostat al
trotskisme, en 1939 participà en la vaga de desocupats de
Newcastle. Ja
anarquista i membre dels Industrial Workers of the World (IWW,
Treballadors
Industrials del Món), col·laborà amb
articles sobre política local i
internacional en els periòdics Newcastle
Morning i Miner's Advocate,
sempre donant un punt de vista llibertari i donant branca a comunistes,
feixistes i conservadors. Des del 1940, en plena II Guerra Mundial, va
ser
sotmès a vigilància per part de la policia
militar. En 1941 publicà el seu
primer llibre de poesia, These poets,
que s'autoedità amb una tirada de 400 exemplars, la majoria
dels quals regalà o
intercanvià, i això que va ser força
aclamat per la crítica. En 1943 va fer
amistat amb els escriptors Nettie Palmer i Miles Franklin durant un
viatge per
Newcastle, els quals els van fer conèixer els poemes de Carl
Sandburg i les
noves propostes de la literatura nord-americana d'aleshores. En 1943
s'instal·là a Sydney i treballà al The
Daily Telegraph --on usà el pseudònim Philistine--
fins a la vaga de periodistes d'octubre de 1944. A partir d'aquesta
data mai no
va treballar i moltes vegades sobrevisqué de la generositat
dels amics. En aquesta
època freqüentà la tertúlia
que es reunia a casa de l'anarquista Angela
Westbrook. En 1943 publicà el poemari Leave
yourself alone, que no tingué gaire
ressò i, aquest mateix any, s'autoedità
Things you see when you haven't got a gun,
escrit filosòfic pel qual va ser qualificat per un
crític com a «bou anarquista
que corre enfollit a través de la seva boira
intel·lectual». En 1943 també
publicà, juntament amb A. D. Hope i Gary Lyle, poemes en la
revista alternativa
literària No 1 --en 1944
apareixeria No 2 i en 1948 No 3. En aquests anys
col·laborà amb Industrial
Worker, dels IWW de Chicago. Després de la II
Guerra
Mundial, formà part activa dels cercles
intel·lectuals de la Universitat de
Sydney, del moviment «Sydney Push», de la societat
artística que es reunia al Lincoln
Inn Coffee Shop i del grup del Tudor Hotel. En aquests cercles es
mostrà
contrari a la filosofia realista de John Anderson i pel feia a la
literatura,
criticà durament els autors de moda (Joyce, Yeats, Pound,
Eliot, etc.), els
quals qualificà d'«antiartistes, filisteus i
xarlatans», reivindicant sempre
figures com Whitman, Wilde, Nietzsche o Henry Lawson. Va saber
compaginar la
bohèmia amb la literatura i mantingué
correspondència amb nombrosos escriptors
d'arreu del món (Japó, Índia,
Grècia, Sud-àfrica, Regne Unit,
França, Nova
Zelanda, EUA etc.). Especialment forní una estreta
relació epistolar amb els
representants del moviment contracultural californià, com
ara l'anarquista Tuli
Kupferberg, que més tard creà el grup de rock The
Fugs. Col·laborà en diferents
publicacions periòdiques australianes i de l'estranger
(Londres, San Francisco,
Chicago, Nova York, etc.), com ara Inferno,
Industrial Worker, Meanjin,
Flame, The
Southerly, Coastlines, The Australian Quarterly, Coastlines,
Australian Highway, Odyssey,
The Bulletin, Aesthetics,
Olivant Quarterly, Conditional
Culture, Beloit Poetry Journal,
Trace, Language,
etc. Fou secretari de la secció de Newcasthe de la Peace
Pledge Union (PPU, Unió per un Compromís per la
Pau). Filosòficament sostenia
que el gènere humà ha de tenir poder sobre les
coses, màquines incloses, però
mai sobre les persones, pensament que definí com a anarcotecnocràcia. En 1952
conegué la cinematògrafa Margaret Elliot
(Margaret Fink, més tard), amb qui va viure durant set anys
a Potts Point.
Entre el setembre de 1955 i 1957 publicà la revista 21st Century. The magazine of a creative
civilization, que comptà
amb la col·laboració de diferents
intel·lectuals d'arreu del món. En el primer
número d'aquesta revista publicà el text
«The politics of things» i, també en
1955
a San Francisco, l'assaig Power over
things, reformulació dels seus postulats
anarcotecnòcrates. El seu
pensament filosòfic el va plasmar en l'obra inacabada Militant materialism, del qual va
completar sis dels vuits
capítols. Només va poder veure les galerades del
que va ser el seu últim
llibre, It is great to be alive,
publicat pòstumament. Harry Hooton va morir de
càncer el 27 de juny de 1961 a Syney
(Nova Gal·les del Sud, Austràlia) i fou incinerat
al crematori d'Eastern
Suburbs. El dia abans del funeral, el seu gran amic, el
músic Bob Cummig, es va
suïcidar amb les restes de píndoles que Hooton
usava per tractar la seva
malaltia. En 1966, com que ningú havia reclamat les cendres,
van ser llançades
en una fossa comuna. En 1969 Arthur i Corinne Cantrill estrenaren la
pel·lícula
experimental Harry Hooton. Outsider poet,
on el poeta anarquista resumia la seva filosofia social en una
sèrie
d'entrevistes enregistrades en 1961 poc abans de morir. En 1990 es va
publicar
l'antologia Poet of the 21st Century.
Collected poems. Harry Hooton.
Harry
Hooton
(1908-1961)
“The gardener gives us roses, not gardeners.”
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