Christian X. Hunter's three-decade tramp transports us through the evolution of '60s East Village counter culture in a kaleidoscope of freaks, to the '80s with Warhol Superstars, Times Square grifters, junkie poets, rock stars, revolutionaries, in the back rooms of the Fillmore East, Max's Kansas City and The Mudd Club. Christian X. Hunter a native New Yorker, is a former coordinator at the Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery, an original member of the Unbearables and a lifelong musician who has played with a spectrum of artists including Sandy Bull, Poppa Chubby, Jeff Buckley, Alice Coltrane, Babu Kishan Baul, Krishnadas and Sting. He has been a contributor to, NY Press, American Book Review and Autonomedia Press.
In The Absence of Angels, Hunter's incredible odyssey opens with him as a kid in the late 1960s, surviving the streets of the old Lower East Side: Ratners, The Dom, The Velvet Underground, through Avenue D Squats filled with teenage runaways, with countless wild events culminating in a back-stage encounter with Jim Morrisson. Every stop along the way bristles with Hunter's grace, clarity and a cinematic prose capturing memorable places and unique characters, not wasting a word. It swings through IRA-plagued London, encounters with wild boys and girls, including a commune of teenage witches, and back to NY to rub elbows with Warhol Superstars and glitter-eyed junky waitresses at Max's Kansas City in time to witness the death of Punk and the early heartbreak days the AIDS crisis. It's as if On the Road went international instead of domestic and spanned decades. The Absence of Angels leaves a radiant presence long after you turn the last page. --Arthur Nersesian, author of The Fuck-Up and The Five Books of (Robert) Moses
Absence of Angels is a synesthetic expedition through late-20th-Century Manhattan. It's a love story between a city and its denizens. Every page is permeated with poetic frenzy, grace and verve. Hunter captures the magical decay of the 70s and 80s like few other writers have. I LOVE THIS BOOK. -Gillian McCain, co-author of Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk
Christian X. Hunter lets us ride shotgun to his life in the turbulent 1960's and 1970's. From the ringalevio streets of New York that blossomed into the psychedelic era to the dark side and back. Yeah, it's sex, drugs, cars, guitars, motorcycles and rock 'n' roll. He tells the tale that only the ones who lived it can tell. He remembers it all and he lived long enough to write it down and we get to not just read it but to experience it! Witness it! There are books I don't want to end and this is one of them! -Penny Arcade
