Human Punk

Human Punk is a 2000 novel by John King that tells the story of a group of boys who leave school in 1977 and the effect the emerging punk movement has on their lives. The book is largely based in Slough, a new town on the outskirts of London, famed for its industry and large trading estate. Human Punk follows the lives of main character Joe Martin and his friends Smiles, Dave and Chris across the next three decades.

Plot

Set against a soundtrack of The Clash, Sex Pistols, X-Ray Spex, The Ruts and Ramones records, sixteen-year-old Joe sets about enjoying his new-found freedom, which in the summer of ’77 means hard-drinking pubs and working-men’s clubs, local Teds, soulboys. disco girls and a job picking cherries with the gypsies. A joyride to Camden Town in North London takes him to see his first band, but it is a late-night incident back on the streets of Slough that changes his life forever.

The second part of the book takes place in 1988 and finds Joe in China, receiving bad news in a letter from home. He buys a black-market ticket and takes the Trans-Siberian Express back to England. During this journey he reflects on the events that have filled the intervening years, eventually returning to that night in 1977. Siberia passes in a series of recollections and romance with a Russian woman, Joe arriving in Moscow during the days of Mikhail Gorbachev, continuing to Berlin where he crosses the Wall in the early hours. More trains take him on to Slough.

The third section of Human Punk captures the main characters as they reach middle-age. They are older, but little wiser. Slough has changed, but not too much, the spirit that drove Joe and his friends as boys stronger than ever. He makes his living in a range of ways, one of which involves the buying and selling of second-hand records. His punk beliefs remain solid. Life bounces along until a face from the past emerges from the haze of a misty morning and forces him to stop and confront his memories once more.

Cultural impact

Human Punk covers many aspects of the punk scene, from the original music and bands to its DIY ethos. It is also a novel that charts some major shifts in British society, from the failing Labour government of 1977 to Thatcherism in the 1980s (when Joe almost literally ‘gets on his bike’), and finally the New Labour of Tony Blair and a Cool Britannia that means little to those portrayed in the book. Human Punk reflects a version of punk that is anti-fashion, its roots to be found in the broader culture of the main characters.

Human Punk has been praised in both the mainstream media and underground punk scene. It is one of only a few novels that attempt to capture punk and its legacy, a heritage which has become more obvious in recent years with its re-emergence in new generations attracted by the likes of Rancid and Green Day. In 2012 a film adaptation of the novel, by actor Steve North and screenwriter David Schaal, went into pre-production.