Monday, July 25
Richard Hell and the Voidoids - Love Comes in Spurts
Re: Charles Mudede's Slog post about ejaculation spam anxiety, here's a little something from Richard Hell & the Voidoid's seminal (zang!) 1977 album, Blank Generation:MP3
This would be Non-Sequitur Audio if it weren't for the fact that I picked up a promo copy of Richard Hell's new [July 15] novel Godlike on Thursday. I began reading it yesterday. Twenty-four pages in:
Then again, maybe there's destiny ("Character is fate"). (Tomorrow is another day. But then, so was yesterday.") Maybe I'm just too fastidious (yeah, right)—but be that as it may, I wouldn't presume to call it "nonfiction." It's all true though! If the truth be told, I'd rather think about Liv Tyler right now. She's such a distraction. I wonder is her glow subliminally tinged by her name's hint of "Liz Taylor"? Nah—that's pretty far-fetched. Her coltishness—velvety—, and (star-)crossed eyes, her overbite, so lovely it makes my room change color ("teeth to hurt"). That's what we want from a star. How will she age I can't help but wonder. Imagine her with a dick! Wow! (Anyway I've never been so impressed by Liz Taylor. She's for real faggots. I'm not really a faggot. I just have a queer streak. A little fond affection for cock.)
After finishing that passage, I asked myself Nick, is this the sort of thing you should be reading with your ass on the toilet? But three sentences later, I received my omen (AMEN!): "Piled up in me like a logjam?" I got up from the toilet, and stumbled away on my already-asleep insteps.
Anyhow, I do recommend Godlike. It's an account of the liquid days of a 27-year-old writer's ("Paul Vaughn") love affair with a preturnaturally aware teenage poet ("Randall Terence Wode") in the early 70's. The writer, now middle-aged, is recuperating in a mental hospital and grappling with the possibility that the memory of his young love may be slipping away now that R.T. has died. Hell scatters poems, prose, and letters that bely the fury and frivolity of his own experience. The manic punk grit swirls in the heady Rimbaud-Verlaine dynamic and makes for a page that, at first glance, looks a little like Virgina Woolf (..."and riddled, shuddering, with parentheses"). Underneath, though, is a true and visceral tenderness—a love song masquerading as affect, much like today's mal-entendu audio.