For some people this is going to be a hellish year! Richard Hell that is. Not only is the definitive collection of his music, Spurts: The Richard Hell Story, coming out August 2nd from Rhino Records but his new book Godlike, was just released on Dennis Coopers Little House on the Bowery imprint from Akashic books.
Check out the official website for Richard Hell
Daniel Robert Epstein: What was the inspiration for this book?
Richard Hell: I dont know how much to reveal, frankly. It has a complex foundation in the sort of writing challenges that I created for myself. To answer your question without giving away too much, there are a lot of patterns in the book that will only be discerned by people who have the same kind of preoccupations as I do as a writer. I dont know if the novel is sounding convoluted and mysterious but I suppose the best way I can answer your question is to say I wanted to write about poets, because I thought it would an interesting challenge partly because I knew that Id have to make poems to represent the writers in the book.
DRE: Is the book autobiographical at all?
RH: When my first novel, Go Now, came out everyone assumed it was autobiographical because its a book abut a burnout junkie punk, driving across the United States and womanizing. Naturally I kind of resented that. Not only because it was suggesting that I behaved like the guy in the book did, but because the implication was that I wasnt really a novelist but that I was writing this veiled account of my real life so it wasnt really on the same level of creativity and imagination as a real novelist. I decided when I did my second book I would go as far as I could from my first book so I wrote about gay poets doing acid. But then I realized of course everybody would assume its me, you cant win.
DRE: Well I know youve done acid in your time.
RH: Ive definitely done acid in my time. But I dont know how to deal with the gay issue because to me it would be kind of creepy to say no Ive never had gay sex because part of the whole point of the book was to challenge people with the idea of taking gay sex in stride. So, let me say this, all sex is gay sex.
DRE: What does that mean exactly?
RH: I think thats definitive and doesnt really require elaboration.
DRE: The structure of the book is pretty wild. Did you come up with that beforehand?
RH: That was another way I wanted to sort of confound expectations because I wanted to do something very unlike anything Ive ever done before. My last book was first person present tense and very straightforward. It almost could have been a journal or something like that, if you could think a journal aloud. Its just sort of transcribing your thoughts, not like it was automatic writing or a stream of consciousness but it was first person present tense and very uncomplicated that way. In this book I wanted to set up all kinds of new challenges for myself. So it is a complex structure that was designed to let me do a lot of different kinds of writing in the course of the book.
The premise is that this middle aged poet has compiled from notes he made in the hospital when he was committed for psychiatric observation in 1997 and he had decided when he went into the hospital that he was going to spend his time there recollecting this intense affair he had with this young boy when he was a young man and that he was going to write this sort of memoir book about that experience in the form of a novel. So its in the third person describing this affair between these two people, Paul and Keith. But when he goes to finally make a book out of the notes that hes kept when he was in the hospital, he decided that hes going to include everything. In other words, diary entries, even an essay, just make one book out of all the writing that he did in that month in the hospital which includes this recollection of his time in the early 70s with this kid. So it kind of switches back and forth between him goofing in the hospital and his pretty straightforward novel version of his affair with this kid many years earlier. Part of the reason that I structured it this way was because I wanted to write a book that had something to do with being middle-aged. Because that was something that Id been thinking about, since I am middle-aged myself. So some of the stuff that the guy is thinking about and writing about in the hospital is his having reached the age when he can foresee dying and when he is sort of assessing his whole life and that all kind of blends into the story he is writing about sort of the most intense experience of his life.
DRE: How was this compared to writing music?
RH: It has nothing to do with doing music at all. It has no relationship to writing music. Its a completely different undertaking. Its nothing like writing a novel.
DRE: How did you hook up with the Akashic Books?
RH: Basically no major publisher would touch Godlike. My first book came from Scribner which is one of the most massive worldwide publishers and they paid a big advance and everything and we were kind of expecting that on this book. I have a really good agent and she had me expecting that but everybody turned it down. Finally I realized that we should have been able to predict that. The first book didnt do badly its just that I was shocked by the amount of money they gave me. I mean it went into extra printings but they gave me a lot of money. It would have really had to have sold a lot of books to have them earn their money back. Im sure that didnt help. The other factor is that Godlike is very much in your face. Not only is it aggressively offensive but its also really human and often kind of visible. It also takes poems seriously in a fairly sophisticated way and thats not really the stuff of mass market so its kind of understandable how we ended up going with a small press whos is in a position to do books for niche audiences. Ive actually had a better experience with Johnny Temple over there at Akashic than Ive had with any other publisher. I really think hes really a great guy. Hes exactly what publishing need. He loves books and his motivation is to get books that he respects to audiences but hes also very serious about making each of those books as successful as he can. It was great that Dennis Cooper signed on for the book. That was a really nice development too.
DRE: How did the Rhino collection Spurts come together?
RH: Its something Ive been wanting to do for a long time, to make one record out of everything that Ive ever done that Id be happy to listen to all the way through because Ive only done like three and a half records. I basically retired in 1984 and then theres one more record thats made out of outtakes and all the stuff we could find that was of any interest. Then the one off record that was called Time and then Dim Stars that I did with Mr. Moore and Steve Shelley. But in order to do that I had to get back licenses to a couple of things and also persuade Warners to do it because they own license rights. Recently Rhino, which is Warner Bros., agreed to do this so I was really pleased. I supervised the whole thing and then re-mixed some of the material, edited some more of it, re-mastered all of it and made this CD out of it called Spurts: The Richard Hell Story. I really do feel that now I have no regrets. I can move on without looking back.
DRE: How do you feel about CBGB possibly closing?
RH: Ive done a few things to support them since the whole thing hit the news but I dont really quite understand what the situation is. I mean if you look at the news reports, it says the owners owe back rent. Im surely in favor of the place remaining and Im doing what I can.
DRE: Do you listen to new music?
RH: Im not like a fanatic about it. I dont read the music papers and have to check everything that people refer to but yeah, Im always having to replenish my CD collection.
DRE: What have you gotten lately?
RH: Well, Im wondering where in the hell the next Yeah Yeah Yeahs CD is. Im anticipating that. I havent gotten the new White Stripes one yet. But I think they sound great.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
Check out the official website for Richard Hell
Daniel Robert Epstein: What was the inspiration for this book?
Richard Hell: I dont know how much to reveal, frankly. It has a complex foundation in the sort of writing challenges that I created for myself. To answer your question without giving away too much, there are a lot of patterns in the book that will only be discerned by people who have the same kind of preoccupations as I do as a writer. I dont know if the novel is sounding convoluted and mysterious but I suppose the best way I can answer your question is to say I wanted to write about poets, because I thought it would an interesting challenge partly because I knew that Id have to make poems to represent the writers in the book.
DRE: Is the book autobiographical at all?
RH: When my first novel, Go Now, came out everyone assumed it was autobiographical because its a book abut a burnout junkie punk, driving across the United States and womanizing. Naturally I kind of resented that. Not only because it was suggesting that I behaved like the guy in the book did, but because the implication was that I wasnt really a novelist but that I was writing this veiled account of my real life so it wasnt really on the same level of creativity and imagination as a real novelist. I decided when I did my second book I would go as far as I could from my first book so I wrote about gay poets doing acid. But then I realized of course everybody would assume its me, you cant win.
DRE: Well I know youve done acid in your time.
RH: Ive definitely done acid in my time. But I dont know how to deal with the gay issue because to me it would be kind of creepy to say no Ive never had gay sex because part of the whole point of the book was to challenge people with the idea of taking gay sex in stride. So, let me say this, all sex is gay sex.
DRE: What does that mean exactly?
RH: I think thats definitive and doesnt really require elaboration.
DRE: The structure of the book is pretty wild. Did you come up with that beforehand?
RH: That was another way I wanted to sort of confound expectations because I wanted to do something very unlike anything Ive ever done before. My last book was first person present tense and very straightforward. It almost could have been a journal or something like that, if you could think a journal aloud. Its just sort of transcribing your thoughts, not like it was automatic writing or a stream of consciousness but it was first person present tense and very uncomplicated that way. In this book I wanted to set up all kinds of new challenges for myself. So it is a complex structure that was designed to let me do a lot of different kinds of writing in the course of the book.
The premise is that this middle aged poet has compiled from notes he made in the hospital when he was committed for psychiatric observation in 1997 and he had decided when he went into the hospital that he was going to spend his time there recollecting this intense affair he had with this young boy when he was a young man and that he was going to write this sort of memoir book about that experience in the form of a novel. So its in the third person describing this affair between these two people, Paul and Keith. But when he goes to finally make a book out of the notes that hes kept when he was in the hospital, he decided that hes going to include everything. In other words, diary entries, even an essay, just make one book out of all the writing that he did in that month in the hospital which includes this recollection of his time in the early 70s with this kid. So it kind of switches back and forth between him goofing in the hospital and his pretty straightforward novel version of his affair with this kid many years earlier. Part of the reason that I structured it this way was because I wanted to write a book that had something to do with being middle-aged. Because that was something that Id been thinking about, since I am middle-aged myself. So some of the stuff that the guy is thinking about and writing about in the hospital is his having reached the age when he can foresee dying and when he is sort of assessing his whole life and that all kind of blends into the story he is writing about sort of the most intense experience of his life.
DRE: How was this compared to writing music?
RH: It has nothing to do with doing music at all. It has no relationship to writing music. Its a completely different undertaking. Its nothing like writing a novel.
DRE: How did you hook up with the Akashic Books?
RH: Basically no major publisher would touch Godlike. My first book came from Scribner which is one of the most massive worldwide publishers and they paid a big advance and everything and we were kind of expecting that on this book. I have a really good agent and she had me expecting that but everybody turned it down. Finally I realized that we should have been able to predict that. The first book didnt do badly its just that I was shocked by the amount of money they gave me. I mean it went into extra printings but they gave me a lot of money. It would have really had to have sold a lot of books to have them earn their money back. Im sure that didnt help. The other factor is that Godlike is very much in your face. Not only is it aggressively offensive but its also really human and often kind of visible. It also takes poems seriously in a fairly sophisticated way and thats not really the stuff of mass market so its kind of understandable how we ended up going with a small press whos is in a position to do books for niche audiences. Ive actually had a better experience with Johnny Temple over there at Akashic than Ive had with any other publisher. I really think hes really a great guy. Hes exactly what publishing need. He loves books and his motivation is to get books that he respects to audiences but hes also very serious about making each of those books as successful as he can. It was great that Dennis Cooper signed on for the book. That was a really nice development too.
DRE: How did the Rhino collection Spurts come together?
RH: Its something Ive been wanting to do for a long time, to make one record out of everything that Ive ever done that Id be happy to listen to all the way through because Ive only done like three and a half records. I basically retired in 1984 and then theres one more record thats made out of outtakes and all the stuff we could find that was of any interest. Then the one off record that was called Time and then Dim Stars that I did with Mr. Moore and Steve Shelley. But in order to do that I had to get back licenses to a couple of things and also persuade Warners to do it because they own license rights. Recently Rhino, which is Warner Bros., agreed to do this so I was really pleased. I supervised the whole thing and then re-mixed some of the material, edited some more of it, re-mastered all of it and made this CD out of it called Spurts: The Richard Hell Story. I really do feel that now I have no regrets. I can move on without looking back.
DRE: How do you feel about CBGB possibly closing?
RH: Ive done a few things to support them since the whole thing hit the news but I dont really quite understand what the situation is. I mean if you look at the news reports, it says the owners owe back rent. Im surely in favor of the place remaining and Im doing what I can.
DRE: Do you listen to new music?
RH: Im not like a fanatic about it. I dont read the music papers and have to check everything that people refer to but yeah, Im always having to replenish my CD collection.
DRE: What have you gotten lately?
RH: Well, Im wondering where in the hell the next Yeah Yeah Yeahs CD is. Im anticipating that. I havent gotten the new White Stripes one yet. But I think they sound great.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
VIEW 11 of 11 COMMENTS
Thanks for the great interview, DRE.
[Edited on Aug 03, 2005 by DrNecessitor]
A7X_FAN said:
I havent read his book but he must be a great author, I love his last name. Is it Real?
His book Go Now was really great. I think Meyers is his real last name.