I love Richard Hell, but what was that?? I picked this book up out of curiosity with practically NO expectations, but he proceeded to disappoint. This was not a novel, it was Richard Hell’s 170 page egomaniacal, misogynistic rave about drugs and his disturbing libido. An embarrassing vanity project and major failure.

Go Now

The author, a Kentucky native who is a crack--so to speak--reader of Rimbaud, from whose UN SAISON D'ENFER he took his name ( http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/boo... ), an extraordinary musician, and more-formidable-than-you-have-ever-guessed-poet-and-novelist, now lives in New York, but given his border state roots, I often wonder why is he never among participants in Southern literary to-dos. Especially because Hell’s wife (a much less frightening role than that phrase might imply), Sheelagh Bryan, has begun a new job curating book exhibitions at the Morgan Library, and neither that institution nor Scribners’--which published GO NOW, and if you read the excerpt ( http://www.furious.com/perfect/gonow.... ), you will see the chilling origin of the title--nor THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW makes a habit of hiring or publishing lightweights.   Hell composed the anthemic “Blank Generation” and then turned from punk rock to devote himself to writing sharp-minded poetry, fiction, criticism, and also an in-progress autobiography. While protesting he’s but an “amateur” reader of his French poetic predecessor, one need only look up the etymological roots of the word in quotation marks and see where it takes you.   Rimbaud was, after all, the poet who believed that deranging of all the senses was necessary to achieve the state in which one was fit to write the stuff, and I wonder why the NYTRB, after selecting Hell as the reviewer of Edmund White’s brief biography, didn't choose him to write about John Ashbery's new translation of the ILLUMINATIONS. Is it because the Voidoids’ DESTINY STREET REVISITED, a reworking of the group’s second album, was released not long ago and thus re-ghettoized him as an aging punk rocker with clouds of substance abuse somehow damaging his intellect? Not so, not so, despite Hell's protests that he is no poet, “only a carrot,” for what practitioner of the art wouldn’t be proud as Lucifer of the following triplet?--“They all died by coin toss. / Love's a form of memory loss. / I can't forget that triple cross.” Listen closely to his lyrics, and pay close attention not only to GO NOW but his other novel, GODLIKE, and also HOT AND COLD, his collection of poetry, reviews, and other prose, and see if you don’t agree that he wouldn't have been a perfect choice.

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