Page 6 - NYWaste-Spring2014

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New York waste resurrectioN issue 2014
A Reading from Hell by Noreña
To promote the paperback release of his autobiography, Richard Hell (born Richard Meyers) read an excerpt from “I Dreamed I Was A Very Clean Tramp” in the Rare Book Room of New
York’s Strand Book Store.
For those who don’t know who Richard Hell is, he is the lesser-known progenitor of everything now considered punk and indie. True the Ramones cemented the leather jacket and ripped jean archetype into our consciousness, but Hell’s aesthetic was the further reaching ---because it wasn’t simply a uniform or distinctly recognizable brand. It was subtle enough to sift down through the ages manifesting itself in the minds and wardrobes of countless rockers, some of who had no idea that their waif-thin build and practiced lethargy was an inherited persona, not their own creation ex-nihilo. Thick black-framed sunglasses while on stage and wearing a blazer? Hell. An intentionally torn t-shirt so shorn it makes a wife-beater look like excess
fabric? Hell. Atonal caterwauling? Hell. And let’s not forget the cropped, spikey hair.
After dropping out of the scene to get a handle on his heroin addiction, Hell turned his attention to writing. The written word, particularly poetry, had been his first passion and his reason for coming to New York. I regret to say that I am unfamiliar with his prolific body of work, which include two novels, volumes of essays and poems, and contributions to magazines. Notwithstanding my one dimensional appreciation of this multi-faceted artist, I couldn’t resist
attending this event and meeting the man, the legend, Richard Hell.
I arrived early to the event. The Rare Book Room is lined by floor to ceiling bookshelves. More decorative and involved than any wallpaper, the spines of the rare books present the wandering eye with a place to rest in any direction. The ceilings are high. The floors, long thin wooden planks stained with age but sturdy to each step. The leather reading chairs with brass studs lining the armrests and backs make it a genial sight for any admitted bibliophile. The tableau could’ve only been complete if everything were covered in decades worth of dust and the room, dimly lit, smelled of decaying paper and the modelering remains of the antiquarians working there whom time forgot.
Instead the Rare Book Room is well lit, clean, and staffed by friendly fresh-faced college grads who wouldn’t have been out of place down the street at a bar during happy hour. I bought my copy of his book and took a seat. Staring at the cover, I felt confirmed a hundred times over that indie rockers with any knowledge of a once even-more-obscure Richard Hell must have grinned to themselves mischievously before walking off with whatever characteristic of his they thought would help their game. Pale, gaunt, heroin chic. Boyishly masculine yet effeminate. An unruly swatch of hair that looks like it’s never seen a comb. And an expression on his face like he wouldn’t even begin to know how to pose for your picture, but he does. He’s been doing it the whole time, and that was his genius.
The Richard Hell that walked out to the podium was a stark contrast from the one on the cover of his book. In his mid 60’s, it was only natural, but it was surprising to what extent he had avoided the physical ravages that mark so many rockers of excess approaching their golden years. Far from looking emaciated, shrivelled, or hunched over, he looked barrel-chested and healthy, like an ex- body builder aging gracefully.
He started by explaining the origin of his autobiography: Vice magazine had contacted him about commissioning a work of fiction, but he felt like using autobiographical material instead and treating it as if it were fiction. It wasn’t to take licence with the material, he maintained, but to put it at some distance from himself, while focusing on the details that would most relate it to a magazine like Vice.
The idea for an autobiography had already been in the works before Vice’s offer, inspired by a night out with his wife. The chapter he read described this anecdote. While at the theatre watching a movie he was captivated by the hair of a girl sitting in front of him. Something about its style
reminded him of an adolescent crush he had had on a classmate with a distinctive hairdo. The reminiscence quickly turned into a meditation on the nature and appeal of hair as being a part of the person but dead and unfeeling. From this digression came the willingness to retrace a history that courses through first sexual experiences to running away from Kentucky and leads finally to the streets of New York City.
The Interview
Bryan Waterman is an NYU professor of American Literature. He briefly summed up his relationship with Hell: In doing his research for a book he had written about the band Television and the years
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