Albertine Sarrazin - 'L'Astragal'

Walking through City Lights in San Francisco a few weeks ago, I told myself: "don't over-do it." For one, new books require $$$. For two, I'd already purchased about a half dozen books at other bookstores and space was limited in my backpack. But being at the ground zero of Beat literature, I knew I had to purchase something here. My plan was to buy a book published by City Lights itself (which I did). But I didn't expect to find French writer Albertine Sarrazin's 1965 auto-biographical novel L'Astragal.

"The sky had lifted at least thirty feet." So the book begins, with our anti-heroine Anne escaping from prison, breaking her ankle (the astragal of the title) as she leaps from the prison wall. Sarrazin writes poetically. "The shock must have cracked the pavement" and she equates every passing second to that of a century in agony. The healing process lasts nearly the entire first half of the novel: "where the explosions in my toes are less frequent," and later: "my leg frozen into a painful rigidity."

Hopelessness and hope, fog, suffering, distrust, neglect. Waiting. Sleep that doesn't come. Restlessness and restiveness. Emerging themes and the ones that Patti Smith, who wrote the introduction for the 2013 edition of this translation, found so evocative to give her her own strength, boldness, and identity, wandering through the Greenwich Village in late 60s New York City. Smith's praise: "A female Genet? She is herself. She possesses a unique highbrow poet-detective deadpan style."

Coffee. Smoking. Drinking. Mascara. Anne's life on the lam. Our anti-heroine is almost glamorous. But she is still a criminal. Why are we so attracted to her? "When it comes to drinking, I'm always for it." She's troubled, this Anne, this Albertine (this Smith, this reader). We must remember: she's not to be idolized anyway. Not in the way most heroes are. But she can be in the way that the faults we see in her are the ones we see in ourselves. You don't have to smoke or drink or wear mascara to relate to her feelings about neglect, distrust, or hopelessness.

Richard Hell - "I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tramp"

I was more than excited to finally read Richard Hell's autobiography. If you're not familiar with Hell, hit play on this video first before reading.

Blank Generation has been one of my favorite albums since I first listened to it sophomore year of high school. I thought it was better than anything else his contemporaries were doing at CBGBs, and even better than the Velvets and Stooges before him. It combined a feral physical nature with intellectual wit and humor, in the lyrics and in the compositions. It's the perfect album for a hormone-addled teenager: music about sex and art made by drug addicts.

Somehow, the Glenview Public Library had a copy of Go Now, a novel Hell wrote in 1996, briefly mentioned in his autobiography. I remember being underwhelmed, and feeling like it was an On the Road ripoff (though I also devoured it). Unfortunately, I feel the same way here. Looking at reviews on Goodreads, a lot of people feel the same. He spends too much time on describing apartments he lived in only briefly, that it was a 3.5 star book, that moments of brilliance are overshadowed by half-baked prose, unnessecary tangents, and not expanding on stuff that he could have shed more insight on.

In high school, I read Please Kill Me three times. It remains one of my favorite books, and is an amazing oral history of the punk scene. So it was sorta disappointing to read a lot of the same stuff again and even some things that are almost line-for-line the same. I had hoped for more of Hell's post punk rock life when he was writing more, but he addresses his reasons for not doing this as the life of a writer isn't that interesting, difficutly in describing present day situations frankly blah blah blah. We want to read you, Hell, because we know you are fearless! Give that to us again.

And yet, I can't hate this book entirely. There are in fact some great anecdotes from the CBGBs days, and he has great descriptions of people like Lester Bangs, Dee Dee Ramone, Anya Phillips, and more, and when his poetry sticks out, it sticks out ("Everything that happened to her was weather," describing a girlfriend), but too often it feels like Hell is cashing in; the book is double spaced with blank pages between chapters, like he was just trying to get to a specified length and then call it a day.

It's not all bad. If nothing else, it's got me excited about that scene again, and what's come out of it. I'm rediscovering some LPs, like Robert Quine (Hell's guitarist) and Fred Maher's album Basic. Quine was a great and underrated guitarist, as angry as they come and with a unique style all his own. Check out 'Summer Storm' from that album:

For those interested in CBGBs scene, I'd recommend going with Please Kill Me. For those that want more of a personal account, read Patti Smith's Just Kids. For those that can't get enough (like me), go for I Dreamed I Was A Very Clean Tramp.