17th February 2010, BOOK: Notebooks Of A Naked Youth by Billy Childish

I picked this up at a book swap (I'll be honest, I didn't actually give any books so technically, I stole it) because I'd heard of Billy Childish as a musician and he always seemed an interesting character, even though I've never heard his music. The book is a pretty intense read. It's told from the point of view of a William Loveday, a frustrated teenage poet and writer, full of self-importance, self-hate and teenage angst. It's split into 3 parts each, frankly, as dark as the other. The first he lives at home obsessing over a schoolgirl, in the second he lives in a dirty bedsit and suffers from weeklong blackouts and the third he's a triangle player in a band on the strip in Hamburg. The amount of suffering, abuse and degradation Loveday goes through makes it a tough read. His irritating arrogance doesn't help much either. In parts though, it was impressive. The first section's how-low-can-you-go feel and the final section's impression of a debauched, low-life seedy city in particular, work well. It's not for the faint of heart though or the impatient though.