More Gallic Hell (Are we galled yet?), but this new book is very pretty, and furthermore bilingual: French and English on facing pages... An edition returning to print, for the first time since the 1973 original, Hell/Verlaine's Wanna Go Out? by Theresa Stern. If you don't know about Theresa, there's a taste of her on site. Due September 20, it's a classic severe but luxe production on heavy rag laid paper with text in Bodoni. [10/26/99 Now available from site.) Its publisher is Éditions Anna Polèrica, and the translator is Michel Bulteau. Richard will read with him in Paris on September 28 at the club La Maroquinerie. Hell will also appear September 25 in Stockholm at The Second Coming Spoken Word Festival, and in London on October 2 he'll read and show a short movie at The Chamber of Pop Culture, The Colonnade. [posted September 11, 1999]

There will be a Memorial for Zoë Lund (see previous notice) on Sunday, September 12th from 3:00 to 5:30 p.m. at Cinema Classics, 332 E. 11th St. (betw. 1st & 2nd Aves.) in NYC. The public is invited. [posted September 5, 1999]

The premier Beat Literature website, Literary Kicks, brainchild of Levi Asher, celebrates the 5th anniversary of its existence with a marathon poetry reading presenting about ten minutes each of our Richard and such writers as Lee Ranaldo, Charles Plymell, Eliot Katz, Brian Hassett, musicians John Cassady (son of Neal) and David Amram, as well as such web-based authors as Mark Thomas, Leslie Harpold, Xander Mellish, Meg Wise-Lawrence, Phil Zampino... 7:00 p.m. on (Hell ca 11:00), Wedn., July 21, at the Bitter End, 147 Bleecker Street, New York City, (212) 642 9784, admission $5.00.

[Note: This event also marks the publication of The Rolling Stone Book of the Beats, a highlight of which is Hell's "Postmortem Notes" re William Burroughs.] [posted July 13, 1999]

CUZ Editions book-release reading announced: There will be a reading hosted by Richard and featuring all-stars Mike DeCapite, Nick Tosches, and Rene Ricard to celebrate the publication of the four new CUZ Editions books (now listed in the CUZ catalog). Will Patton is in California making a movie, so he probably won't be able to make it, but Richard may try to imitate him. The reading is at Manitoba's bar (982-2511), 99 Avenue "B" between 6th and 7th Streets in NYC, and will be held on Tuesday, June 29, at 9:00. Door charge'll be $5. [posted June 3, 1999]

Gargoyle #42 presents the first story, "Boy Meets Death, Boy Falls In Love," in a series Hell's working on that are all written in the same "voice" (almost like a novel). (Its very first appearance in print was actually in Japanese last year in a Tokyo literary magazine, American Book Jam.) Beware: it's depressing. Except nothing well written is really depressing. Judge for yourself: we have the entire story up. Gargoyle has a webpage too. [posted May 27, 1999]

Zoe Lund, also known as Zoë Tamerlaine or Zoë Tamerlis, died last month in Paris of heart failure. She was an actress and a screenwriter, star of Abel Ferrara's Ms. 45, and writer of his Bad Lieutenant (which she also had an outrageous scene in). She was a friend of Richard's. Richard writes, "It always makes me happy to think of Zoë. I've known a lot of serious drug users, but Zoë was Queen. You've got to admire someone as committed to it as she was. She didn't just LOVE heroin, she believed in it. (I might be way out of date, as I saw her most in the '80s and then she moved to Paris a few years ago...) Unlike the stereotype of the junkie, she was always stoked with enthusiasm, for drugs of course, but also for revolutionary politics, movies and writing, and then for RATS. I'll never forget visiting her in her huge old East 10th St. apartment in the early '90s and finding it carpeted (I'm not exaggerating) with rats. It was positively psychedelic. All surfaces were alive with them. A bureau drawer was the maternity ward, quivering with dozens of translucent little rat babies. We talked about doing the movie I'd written about Theresa Stern, and I have a great 45 minute videotape of her reading the part. She looks so gorgeous, but what's up with that finishing school accent?" Her former husband Robert Lund has created a page of more information from and about her including writings, photos, and links. [There is now a fuller version of this recollection of Zoë by Richard as published in the French film magazine Balthazar. -- 2002]. (Thanks to Robert Lund for the photo here.) [posted May 15, 1999]

A French translation called L'œil du lézard of Hell's novel Go Now (NY: Scribner, 1996) is published by Editions de l'Olivier, Paris, as one of the first three books in the publisher's new "Marges" series of blushing English-language novels (the other two being by Irvine Welsh and Tim Willocks). In case you're wondering Richard's also trying to figure out how you get from "Go Now" to "The Lizard's Eye," and what the fuck that Hollywood smirk is doing on the cover (The publisher says the French will get the "irony." Irony this, ya donut.). [posted April 7, 1999]

Springtime in Paris, it is... Paris, Hell. Parisian international and multilingual art/lit zine Purple publishes the first chapter-and-a-half of Richard's new novel-in-progress in the issue that hits stands in April (it's #3, dated Summer 1999). The novel is about poets and takes place in New York in the early '70s and the late '90s. The Purple passage starts like this. [posted April 3, 1999]

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