Hey, hey… Buzz Heavy here.

For some reason, instead of the music I was inspired to write about some suggested reading.

What does literature have to do with GLITTERPUNKABILLY ?

Possibly nothing, possibly more than one might imagine. Here's some ramblings about a few of my faves.

HUBERT SELBY, JR.: Best known for his cutting edge work of fiction, LAST EXIT TO BROOKLYN, Selby wrote (and will hopefully write more) bad ass prose with virtually no regard for convention, punctuation and many other things that certain square authors find to be so important. LAST EXIT TO BROOKLYN was chock fulla drag queens, junkies, thugs and domestic disharmony in a hellish neighborhood in Brooklyn a few years after World War II. A true slice of pre-rock 'n roll decadence, the book is my favorite book on the motherf'ing planet. His collection of short stories, SONG OF THE SILENT SNOW, is also absolutely brilliant. Also highly recommended is THE ROOM, a surreal story that takes place in a prisoner's cell and his deluded mind. It's a confusing book since it's tough to distinguish what's really happening and what's imagined but it's a great read. Also a great read is REQUIEM FOR A DREAM, which is about the trials and tribulations of three heroin junkies and one of the junkie's mothers. It's set in the late 1970's but timeless in its disturbing nature. It has been made into a major motion picture but I have not seen it as of yet. Selby also wrote two other novels, THE DEMON and THE WILLOW TREE which I have not yet read because he's my favorite author and I want to look forward to enjoying more of his work and that's all he wrote. He's still alive but I'm uncertain as to whether or not he's still writing and we'll just have to see if he puts something out before he kicks the bucket. He's about 78 or so and I'm hoping he sticks around for a while.

Selby is a major talent who was way ahead of his time and still delivers the goods. Before I even read his works or even knew who he was, I saw him do spoken word at the Bottom Line in New York City. I had gone to see Jim Carroll of The Jim Carroll Band and THE BASKETBALL DIARIES fame and Selby was opening for him. I asked my buddy Steve Litewait who had scored us the tickets, "Who's the old man?" He told me who he was and all I knew about LAST EXIT TO BROOKLYN was that it was a controversial film from the mid 80's. My buddy Joe Heavy was also with us and he had read the book and seen the movie as well but he did not know who Selby was until after the reading which blew us both away without being knowing anything about his rep.

What influence did Selby have on GLITTERPUNKABILLY ? Well, just ask proto-punk/glam pioneer Lou Reed who said in an interview in a documentary on his life that he and his contemporaries all dug Selby. He didn't say much else about him except that they were into him, so like I said, you'll just have to ask Lou.

Bukowski's poems are great stuff, but I was hooked on him before I ever read any of his poems ever since I read a short story collection, THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMAN IN TOWN. I've since read what I believe to be all of the collected works of his short fiction but THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMAN IN TOWN is still my favorite. Besides his tales of sex, violence and alcoholic misery, this one had a few stories of speculative fiction that I found very intriguing. I'm not going to list all the names of his short story collections because you can find all about them on other sites, but I will say that my next two faves are NOTES OF A DIRTY OLD MAN, a collection of articles/stories that he wrote for a short-lived underground newspaper in Los Angeles, and TALES OF ORDINARY MADNESS, which was presumably the best of two other previously published volumes. He also wrote 6 or 7 novels, of which I haven't read all because, as with Selby, I do not wish to exhaust my supply of unread Bukowski.

What does Bukowski have to do with GLITTERPUNKABILLY? Probably not much except for his bold, daring, caring yet indifferent attitude. He was a good guy who sometimes acted bad like many of us do. There was a part of his novel HAM ON RYE, which is about his life from birth in 1920 until just after high school, that seemed quite GLITTERPUNKABILLY but I can't remember what it was and I forgot to mark the page. Oh, well. Read it. It's a great story on what scumbags and how shallow people are. Bukowski died in early 1994 at the age of 73, living far longer than anyone leading such a life could realistically expect to live.

TENNESSEE WILLIAMS: Tennessee was a gay good ol' boy, and while GLITTERPUNKABILLY is not about being gay, hetero or bi-sexual per se, Tennessee was one of the first modern authors to write about gay romance as well as non-gay romance stories. He may have been bi- but I'm not certain. Whatever the case, he wrote phenomenal prose though he is best known as a playwright.

What influence did he have on the bi-sexuality trend of the early 70's glitter rock era? I'm not certain that he had any influence, but his seemingly bi-sexual nature and philosophies, sexual and otherwise, seem to fit in with a lot of the alleged ideals of the glitter rock movement. For instance, one story (I can't recall the name) was about a woman who decided that that she felt really great one morning and wanted to dress really flashy. She looked through her wardrobe and saw naught but grays, blacks, whites and tans so she went out and got a new, bright red dress. She put on the dress and it then occurred to her that revolution begins in putting on bright colors.

GLITTERPUNKABILLY all the way, baby. Too bad he choked on a wine bottle cap back in 1980 or so. All of his works of short fiction can be found in a single compilation. I can't recall the name of the book but it's the Collected Works of Tennessee Williams or something like that. I found it in a chain bookstore that can probably be found in most every state. F'ING MONOCULTURE!!! Absolutely sickening, isn't it?

If you know anybody who has any books by Selby, Bukowski or Williams and you're the type of person who returns books without soaking them in the tub, I strongly urge you to borrow them. Of course there's always libraries. I don't know about Selby, but I'm sure that you'll find Bukowski and Williams' plays if not his short fiction.

I've got a few more authors to write about so keep an eye out.

OBLIGATORY DISCLAIMER: Some of this stuff is absolute trash, brilliant trash but trash nonetheless. If you get squeamish easily or if you're under 18 or just act like it, you might want to skip Selby and Bukowski and just read Williams. He started writing earlier than the other two and had to pull some punches even though he still wrote about some controversial subject matter.