Notebooks of a Naked Youth

Fiction. By daring to give everything of himself, his most painful and secretive thoughts, Billy Childish has broken through to a whole new expression never before seen in English writing. Highly personal and uncompromising, NOTEBOOKS OF A NAKED YOUTH is narrated by one William Loveday, an acned youth, possessed of piercing intelligence, acute self-loathing and great personal charm. Haunted by sexual desires, William Loveday leads us on a naked odyssey from the "rust belt" of industrial North Kent to sleazy sex clubs of Hamburg's Reeperbahn--a twilight world of murderous pimps and tattooed hermaphrodites--and a final descent into an expressionist hell. Childish's "fantastic biography" achieves what only the most foolhardy would ever attempt: the unholy union of punk rock, Knut Hamsun and Celine. The result is a hilarious, drunken, un- English voyage into the human shadow--the ultimate antidote to the Oxbridge pretenders and mindless hype of drug culture. One thing separates Childish's voice from all those of his contemporaries: he can write like the devil!