NOTEBOOKS
OF A NAKED YOUTH –
BILLY CHILDISH
I admire and respect Billy Childish – the man, his music, his art
and his moustache. He also still gets my vote for being the Greatest
Living Englishman. Unfortunately, there's something about Notebooks
of a Naked Youth - his sequel to his début novel, My Fault -
that makes it inferior to it's predecessor rather than being it's
equal or even its better.
There's a sense about it of being a work in progress, as if there was
no clear aim as to where the book was going to go or of even what
kind of book it was going to be. It starts off as if this time
Childish is playing it for laughs and effecting a style of writing
that displays his somewhat dark and twisted sense of humour. It ends
up as a sort of bastard child of William Burroughs and Henry Miller.
The narrator's voice is that of an imbecilic child inside the body of
a young adult, or of someone with Aspergers who doesn't know how to
properly relate with other people. It's rather like the Paddy
Considine character in the Shane Meadow's film A Room For Romeo
Brass. Is it an affected voice, I wonder? A fictional voice utilised
to relay the story? Or is it Billy Childish's actual voice? I don't
want to give offence but it's hard to tell. Either way, though it's a
disturbing voice it's noticeable that it's not such an intense voice
as that heard in My Fault.
Between the comical narration there are indeed plenty of disturbing
episodes such as when the author is stalking a 15 year-old girl, or
when he's stopped by the police and they see he's wearing a trick toy
ring water pistol – and they ask him if it contains drugs? Or when
he's about to have sex with 'the Jewish lady' and he suddenly
remembers lying in bed with 'uncle' Norman who's tugging his trunks
down round his knees and whispering 'Can you keep a secret?' Or when
he's on a bus and he accuses all the other passengers of having 'mind
mirrors': “You think that I don't know that you've all got mind
mirrors?” he shouts “You think that I don't know that you
can look into my darkest thoughts? You think that I'm mad, that I'm
sitting on this bus amongst you strangers and that I don't know that
you all have mind mirrors! Go on, cross your gangrenous legs and hold
your newspapers to your noses like I'm invisible, all the while
secretly studying me with your hideous, disrespectful, hypocritical
mind mirrors! Ignore me then, damn you! But don't think for one
minute that I don't know all your names and addresses, you
scallywags!” We've all met this person before, haven't we? On
the Underground, at the shopping centre, or even on the bus? The
person we try to ignore and keep away from in case he turns his
attention explicitly upon us?
Billy Childish is that person.
What is even more disturbing about the book, however, is the blurring
of the lines between fantasy and reality, and between fiction and
fact. Did Childish really fuck a dog? Has he really killed a little
girl and her tiny, bird-like body now lies hidden in his blue
cardboard guitar case? Who knows? It's feasible. Is this a work of
fiction or a memoir? The edges are so blurred that it's hard to tell.
Billy Childish is an extremely interesting character which makes for
anything he creates being equally interesting; be it art, music,
poetry or prose. For all its faults, Notebooks of a Naked Youth
easily falls into that same canon.
John Serpico
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