Signed Copy of Go Now by Richard Hell

On October 1st, 2022, Institute 193 hosted a reading by Lexington-native writer and musician Richard Hell. Hell read from a selection of his publications, including Go Now.

On the road with the Blank Generation, Go Now takes readers on a wild trip across the country and into the head of a down-on-his-luck punk musician. Billy, a burnt-out, drug- and sex-addicted punk musician, sets out with his erstwhile French girlfriend, Chrissa, on a cross-country writing assignment that turns into a ricocheting, brain-searing, agonizing head trip.

Richard Hell (b. Richard Meyers) was born in Lexington, where he would spend the first fifteen years of his life. In 1967, he dropped out of high school and left, alone, for New York City to become a poet. He has lived in New York ever since. In the early seventies, he co-founded the rock and roll band the Neon Boys with his (post-Kentucky) high school friend, Tom Verlaine. Hell would quickly go on to found and co-found three more musical groups responsible for initiating punk and putting CBGB on the map: Television, the Heartbreakers, and Richard Hell and the Voidoids. The latter group is celebrated for two acclaimed albums, Blank Generation (1977), and Destiny Street (1982).

In 1984, Hell retired from music and resumed focus on writing. He is the author of the novels Go Now (1996) and Godlike (2005); the collection of essays, poems, song lyrics, notebooks, pictures, and fiction, Hot and Cold (2001); the autobiography I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tramp (2013); the essay collection Massive Pissed Love (2015), and many other books and pamphlets. He’s been published as a journalist in the New York Times and its Book Review, Spin, the Village Voice, Esquire, Art in America, Gagosian Quarterly, Artnet, Stereogum, Bookforum, and numerous other outlets. His book of 40 poems, one essay, and an 88-entry “list,” What Just Happened, will be released in the spring of 2023.

Title: Go Now (Paperback)
Publisher: Simon & Schuster, United States
Publication Date: 1997
Binding: Paperback
Book Condition: New
Edition: Reprint.
Signed by Richard Hell.