The Voidoid

Published by Josh Smith and Todd Amicon’s 38th Street Publishers, The Voidoid is a novelina written by Hell in 1973 and first published in 1996. This new edition includes drawings by young Norwegian artist Kier Cooke Sandvik that both re-articulate the work while providing their own brash narrative.

Before Richard Hell’s well-known life as a musician began, he was a practicing writer. The Voidoid was written as his life shifted from poet to punk rock icon and reflects the grimy spirit of that bygone era, as Hell himself explains:


“The Voidoid was written in 1973 in a little furnished room on East 10th St. I was staying with Jennifer (‘my thoughts and me are like ships that pass in the night’) in her apartment down the block overlooking the graveyard at St. Mark’s Church. The Neon Boys was stalled because we couldn’t find a second guitar player… Every day I’d take a bottle of wine with me across the street to the $16-a-week room I’d rented for writing. The method was I’d keep going till I got to the end of a single-spaced page, which was pretty far. I’d wake up an hour later and have to drink a whole lot of water.”