dogmatika
This stuff will probably kill you, let's do another line
04 August 2007
[Drugs] have meant everything to my writing. They have formed my worldview. I see everything through my experiences as an addict. To truly step outside of society, and to be among America's invisible population is a terrifying, yet liberating experience...I do not have any aspirations to be a part of respectable society any more.
[Picture: by Sean Lynch]
The UK edition of Tony O'Neill's novel Digging the Vein, published by Wrecking Ball Press, is reviewed in today's Guardian Review:
From Hull's fearless Wrecking Ball Press comes a new author, who, despite his tender years, has produced a noir novel to stand up there with the work of label mates Dan Fante and Charles Bukowski. O'Neill's debut is based on his passage from rising indie music star to raging junkie. All before he was 25, an age at which he had boasted he would kill himself if he wasn't famous. He may have already exhausted the patience of Marc Almond, Kenickie and even the infamously unstable Brian Jonestown Massacre but he never tests that of his readers. What separates O'Neill from more fashionable junkie peers is a reservoir of self-awareness and not an ounce of self-pity. The same vicious wit that sustains his anonymous narrator against the torrent of chemical abuse never deserts him, not even when he is running from crack dealers, having an abscess cut from his arm or shooting up in his groin in an LA parking lot, having blown out every other vein in his body. His evocation of Los Angeles recalls the gnarled grace of a Tom Waits adage: this stuff will probably kill you - let's do another line.
There's also a great interview with O'Neill in The Commonline Project:
Will you have another novel out in the near future?
I'm writing a follow up to Digging the Vein called Down and Out on Murder Mile which explains what happened to me next. It is set mostly in London, and talks about my second marriage and the gradual, mental unraveling of my then wife, the extreme poverty of that period of my life, my experiences in the methadone clinics of London, and how I eventually began to reclaim my life. The book is very extreme and it moves like a freight train. It feels like two steps on from the first book. I had to get all of that autobiographical stuff out of my system. Now I feel that I can tackle the other subjects that really interest me. I have a couple of ideas for 'fictional' books which I am pretty excited about.
The storytelling of Digging the Vein appeared to be surprisingly sober and objective. Are you interested in presenting more daring methods to your short stories and novel writing?
Definitely. Digging the Vein was the product of me teaching myself how to write, with no formal training. To get the book right, it was more a process of unlearning than learning. I had to disregard everything that people told me "should" be in the book. My model was something like Junky by Burroughs, which was essentially a piece of pulp fiction with literary ambitions. I am a big fan of pulp fiction, and I wanted the book to have the propulsion and power of a good rock song. Like, say, 'Raw Power' by the Stooges. In the time since I completed Digging, my writing has been moving in all kinds of different directions. The collection, Seizure Wet Dreams has some of my more experimental short stories in it. The real freedom for me was moving away from writing about my own life and into the realms of imagination. I mean all of my old obsessions are there, and my stories are often set in the same "world" as the novels: the world of addicts, crazies, the underclass – but they are darker, more experimental in tone, more allegorical.
[hat tip: Burning Shore Press]
[Picture: by Sean Lynch]
I'm writing a follow up to Digging the Vein called Down and Out on Murder Mile which explains what happened to me next. It is set mostly in London, and talks about my second marriage and the gradual, mental unraveling of my then wife, the extreme poverty of that period of my life, my experiences in the methadone clinics of London, and how I eventually began to reclaim my life. The book is very extreme and it moves like a freight train. It feels like two steps on from the first book. I had to get all of that autobiographical stuff out of my system. Now I feel that I can tackle the other subjects that really interest me. I have a couple of ideas for 'fictional' books which I am pretty excited about.
The storytelling of Digging the Vein appeared to be surprisingly sober and objective. Are you interested in presenting more daring methods to your short stories and novel writing?
Definitely. Digging the Vein was the product of me teaching myself how to write, with no formal training. To get the book right, it was more a process of unlearning than learning. I had to disregard everything that people told me "should" be in the book. My model was something like Junky by Burroughs, which was essentially a piece of pulp fiction with literary ambitions. I am a big fan of pulp fiction, and I wanted the book to have the propulsion and power of a good rock song. Like, say, 'Raw Power' by the Stooges. In the time since I completed Digging, my writing has been moving in all kinds of different directions. The collection, Seizure Wet Dreams has some of my more experimental short stories in it. The real freedom for me was moving away from writing about my own life and into the realms of imagination. I mean all of my old obsessions are there, and my stories are often set in the same "world" as the novels: the world of addicts, crazies, the underclass – but they are darker, more experimental in tone, more allegorical.
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