LET IT BLURT(ISBN=) 英文原版

　　Let It Blurt is the raucous and righteous biography of Lester
Bangs (1949-82)–the gonzo journalist, gutter poet, and romantic
visionary of rock criticism. No writer on rock ‘n’ roll ever lived
harder or wrote better–more passionately, more compellingly, more
penetratingly. He lived the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle, guzzling booze
and Romilar like water, matching its energy in prose that erupted
from the pages of Rolling Stone, Creem, and The Village Voice.
Bangs agitated in the seventies for sounds that were harsher,
louder, more electric, and more alive, in the course of which he
charted and defined the aesthetics of heavy metal and punk. He was
treated as a peer by such brash visionaries as Lou Reed, Patti
Smith, Richard Hell, Captain Beefheart, The Clash, Debbie Harry,
and other luminaries.
　　Let It Blurt is a scrupulously researched account of Lester
Bangs’s fascinating (if often tawdry and unappetizing) life story,
as well as a window on rock criticism and rock culture in their
most turbulent and creative years. It includes a
never-before-published piece by Bangs, the hilarious “How to Be a
Rock Critic,” in which he reveals the secrets of his dubious,
freeloading trade.

　　Finally, the great American writer gets the book he deserves.
Jim DeRogatis’s Let It Blurt is a personal journey through the wit
and the world and the ferocious spirit of Lester Bangs…it reads
like rock and roll.
　　–Cameron Crowe
　　”Let It Blurt tells one of the essential rock and roll stories
with great affection and panache. Lester Bangs–paradigm, mystery,
great writer, tragicomic presence–has been given the biography he
deserves…A splendid book.”
　　–Jonathan Lethem, author of Motherless Brooklyn
　　”Lester Bangs lived fast, died young, and left a beautiful body
of work. Jim DeRogatis, himself a gifted writer on rock and roll,
knows both of Bangs’s worlds–the music and the journalism–and has
written an elegy for one of the few critics whose work is worth
reading for itself, apart from its subjects.”
　　–Roger Ebert
　　”To those who knew him, Lester Bangs was a force of nature,
‘larger than life’ and all such biz. For a mere book to capture the
full sweep of his mind/body at speed and at rest may be too tall an
order, but Let It Blurt is a welcome stab indeed at the whole
Lester thing.”
　　–Richard Meltzer — Review
　　As Jim DeRogatis’s readable and well-researched new biography of
Bangs makes clear, he lived as exuberantly as he wrote. — The New
York Times Book Review, Dwight Garner

　　The Closed Circle
　　Conway Bangs needed a drink. He chain-smoked while pacing
nervously in the cool night air outside Escondido Community
Hospital–a fancy name for a tiny clinic run by one doctor in a
wood-frame house only a little bigger than most of the others here
amid the Southern California orange groves. From time to time he
heard his wife cry out, and he knew that she must be hurting.
Complaining about the pains of the flesh was not the way of the
Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Norma was nothing if not a faithful
soldier.
　　The doctor had urged Conway to talk some sense into his wife.
There were risks in having a child at age forty-three, but Norma
wouldn’t hear any talk of abortion. The Witnesses forbade it under
any circumstances, including a fatal threat to the mother. Conway
didn’t have much use for his wife’s religion, but for once he was
glad she stood her ground. A few years earlier the prison doctor
had told him he’d never have a child. Them doctors seemed to be
wrong a lot, he thought, because his son was born without
complications at two minutes before eleven on the night of December
13, 1948.
　　The baby arrived weighing eight pounds, eight ounces and
exercising what sounded like an extremely healthy pair of lungs.
The couple named him Leslie Conway in honor of his father, Conway
Leslie. Once he saw that Norma and the boy were resting peacefully,
Conway ran to spread the news to the rest of the family. “Conway
was thrilled to death,” said his twenty-one-year-old stepdaughter,
Ann St. Clair, one of three children from Norma’s first marriage.
“When he came up to the house where my husband Ray and I lived, he
told us that he had the most beautiful son in the world. Because
Leslie was born with a full head of black hair–enough for three or
four babies!–I didn’t think he was very pretty, but that didn’t
make any difference. That was Conway’s baby boy.”
　　From Ann and Ray’s place Conway went to see Ben Catching, Jr.,
Norma’s eldest son. At twenty-three Ben already had a four-year-old
boy of his own, Ben Catching III. The two men drove trucks for
Escondido Transit Mix. After work they would sit outside Conway and
Norma’s small rented house near Highway 395, drinking beer on the
rickety front porch. Early on the morning of December 14 they drank
a toast to young Leslie Bangs.
　　For several generations on both sides Leslie’s forebears were
migratory Southwestern farm workers. The families’ roots in the
United States stretched back far enough for the current members to
have forgotten the Old World traditions and even their particular
European heritages. They shared some Scottish and English blood, no
doubt, and possibly some Irish and German as well. Basically they
were the sort of people portrayed in William Faulkner’s “Barn
Burning” and Nelson Algren’s A Walk on the Wild Side. At the time
they would have been called Arkies, Okies, drifters, or crackers.
In his less charitable moments a grown-up Leslie would call them
“white trash.”
　　Leslie’s paternal grandparents Gady and Leota Bangs crossed the
border from Arkansas to Texas around the turn of the century. They
settled in the country between the small towns of Cooper and Enlow
about ninety miles northeast of Dallas. Gady farmed, brewed bootleg
whiskey, and drank, though not necessarily in that order. A broad,
squat man with a penchant for oversize cowboy hats, he was as
unpleasant and churlish as the plump, round-faced Leota was sweet
and loving. The couple raised five daughters and two sons,
including Conway Leslie, born on August 25, 1915. His middle name
paid tribute to the sheriff of Delta County, but the family friend
never did his namesake any favors. In fact, he was one of the men
who sent Conway to prison.
　　Conway’s first arrest came a few months before his eighteenth
birthday, six years after he dropped out of school in the seventh
grade. Charged with four counts of burglary, he pleaded guilty to
one in return for the others being dropped. Because of Conway’s age
the judge suspended the five-year sentence, but the conviction
stigmatized him nonetheless. One day in late 1934 a neighbor
accused him of stealing some tools. Conway asserted his innocence,
but the man wouldn’t listen. The boy flew into a rage and viciously
beat his accuser with a wooden bucket. “If Conway saw someone being
mistreated, man, he would jump right in there,” said his sister
Imogene. “He could get angry, but usually when he got angry, he had
a right to be angry. He wasn’t much of a talker, but when he did
talk, it meant something. And if someone beat him, well, he’d just
beat them right back.”
　　On January 15, 1935, a jury found Conway guilty of assault with
intent to murder. District Court Judge Charles “Chuck” Berry
sentenced him to five years for the beating and reinstated the
original five-year sentence for burglary. Three weeks later Conway
began serving his decadelong term at Huntsville. Among the habits
noted on his prison record: intemperance, use of tobacco, and a
disdain for organized religion. On the rare occasions later in life
when he talked about his incarceration, Conway spoke of being
whipped, beaten with chains, and strapped to a plow like a horse.
One day he begged off the work detail, complaining of a headache
and a painful swelling in the groin. The guards sent him out into
the fields, and the next morning he collapsed. The mumps had
brought on a case of encephalitis. The prison doctor told him he’d
have died if he went without treatment much longer. As it was, he’d
probably been rendered sterile.
　　Conway completed his sentence on September 11, 1945, and he moved
back in with his parents. He found work driving dump trucks on
construction sites in Dallas, which bustled during the postwar
building boom. His younger sisters admired his rugged good looks
and compared his hardened features to an outdoorsy, Western version
of Humphrey Bogart. Like his father, Conway sometimes drank to
excess, but he was a docile drunk, where alcohol only made Gady
meaner. The old man’s favorite rant was about the new religion that
consumed so much of his wife’s time. Gady would stand in the
doorway and curse Leota as she left for Bible study. “I hope you
drive up a goddamn tree and kill yourself!” he’d shout. “Goddamn
you and all your Gee-hovah’s Witnesses!”
　　Leota was unflappable. “Gady, honey, you just relax, and I’ll see
ya back here in a little bit,” she’d coo while driving off with her
friend, Norma Catching.
　　Conway would watch these scenes and shake his head. Norma was
nine years his senior. She had already buried one husband and
raised three children who were living on their own, but he was
struck by her youthful beauty. Her quiet dignity in the face of his
father’s vitriol impressed him, and he was glad that she didn’t
seem to think less of him because he’d been to prison. He felt like
a teenager whenever he talked to her, and he hated to see her
go.