Dreamy. Druggy. Delirious.

While novelists, poets, and lyricist all ply their respective trades with words and how they evoke meaning, few artists can create meaningful works across multiple genres. A few songwriters have written excellent novels and poetry collections, some poets pen story stories and novellas, and the occasional novelist will make their way into poems and songs. But the Venn diagram containing someone developing outstanding material in all three is rather empty – and for good reason. Not only is it hard work to do poorly, but it’s very hard work to do them well. Forms and conventions matter, and just because they all use words doesn’t mean the actual skillset is the same.

Unless you’re a genius like Richard Hell. The guy was instrumental in multiple iconic punk and post-punk bands, including Neon Boys, Television, The Heartbreakers, and The Voidoids. As a working poet and musician, he rubbed shoulders with entire swathes of influential New York-based artists in ‘70s New York City. He eventually started writing novels in the late ‘80s, several of which received critical acclaim. Originally published in 2005, Godlike was repressed by New York Review of Books in 2026, giving fresh life to a frenzied account of life as a vagabond artisan.

The book is equal parts pastiche of the tumultuous relationship between Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud, recollection of Hell’s friendship with Tom Verlaine, and tribute to Hell’s poet friends. It’s the tale of Paul Vaughn, a celebrated poet who leaves his wife to embark on a furious and turbulent affair with Randall Terrance Wode, a sixteen-year-old poet who’s just arrived in the city. Vaughn tells half of the story in the moment in third person, while he recounts the other half decades later in first person while convalescing in a psych ward. Neither narrator can be trusted farther than you could throw them, which allows for massive amounts of embellishment, exaggeration, and egregious behavior.

Vaughn is enchanted and horrified by Wode’s behavior in equal measure, which only ramps up his sexual attraction. This alienates certain members of his friend group, even as other find Wode a talented curiosity who has Vaughn wrapped around his little finger. The two of them devolve into romantic indolence, spending all of their time reading poetry, writing poetry, drinking beer, and dropping acid. Vaughn goes to work just enough to get paid just enough to pay rent on his tiny apartment and the one he finds for Wode. Their bond eventually unravels, as their travels to Memphis, TN and St. Petersburg, FL, for a change of scenery that rapidly disintegrates into shouting matches, gunfire, and family intervention.

Ribald and rapturous in its seamy descriptions, Godlike delivers a seedy ode to the power one feels when under the thrall of sexual and artistic attraction, even as he never shies away from their catastrophic potential. As the delightful prose comes laced with actual lines from Hell’s favorite poet-friends, a helpful appendix provides readers the chance to engage with the profundity of the full works.