Interview With The Brummie Bukowski

 

 

 

U.V. Ray, or as he's known around these parts, The Brummie Bukowski, hasn't taken part in an interview for a decade. The rare and original writer has much to say, most of it about his new book, A Cigarette Burn in the Sun which, going on the reviews alone, looks to be his most popular work so far. It's a bleak piece, both terse and terrific, and recounts a period in time which deserves more attention. I identified a lot of truth in the book, recognised the fact and the fiction, but wanted to know what the author thought. So, here we are, a rare insight into the working life and practices of a truly talented practitioner of the writer's craft. 

TONY BLACK:  I believe the book's based on a real-life incident, is that right?

U. V. RAY:  Fictionalised reality, yes. We used to go to this club in Brum called Snobs and they had this indie night called Loaded. Me and my drinking pal Paul came rolling outta there about two-thirty in the morning and I think we might have dropped a couple of acid tabs as well. Some girl in the street comes over and says to me, come and have a look at this. And she takes us into the shithole public toilets down in the subway, points at one of the stalls and tells me: have a look over that door. So I pulled myself up and looked over and that’s where the dead goth kid was. Sitting on the toilet and still got the dart sticking out his arm. I mean, he was all pale and his lips were blue and all that - but it coulda bin his fucking goth make-up. The joint was fulla wasted boys and wasted girls hanging about. Blood and broken glass all over the floor, glittering in the fluorescent lights. Surreal scene. 

The girl asks me if I think he’s dead and I tell her well he looks fucking dead - but he could just be off on a noddy. But anyway, I gave Paul a nudge and tells him let’s get the fuck gone before the bluebottles show up. I think we did a runner and ended up in some burger joint where some kid had bin stabbed, he was on the floor and the cops were calling for an ambulance. These were action-packed times we lived. 

Anyway, turns out the goth kid in the toilet was indeed dead and over the next few weeks around on the scene it’s all like “did you hear about so-and-so?” And a course I was like: hear about him? I was there.

But the book isn’t written from a personalised viewpoint. It centres around a whole gaggle of characters who in some way revolved around this incident. So there’s fiction in it, but the story is factual, it’s a case of only the names have bin changed. 

TB: Was there a sense of "there but for the grace ..."  What I mean by that is, now that you're older, do you think about it differently?

UVR: Not at all. We were firing on all cylinders. My novels Black Cradle (2016) and especially Drug Story (2019) are far more autobiographical. Although there were sacrifices - the lifestyle really fucked up my relationships with women - I mean there were a couple of them I liked. But I preferred the drugs and drink - they were the best thing that ever happened to me. I don’t think I expected to be here now at the age of - what am I?  I am on the whisky right now and I’m not sure if I am 57 or 58. Maybe I’m still 56. I couldn’t give a fuck. Still got all my hair. But sometimes I bump into people from back in the 80s / 90s and they can't believe I'm still alive - and I tell them yes, and I still will be in another 30 years as well. I'm like fucking Superman.

TB: Didn't Superman end up a paraplegic? I mean, that night Ollie Reed was arm wrestling those sailors he must've said something similar. Thinking about your health, mate. I've heard there's 12-steps or sumthin...

UVR: Nah, that was real life. The character Superman lives on. I’m not really real. On my gravestone I am having only one word: FICTION. Like I never really existed at all. And on a universal scale, in the fullness of time, none of us really do. Within two generations we are all nothing more than a genetic sequence in our family blood line.

TB: The book, and I loved reading it, is a great depiction of that sordid, 80s, seedy-drinker scene, there really was nothing to look forward to then, was there?

UVR: I think A Cigarette Burn in the Sun revolves around a depressing issue and a set of characters that have little hope in life. And yes, they are all based on real people I knew. But it wasn’t as depressing as I make it seem. I suppose those Thatcher years offered little hope to the working classes. But as I remember it, most kids were much less politically influenced than they are now. I think we had a healthy dose of not giving a flying fuck. We didn’t sit around talking about politics and having our lives fucked up by it like the kids do now. I’ve seen young kids now talk about breaking down in tears because they’re so concerned about social issues. My heart is saddened by that. Listen, the earth and the human race will still be here in five-hundred years, and for the most part we’ll be alright. The human race is phenomenally good at survival. There will be problems as we continue to evolve but we’ll be here until the solar system dies in about a billion years. And we can’t do anything about that. Not even Dr. Prof. Saint Greta Thunberg can save us from that.


TB: I remember 80s pubs, feet sticking to sodden carpets, everything tinged yellow with baccy smoke; life was superficially rougher, but I think better.  We seem to be hardwired for struggle, when things are too easy we find ways to fuck ourselves up. My grandparents' generation lived through the war and were much more together, much happier than the boomers, who left the place in a right fucking mess for the coming generations to clean up. I also think creativity across the board has crumbled since then, you could see it slowing in the 90s and then it just died, certainly in the mainstream, about 2000. Can your younger readers really get that the pre-internet, pre-mobile days were so different, and, do you agree, so much better? 

  The man in black, is it U.V. Ray, or Johnny Cash?                 

UVR: We all have a tendency to view our past with rose tinted lenses and I’m certainly guilty of that too. But I think in 30 years the kids now will look back and remember themselves quite differently to the namby-pamby insipid little cry-babies that they are. But they’ve been socially engineered to be that way. A whole fucked up generation of trembling little cream-puffs is easier to influence and control. Keeping the population demoralised pays off for those running the show. But the kids will rise again, they just need sumthin palpable to grab onto  - and when they do it’s gonna be a fucking riot.

And yes, I think creativity and the arts have been under the cosh as well. 
Near the end of  the ‘70s Punk was dealt a blow when they started selling Sex Pistols t-shirts in fucking Woolworths, man. Suddenly you got the Ramones playing as you walk around fucking Tesco. What next? Slayer? Cannibal Corpse?

But there will be something else soon. I have utter faith in the rebellion and resilience of art. As I said in Drug Story: sum day soon sum body gonna come along who won’t get under the cosh, sum day soon sum body gonna come along and start a real revolution.

TB: In my review of your new book I referenced James Joyce, which I think made you chuckle, why? You have an absurdist's eye for the world, do you not?

UVR: Well, I’ve had comparisons to Bukowski, Nelson Algren, Hubert Selby jr  - even Camus. But never Joyce. I never really saw myself as an absurdist. But we’re not always aware of ourselves, I suppose. If you’re gonna write about the everyday world maybe absurdity is unavoidable. The world is going to hammer you into submission, it’s gonna try and break you in body and mind - and if you can come through it and there’s a morsel of sumthin left inside you - then you’ll have sumthin to write about. I’m not educated, I’m not particularly intelligent, so I have to work with what I’ve got and that means just hammering the words out the best I can. I remember Gary Numan saying he wished he had a greater vocal range so he could do more with his songs. I feel the same about my intelligence - I wish I was more intelligent so I could do more with my work.

TB: The structure is not that of a plot-driven three acts, with a hook at the end of every chapter and a steep incident ramp, I'm delighted to say. It's my strong belief that we can do without plot, but not tension, what's your opinion on this and why do you think the mainstream favours plot over all else? I tend to think, on the rare occasions the mass market gets a taste of books that aren't plot driven, they can be very taken with them, I'm thinking Catcher in the Rye; Generation X; On the Road etc, etc ...

  Either the wallpaper goes or I do.  U.V. Ray, centre               

UVR: My intention has always been to break down conventional forms. I never wanted to follow the age old blueprint. I think writers need to be forging new methods - even just the way it looks on the page - I want art, not derivatives of everything we’ve already seen. I always quite liked the idea of a story about a man with nowhere to go and nothing to do when he gets there. The old adage goes that genre fiction is plot driven and literary fiction is character driven. And I think the mainstream reader wants to be entertained rather than literated. My current work in progress - 13 Grams of Amphetamines - is going to be a novel / film script hybrid. I’m calling it a cinematic novel. Maybe my daffodils will bloom after I’m dead. Or maybe I’m just plain wrong about what I’m doing. But at least I can hold my head up and say at least I fucking tried. At least I did that much in the face of mediocrity. 

TB: There's something in what you say, for sure, but I also think the mainstream's plot obsession is laziness, and contempt for their readership. Plot can be, no pun, easily plotted, it can be broken down and played with and a lot of editors have egos; they like to leave their tracks on a work. They like to spoon feed their readers with what's worked in the past; publishing is full of me-tooism and if you ever listen to an editor's critique they back it up with, "When I was at Penguin, or when I worked with Amis..." Publishing is very backward looking and yet language, art, stories are all facing in the opposite direction.

UVR: It is contempt for the readers, yes. But even more contempt for writers, I think, to the extent that only the shit gets through the system. They definitely don’t appear to be seeking out fresh narratives. I don’t really have much good to say about them. I refer to them as the frilly knickers brigade. Maybe I do myself no favours. You asked me elsewhere about publishers or literary zines in my home city. They don’t want to know me. I am completely ignored by those involved with the lit scene in Birmingham. No indie book stores carry my books, lit zines turn me a deaf ear. I don’t get a look in, even though my books have sold to countries all round the world and I outsell most of the writers they wet up their little knickers over. So fuck em, I’ll fucking still be here long after they fold. Bastards.

TB: You seem to revel in the outsider tag, are you the outsider's outsider? (Like Angel T. Cooley) Is there anything about the modern book market that you think is worth reading, or is it all shit? I think there are good publishers out there, but they are very hard to find and I know a lot of good writers find it soul destroying; what struggles did you face getting A Cigarette Burn in the Sun out there?

They'll be eating chips out your knickers, or the bin

 

 

UVR: It was a difficult childhood, actually. I always was an outsider. Never really had any friends growing up. I wasn’t one of the popular kids. It’s not something I’ve always revelled in - it’s something I’ve had to accept. Just one of those people that never fit in anywhere. Makes you tough in the end. 
Donald Ray Pollock’s Knockemstiff (2008) and Nico Walker’s Cherry (2018) are two fantastic books. Pollock is right up there with Harry Crews, in my view. Real good southern gothic stuff. And Walker’s book drops off in places but overall the writing is fantastic - very natural because he wrote it in prison without any ideas of it being published. One of my favourite books is Bret Easton Ellis’s Less than Zero, which of course was written back in 1985. But I don’t think he’s written anything as good since, though many will disagree with me there.

A Cigarette Burn in the Sun is on a very small fledgling publisher - Yellow King Press - and Paul the editor approached me after my usual publisher - Murder Slim Press - had to take a hiatus for a number of reasons. So I didn’t have any problems there. 

TB: You can't be that much of an outsider if publishers are asking you for work. Something I've wondered about your work in general is, for a man with so much to say, the books are quite short. Do you cut a lot? Are you consciously keeping things tight?

UVR: I like short books. 30,000 - 50,000 words. I like my books to be like a fast two-minute punk song. I think it reflects the amphetamine fuelled subject matter.

TB: How did you come to writing? Were you always bookish? And, why do you write?

UVR: Started writing when I was eight years old as a way of screaming into the void.
My parents had no interest in books, films, music or art of any kind. My dad was just one of those pragmatic men of a certain generation  - his idea was you learn to do something with your hands - learn to build things. So the interests I had were simply discounted as idiocy and my mother saw my writing as a thing of ridicule, something to be laughed at. I was told I was a stupid kid and the stuff I liked was stupid and useless stuff. I used to read books - a lot of sci-fi - I suppose then it was an escape for me. My mother wielded the bible as her weapon and any books and records I owned were always in danger of getting destroyed in a religious frenzy. And they often were. So I also became an atheist. We walked on eggshells in our house, my mother ruled the roost. My dad was absolutely fucking terrified of upsetting her. If she kicked off it could go on for days. 

I wasn’t good at anything at school, which affirmed and compounded this feeling that I was stupid. I just drifted through the days until the time would come that I could leave school. Writing was all I ever had. I refer to writing as a terminal illness. I live with it.   

 

:: Thanks to U.V. Ray for indulging me and my interrogation techniques. I've posted my review of A Cigarette Burn in the Sun below. 

If you'd like to know any  more about U. V. Ray you can find him online at Twitter/X:
https://x.com/uvray_

You can buy his new book at: Amazon