Vera Ramone King's Piece of Shit Memoir

I cannot remember the last time I spent so much time reading such a piece of crap.

I recently re-read And I Don't Want to Live This Life, that classic shlock-bio that Deborah Spungen wrote about her daughter Nancy Spungen. You remember Nancy. Sid and Nancy. Right. Her.

Deborah Spungen's book has a few flaws, and you know it's basically biassed and that there's no way it's really telling the whole unvarnished (or un-Manic Panick'd) truth. But it's a completely readable book. It really is.

So Miss Edith's at the library the other day and notices that Vera Ramone King has published a book about her life with Dee Dee Ramone. It's called Poisoned Heart. Now, Miss Edith was really a Joey person, not a Dee Dee person. You know how everyone had their favorite Beatle? Their favorite Monkee? (John Lennon; Mike Nesmith -- thanks for asking.) Well, my Ramone was Joey and if that makes me a teenybopper poseur, so be it. But Dee Dee was an interesting enough character, I thought, "Well, hey, it's a short book, anyhow, how bad could it be?" So reader: I borrowed it.

Phoenix Books, an outfit based in Los Angeles, really needs to hire some goddamned editors.
As a matter of fact: Phoenix Books, if you're reading this, if you would like to hire me, I would be more than happy to -- for a small fee -- completely rewrite this book so that it's in English that doesn't screech in my ears like an old warped copy of Metal Machine Music. Ok? Call me. Because this book is a piece of crap. Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz, who I believe in my heart of hearts to be intelligent and literate people, wrote in their introduction to this thing that Vera Ramone is now a writer. You know something? I just lost some respect for Weymouth and Frantz, even though I'm sure they're just trying to be polite. This is a book that uses every cliche it can as many times as it can. Phil Spector is referred to as "the legendary Phil Spector" twice in one page, nearly in one paragraph, as I recall. Vera Ramone may be a lovely woman, but she is no writer.

Deborah Spungen had the wits to hire a ghostwriter who turned her story into something that was painful to read but not because the language was so mangled. Vera Ramone must have written this thing on her own, because otherwise there's no excuse. What I don't understand is why her editor at Phoenix let her down so badly. This embarrassment of a book shouldn't have seen the light of day, at least not in its current form. Vera Ramone uses the same stupid, hackneyed phrases over and over again. She's constantly telling us what a giving, loving, affectionate genius Dee Dee was. What a guy. He was a peach, when he wasn't ODing on something or beating the crap out of someone. If this book had been handled by Judith Regan, back when Judith Regan was handling this kind of thing, this would have been a trashily fun little book about the Ramones. As it is, it's just horrible, and I don't even know if trying to be charitable and looking at it in a campy way is going to save it.

I'm sorry to say this, but this is one case where I'm really glad I read a library copy and didn't spend actual money on a book. Good lord.