Meet Me in the Bathroom: Rebirth and Rock and Roll in New York City 2001-2011 - Lizzy Goodman (2017)

Meet Me in the Bathroom is an oral history of the NYC rock scene in the early 2000's.  It is about the Strokes, Interpol, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and DFA Records/The Rapture/LCD Soundsystem.  To a lesser extent, it is about the White Stripes, Kings of Leon, TV on the Radio, Vampire Weekend, Fischerspooner, Franz Ferdinand, the Killers, Ryan Adams, the National, Conor Oberst, the Vines and the Moldy Peaches.  And there are even more incidental references to other bands of the era.  It starts off with Jonathan Fire*Eater, as a precursor to the Strokes.  I had never heard of them before and I thought the Walkmen (which 1/2 of the band eventually became) were a bigger deal.

Jonathan Fire*Eater is positioned in the kind of Velvet Underground role in Please Kill Me, the first band to get mentioned out of the gate, the primary influence from which the scene sprouts.  Everybody that listened to the Velvet Underground started their own band.  Admittedly, it is a tall task to match up to VU, but JF*E do not directly influence the sound of many of the bands that are later written about, in quite the same way.  Regardless, it is an interesting way to the start the book, because it is really more about the scene in the late 1990's.  It goes right into the Strokes from there and never lets go.  This is really the Strokes book, at least in terms of myth-making and cementing their status as icons.

I am really conflicted about this but I cannot quite put it on the Best Books list.  It is really, really good, but it would basically equate it to Please Kill Me and Lexicon Devil.  And obviously, Please Kill Me is a classic, and Lexicon Devil was just a blistering experience for me.  This book was extremely entertaining though and I loved it.  I was sad when it was over, and that to me is one of the signs of a great book.  Whatever, I change my mind.  It belongs on the list with that qualification.

It is perhaps worth noting that I went to NYU in 2001 and so was the target at which so much of the buzz of these bands was aimed.  My friend Danielle burnt me a copy of Is This It.  Interpol was a band of NYU graduates (Paul Banks met Daniel Kessler at NYU in Paris, where I would be 4-5 years later).  Also in Paris, I went to see the Rapture at some festival type thing at a club in the Bois de Bologne.  We would sometimes go out dancing at Favela Chic and I remember my friend Tommy talking about them.  One night the DJ played "House of Jealous Lovers" and he was like, that's them!  It was pretty awesome, so we went to the show, and afterwards we saw the band and walked up to them with our third friend, Sarah.  We were like, "We're from New York too!"  And they were like, "Um, cool."  They weren't very interested in talking to us, so I always had kind of a weird feeling about them after, but I still got Echoes.

A fair number of the bands featured in here played $5 NYU shows, and I went to almost all of them.  I also miraculously got a press pass to the CMJ Music Marathon in the Fall of 2002, and saw many there as well.  I was there as the scene shifted from Manhattan to Brooklyn.  I read Our Band Could Be Your Life and gave it to my friends.  I  recruited about twenty of them to join a potential band, with which we had two very tentative practices.  I took guitar lessons and wanted to learn the drums.  Finally I convinced my friends to let me manage their band, and got them their first gig.  Even though I had no musical talent and could not (and still cannot) play any instruments, I wanted to be around people that did, and I wanted to get involved any way I could.  My point is, it wasn't just the Strokes, but the whole scene, that made people want to start their own bands.  That kind of situation lends itself well to an oral history.

The atmosphere of New York circa 9/11 also influenced us all.  One of the things about this book that elevates it into Best Books territory is chapter 30.  I would say that it is the finest piece of writing I have read, to date, on the subject of 9/11.  Nothing else had ever so perfectly encapsulated my experience:

Andrew VanWyngarden [MGMT]: "I was a week into my freshman year at college and that's such an impressionable stage.  I was a virgin and I was meeting all these new people and was just bright eyed and wow.  Then September 11 came and I got so deeply freaked out, paranoid, and just knocked off of my foundation of what reality was that it just totally fucked me up." (203)

There are also a ton of journalists that supply the oral history.  The book is dedicated to Marc Spitz, a voluble presence, who recently passed away.  Marc Maron is also a contributor and I have been listening to the WTF podcast a lot recently.  One of them was with Ryan Adams and my friend actually asked me to go to a Ryan Adams concert in Milwaukee right around when he dissed the Strokes on Twitter.  So this is really still topical.  Apparently Marc Maron is also putting out a book in October that follows a similar format to this, so I'll probably check that out.  Perhaps he was influenced by his experience participating in this, and realized that it is a pretty interesting way to construct a book.

David Cross also hangs out with the Strokes and there are a couple embarrassing stories that I won't recite here.  But the stuff about Ryan Adams is too funny to pass up:

Ryan Adams: "One night I was hanging with the Strokes guys and Ryan[Gentles].  We were really stoned because we were basically always smoking pot.  It was very late.  Fab would always play me a song that he had written, some beautiful romantic song.  So one night, jokingly, I'm also certain Fabby said, 'Dude, what if John Mayer was playing that guitar right now?'  And I said, 'I can make that happen.'  And they all said, 'You're full of shit.'  I said, 'Give me three fucking beers'--because there were only so many beers left at that late hour--'and I'll make it happen.  I'm a goddamn genie in a bottle.'  And we died laughing.  Now, I lived down the block from John Mayer and he'd been talking to me about his new song for a while.  So I texted him, because he was always up late back then.  I said, 'Come to this apartment.  Bring an acoustic guitar.  I really want to hear your new song.'  I didn't tell them that I'd done it.  So everyone is sitting there and I was like, 'Let's all take bong hits.'  I really wanted it to get crazy.  We smoked some bong hits; I probably did some blow.  I started to drink my three beers.  The doorbell buzzer rings and I open the door and John Mayer walks in with his fucking acoustic guitar and they were all slack jawed.  John sat down and played the fucking acoustic guitar--three or four songs that probably have gone on to be huge--while those guys just sat there staring at me like ,'Oh my god, you're a witch.'  The next day John was like, 'Hey man, next time maybe less cigarette smoke?  That really hurt my throat.'  That apartment was like an airport smoking lounge." (379)

In short, I could understand why Ryan Adams might not like the way he comes off in this story, but I finished the book more interested in him.  He's basically one of the greatest characters in the story.  He comes up in his own way, as he arguably peaked in his popularity with the video for "New York, New York," which was released at almost the exact same time as Is This It, basically on 9/11, or maybe a week or two later.  But he mostly comes up as a friend to, and a potential "bad influence" on, the Strokes.  Most others are candid about their drug use, and also use the excuse that 9/11 bestowed upon the city a kind of desperate party-because-we're-going-to-die atmosphere.  One reads a book like Meet Me in the Bathroom because it has the kind of gossip that you don't usually read about except in really unguarded stories in Spin or Rolling Stone or on Pitchfork.  It is also good for correcting inaccuracies that are awkward to kind of mention out of the blue, but fit perfectly with the subject matter.  One of the most striking is about the LCD Soundsystem song "Someone Great."  Now, many people really love this song, and I think most consider it the second best song off Sound of Silver after "All My Friends."  It also supplies a sizable piece of "45:33" (which I actually bought).  Everybody says that this song is about mourning a lost lover.  But I found the truth even more touching:

Tyler Brodie: "Do you know about the therapist?  I never met him, I don't even know his name, but I do know LCD's "Someone Great" was later written about him."

Tim Goldsworthy: "That's not about a love affair.  That was written the day that James's therapist died." (265)

James Murphy apparently did therapy three times a week.  The book also touches on "Beat Connection," which gave me occasion to play it just now, and I have to say it is a really great song.  I think Murphy sounds more like Mark E. Smith on it than on "Losing My Edge," though he is more on rant mode in that song.

The book is just filled with interesting stories and I think it would appeal to a general audience even if the reader doesn't know very much about the bands themselves.  There are also little tidbits about the realities of life as a musician that is yet to "make it" that are particularly amusing.  Take, for example, this nugget of truth that I appreciated as the purveyor of MEP:

Chris Taylor: "When I first moved to Brooklyn, Chris Bear, who plays drums in our band, moved into the same loft as me; we built it together.  We were in this band, and at that age when you really have the energy and ambition to do all of this.  There's just things that you don't care about that allow you to be free and experimental and take big risks and live in a dirty place and you don't give a shit.  Rent was really cheap, $600 a month.  Chris and I were vegetarians because it was cheaper--we cooked rice and beans so many nights.  We priced it out.  We knew the cost of the beans and the cost of the rice and we bought the onions and we're like, 'Okay, cool, this whole food element of life is under five bucks.'  We can buy a Yuengling, which was like a dollar fifty, which was definitely a choice beer at that time, and that was enough.  You find a cheap bike, so you don't even have to take the subway.  That and some money for weed, that was your budget.  That was all you needed."

Dave Sitek: "It was so cheap that you could afford to take risks and fail.  If you failed at what you were doing it didn't matter because you were in Williamsburg.  If you failed in Manhattan, it was different."

Eleanor Friedberger: I rode my bike everywhere.  I got all of these amazing jobs that were so easy and stupid.  I would work these office jobs, then go out every night, and I could afford to pay my rent" (310-311)

Speaking of Eleanor Friedberger, she really only has one revealing story, which involves the period when she was dating Alex Kapranos of Franz Ferdinand.  I don't know if there will be a "deluxe edition" of Meet Me in the Bathroom that comes out in 20 years (the way Please Kill Me was later supplemented), but I would read it if there were chapters on the Fiery Furnaces, and other bands like Liars and !!!.  That is one of the primary criticisms I have of the book.  It could have been even bigger and better.  Actually there is a brief mention of the Fiery Furnaces record deal.  And this classic bomb she casually drops:

Eleanor Friedberger: "It only seemed weird that bands like the Strokes and Interpol were around at the same time as us when they started doing so well and I thought they were so bad.  I just didn't give a shit about that stuff." (315)

Oh snap, Eleanor lays it down!  Of course no one is obligated to like everything, but she is pretty much the only one in the book that says she didn't like those bands.  It would be nice if Julian Casablancas tweeted, "Sad @eleanorfriedberger, I love your music :(," and if she replied, "Okay I guess Room on Fire is pretty okay :)."  But I doubt that will happen. 

Vampire Weekend signals the beginning of the end of the book.  There is a special place in my heart for them, as the subject of one of the earliest posts on Flying Houses.  I think that review is a little bit harsh, and I partially disavow it.  And actually I think they have gotten better with each album and believe that they delivered on their early promise.  Nevertheless, I am not the only one who cannot resist poking fun:

Laura Young: "I was there [at the Strokes' Madison Square Garden show in 2011].  I had seats but I traded with somebody so I could be in the pit.  I thought, 'I know I'm a little bit too old for this but I'm going anyway.'  I remember seeing these kids that were fifteen years old.  I was either talking to them or overhearing them and they were saying, 'This is the first time I'm seeing the Strokes.  I listened to them all through elementary school and middle school.'  It was so cool to see them there and so excited.  I don't know, maybe somewhere, somehow, years from now Vampire Weekend will do some kind of reunion show, but I can't imagine young kids being there saying, 'I love Vampire Weekend so much.  I'm so excited about them.  I've been listening to them since elementary school.'  And if they are, they should be punched in the face." (589-590)

The story of their band is one of the most boring in the book, primarily because they all seem to have their lives together.  The reason why I think I hated them so much before is because everything just seemed sort of effortless and easy for them.  I doubt that was true, and the story of how Ezra Koenig lived with Dave Longstreth of the Dirty Projectors and all these other people in this quasi-bohemian house-studio is pretty interesting.

I haven't really talked about Interpol and they are a major part of the book as well.  Paul Banks is quite entertaining in almost everything he says.  Even though he sounds like he's really serious and kind of weird from his lyrics and singing, he is extremely self-effacing and claims to have no talent.

Paul Banks: "...'Like now to college kids, we're old people?!  How the fuck did that happen?'  I don't feel like I look that different but apparently I'm an old guy now.  You know, I'm the guy trying to pick up eighteen-year-olds.  'Hey, kids, want some reefer?'  Just kidding." (575)

The gaping hole in this book is Carlos D.  He is often talked about--many myths are made about him--so his absence as a contributor feels all the more striking.  He maintains an air of mystery.

In almost every other dimension, however, Meet Me in the Bathroom feels very complete and authoritative.  On third thought I don't think I'm going to add it to the Best Books list--but it was definitely the best book I read in the past year.  I'm not sure I'll read it again, but I think everyone should at least read it once.

Please Kill Me: the Uncensored Oral History of Punk - Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain (1997)

I first read Please Kill Me about 9 or 10 years ago, right after I graduated college.  I decided to read it again when I finished my last couple books quickly and the newest one hadn't arrived at the library yet.  I am very glad I did this, and it seems really cliche at this point and non-prestigious, but I must anoint this yet another one of the Best Books reviewed on Flying Houses.  This book is not perfect--it's maybe 50-100 pages too long, but once you start to get wrapped up in the characters, you would probably go on another 200.  I mean, this book never got boring to me.  There were some parts that just aren't as well told as others, but there is so much detail and vulnerability in these pages that no reader can encounter this text without becoming unmoved.  Not everybody is into punk rock music, but everybody should read this book.  Most people like some kind of music, and this book hits on most genres anyways.

There are a lot of similarities to Lexicon Devil (also on the Best Books list), and perhaps one could accuse me of being a sucker for the oral history genre.  I mean, I also really liked Rant.  But it's more than the format, or the concept of a book devoid of exposition, operating purely on dialogue.  The genre just tends to elevate storytelling to a higher level, accentuating unique details from shared memories and sensory impressions.  More obviously, none of these books are PC.  They describe experiences that never should have been allowed to happen.  Please Kill Me positively revels in this material.

Still, it's not an endorsement of a dissolute lifestyle, and focuses a little bit more on the music than Lexicon Devil.  Now this may be because the Germs were a terrible band who seemed to actively avoid improving their chops.  But the other book this calls to mind is Our Band Could Be Your Life.  Where Please Kill Me leaves off (late 70's/early 80's), Our Band Could Be Your Life pretty much picks up.  The format is different, but the attitude is similar.  OBCBYL feels a little bit more academic, and is probably not as engaging a read because once you finish the story of each band, you're done.  I think ultimately what makes Please Kill Me so special is the power of its story.

The story starts in 1965 with Lou Reed and ends in 1992 with the death of Jerry Nolan.  The interviews that comprise this "oral history" seem to have started in the late 70's with Punk magazine and wrapped up with more comprehensive, authoritative, and "sober" interviews in 1994 and 1995.

Before moving on, I want to note that this book is ripe for a re-issue, with new material.  The final section of the book (the epilogue) is titled "Nevermind: 1980-1992."  Now, when this book was published in 1997, one of the most fucked up periods of popular music was ascendant, and few would anticipate the backlash to that era, or the revival of the so-called "CBGB scene."  Almost all of the artists in Please Kill Me made "comebacks" (to varying levels of success), and many others have died.  To recognize such occurrences, I would include a "post-epilogue" and title it "Cashing In: 2003-2015."  Apparently, a 20th anniversary edition will be released next year, so my predictions are not far off.

The book starts off on an impossibly high note with its material on the Velvet Underground.  Straight out of the gates, it is immediately apparent that nobody is trying to maintain a squeaky-clean PR image.  Lou Reed is basically at the center of the depravity.  There are PLENTY of juicy excerpts that I could include here, but I will leave them to be sought out by discerning readers.  Instead, I will try to focus on the historical import of the artists described.

Now, most people will say punk rock started with the Ramones.  Some say the Stooges.  Others say the Sex Pistols.  The authors contend that they invented the term themselves.  Sometimes I say that the Beatles' "Helter Skelter" is the real beginning of punk rock.  But truly, honestly, the Velvet Underground embodied everything that came to define the genre (except the faster tempos):

"Lou Reed: Andy Warhol told me that what we were doing with the music was the same thing he was doing with painting and movies and writing--i.e., not kidding around.  To my mind, nobody in music was doing anything that even approximated the real thing, with the exception of us.  We were doing a specific thing that was very, very real.  It wasn't slick or a lie in any conceivable way, which was the only way we could work with him.  Because the first thing I liked about Andy was that he was very real." (7)

Danny Fields makes his first appearance here, and describes how he convinced Lou Reed and John Cale to cut "the Exploding Plastic Inevitable" from their live show (which was a kind of S&M performance with lights and film projections) and to leave Andy Warhol for a better manager, to "make it" as a band.  Fields is practically a non-stop presence throughout the book and tells many of the best stories--though the reader tends to wonder if some of these stories are more "legend" than "fact."  Actually, there are several points in the book where the speaker (or interviewee) draws a distinction between the story everyone hears and the reality that happened.  One of them is the famed meeting of Jim Morrison with Nico and Andy Warhol, indelibly portrayed by Crispin Glover in The Doors:

"Danny Fields: I've never had any respect for Oliver Stone, but after seeing his version of the Morrison/Nico meeting in the Doors movie--'Hello, I am Nico, would you like to go to bed with me?'--the reality of it couldn't have been more different.
What really happened was that I met Morrison at the Elektra office in Los Angeles and he followed me back to the Castle in his rented car.  Morrison walked into the kitchen and Nico was there and they stood and circled each other.
Then they stared at the floor and didn't say a word to each other.  They were both too poetic to say anything.  It was a very boring, poetic, silent thing that was going on between them.  They formed a mystical bond immediately--I think Morrison pulled Nico's hair and then he proceeded to get extremely drunk and I fed him whatever was left of my drugs that Edie Sedgwick hadn't stolen." (29)

Right after this early section about the Velvet Underground with passing references to the Doors, the Stooges are introduced.  Now, the Stooges are one of the major elements of this book, and almost all of the anecdotes about them are mind-boggling.  I particularly appreciate the story of Iggy Pop's first experience with weed:

"Iggy Pop:...I realized that these guys were way over my head, and that what they were doing was so natural to them that it was ridiculous for me to make a studious copy of it, which is what most white blues bands did.
Then one night, I smoked a joint.  I'd always wanted to take drugs, but I'd never been able to because the only drug I knew about was marijuana and I was a really bad asthmatic.  Before that, I wasn't interested in drugs, or getting drunk, either.  I just wanted to play and get something going, that was all I cared about.  But this girl, Vivian, who had given me the ride to Chicago, left me with a little grass.
So one night I went down by the sewage treatment plant by the Loop, where the river is entirely industrialized.  It's all concrete banks and effluvia by the Marina Towers.  So I smoked this joint and then it hit me.
I thought, What you gotta do is play your own simple blues.  I could describe my experience based on the way those guys are describing theirs...
So that's what I did.  I appropriated a lot of their vocal forms, and also their turns of phrase--either heard or misheard or twisted from blues songs.  So 'I Wanna Be Your Dog' is probably my mishearing of 'Baby Please Don't Go.'" (38-39)

The MC5 are also introduced around this section.  Together, these two bands (along with the Dead Boys, who come along towards the end) comprise the entirety of bands based outside of New York City.  While this is a book about the origins of punk rock, it is also a vivid portrait of NYC in the 70's.  The material on MC5, I can take or leave.  I've tried listening to them, and just can't really get into it.  The music just sounds more dated to me, for some reason.

The New York Dolls come next.  Now, I actually saw the Stooges and the New York Dolls for the first time on the same day, at Little Steven's Underground Garage Festival on Randall's Island in August of 2003 (maybe '04, I can't remember).  Syl Sylvain had just died, and the New York Dolls were the third to last band.  They seemed a bit like a nostalgia act, but David Johansen was energetic and enthused and the crowd loved them.  The Strokes then played next, a very efficient, no-frills, solid set.  The Stooges closed, and to date remains one of the best performances I have seen.  Mike Watt was on bass, but both Asheton brothers were in, and Iggy (then in his mid-50's) seemed as potent as ever.

Really I'm skipping around though.  There's a section before the New York Dolls that introduces Patti Smith.  The material on Patti Smith in this book is essential.  It might as well be Patti Smith's book.  After I finished it again, I watched a performance from the Primavera Sound Festival in May 2015, and while I was slightly let down when I saw her at Lollapalooza in 2005, she seemed like she has tapped into a more powerful energy of late.  Her rendition of Lou Reed's "Perfect Day" (despite screwing up the words) is an emotionally devastating experience that should make you cry in the most beautiful way.

There are several "hearts" of this book, and Patti Smith is one of them (Iggy is another).  The success of her memoir Just Kids has fueled a late-career renaissance, and I hope to read and review that book in the near future on this site.

Jim Carroll, another one of the several characters in this story that recently passed away, is introduced near this point.  So is David Bowie:

"Cyrinda Foxe: David Bowie and his wife Angela had a very open marriage.  They were sleeping with anybody they felt like sleeping with.  David and Angela and I had a menage a trois for about five minutes, but then I made her leave because David and I were gonna play.  Angela was fucking David's black bodyguard, and David and I used to get down on all fours and peek in their keyhole and watch them fuck.  I was sort of like a new toy for David on the Ziggy Stardust tour.  But while we were in San Francisco, David asked me, 'Are you in love with me?'
I said, 'No.'  I wasn't about to say, 'Yes!' I was still tripping around.  I had no flies on me then.  No salt on my tail.  I didn't want to get tied down.  Besides, Tony DeFries wanted everybody to be this Bowie thing.  I didn't want to cut my hair like that.  So I wasn't impressed with them.  I mean, okay, I get to go on a plane and go somewhere, but that's all I thought it was.  So when David Bowie asked if I was in love with him, and I told him no, he left me there." (134)

Soon after, Patti Smith and Television take center stage.  At this point, Richard Hell was still in the band, and perhaps because of his "literary" background tells some of the best stories.  This one explains the book's title:

"Richard Lloyd: Richard Hell had designed a T-shirt for himself that said Please Kill Me, but he wouldn't wear it.  I was like, 'I'll wear it.'  So I wore it when we played upstairs at Max's Kansas City, and afterwards these kids came up to me.  These fans gave me this really psychotic look--they looked as deep into my eyes as they possibly could--and said, 'Are you serious?'
Then they said, 'If that's what you want, we'll be glad to oblige because we're such big fans!' They were just looking at me, with that wild-eyed look, and I thought, I'm not wearing this shirt again." (173)

The Ramones come into the picture, and are introduced by their infamous song about street hustling, "53rd and 3rd," with background history supplied by Jim Carroll.  There is also an interesting story about the song "Chinese Rocks," which sheds light on one of the lines to the song ("Is Dee Dee home?"):

"Richard Hell: Dee Dee called me one day and said, 'I wrote a song that the Ramones won't do.'  He said, 'It's not finished.  How about I come over and show it to you and we can finish it if you like it?'  So I believe he brought an acoustic guitar over.  And I had my bass.  Basically the song was done, but he just didn't have another verse.  I wrote two lines.  That's all.  It was basically Dee Dee's song, though I think the lyrics, the verses I wrote, were good.
Dee Dee Ramone: The reason I wrote that song was out of spite for Richard Hell, because he told me he was gonna write a song better than Lou Reed's 'Heroin,' so I went home and wrote 'Chinese Rocks.'
I wrote it by myself, in Debbie Harry's apartment on First Avenue and First Street.  Then Richard Hell put that line in it, so I gave him some credit." (213-214)

After this, the story jumps over to England briefly and covers the Sex Pistols.  There is one story that made me smile (anybody that has run with a crew of "punks" should be able to relate):

"Bob Gruen:...I didn't see Johnny with a girl until the last night.  He left the last show with some girl who was backstage.  It was kind of a surprise, because from the first minute I met him, Johnny didn't seem to ever like anything.
He just seemed to be in a really bad mood from day one.  You know, everything sucked.  He was so cynical and sarcastic about everything that he would always point out the derogatory aspect of everything.  That's why I was so surprised when I saw him leave the Winterland gig with a girl on his arm and half a smile on his face.  It was the most human thing I ever saw, because it was something so out of character to see him enjoy a moment of life." (331)

The book ends with a few interesting stories: Phil Spector's production of the Ramones album End of the Century, the deaths of Sid & Nancy, Nico and Johnny Thunders, and a lot of stuff about the Dead Boys...I could quote more (obviously the Phil Spector anecdotes are priceless)--but I've gone on long enough in this review and it's time to wrap it up.  I want to include one final quote that I found very punk, and certainly pertinent one month after the blockbuster SCOTUS decision:

"Legs McNeil: Gay liberation had really exploded.  Homosexual culture had really taken over--Donna Summer, disco, it was so boring.  Suddenly in New York, it was cool to be gay, but it just seemed to be about suburbanites who sucked cock and went to discos.  I mean, come on, 'Disco, Disco Duck?' I don't think so.
So we said, 'No, being gay doesn't make you cool.  Being cool makes you cool, whether you're gay or straight.'  People didn't like that too much.  So they called us homophobic.  And of course, being the obnoxious people we were, we said, 'Fuck you, you faggots.'
Mass movements are always so un-hip  That's what was great about punk.  It was an antimovement, because there was knowledge there from the very beginning that with mass appeal comes all those tedious folks who need to be told what to think.  Hip can never be a mass movement.  And culturally, the gay liberation movement and all the rest of the movements were the beginning of political correctness, which was just fascism to us.  Real fascism, more rules.
But as far as being homophobic, that was ludicrous, because everyone we hung out with was gay.  No one had a problem with that, you know, fine, fuck whoever you want.  I mean Arturo would regale me with these great sex stories.  I'd be going, 'Wow, what happened then?'
What was great about the scene was that people's curiosity seemed stronger than their fear.  The time was rife with genuine exploration, but not in a trendy mass-movement way.  And I was always fascinated by how anyone made it through the day, what they really did when the lights were out, to keep their sanity, or lose it." (275)

In short, if you read this book, not only will you understand me better, but you will also understand yourself better.  How you react to some of the more salacious stuff can act as a barometer of the types of art you appreciate.  I always prefer the real, the raw, and the honest truth: psychological realism.  It seems that most all of the artists on display in this "bible" think along similar lines, and I can only state that they have been powerful influences.

85A - Kyle Thomas Smith (2010)

I have mixed feelings about 85A.  On the one hand I want to recommend it because it is about as vivid a portrait of Chicago circa 1989 as you will find in a book.  It's also a pretty good coming-of-age story and a decent primer on how to live a "punk rock lifestyle."  On the other hand I can't quite call it an undiscovered masterpiece because...I don't know...it just seems to be missing something.

My friend gave me 85A sometime in November of last year.  He had gotten it from Center on Halsted, which is a non-profit organization that has a community space in Lakeview.  They were doing a weekly reading series called "Read All about It" in one of the youth groups and he was offered a copy.

COH provides crisis management services for LGBTQ individuals and have a number of youth support groups.  It is not surprising that my friend got this book from there, because it seems like the sort of place at which the main character of the novel, Seamus O'Grady, should have been a regular visitor.  Unfortunately it opened about 18 years too late.

The story takes place on January 23, 1989, and begins with Seamus waiting for the eponymous CTA bus to take him from his home in Jarvis Park to the El to his Catholic high school on the south side of the city.  I can't quite figure out the route--since apparently he takes the Blue Line (then known as the O'Hare-Congress line) and it doesn't seem to go near Ashland Ave. and Blue Island Ave., which is an intersection near his school.  But I am getting wrapped up in travel details.  I have to say I really liked the description of the escalator at the Logan Square stop because it is my home stop.

He lives in an upper middle class community and his parents are religious.  He does not seem to have any friends at his school.  He really only seems to have two friends: Tressa and Dr. Strykeroth.  The former is an artsy biracial girl who rescues him from a group of skinheads that jump him at the corner of Belmont and Clark near the "Punkin' Donuts" (this is one of my favorite moments in the novel because that Dunkin' Donuts is still there and it may be one of the famous fast food branches ever because of it); he also later loses his virginity with her.  The latter is his psychiatrist with whom he apparently has a sexual relationship.

This is a slight problem for me--not because it's sick or whatever, but because it's teased out like the reader isn't supposed to be clear on what's going on.  Like, does Seamus just go to visit him and cry on his shoulder and ask to be held?  Or are they having various kinds of sex?  Of course, a graphic description might be off-putting, but the scene with Tressa is pretty graphic, so I don't understand why Seamus doesn't blatantly tell the reader what is happening in that office.  In a sense, this makes the novel like Try by Dennis Cooper.  I say that the because the main character is gay but also has sex with a girl in it.  But obviously, Try is going for something quite different than 85A.  Still, it just seems tame by comparison.  If you're going to write about transgressive subject matter, I don't think you should beat around the bush, basically.

This book also reminds me of Crossing California.  Together, these books paint a wonderful portrait of Chicago in the 1980's.  I like this better than Crossing California because it's more compact, and less of an "award-winning novel" (i.e. like those movies that are made to win Oscars), but I like it less because it's not as intricately constructed--or at least doesn't appear to be.

Still, I read this book not long after beginning my recent stint at the CTA, and I found it very entertaining for its topicality.  I daresay this may be the ultimate "CTA Novel" though it is certainly not a history of the transit system.  Certainly there cannot be many other books named after bus routes.  Many, many people ride the CTA everyday.  I am sure that many of them would find this book to be at least of passing interest.  At the very least it would be the most ironic book ever to read while on the bus.

But I also take issue with an early scene:

"Finally!  The 85A's rounding Touhy Avenue.  Just when my thighs are freezer burnt and my balls have turned to dry ice.
Last time I asked the driver, 'What took you so fuckin' long?' he ordered me off the bus.  Refused to move til I got off.  Everyone's screaming at me.  He threatened to call the cops, so I got off.  Had to wait for the next bus.  Ended up thirty-five minutes late for school.  Got JUG.  Had to write out the St. Xavier Norms of Conduct twice and the tardiness policy three times.  It's the same asshole bus driver every morning.  So now, no matter how late he is, I have to just suck it up, flash my Student ID, deposit my token and fifteen cents and take my seat like a good little cunt." (11)

Maybe things are different today than they were in 1989, but if Seamus had reported the bus driver for ordering him off the bus, I believe that bus driver would be disciplined.  Bus drivers, like cops, are essentially public servants that are expected to put up with their share of bad behavior.  I read a case about a bus driver who was fired because she pushed an older man who had confronted her physically and had also been loudly directing racial comments at her.  She said she was wrongfully discharged but the arbitrator said you can never have a bus driver hit a passenger.  Now, Seamus is not getting hit, but that sort of behavior (stopping the bus and ordering him off) is unacceptable and I don't believe it's realistic.

Which is my main issue with this book.  My big criticism.  I just don't think it's realistic.  I'm sorry.  Some of it is absolutely wonderful and clearly drawn from true life.  But other details just seem too ridiculous to be taken seriously.  In particular, I do not believe that Seamus's father and brother would beat him as mercilessly as they do, and treat him with such cruelty.  It seems like everyone is a villain in Seamus's life and he has nobody on his side.

Now, I have to admit, I would be pretty mean to Seamus too, because he is kind of annoying.  He clearly is smart but he fails all of his classes anyways.  He doesn't want to have any kind of job but to write.  He has vague ideas about living in London and New York as a quasi-homeless artist who can get by on the kindness of others and he doesn't want to conform to any kind of "normal" life.  This is all well and good--I was like this too, and I am sometimes still like this.  But he does not have very many redeeming qualities apart from having a fair dose of artistic talent.  So that is another problem I have with the novel: cannot identify with the narrator.

Don't get me wrong.  I love the Sex Pistols and PiL.  I love Sid and Nancy.  I love all the musical references in this book.  But Seamus is just like Johnny Rotten in a way: a "fashion item."  He dresses and acts the part, but the book sort of highlights the vacuity of so-called "punk rockers."  Maybe this is just because Seamus doesn't hang out with a group of them, so you don't get the sense of the lifestyle like you might from reading Our Band Could Be Your Life or Lexicon Devil.  85A is basically a lot of posing done by Seamus.

Still, this book has a lot of heart, and would make a good movie.  It reads pretty nicely, though I think Seamus relies too heavily on the word "fuck."  The Wolf of Wall Street supposedly set a record with the number of f-bombs there are in it.  But that is a three-hour movie too.  This book might set a similar sort of record.  I understand he's a teenager but I couldn't help but feel the writing was sort of, I don't know, lazy because of it.

I don't understand the narrative "moment" either--I suppose it takes place at the final scene in the story.  But Seamus doesn't appear to be writing a memoir, or telling it to somebody.  I just don't get who the novel is addressing.  Clearly, the key referent for this book is The Catcher in the Rye.  This is basically the same novel, 50 years later, in Chicago instead of New York, and with a Catholic high school rather than a boarding school.  But Catcher is an adventure story of sorts--it's about 3 days in New York, and that's the plot.  My friend that gave me 85A said the problem with it is that it doesn't really have a plot.  At least until the end.

And the ending is great.  The last fifty pages are the best part of the book.  And the rest of the book isn't too bad, but it just feels random and sometimes (I hate to say this) cliched.  So I think I've adequately summed up my feelings at this point.  But a couple more passages:

"When I was a little kid, I used to go into a deep fuckin' freeze whenever I thought about death and being stuck in a casket some undertaker drops in the ground.  It scared the living shit out of me that buried dead might be the same as buried alive--and it'd be for-fuckin'-ever, just you and your lonely little corpse, stuck in one place under thick wood and mounds of immovable dirt, until the end of time, until the Second Coming--whenever that shit was supposed to happen.  Later, when I was about seven, I found out you could get cremated instead, so I went and told Mom I want to be cremated, have my ashes scattered to the four winds so I can at least get some elbow room when this trip is over.  She said Catholics can't.  Man, Catholics can't do shit, can they?  I think it's after she told me that that I first started checking apartment listings in the Sunday Trib, thinking I should move out.  Seven years after my cremation chat with Mom, I found myself right where I didn't want to be: flat on my fuckin' back in the afterlife, in a dark place, unable to move a muscle, probably for-fuckin'-ever." (37-38)

This is a nice example of Smith's ability to write very well, i.e. to explain a feeling that most of us have felt at one time or another and put it perfectly into words.

The other part of the novel I really like is Seamus's obsession with a boy named Colby that he met on the El.  There is a passage that was very similar to one part of my second novel S/M, and made me feel like a similar feeling was at work, i.e. writing about somebody and hoping they would one day read it and know they were the character and find you years later:

"It's been well over a year now.  Colby still hasn't called.  Not that I'm waiting by the phone anymore.  And I haven't seen him around since that night either, not even at the fuckin' Murphy's Law concert, where my eyes were peeled out of their fuckin' sockets for him.  And I've been back to the video room time and again and he never turned up.  He wasn't even at Medusa's when Ministry played.  Fuckin' everyone who's anyone was there!  Not him, though.  Who knows, maybe he moved.  God, I fuckin' hope not.  I so want to see him again.
I never told Tressa about the night I met Colby.  Never told her what happened with Narc.  Never told her about my attempts at a cockney accent and a new story.  But I did ask her if the name Colby rang a bell.  She said it didn't and asked me why I asked.  I said somebody told me some story about somebody on Belmont named Colby but I couldn't remember how it went.  I could tell she could tell I was lying.  I remembered the story.  Knew it fuckin' chapter and verse.  I was its author.  'Colby's coming with me to London': I nursed the story all last year.  I nurse it now, but not so much now that a year has gone by and the phone hasn't rung.  Yet my London Plans still stand if he ever wants to hear my pitch, if I ever see him on the L again, if we ever become friends.  I'll keep watching out for him at Irving Park station.  But I won't do a cockney accent next time.  That was just fuckin' stupid." (104-105)

In summary, 85A is a bumpy ride, but it is one that you may be glad you took.  This is a really good book for young adults, even though the language is very vulgar.  I know things are different in 2014 than they were in 1989, but there are still kids out there like Seamus who feel like nobody could ever understand them.  This book will show them that everything they're feeling is totally normal, and that they shouldn't give up hope that their lives will get better.  It's not a perfect book by any means, but it's a pretty good debut for Smith, and I would be interested to read his other books if and when they are published.