Customer Reviews

Boulevard

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I am a big fan of Jim Grimsley's work but was disappointed with his latest novel which reads juvenilely and works more effectively as a character study than an actual novel. I kept thinking as I read this novel that Mr. Grimsley was writing a screenplay or a script for the theatrical stage. What I do like in this work was the liberation of the central character Newell, who comes to New Orleans seeking a life he can only dream about, hence escaping the small town life of Pastel, Alabama. In some respects Newell's life mirrors my own experience when I moved to Chicago. Newell's sexual odyssey is what drives the novel, and the other notable characters as Ms. Sophia (A mentally deranged transvestite who works in the adult bookstore with Newell) Mac (the greasy, loud, bossy manager of the adult bookstore) and Mark (Newell's on-then-off again druggey boyfriend) fill in as bit players developed well enough to the point of passing interest for the reader. The ending of the novel seems a bit rushed and not well thought out as Newell decided to return to small town life, defeated by all the sexual imagery and freedom that surrounded him on a daily basis. There is no build for Newell's decision and hence, no empathy for me as a reader. I can only hope that Mr. Gimsley next literary effort will be as rich as the one I experienced with "Dream Boy" and "Comfort and Joy."

Being a huge fan of Dream Boy, I was very excited to hear that Jim Grimsley had written a book about my hometown of New Orleans. However, I was disappointed overall and did not think it was as good as his earlier work.

The story starts out strong in portraying Newell as the naive country boy exploring a new city. The description of locations in New Orleans is dead-on, detailing the Bourbon Pub, Cafe Lafitte, Cafe du Monde, Clover Grille, etc. You can really get into his struggles in trying to hold down a job and get settled. You're hooked by the time he finds the job in the adult store.

Then, seemingly out of nowhere, the book goes off on this loooong tangent about Miss Sophie, the transgendered janitor of the store where Newell works. Who cares!? Page after page, nothing happens but her getting drunk and wandering the streets aimlessly.

I started to think that I was just reading a collection of short stories: first Newell, then Miss Sophie. By the time the story did come back to Newell, I had lost interest. He turned into a queeny whore who had taken a liking to wear dog collars at work and hooking up with drug addicts.

The story ends with a whimper in a tasteless scenario for Newell. It's like Mr. Grimsley had run out of adventures for Newell to go on so he wraps it up fast.

Hopefully his next novel, like Dream Boy, will be more focused...

While the book starts off fairly promising, it becomes hard to follow with later chapters taking the points of view of other characters that aren't nearly as interesting as Newell. I find myself not remembering many parts of the book shortly after reading it - including the ending.

Grimsley's writing makes this story more interesting than it would be in the hands of someone less adept -- he successfully creates this N'Orleans atmosphere, specifically having to do with a handful of gay hangouts that our main character Newell will discover. There's a hammy characterization of many of the characters -- we can practically feel the venality of Mac, the manager of the bookstore where Newell works. Occasionally the language is affected ("they couldn't be called private at all"), but I think that for the most part it's necessary for giving the novel the druggy mood it has -- the feeling of being on acid, or coming off a hangover, or in the midst of sexual ecstasy. It's a cast of eccentrics, and the affectation works in helping create their familiar mannerisms.

It's not a bad effort (though someone had written "what a dull book" on one of the last pages in my copy), but it doesn't have much momentum, that sense of urgency that "Dream Boy" has. It's a story that exists in a world (which I think is very well-created -- the bookstore is a character in itself, with characters twirling out of it), except what happens in that world isn't terribly compelling. There is a continued interest in the notion of escaping oneself, whether through literal or metaphysical means, and it's a nice play on the boy-moves-to-city theme, but it doesn't transcend it into something truly special -- it exists as something pleasantly strange.

Having read all of Jim Grimsley's previous novels, I opened "Boulevard" with sweet anticipation. Unfortunately, I was somewhat disappointed.

While Grimsley has perfected his character development in previous books, and has that whole southern storyteller thing down, I found "Boulevard" to be confusing and meandering. While the initial 100 pages are Grimsley at his best (drawing a deep and complex character in Newell), the introduction of the subsequent characters was distracting. By the time I got to page 200, I no longer cared what happened to Newell, or his innocence...or especially his newfound and somewhat sociopathic boyfriend.

I would recommend any of Grimsley's previous works before touting this one.

Those unfamiliar with Jim Grimsley's work will find "Boulevard" an imaginative and sometimes surreal coming-of-age tale set in New Orleans of the late 1970's. But those who have read his previous novels, including "Winter Birds" and the award-winning "Dream Boy," will be disappointed. The characters in those novels had an intensity that radiated from deep-seated anxieties. There is no such angst or self-consciousness with the present books characters, who are largely callow and uninspired automatons in an aimless plot.

Newell, Boulevard's main character, leaves his provincial existence in rural Alabama for America's most decadent city, save the larcenous leviathan of Washington, DC. The naïve country youth that yearns for an identity in a manic, unforgiving urban climate is a longstanding and well-worn literary tradition. Newell, whose main asset is his appearance, has no larger ambition other than to hold a job, make next month's rent, and engage in carnal pleasures.

Instead of making his protagonist as more enticing, complex figure, Grimsley gets sidetracked by his own creative gymnastic pretensions: a historical second-hand account of a slaveholder's homicidal cruelty, and detailing the thoughts of a transvestite cleaning lady who is run ragged by alcohol, loneliness and dotage. What reader really needs to be reminded that New Orleans is a city with history, or that society includes people other than young, vain twenty-something waifs?

Jim Grimsley is talented enough to make a mundane trip to the corner market seem more than ordinary. And he proves that here. One can only hope that his next volume will recapture the spark of individual passion lacking in "Boulevard" and its inhabitants.

It's an old story: Näif from the country comes to the big wicked city and is simultaneously absorbed and victimized by his new-found `friends'. Grimsley's protagonist, Newell, comes to New Orleans in 1976 from Pastel, Alabama with little money and fewer clues. Unconsciously channeling Blanche Dubois, he finds a few kind strangers to rely on and he's on his way to becoming the freshest streetmeat in the Quarter. Grimsley certainly captures the eternal ambience of New Orleans and the cruisey unfettered abandon of the pre-plague era.

Sounds good so far. Alas, the ambience and the oh-so-typical characters start chewing up the scenery. Newell's story is overwhelmed by irrelevant, if well-drawn, detours into the lives of the bit players. We get far deeper into the head of a quasi-transsexual that Newell barely knows than we ever get into Newell himself. Newell has his first boyfriend and then the relationship withers, without much insight why until very late in the book. Despite the blurbs to the contrary, there is nothing about the leather scene of mid-70s New Orleans in this book. One psychopath doesn't make a culture.
This book started out with all the right ingredients; Grimsley's true-life experience in New Orleans and a John Kennedy Toole-ish ear for dialog. Sadly, it loses its way, meandering through the heads of everyone but the central character. Finishing the book, the reader will be as clueless and lost as poor Newell.

Since the early 1970s, hundreds (perhaps thousands) of novels have been written with the same basic plot: a young and naive man, graced with wide-eyed innocence and (always) extremely good looks, arrives in a big city from a small town, realizes his gay sexual awakening, and spirals downward into an underground filled with debauchery, danger, and bad music. This territory has been mined so often (and continues to dominate the debut efforts of many up-and-coming novelists) that established writers dare to trespass in this realm only if they could deliver something unique. Unfortunately, "Boulevard" is anything but.

Grimsley is a confident writer whose prose is unadorned and meticulous, but his writing can't save the hackneyed plot. The novel's central character, Newell, leaves small-town Alabama, and the novel's first page (correction: the first sentence!) describes him getting off the bus in New Orleans in 1976. This B-novel cliche is followed by 120 pages of formula--first time going to a gay bar, first sniff of amyl nitrate, first joint, first visit to a pornographic bookstore (where Newell ultimately lands a job), first sexual encounter, etc.

In addition, there are flaccid descriptions of famous French Quarter landmarks that could have been lifted from Fodor's. The prose here is so detached, so cynical, so clinical that it conveys no emotional impact: at one point, Newell reflects on his first night of drinking and dancing as a "nice evening" of "pleasant places"--an impression that the previous twenty pages absolutely does not convey. It's hard to say if Grimsley means to suggest that Newell is a vapid reporter of his so-called life or if he means to condemn the excesses of gay life in New Orleans.

After this first chapter, "Boulevard" takes a sharp turn and hints at what this novel could have been. Grimsley shifts the story's style and point of view: first to Miss Sophia, an older, schizophrenic transsexual who works with Newell in the bookstore, then to Mark, Newell's drug-addled boyfriend, and a final chapter (as well as a coda of sorts) that, with whiplash rapidity, switches perspectives among the several characters introduced throughout the book. Interspersed is a journal written by a nineteenth-century neighbor of a notorious woman who imprisoned and tortured her slaves.

As others have noted, the chapter about Miss Sophia seems entirely out of place in this novel, but I thought it daring and believable; on its own, it would have made a great short story or the kernel of another novel altogether. As a whole, however, these last three chapters don't attempt to make the characters more believable (they certainly don't illuminate the reasons for Newell's sudden downfall and his equally sudden epiphany at the end of the book), and they tantalize the reader with the silhouette of an entirely different--and possibly better--novel.

Jim Grimsley writes well - WINTERBIRDS, COMFORT AND JOY, DREAMBOY all attest to that. His way with language is sure, his insights into the minds of his variously troubled characters is on target. For this reader BOULEVARD does not slip into his usual category of novel development. This novel is more four novellas loosely joined. Yes, he once again has been able to conjure up a credible, likeable main character in Newell - the too often portrayed kid from the country who enters the city of evil and is consumed by it. As long as that narrative stays on course this novel reads well, if tired. It is the suppporting cast that begs question as to relevance. Instead of being additive to the narrative each of the other characters tends to a story within a story. Interesting people, yes, but tangential instead of integral.

But all novelists are allowed an aside now and then, a different turn similar to an olio act on the old stage, placed as comic relief for serious dramas. Grimsley does capture a seedy stench of the endless day/night called New Orleans. He understands the South and furthers the Tennessee Williams flavours. We all await his next novel, as surely this outing is just a out-of-town tryout for what he really is capable of writing.

I have wanted to read this one for a long time as I had read some of Mr. Grimsley's previous efforts and enjoyed them. In the end I am glad that I borrowed this one from a friend and didn't purchase it as it was far from a great read. The first two rather lengthy chapters started out with lots of promise. Our main character, Newell, leaves Pastel, Alabama and heads for New Orleans (one of my favorite cities and described to the T by the author). Once there, he rents a room and gets a job as a busboy at a local restaurant. He winds up leaving the restaurant and getting a job at an adult bookstore. It is through his job at this establishment that he meets several other characters, men who come in the store to look at the magazines and drop their quarters in the video machines that show m/m porn 24-7. By the end of the second chapter the story gets really good and then in the third chapter and beyond Mr. Grimsley loses focus and the story pretty much falls apart. This is sad as I was really enjoying it! Newell is a well-developed character that we lose touch with for the balance of the story. There are other characters that are given more of a focus, but you don't get to know them very well. Towards the end Newell returns and we come to find out that he has a penchant for getting slapped around...you ask yourself...from where did that come? Anyway, not a total loss, but do as I did...either check it out of the library or borrow it from a friend.