Customer Reviews

Futureproof: A Novel (P.S.)

5 star:		(28)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Blighted by a fractured family and a serious case of generalized hate, the directionless Gen-Xer, Luke, begins a seemingly inevitable descent into serious drug addiction against the background of the early 1990s ... "Futureproof" is a wild, unfocused mess of a novel that still manages to be compelling. It's far too long, structurally inept, filled with sketches instead of characters, too much preachy dialogue, gratuitous violence and dull sex - and yet there's an awesome energy here that just keeps pulling you in. That energy, I suspect, is the author's earnestness. His deep passion, his violent need to tell this tale, is palpable on every page. It's as though he's locked behind the wheel of the V8 T-Bird that is his burgeoning talent but he doesn't quite yet know how to drive: even when it's completely out of control, there's still something about the spectacle that makes you smile with appreciation. But a novel requires more than desire. There's a vast amount of coolheaded craftsmanship that goes into turning even the most amazing real or imagined experiences into a piece of literary art. Don't get me wrong. Daniels can write. There are flashes of the real thing here: the muzak-driven banality of Andie's abortion; Luke's sad motel liaison with Nadia; and the utterly perfect description of shooting up with heroin for the first time: "I am in love. I am alive and I am in love. I am home." (And he has the seed of a Pulitzer-winner in those "Andersonville" vignettes, but it would be a very different novel and would take an Updike, a DeLillo or a Roth to pull it off.) "Futureproof" ends much better than it starts - in the final third, when something's actually at stake, it's gripping and heartbreaking in equal measure. But the whole thing needs a more disciplined approach to dramatic structure, characterization, and much more thoughtful poetics. The voice wears thin too early. Pathos too often turns to bathos. I'd cut every second chapter. Sounds crazy, I know. But go read Ryu Murakami's "Almost Transparent Blue" (1976) and see how much can be done with the same kind of characters trapped in the same kind of nightmare in little more than a hundred pages. The difference is that Murakami knows precisely what he's aiming for. He could state it in a sentence. He picks his moments and his central metaphor accordingly.

Wayne kindly lent me his copy of Futureproof, by N. Frank Daniels (sorry Mr. Author, I know that's one less copy sold, but hey, if it's any consolation, this is one more positive review) and strongly recommended it. In fact, Wayne's recommendation is in the book itself in the testimonials.

But, to be honest, I wasn't expecting to like it. Wayne told me about how it's about a young guy's journey into the world of drugs, and the other reviews talk about the great style of the book, and frankly, it didn't sound like it would be my thing. Having followed the straight-and-narrow, role-playing-game-playing, computer-nerd path through adolescence and early adulthood, I just didn't think I would relate. And this "style" didn't sound inviting either. But Wayne liked it, and that was good enough to get me started.

As it turned out I did relate slightly. From Luke's experience of the Rocky Horror Picture Show and onward, I recognized a lot of cultural references that were contemporary with my own adolescence - even though I was on the other side of the world and on a nerd-trajectory to adulthood.

As it really turned out, however, none of this mattered. I didn't need to relate to anything in Luke's life. With his supremely economical, first person, mini-scene chapters Daniels lead me deeper into the life of Luke, as he seems to slide down into ever more serious drug addiction, than I could possibly have imagined.

Daniels sketches his story as if in a series of short, detailed stills in the margins of a notebook, then flicks it past us like a flicker-book. The effect left me at first wishing for more continuity between the chapters - more ongoing-story. But I was quickly hooked and I soon found that myself really needing to get to the next bite-sized chapter.

Luke's piecemeal descent from a recognizable, ill adjusted teenager, into a hard drug user is so subtle it's unnerving. Disturbing because there's no one place or time where he makes a clear irretrievable leap into the abyss, so there's no easy way to point to one wrong turning or stupid decision and reassure myself: Well there's no way I would have done that. He brings us along so closely with him that its hard to say we wouldn't end up in the same dire situation.

I was supposed to be working when I read this, but I kept telling myself I'd just read one more chapter, then I'd put it down and get to work, go to sleep, get on with my life - whatever essential activity I was currently forgoing to get another hit of Futureproof.

Seriously, that's the way I came to think of it. Luke was drawing me into his mentality and it took me a while to realize that I was blurring the story with the act of reading it.

And this is the highest commendation of Futureproof - forget "style", it has that most laudable of styles: the one where you can't remember later if there was any style to speak of. No, the highest commendation is that, having nothing in common at all with this character, I still came out identifying more with Luke than with any character since Updike's Harry Angstrom. (I remember for years after reading the last of the Rabbit stories, I would still see something like a macadamia nut and catch myself thinking "Harry would like that". I had nothing in common with him either.)

Daniels, through the person of Luke, has basically ruined me for looking down at the local drug-addict teenagers I see hanging out not-nearly-far-enough-away from my kids' school. I used to feel an intolerant moral disgust for them. But now I see Luke in there amongst them and it's harder to remain so detached. I guess I don't want to have any more to do with them than I did before, but they do seem a lot more like people now.

I can't leave this review on that note, though. Otherwise it might seem that the point is that you should read the book so you might sympathize better with junkies. Screw that. You should read this book because it will grab you and draw you so rapidly, so inexorably into Luke's life that you won't be able to put it down to get on with your own. That's what novels are for. That's what literature is all about. Make no mistake, Futureproof is literature, and it's a sad indictment of the state of modern publishing that it should be languishing on Lulu.com instead of flying off the shelves at Barnes and Noble.

Buy it and read it. Or if your cheap like me, ask Wayne if you can borrow his copy. (Wait till I give it back to him though - sorry Wayne, I'm bringing it next week, I promise).

It's not easy for me to become - and then stay - interested in a book. I don't know how many I've picked up in the past few months, only to set them down and forget about them.

There was no forgetting Futureproof. I was immediately drawn to the narrator's conversational (and often caustic) voice, and after that, the characters themselves - each of them real and complex - added to the book's allure.

It's also getting inside people and taking vicarious pleasure in the things we really aren't supposed to take pleasure in that really attracts me to reading any particular book. (If you can't be improper in fiction, where can you be?) Daniels provides one such guilty-pleasure scene on page 66:

"I kick him hard in the ribs, hear the wind rush out of him. Then I take my boot to his face a few times for good measure. He doesn't move anymore after that.

"Should I relish these moments? Probably not. But I do. I can't stop kicking him."

Futureproof is deliciously hardcore and a wonderful read.

What did I like best about this book? Well, I was reading Fieldy's book at the same time so it gave me a glimpse into the drug life that he skimmed over in his book. I confess that if both books hadn't been suggested to me I never would have read either of them as I don't really live that scene. I found Futureproof to be very interesting at the beginning, but as time wore on, it was less engaging. I was worn out by the time Luke starts talking about how being sent to a treatment facility is his groups Vietnam.

I thought it was interesting how you don't learn the main character's name until page eight - thus increasing the feeling that this could be anyone's life. There are some interesting pieces to this read. However it's difficult to know who to recommend it to, it's dated by the O.J. references so it should be someone over thirty but many of the over 30 crowd will loose patience with Luke. Overall I have to agree with a previous review - loose a couple of chapters and it will be a better book but it's not a bad read as is.

Any book that opens by throwing you head-first into the audience of a midnight viewing of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" is alright by me and probably something that you would be better off reading rather than skipping past.

Frank Daniel's tale of teenage insecurity and discomfort is set in the wasteland of 1990's Atlanta, Georgia - where white-flight and bright-flight were probably the two most overused phrases regarding this point in Atlanta's struggling history. Daniel's drop kicks your senses from the suburb of his single parent home that is cluttered with siblings and homo-habilis era man-friends of his mother's - directly into a lifestyle and life that no one would sanely wish for, but many of us have survived through. Sometimes raw and real and other times light, overall "Futureproof" is a solid piece of literature.

Frank's literary doppelganger, Luke, comes across as the Black Swan of his generation but seemingly finds himself embroiled in the arms of more women than Highsmith's Dickie Greenleaf ever dreamt of on his best day. It is this element though, that brings the reader some often-needed light-heartedness as the tale slips into the dark perimeters of drug-use, mindless shift work, couch-lock and lost vagabond youths working on their much-coveted X-Box tans.

The book is quite absorbing overall, full of teen-angst and coming-of-age matter. I came up with a list of great coming-of-age books by decade and believe his might just be that for the 00's.

1940's: Richard Wright's "Black Boy"
1950's: Jack Kerouac's "The Subterraneans"
1960's: S.E. Hinton's "The Outsiders"
1970's: Robert Cormier's masterpiece "The Chocolate War"
1980's: Bret Easton Ellis's (Los Angeles Nightmare) "Less Than Zero"
1990's: Haruki Murakami's "Norwegian Wood" & Irvine Welsh's "Trainspotting"

And now, if handled properly by time, "Futureproof" might just take a place in the revered list.

Daniel's does keep you closely engaged not just for the big events that fuel the story but the minor happenings that boggle the mind and typically foreshadow some change within the narrative. A writing style that is unforgiving as Bukowski's "The Genius of the Crowd" and at times as detailed as James Clavell's "Shogun". Frank Daniels: Poet Warrior, on the nod, delivers the goods ... and not just in small ziplocks either.


... ...

Daniel's has crafted a modern day "Go Ask Alice" with his brave look into the slow decay of a modern youth falling into the world of excessive drug use and the meaninglessness that seems to flow out of his every activity as a result. Make no mistake; this is no morality play. The author spares us the moral lesson of "see what can happen when you do this" and instead offers many bite sized nuggets of the sometimes amusing, sometimes disturbing decline of the narrator (Luke) and his companions into a morass of self indulgence fueled by addiction. The steps are gradual. There is no single climax. There is no great resolution. But there is a glimpse into a life forged in a troubled home life and a lack of a real sense of just what should come next.

The writing style emulates the behavior and thoughts of Luke's narration. Sometimes seemingly disjointed vignettes ultimately tie together to give a mosaic view of his increasingly troubled life. Visceral descriptions of hard-core drug use are shown as growing ever more commonplace and what starts out as mostly innocent adolescent substance abuse at the occasional party turns into full-blown addiction. To anyone who grew up in the 90s, it is hard to not connect the beginnings of Luke's story. And it becomes all too easy to see how he could make his choices.

While the steps on the path may be disturbing, it is hard to pull away. As the story progresses you can almost feel the numbness to the prior behavior creep over you as the newer debaucheries put the old ones to shame. A compelling read from a new artist with something to say. Give it a read.

A coming of age story. A terrific role model for many of today's teenagers.

At the time in life when he is enduring the brutalities of adolescence (he has wiry red hair and is half Jewish), Luke is suffering physical abuse from an alcoholic stepfather. He finds companionship in a cultish world of dysfuncionites in their own rite.

An analoagous encounter with Timothy Leary, an emotionally estranged mother and reasonings with his deep seated Christianity foretell his fate and his relationships with women. But this kid is no simple survivor, he is determined to have a life. A true hero. A Napolean Dynamite.

This is definitely some good writing and poingnant (often painful) reading.

Classify this Young Adult but beware the censors. Magnificent raw narrative with well fashioned passages like, "She reaches down and places me at the portal to lost virginity." Brilliant.

Few writers have touched the world of our lost youth as deeply and with such well-crafted prose as Frank Daniels has done in "futureproof". And few writers have come back with as reassuring a message of how resilient those young people are. Dysfunctional families, lousy economies, misguided social policies take a toll but this is the story of how real enough kids make their way through very real problems and survive with dignity. Not the kind of dignity that struts across a TV interview stage but a quiet, decent way of responding that could, if anyone were to notice, form the basis for a lasting, overdue revolution in our values. It seems it is only the desperation of these times that leads such good kids to such extremes.

Dark, disturbing, but engaging till about half way in. After that, I found myself losing patience with the main character, Luke. It's hard to stay engaged in a story with a character that inspires very little sympathy.
*spoiler alert below*

He gets his sometimes-girlfriend pregant not once but twice (forcing her to have an abortion the first time), accidentally kills a kitten, and helps his little brother get addicted to heroin. After the midway point in the book, I just couldn't shake the feeling that the book became a contrived experiment in Dark Literature. Having finished the book by skimmed the last 1/3 or so (Luke's self important musings get old by then), I am left with a nasty aftertaste in my mouth. Somehow the author tricked me into wasting hours of my life on a book that took me down violent paths full of not-even-very-inventive gratuitous casual sex. I think the author has some raw talent but has a lot of maturing to do himself.

Wow...I don't even know where to start..what a ride this book is..once you start reading you can't put it down. The raw brutality that pours forth from page to page compels you to read on.

In my mind, I compare this book to several others I've read..books like this fascinate me; its a world I've never stepped into, but have known many who did. And with each book like this I find, I feel I understand those people that much better. The world I'm referring to here is the world of drugs; and "futureproof" takes you deep into the taboo that is the drug world; it grabs you and refuses to let go. The words written in this story are as addictive as the drugs they are describing.

I'd compare N. Frank Daniels to other authors like James Frey, Michael Sonbert, and Jack Kerouac. His writing is raw and honest, yet it flows like music. It's hard to describe this book adequately other than to say this is one of the best books I've read in a long time. Scratch that, its one of the best books I've read EVER.