Hey, Joe [Paperback]

Ben Neihart (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 1997

When The New Yorker introduced Joe Keith in 1994, readers all over the country fell in love with this generous, messed-up kid. Now Ben Neihart brings Joe back in his debut novel -- a story about coming of age amidst the bawdy splendor of New Orleans, where a sixteen-year-old boy has the whole world at his feet and life can change in just one night.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A novel featuring a teenage protagonist that isn't about sexual abuse, drug addiction, youthful violence or adolescent angst? Unlikely as that may seem, first-novelist Neihart has done it, with charm if not photorealism. His protagonist, Joe Keith, who lives in New Orleans, is openly gay but entirely at ease with it, smokes pot but doesn't have a drug problem, misses his curfew by a few hours but deeply loves his mother. The primary plot line concerns a lawsuit charging sexual abuse, filed by a group of orphans against Rae Schipke, executive director of the charitable foundation that supports their orphanage. Joe is connected only loosely and coincidentally to this main story line, however, and the narrative gains energy and originality when it moves on to the boy's nocturnal wanderings. Over the course of the long night during which the entire novel takes place, Joe meets Welk, a resident (though not sexually abused) of the orphanage, falls in love and loses his virginity. Even more than Joe, Welk is a paragon, a walking dream lover who's more caricature than character-as is Schipke, who comes off as a one-note sociopath. Neihart writes super-hip prose. Though it catches the tone of modern adolescence, it's ultra-fashionableness eventually wears thin-but not so thin as to dilute this spirited novel, which captures the rhythms and pleasures of the Big Easy.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Neihart's first novel is a coming-of-age tale set in a nocturnal New Orleans, where infinite possibilities for pleasure mingle with a vague sense of dread. It follows Joe Keith, a gay 16-year-old, as he wanders through the French Quarter one night, seeking a sense of who he is and where he belongs. Set against his adventures is the imminent verdict in the trial of Rae Schipke, an orphanage administrator accused of sexual abuse. The two plot strands intermingle after the verdict when Joe has a late-night tryst with an older teenager from the orphanage while Schipke invades Joe's home, holding his mother hostage. While the novel effectively uses the New Orleans setting as a mirror of Joe's psyche, the overwrought ending somewhat diminishes the novel's impact. Still, this is a worthy purchase for most collections.
Lawrence Rungren, Merrimack Valley Lib. Consortium, Andover, Mass.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 211 pages
• Publisher: Berkley (September 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0425159728
• ISBN-13: 978-0425159729
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 4.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,752,340 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Nice unenjoyable read, December 13, 2002

By 

christina marable (riverside, ca) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hey, Joe (Hardcover)

I read "Hey Joe" while I was on vacation and it is the perfect book for that- vacationing, hanging around. The novel chronicles sixteen year old Joe on one night when something really important happens- I won't give it away. The novel also introduces a counterplot with a jury verdict, a female sexual predetor, Joe's neighbor who hasn't come to terms with certain items, and his mother.
"Hey Joe" takes its readers in the colorful, crazy, and at times implausible world of this New Orleans teen. The characters are fun, have a sense of reality, the dialouge is realistic, and the story moves well. I enjoyed the fact that Joe was not hung up about his sexuality, but rather accepted it. Niehart also didn't portray Joe as a flamer or any of the characters as caricatures, which is often a mistake in first novels. The writing as languid, easy to understand, and enjoyable- all things a vacation book should be.
I must say that the novel ends on a confusing note. I have a hard time beleiving that such a comfortable guy would end with such jargon. And I couldv'e done without the counterplot about the trial and jury. That sounded a bit outlandish. The book wasn't meant to change the face of the world and how people view gay teens ... but was meant to be enjoyable, dream like and even a bit romantic- in it's old notions of course. But don't take it for anything else. Niehart has a good stlye. I just hope to see it develop in the future.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It pulled a dozen emotions at once., February 4, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Hey, Joe (Paperback)

Hey, Joe (Simon & Schuster), by Ben Neihart. As I was getting ready to leave Austin to live in New Mexico, a friend asked, "Before you leave the area, have you considered taking a road trip to New Orleans? You really should." I'm embarrassed to say I have never been to New Orleans. Not physically. But like Robert Stone's acclaimed 1966 novel, Hall of Mirrors, which takes the reader into the seediest and most noteworthy cracks and edges of the Big Easy, Ben Neihart's astounding first novel, Hey Joe, took me like a tornado smack into the center of New Orleans and whirled me around and spat me out and left me breathless. Neihart's bumpy, jumpy, keen prose ignites every sense: "In the opposite direction from the river, there was a cop barricade; above it, the black smoke of a fire hung. A bony rhythm track blew from the open windows of a passing white limo: it was Queen Latifah, rapping. . .î The book begins in the late afternoon of a warm summer day, and ends in the middle of that night. The New Orleans spotlight is shared by the novel's protagonist: beautiful, bright, sensitive, sixteen year-old Joe Keith. "He had the rosy aspect, and the swagger, and the skinny arms, and the bad reputation. He was a brooder, a magazine reader, a swaying dancer at mellow, jazzy rap parties." Joe is unabashedly in love with the supermodel, Linda Evangelista, coveting pages of glossy mags that display her in velvet robes and skimpy skirts. He's sure that he likes women, but he does not long for them. He longs for slightly older boys, and part of this novel deals with Joe's sexual coming of age and his first whole experience with a male. What really takes hold here, and I mean by the roots of the hair, is Joe's brave vulnerability. Joe is able to say what he wants and why he wants it. He is able to think: "Don't you know I want to be in love with you?" then to show it. He is utterly honest about his feelings, so white and black, never indifferent, that one cannot help but fall madly in love with the boy's humanness. One cannot help but think: I remember how vulnerable I was at that age; my body, my face, my hair, my voice - all too awkward and ugly and bare. Joe is accompanied by a cast of rich and rare characters. Among them: Al Theim, Joe's next-door neighbor who is about Joe's age, heterosexual, questing for big biceps and girls. Joe's mother, Sherry, widowed at a young age, a good mom. She worries for Joe and loves him as he loves her. White Donna is a disc jockey of alternative rock; when Joe confides in her, she tells him, "You can love somebody with four or five hearts . . . I know a lot of people say they can take it; they can take whatever heartache gets ladled on top of them. A lot of them are liars. But I'm not." Through White Donna, Joe soon meets up with Welk, a slightly older boy with whom he falls in love. "To have Welk hanging on him, anchoring him to the spot, was a perfect kind of burden." When they are alone together in the dark, Joe candidly utters his fear. "I'm nervous." It is not so much JoeÍs affirmation of his sexuality that makes this book so touchingly priceless, but it is the innocence by which Joe comes to the affirmation. Only hours before he is with Welk, Joe partakes in a lusty encounter with Iquoi, an exotic half Indian, half Irish girl with thick lips gleaming in purple lipstick. She wants to know if Joe has made out with certain girls. "'Course,'" he replies. "'Do they kiss as good as me?'" she asked, leaning just a fifteenth of an inch closer and opening her mouth on Joe's." NeihartÍs dialogue is ultra hip and snappy, inventive, loopy. He consistently works cool language inside out and outside in, seams showing, seams invisible. The prose is fast-paced and gorgeous and dreamy, coinciding with the wet, sticky, diaphanously-humid night, the mellow jazz and loud rap, love and lust in New Orleans. Neihart shows in his meticulously simple, compact ending, that sixteen year-olds have a way of knowing everything will be all right „ even if they subsequently are not. Although coming-of-age and homosexuality are relevant in the novelÍs content, this is a novel not to be pigeon-holed. More relevant is that the novel is literature, exceptional literature. Read it if you want to laugh. Read it if you want to cry.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars 'Hey Joe' favors style, crisp dialogue over plot, March 27, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Hey, Joe (Hardcover)

'Hey Joe' keeps company with one of gay literature's freshest, most likeable characters. Author Ben Niehart wet-jacks us into Joe's central nervous system from page one -- his world, his fantasies, his raw emotions are vibrantly, painfully real. Because Joe rings true, his world (New Orleans, the backyard, the bar) rings true. When the book is over, you'll miss him. Unfortunately, for all the crisp dialogue and hypnotic style, the book's ultimate plotline -- a trial in a sexual abuse case -- is nowhere near as interesting as Joe. The conclusion of the book is more required than inspired, and the antics of the novel's antagonist (the evil Rae Schipke) become almost cartoonish. Ultimately, here's a novel you'll never forget -- with an ending you'll wish you could