Customer Reviews

Hey, Joe

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

 

 

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.

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.

'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

Ben Neihart is a terrific writer with a fresh, original voice. Those who have read portions of this book as stories might be disappointed that as a novel the book never really comes off, troubled by a so-so plot. Nonetheless, the writing makes up for it, and I eagerly await Ben Neihart's next book.

I originally read "Hey, Joe" as a short story published in The New Yorker magazine. As an aspiring writer, I was intrigued by the subject and came away dazzled by what Ben Neihart had accomplished. In its story form, "Hey, Joe" was utterly convincing in its depiction of how, for a young person emerging into the world of relationships and sexuality, both love and distrust can inhabit the same thought about the same person, whether that be your own mom or the boy who lives next door. The story affected me so much that I xeroxed it to keep. When I saw the expanded novel of "Hey, Joe" in the bookstore a year or so later I snapped it up. Sorry to say, though, that as a novel, "Hey, Joe" is a big disappointment. What seemed like perfectly observed moments in the short story become mannerisms in the novel. I loved the Joe in the story, but found myself rather annoyed by the character in the book. The writing style started to intrude, making me think of the author rather than his story, which for me is a capital offense in writing. For anyone curious, the short story of "Hey, Joe" was rewritten to be the first chapter of the novel, but even there Neihart has made some subtle changes that I feel disrupt the incredible rhythm that he acheived in the shorter version. If you want your "Hey, Joe" in its most perfect form, seek out that back issue of The New Yorker. If that's not feasible, then read just the first chapter of the novel. Pretend it ends there and see what you think.

"Hey, Joe" is the novel I reread the most this year. The characters are funky and the lines they speak are so palpable that they jump off the page. I found myself reading lines out loud to my friends. New Orleans, where the novel is set, looks and smells and feels exactly as I remember it. Joe, the main character, is the most heartbreakingly open-hearted character of the year. He's a sixteen year old kid who just happens to be gay and who gets caught up in a wicked conspiracy. The fresh supporting cast recur at just the right frequency, as in the best novels; just when you've forgotten about one great character, he or she returns. There's plenty of sex, plenty of great food and booze and dancing. Gentle breezes. Wet kisses. All of the best things in life

I think this is an astoundingly fine first novel; i loved it the first time and i just read it--in about 24 hours--again. The novel manages to capture Joe's life for less than a day and the sub-plot works well. Good dialogue, character development and the descriptions of New Orleans are top-notch.

Since I purchased this book I've read it about a million times, I read a lot and have never gotten so caught up in a story or the characters that are so human they feel like old friends. This is a wonderful book its style is not that of a novel, but of an experience, like spending a night out in the city streets of New Orleans with friends.

Hey, Joe, a first novel by Ben Neihart, is an enjoyable enough romp through New Orleans. The lead character is the wonderful creation Joe Keith, a sixteen year old fiercely homosexual and pleasure diving kid. He is the perfect guide to lead the reader through New Orleans (which can be even more decadent than portrayed here, if the reader can believe that is even possible). It is one night with a number of characters moving through this novel. Not all the personalities and the plot lines gel but there is more than enough in this short novel to take the reader happily and quickly to the end.

What a great little hero: young Joe Keith is comfortable - even cocksure - about his own homosexuality, while reasonably anxious about a lot of the common ground shared by all teens, gay or straight: family relationships, desires for the future, curfew, drug-use, romance. Its refreshing to have an author advance the optimistic notion that a contemporary kid might be more traumatized by the generalized angst of adolescence than by his gayness in particular.