Now Is the Hour (.) [Hardcover]

Tom Spanbauer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 15, 2006 | Series: .

The year is 1967, and Rigby John Klusener, seventeen years old and finally leaving his home and family in Pocatello, Idaho, is on the highway with his thumb out and a flower behind his ear, headed for San Francisco. Now Is the Hour is the wondrous story of how Rigby John got to this point. It traces his gradual emancipation from the repressions of a strictly religious farming family and from the small-minded, bigoted community in which he has grown up during a time of explosive cultural change. Transforming this familiar journey from American Graffiti to On the Road into something rich and strange and hilarious is the persona of Rigby John himself. Intimately in touch with his fears, hesitantly awakening to his own sexuality, and palpably open to life's mysteries, Rigby John is a protagonist whom readers will fall in love with, root for, and be moved by.

Now Is the Hour is a powerful, vastly entertaining story of self-awakening, of the complex bonds of family, and ultimately of America during a period of tremendous upheaval.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Spanbauer follows his well-received The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon with a risky assay into the traditional bildungsroman, with this straightforward but luminous tale of a country boy's self-liberation. In the summer of 1967, 17-year-old Rigby John Klusener is hitchhiking from his hometown of Pocatello, Idaho, to San Francisco to escape a life of religious, racial and sexual bigotry. He leaves behind a pregnant girlfriend, a hopelessly mystified mother, an embittered father and a sister trapped in a brutal marriage. As he waits for a ride out on the deserted highway, he winds the story back to his childhood, then virtually walks the reader through a life marked by hard farm work, Catholic guilt and the liberating passion of deep friendships formed with the most scandalously disreputable people of the community. From his first school-yard fight to first experiences with sex (of various sorts), cigarettes, alcohol, pot, jealousy and love, Rigby John's first person is at once reliable and highly ironic; we may know better, but he truly doesn't, and the distance is delicious. And his genuine astonishment at other people (great names: Allen "Puke" Price; Grandma Queep) keeps his telling edgy and warm, without allowing it to be sentimental. (May 15)
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From Booklist

*Starred Review* This sophisticated, funny, poignant, sexy coming-of-age novel is by the author of the well-received and continuously popular The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon (1991), which was his second novel. His new one, frankly, is even better. "The universe has always conspired to fuck me up," maintains teenage Rigby John Klusener, who, in the 1960s, lives with his parents and sister on an Idaho farm. How he learns otherwise--that sometimes life bestows pleasures and actual advancement--is the lesson of his seventeenth year and the plot construct of this lengthy but absolutely nimble narrative, related by Rigby himself. Rigby is bound and determined to break away from the bonds of his repressive home environment, first in the form and arms of a girlfriend, and then, far more profoundly, of the outrageous but bighearted George, who, although much older than Rigby, unlocks for him the splendor of true love. Rigby's storytelling voice is natural, warm, and positively addictive; the many pages of this breathtaking, romantic, and unpredictable novel fly past. Rarely does such a gripping story match with such a lovable character. Simply sit back and enjoy the lovely partnership. Brad Hooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 480 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (May 15, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0618584218
• ISBN-13: 978-0618584215
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #169,611 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

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19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "Solitary warriors of love", June 10, 2006

By 

A. Hickman (Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Now Is the Hour (.) (Hardcover)

Fans of Tom Spanbauer, and I trust the number is growing, will not be disappointed by his latest novel. A couple of years ago, after he discovered he had AIDS, Spanbauer said in an interview that he might not write another novel after "In the City of Shy Hunters." I'm happy to report that, not only did he change his mind, but the result is "Now is the Hour," a worthy successor to his three earlier books. "Hour" may not be a masterpiece on the order of "The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon" (what novel is?), but it is a beautifully conceived and lovingly textured work, with yet another one of Spanbauer's patented queer-boy heroes, Rigby John Klusener, a seventeen-year-old who, like his predecessors, Jacob Joseph Webber in "Faraway Places" and William Parker in "Shy Hunters," must escape the nets of family, religion, and general dysfunction in order to find his true self. Once again the backdrop is Spanbauer's favorite stomping grounds, Bannock County, or Pocatello, Idaho, where Judy Garland was born in a trunk and where there's something emphatically gay in the water. But this time, I'm pleased to report that Rigby John is not straddling the bi-sexual fence; his best friend may be gal-pal Billy Cody, but the love of his life is George Seranto, aka Georgy Girl, who is half Native-American (his father was half- Shoshone and half-Apache) and half-Italian on his mother's side. And George is all man.

There are so many pleasures to be mined in a Tom Spanbauer novel, that it would be ungrateful to complain about the similarity of this novel to earlier works, especially when its author provides us with such a loveable variation on the standard Spanbauer hero as John Rigby, who relates his story in flashback as he walks down Highway 93, "a flower in my hair," hitching to San Francisco in the Summer of Love, 1967. There are several set-pieces of the sort we've come to expect from the author (who could forget the hilarious Fresh Fruit Truman Compotee of "Shy Hunters" or the killdeer and "Hairy Moon Man" excursuses of "The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon"?), including a detour into the world of jitterbugging and a meditation on Thunderbird, the Native American spirit of wind and thunder. My favorite scene in the novel, however, is when Rigby John seeks out George at his underground club, the Back Door, and finally submits to his emotions as they dance to a Billie Holiday tune and become "solitary warriors of love."

Does the novel end happily for George and Rigby John? Read for yourself, and find out. One thing's for certain, in matters of love, Spanbauer always finds a unique way to express the inexpressible (e.g. "having a very good parade"). This is a long and rambling novel that requires a little patience in the beginning as it finds its focus. It also just happens to be pure magic, another guaranteed winner from one of the best writers, along with Annie Proulx and Denis Johnson, of prose fiction in America.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Eyes Have It, July 24, 2006

By 

H. F. Corbin "Foster Corbin" (ATLANTA, GA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Now Is the Hour (.) (Hardcover)

The time is 1967. The place is Pocatello, Idaho. Rigby John Klusener is seventeen and leaving home to go to San Francisco. Tom Spanbauer's amazing fourth novel is the story of how this young man got to this place in his life. It has to do with his discovering his sexual feelings for men, the repressive Catholic church and his sad, harsh parents: his mother who spends far too much time on her knees in the local Catholic Church and a father, described as a "dry drunk" who only once in Rigby John's life has told him that he is proud of him. His only friends are Billie Cody with the Simone Signoret voice and a body far too voluptuous for rural Idaho 1967 standards and two Mexicans, Flaco and Acho, who work for his father. Then he meets George Serano, an Indian who lives in a log cabin with his grandmother not far from the Klusener property; and nothing is ever the same again.

I can probably count on one hand-- certainly there are fewer than ten-- the novels that have moved me to tears. Tom Spanbauer's NOW IS THE HOUR is one of them. I read no farther than page 32 of this long novel-- but like the road to a friend's home, a good novel is never long-- before my eyes were burning. Rigby John (the story is told from his point of view) recalls a happier time before his brother, Russell, who was born with a handicap and only lived 100 days, died: "When my mother's eyes were the only show in town, almond-shaped and hazel. . . Mom's hazel eyes were gold when she was happy. When her eyes were gold I could find myself inside them." Later in a particularly nasty scene between Rigby John and his mother, when she tries to stop him from going to a party and rips the iron cord from the wall, he says her eyes were not hazel but an ugly gray. Throughout the novel, he is obsessed with eyes. "Maybe it was just the sun, but for a moment, there was a big bright shine in his eyes. Gold in Dad's eyes, the way Mom's eyes get. I've looked for it ever since, but that gold shine in my father's eyes has been a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence." (Judy Collins ["My Father"] watched the Paris sun set in her father's eyes.) Rigby John, in a beautiful scene from the novel when he and George smoke the same Camel cigarette, sees gold bars in George's dark eyes, "Jesus in George's eyes."

Mr. Spanbauer gets just about everything right in this wondrous book: the plot-- there are surprises along the way-- the characters, the attention to detail that makes rural Idaho in the 60's come alive, from Old Spice and English Leather to Snickers candy bars to S & H Green Stamps to Campbell's mushroom soup. Then there is the music of the times: "Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," "Eleanor Rigby," "Georgy Girl," "Monday Monday," "To Love Somebody," "Light My Fire," "All You Need Is Love" and of course "Now Is The Hour," to name a few.

This rich novel is about so much that is wrong with the world-- hypocrisy, racism, homophobia. But it is also about hope and love and possibilities. As I finished this novel, I kept hearing the words from a Flirtations song, "everything is possible."

It hardly seems fair that one writer should have so much talent. On the other hand, we can rejoice that Mr. Spanbauer has given the world this outrageously wonderful novel.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Tom Spanbauers worst books beat most author's best, November 1, 2006

By 

Pete "Peter David" (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Now Is the Hour (.) (Hardcover)

Okay, if you're already a Spanbauer fan, you should know that much of the material in here echoes that of Faraway Places, especially in the relationship with the father. For newbies, I can say a couple things. If you're a fan of rural fiction, like that of Kent Haruf (Plainsong) or James Galvin (the Meadow) this would be a great book for you. It's as much about small town America as anything. For those of you who found SPanbauer through his protoge, Chuck Palahniuk, I would advise you start with In the City of Shy Hunters as it's more like one of Palahniuk's.