Our Noise [Paperback]

Jeff Gomez (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 1995

Craig is armed with a college degree that has so far brought him nothing, certain that something better is just around the corner but unable to encounter it. He's been cohabiting with Ashley since college, and is caught in the dilemma of whether to break up with her or give in to marriage. Meanwhile, Ashley's efforts to earn a graduate degree seem futile considering that her diploma has taken up residence under the sofa cushions. Stuck in dead-end jobs; weary of commercial, corporate, and parental influences; searching for their own identities; Ashley, Craig, and the other characters of our noise find refuge in the brash world of indie rock, thrift stores, coffee houses, zines, and cheap beers. There are Eileen, who ends up in Kitty, Virginia, by accident and forgets to leave, and the members of Bottlecap, Kitty's hometown band, trying to decide whether to sell out and go to the West Coast or continue in the life of a small band. Chipp and Randy start a zine as a way to get their blood flowing for the first time even as Dave, the struggling founder of Violent Revolution Records, works as a waiter to fund his record label.

Funny, realistic, perverse, our noise captures the lives, loves, and record collections of a thrift-store-clothed group of twentysomethings trying to make their way in a real world that is nothing like what they expected.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Gomez's first novel was originally published as a serialized 'zine distributed through mail-order venues and Tower Records. Then it was noticed?and brought to the attention of publishers?by Bret Easton Ellis. Unfortunately, this tale of a young writer's ingenuity is more interesting than the novel itself, which is low on momentum but well-stocked with Generation X stereotypes. Set in Kitty, a small town in Virginia, an ensemble of post-collegiate characters engage in unsatisfying personal relationships, dead-end jobs, labyrinthine discussions of alternative music and the future. Included are laid-back Eileen, who decides to stay in Kitty after her car happens to break down there; the members of a struggling local band called Bottlecap; and slackers Randy and Chipp, roommates who start an alternative music 'zine. The narrative is determinedly straightforward, often detailing every movement a character makes (e.g., every mouse click of logging into the Internet is described).It lacks the insight or humor that might separate the reader's experience of the book from the apparent dullness of these characters' lives. Instead, there are many 1980s teenage cultural reminiscences (the decade when the group would have been in high school), which comprise the novel's most vivid passages.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

The action of Gomez's debut novel is set in the small town of Kitty, Virginia, and flits among five sets of young characters, including a local band set to sign with a major label, a couple on the verge of relationship meltdown, two friends who start a zine, the owner of a failing record label, and a young woman whose car breaks down in Kitty and decides to stay. Unlike Douglas Coupland (from whom Gomez clearly hopes to steal the mantle of generational spokesperson), this work takes delight in the banal?down to a blow-by-blow description of the powdery soup mix that is a dietary staple of the underemployed players. This overabundance of detail is not mere long-windedness?Our Noise was written as a serial and distributed by mail to loyal subscribers. It is the resulting episodic flavor, complete with chapter-ending cliff-hangers, that makes Gomez less a successor to Bret Easton Ellis than a Generation X Dickens, bringing to life the aching doubt that is the handmaiden of bad planning. Like most novels aimed at today's twentysomethings, teens will love it, too. Recommended for popular fiction collections.?Adam Mazmanian, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Touchstone; Original edition (September 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684800993
• ISBN-13: 978-0684800998
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (37 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,179,872 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Dismal, August 14, 2001

By 

"muppetcow" (Omaha, NE United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Our Noise (Paperback)

I bought this book because it is full of all the things I enjoyed reading about in my post-college wastoid time before I got a real job and became a Productive Member of Society (the horror!) and I was severely disappointed. I mean, really, how can a book chock full of dead-end jobs, sleazy apartments, mind altering substances, and alternative lifestyles possibly be bad? Let me count the ways.

1--poor writing! This is Jeff Gomez' first novel and I've never written a novel, so I will cut him a little slack here, but this was poorly written. It had it's moments or I wouldn't have finished the whole thing, and it's fairly aparent that Mr. Gomez has talent, but he should have thrown this in a drawer for a couple of years, come back and re-edited later, and then re-edited again before deeming it fit for publishing. There's nothing I hate more than when an author insults the readers' intelligence by explaining in great detail the already obvious irony of a situation.

2--characters I don't care about! I honestly didn't care what happened to any of them, and would have laughed had they all died in a horrific environmental disaster. Like I said before, this book had it's moments, and it was only because of them that I could muster enough interest to continue reading.

3--cliches! cliches! cliches! Alright, I'll admit, any book about dead-end jobs, sleazy apartments, mind altering substances, and alternative lifestyles is almost positive to be a cliche, so what was I expecting?

The only reason I can see to read this book is if you are interested in reading "Bottlecap," the sequel, which, although flawed, is leaps and bounds better than "Our Noise." But, hey, Vonnegut's early work wasn't the best, either.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful post- study, mid twenty's no direction observation, August 19, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Our Noise (Paperback)

If this book was a film it would be Ted Demmes Beautiful Girls. Utterly pointless, dull at first, but leaves you feeling somewhat content, mildly depressed and joyfull that your life is surely better than the lifes that Gomez intellegently writes about. Each character has some pecadilos that we can all identify with, and more worryingly they are the people we would of been had we not made certain good/bad life decisions. It made me think about my own current situation, and any book that can do that is well worth reading. Gomez has a talent for observing peoples actions and thoughts and more importantly writting them down in a coherant way. This book has no real plot, just reflections on current situations that we all come across. It stays away from the Gen-X sterotype as much as book of this nature can, and although some may accuse it of being a Gen-X hang on, I think they just missed the point by a mile. Oh yea, Mr Gomez has kick-ass music tastes.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Horrifically Disappointing, January 2, 2011

By 

krittrdudle - See all my reviews

This review is from: Our Noise (Paperback)

Like many people who picked up this book and purchased it, I was excited to read it. I expected something really good, something exciting; the back made it sound so interesting! And when I started reading it, I still believed it'd be okay, even though I was turned off by the use of present tense in the writing. As I kept reading, my insistence to my friends that it was a good book weakened and by the time I was halfway through, I was complaining every time I picked it up about how awful it was, and why.

The biggest fault is probably the writing. Granted, it was a first novel, but the writing was equivalent to walking into any role play forum and picking something out to read. It was over-detailed (there's an entire long paragraph dedicated to the description of a fat man that enters a store and then leaves; he has no interaction with the story whatsoever and is never seen again). And something that really got on my nerves was the long winded descriptions of things like smoking pot, being a waiter, being drunk and what it feels like to drink alcohol, and pages upon pages of talk about bands and their music. These descriptions are typical of two motivators, and two alone: either the person didn't know what they were talking about and wanted to sound like they did, or they wanted to show off what they knew.

Again, it's something typical of a role play forum.

Sadly enough, for the most part of the story I did enjoy the actual story. I thought the dead end jobs and what not were interesting, but then it got to the end and it basically became everyone was sleeping with everyone, and no one was happy with the person they were with and it made me angry that the book seemed to be saying that the person you're with sucks and you need to go and cheat on them to be happy.

Let's not forget the book's final line, and it humorously reminds me of the reaction a friend of mine had to Toy Story 3: " 'Ever one of us wants to be some sort of star', Eileen thinks, 'but instead we're just ending up satellites that don't call home.' "

If you're expecting an interestingly written, feel good tale, go look somewhere else. And if you're looking for a good doorstop, or something to keep that slippery window from falling down when you want the breeze to roll in, pick up this book.