Customer Reviews

Small Town Punk

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

First of all, I read this book in two days, laughing out loud in various coffee shops, while I should have been at work. I guess the fact that I was blowing off work instantly meant that I was meant to relate to Buzz, the main character. Sheppard's writing is cynical and hilarious, giving the reader many classic lines that you end up wondering where they came from. For example, "This barber had a pinched-up face, like someone had taped a dog turd under his nose 20 years ago and he'd never removed it, except to maybe freshen it with a new dog turd." or about Tolkien, "He writes ponderous escapist bulls**t that bears no resemblance of real life. Evil is too evil to be actually evil. And good is impossibly good. And it's written like a high school history textbook, so that the d**ks that read it can pat themselves on the back for being smart." It's the sort of real life humor written in a real life way that I enjoy. (Not all the humor is scatological, this is just an example of how lines explode out of nowhere). Also Sheppard's use of dialog is realistic and amazing. It is as if you are at the Pizza Hut, where the characters work (or in their car), listening, laughing, and cracking open a beer with them. The character's are entertaining screw ups, especially Buzz's friends, yet Buzz's character, even though a screw up, is saved by the sweet relationship he has with his sister.

Now the thoughts...

I thought of Holden Caulfield when reading this. I thought of Bright Lights, Big City (the book) while reading this. I thought of my college and High School days while reading this. I thought of Jesus' Son (the book or movie) while reading this. I thought of Hunter S. Thompson while reading this. I thought that this book would make a tremendous movie (please don't cast Matt Damon or Leonardo D.). I thought of a lot of people that would enjoy this book a lot and that I could turn people onto an author that they'd prob. never heard of. I DO give Small Town Punk a strong recommendation, especially for slackers, 80's punks, clubbers etc.

Important to note: This is not a book about PUNK ROCK. The strength of the book is the relationships between friends and their situations, as well as family relations and dysfunction.

Did every town have a punk rock Pizza Hut? I know mine did, and when I read John Sheppard's book, I realized it wasn't an anomaly. This tale of a Reaganism-infected Florida and the lack of a punk scene features a band of outcasts that anyone with some Black Flag or Dead Kennedys in their record collection could identify with. But the book isn't really a punk rock anthem as much as it is a tale of small town boredom and the desire to get the hell out and do something other than mow lawns and play football and go to church. There's a lot of great humor in the situations these characters go through, but the authentic details of this era sold me on the story. This is a great book to read if you're an old-school punk, a recovered small-town escapee, or just anyone who appreciates a great story.

The concept of motive is so narrowly defined in both fiction and existence. The word is so often defined in the most Newtonian nature--a strict, measurable sequence of events that are reversible. Sure, there are precipitating stimuli in the world of Buzz, the main character of this novel (an abusive father, alcoholic mother, crazy grandmother, the Reagan era), but these don't satisfyingly explain this boy's hatred for the world and himself, nor his drive to maintain a close and deep relationship with his sister, Sissy. He keeps his job at the ratty Pizza Hut though he despises the Half-Price Wednesday clientèle, and he relishes visits to his grandmother if only to raid her medicine cabinet and replenish the stash he keeps in his genitalia-shaped change purse. He finds the love of his life, but is almost just as satisfied making people hate him. The boy is quite simply a torrent of rage and emotion. John Sheppard has already proved his mastery at breathing life into the lost and ejected with books like Midnight in Monaco and The Runner-Up and handles Buzz with the proper mixture of humor, insight and revulsion. Buzz is horrifying as well as familiar, and his insights are both spot-on and laughably trite.



But what exactly is the source of Buzz's motivation? It's the whole world around him--flat, featureless Sarasota, home to the unimaginative and dangerously oblivious. Even many of the local punks provide no haven, for they are rich copycats of English weirdos who can afford leather and dye jobs. Sheppard captures with an icy lens how the weight of existence can drive a young man to sit on a curb, plant his feet in the gutter, smoke a cigarette and say that he's having a good time...well, maybe just a bit better than having his face kicked in by a couple of football players, but still...



This is one of Sheppard's strongest works--emotive and accessible, while also a kick in the gut. Buzz is a psychological puddle of vomit worth picking the pepperoni out of.

Set against this backdrop (the Everycity is, in fact, Sarasota in the 80's), Sheppard paints a cast of disillusioned, angst-filled, bored youth that are so unique, so unlike anyone else, that they are every teen in every city trapped smack-dab in the midst of their own quest for meaning in a drab, adult-filled world.

When I used to teach, I'd often tell my students that I knew the one thing they hated hearing more than anything from the adults of the world was the one thing that would ring most true, the phrase that would make everything better and everything worse: "everyone feels the same when they're a teenager". It's a teen's job to rebel, to hate their parents, to carve out their own identity-and Sheppard captures this, the angst, music, the ennui and the frustration, perfectly.

[...]

I'm simply astounded that John L. Sheppard isn't famous. Small Town Punk highlights Sheppard's enormous talents for character development and true-to-life dialouge, and his biting sense of humor. Those reviews comparing this work to Catcher in the Rye aren't over-stating Sheppard's talent. I hope he keeps writing.
This is a page-turner you don't have to feel guilty about.

Small Town Punk is a work of profoundly serious intent, set in an unlikely milieu; the marginal, lower working class of Florida, far from the glamorous wealthy beachfronts. In tightly written, yet evocative, prose, it depicts places, people, situations, and emotions - of an atmosphere and social class generally ignored by most writers.

Indeed, this class, in addition to the disadvantages of poverty,suffers from being the only social group in America which it is permissible, even de riguer, to disparage. Popularly, even gleefully, known as "poor white trash", they do the dirty dangerous work, and their young sons most of the dying in our wars, but are mocked and belittled by much of their country. Sheppard makes these disposable people recognizably American and sympathetic.

The young narrator's inchoate anger at the shabby cards life has dealt him, his friendships and longings, adventures and travails, maintain the perspective and limitations of his age and circumstances. In this book, Florida is not sunny, it is miserably hot. The surroundings are not in luxurious, expensive pastels; they are dark, tawdry and mean. The characters work when they must, and find evanescent pleasures when they can.

The characters include oddball friends and madcap relatives. There are quirky encounters, bitter social criticism, youthful primal urges and tugs of heart of a a sensitive, intelligent youth struggling to make sense of it all, and his place in the world.

This is an accomplished novel. In parts it reminded me of A Confederacy of Dunces, in parts Huck Finn, a soup son of Hiassen - and maybe Kafka, not from style or substance, but in its bleak hopelessness and absurdity.

There is a modern Romanticism here. Beyond the quotidian indignities, discomforts, and aesthetic nullities (even of language and emotional realms) of life at the margins in Florida, rendered with minimalist precision - there is expressed and implied anger. That life is unfair and unforgiving and uncaring is taken for granted. However, the response to that weltanschaung is not resigned acceptance - it is rage. That is where Romanticism comes in. Innocents suffer and life has no point - the implied response in the novel is that it is wrong, that should not be, life should be better than that. At
one point, even the Creator is held to account, and rebuked.

The anger is key. No such emotion would be called for or necessary, if fatalism were operating here. For anger arises only when there is a focus for the anger, or the thwarted possibility that life could be more congenial if not for the operation of a malign force or forces. The focus might be God, or Nature, or perhaps the Cosmos. Or it could be Man himself, as operative of Society, with the potential of making the life of his less fortunate fellows less onerous, and even happier.

There is another possible cause of the anger, more intimate and elusive, as invisible as the Almighty. It is subtly acknowledged in the novel that a man is enemy to himself. The perverse, spiteful, self-soul eating destroyer within, acknowledged by sages and saints since humanity's dawn.

Each canker, macro and micro, is adumbrated in the book. They may all be operative for the narrator. Each of them is assailed in some way (paradoxical, in a work so determinedly affectless) as an adversary that might somehow, in some way, be defeated. It is ultimately for the reader to decide if such a Promethean (and thus, Romantic) notion can be accepted as a legitimate course. In this philosophy, the only alternative is complete despair.

Imagine a man shaking his fists at a thunderstorm, or his own life. He knows his rage is impotent, yet on he rages. That is the courage of humanity. It is the glory a

I may not know much of anything but I do know this was one of the best books i have ever read. His odd life kept you wanting to read more and more. You found yourself becoming sad when it was getting near the end. This book is not a pick-me-up kinda thing but you will surely love it.

i really really loved this book! i read it in less than 24hours and then i read it again! it really captures the life of a punk in an extremely interesting light. i found myself laughing and nodding in agreement time after time.......and is it just me, or does every small hick town have punks working in the pizza place?!?...well at least thats the way it is in california.
the only complaints i have , is it seems that the author was running short on time and abbruptly ended the book without really any events leading up to it.....it just sort of stopped....and it kind of lacked a plot too......but it was entertaining none the less.
i strongly recommend this book to ANYONE!.....especially if youre into punk!

This book reads like an open wound of pain and rage. If you're looking for the new Electric-Kool-aid-acid-trip about punk music or a nice wise-cracking teen who is wiser beyond his years, and has an epiphany every ten pages, get another book. If you want a novel that tells what it is to be young, filled with pain, and stuck in a bad job at the end of nowhere, then read this book. If you want a searing slice of reality, read this book. If you want to know why your grandson does nothing but fight in school and get drunk after it, read this book.

I ordered this on a whim, after stumbing across a local rag review that made it sound interesting. That review never did it justice. I read it in one long sitting, unable to put it down.

I come back to it being like an open wound and that is how it struck me, raw and bleeding, like a dog struck down on the interstate. That was the image in my mind by the time I finished it. A view of pain and torment, the type of images you'd get if you could read teenage minds, ones which would leave you howling in the night.

I love this book! It's a very funny - but brutally honest - take on growing up. Mr. Sheppard transports the reader to a thicket of Middle America familiar to anyone who grew up in the flyover states. The characters are very real and human, both aimless and fragile in a way that is true to adolescence. Unlike other reviewers, I don't really see it as a meditation on teen angst. It's more about the resignation and acceptance that are necessary when making the transition to adulthood. I highly recommend it.