Customer Reviews

Teeth

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

Since Hugh's legendary college essay, I kept track of him; mainly due to the fact that we were the same age and I identified with him. Identification became admiration when he landed a "One to Watch" in Sassy and a job at Dirt ("Dusted" in this novel). A few issues into Dirt though, it became clear that Hugh was not growing as a writer; no one was editing him, his writing grew self-indulgent and in some cases just plain trite.

So apparently a few years later some pop culture hanger-onner weaseled him a book deal with yet another apparent no-editing clause, and the results are embarassing. Among the thinly-veiled psuedonymous characters are Mark Lewman, Andy Jenkins and Spike Jonze of Dirt Magazine along with others from Big Brother and the Beastie Boys (Rage Against the Chili Pepper), all self-consciously parodied in a way that Hugh just doesn't have the right or strength of character to do. Open Letter to Hugh: No one else cares about Spike's Speigel fortune, and if you were him I doubt you'd have sunk your family's money into a laudable but dying pop culture experiment either. Being only a staff writer at the time, it's not even yours to forgive, so why spend the better part of a novel doing so?

Playing off recognizable real-life friends and cohorts as pseudonymed whiners and weaklings to Hugh/Neil's unchecked brilliance is too sloppy and immature to believe; I still wonder if the narrator is supposed to be reliable, but the similarity of these 'fictional' events and true events lead me to believe that this was Hugh being "earnest." I'd love to hear the Dirt Triumverate's opinion of this novel; maybe they know something about Hugh that makes these adolescent shenanigans tolerable. Unfortunately I don't, and I won't be following this career any more.

P.S.: I've -got- to assume that Gore Vidal's back-cover blurb was tongue-in cheek.

Hugh Gallagher brings together his family woes, writing career, and pop culture impressions in this novel to set the stage for what turns out to be a pretty accurate depiction of generation X. I disagree with those critics who feel that the use of thinly veiled famous rock bands (Rage Against the Chili Pepper), actresses (Gertie a.k.a. Barrymore), and rock tours (Chockapolacka a.k.a. Loolapalooza) shows a lack of originality from the author-it's called poetic license-and the blatant satire is really hilarious. Sure, the writing is often bland and repetitive (how many times will Neil's string of miseries be outlined for the reader?), but I enjoyed the quirky parallel between the status of Neil's teeth and the state of affairs in his life, i.e., his mouth turning into a festering pit as he hits a depressed, drugged-up, rock bottom.

I bought this book after the author himself told me about it at a rooftop party in New York years ago, and I regret that I didn't read it sooner. Gallagher has some fine-tuning to do, but will probably continue as a fine writer in the future.

Either poor Hugh did not have the benefit of an editor, or whoever was riding herd on this boy was absent when they handed out red pencils! This is the most overwritten, plotless book I've had the pleasure to read in years. I couldn't put it down - I felt glued to each page with dental adhesive.

Perhaps Gallagher's crowning glory was his college entrance essay, much read on the Internet, and quite amusing. But he has not yet shown himself capable of handling forms larger than a few paragraphs in length - leastways, he doesn't with Teeth. I ground mine in frustration on nearly every page. Perhaps his sloppy writing was meant to reflect an equivalent sloppiness of intent in his generation? That's the most charitable estimate I can provide.

I really wanted to like this book. Hipster Hugh Grant--purveyor of the East Coast Head, writer for Dirt magazine, underground sensation--has written a terrible first novel. This barely disguised autobiography painstakingly chronicles every detail of Grant's life following the demise of Dirt (here dubbed Dusted) and his subsequent failure to continue writing. A novel about writer's block? Why not just publish your diary, Hugh? At least that way we wouldn't have to suffer through your myriad awkward re-namings of key Gen-X trendies (River Phoenix becomes Nile Waters, Drew Barrymore is Gertie, and worst of all, 2 popular bands are merged to become Rage Against the Chili Pepper). The first chapter or two are interesting enough, but Neil's/Hugh's ceaseless self-pity and masochism quickly become too much to bear. I read the entire novel hoping for redemption but experienced quite the opposite effect--it just got worse and worse and worse, losing all sense of direction before finally careening into a nauseating, poorly devised ending. I can only hope future efforts from the once-impressive Grant are on par with his previous writings. I haven't read anything this painful since Prozac Nation.

It still amazes me that I managed to finish this novel. Its poor quality is apparent almost form the first page. But I stuck it out till the end an activity that I would not recommend that anyone else try.

Neil , our protagonist, is a self-absorbed adolescent whose life has take a turn for the worse. For years he had dental problems stemming from accident at a party. His life revolves around the amateur magazine he and his group of friends published but that has gone under. His parents fail to respond to his many withering criticism of their lives by the wise son they have raised. And as if all that wasn't bad enough, they also refuse to pay for the expensive dental work he needs. I wouldn't pay for it either as Neil seems to always find enough money when he needs it to indulge his hedonistic lifestyle. Including the epic journey around he world that he takes to recover from his experience "selling out" his talent by actually working for someone for a change.

This character makes me ashamed to be in Generation X. With that as a start, the author spends most of the book name dropping (thinly veiled pseudonyms) and explaining about how hard it is to be famous to 15 people.

It was boring. It wasn't original. It wasn't funny. It wasn't much of a book. Don't waste your time.

This book was pretty pathetic. The writing was weak, as were the characters. It had too much angst and very little intelligence. It felt like something that I would have wrote in the eleventh grade. Yet I feel bad because I could relate to Neil in some sense, and I started Teeth really wanting to like it. But instead I was really dissapointed. I sincerely hope that Hugh Gallagher is not the future of American literature or any kind of literature for that matter.

Gallagher is the author of the now-famous college essay that is perhaps the single greatest essay written. With it, he established himself as a bold, fearless writer with an incredible sense of humor. I wish he was able to write a novel that consistently exhibited these same strong qualities.

Teeth is a fine, funny novel, its reasonably well written, the humor is brilliant and his characters are well developed. Yet there's something that keeps this from becoming a truly great novel. Perhaps is Gallagher's reliance on 90's clichés (yet Coupland's been able to pull it off and Bret Easton Ellis has used the entire decade of the 80's to his advantage). Gallagher satirizes the decade, its culture and its music with fake brand names, bands and magazines that are, perhaps, a little too close to their real counterparts (Rage Against the Chili Peppers?).

Overall, Teeth is good. Its worth reading and you won't regret picking it up. Contemporaries like Douglas Coupland, Brett Easton Ellis, and Dave Eggers have produced similar - probably better - novels but Gallagher's talent is well worth experiencing.

To date, the only other review I've bothered to write on here was for a certain spoken word album titled "Bomb The Womb" by Hugh Brown Shu. Well, Hugh Brown Shu and Hugh Gallagher are one and the same person, and I have been waiting for more from this brilliant wordsmith ever since hearing "Bomb The Womb" in the summer of 1997. It was worth the wait...

Altho not as sharply brilliant as his album, this first novel of his is a great read and a must for anyone who ever might have considered themselves "punk," not to mention anyone who has even a drop of contempt for pop culture and the shallow veneer of MTV. His fictionalized versions of well known young celebrities are a bit thinly veiled, but in my opinion, if you're going to hurl rocks at sacred cows, make sure everyone knows what pasture you're aiming for. Besides, self-important celebrities deserve just as much ridicule as the undeserved worship they get from the sheep-like masses. I'm not much of a fan of contemporary literature, mostly because I see more literary television on the New York Times Bestseller's list than actual literature, but this book will proudly share shelf space with Kerouac, Salinger, Maughm, Vonnegut, and Dostoevsky.

(...)

This book is exquisite. Very real. I'd give my first born to be able to write like Hugh Gallagher. Gritty details lovingly rendered. And that second to last chapter, good god, I can't remember the last a book had me laughing so loud and so long. I could say something utterly cliche, "This book is so punk rock!" but no one seems to remember what punk is anymore. It would be interpreted as "punk rawk", and, well, I don't want to misrepresent this glorious book with something as cheap and tawdry as "rawk."

This masterpiece is for those who remember punk. Or for those who blacked out once too often and would like to remember. Or for those who have bad 'teeth' and haven't figured out how to fix them.

Glorious, glorious, and again, glorious. May we hopefully hear more from Gallagher in the future.

I have read more than three quarters of Teeth and have enjoyed every moment of this unclassic and interesting adventure of Neil, his teeth, wants and desires. There is nothing difficult to understand in this book - the reasons Gallagher changed names of people and bands. I feel he did it to make people remember the things they did when they were younger, are doing now, or want to do in the future. His abstract sense of prose and anecdotes envelopes most readers and draws them into Neil's world. Although some people may not appreciate this book there is an understanding each reader must find in one of Neil's problems, relate to it, and enjoy every moment of it. I am impressed with Gallagher's first novel and hope to see others soon, hopefully just as amusing but about something completely new and interesting as seen through Gallagher's eyes.