Customer Reviews

Tim and Pete: A Novel

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Known for his dark, often violent satires, James Robert Baker (1946-1997) had slowly success as novelist--until 1993, when he published TIM AND PETE. With a plotline that seemed to recommend assasination of a host of then-living politicians and religious leaders, the book put panties in a twist from one end of the country to another. In the wake of the flap, Baker found it virtually impossible to find a publisher for his later works. Over the course of the next few years he sank into profound depression and committed suicide.

Tim and Pete are two gay men living in the Los Angeles of the early 1990s. Both have lived through the sexual revolution, gay liberation, the rise of AIDS, and most recently the Los Angeles riots of 1992. They have also broken up. Six months later, Tim finds himself reluctantly trapped into a Memorial Day weekend date--and when it goes awry he turns to Pete, who he still loves, for help. Their reunion touches twenty-four hours of bickering, making up, accidental drug use, a tour of post-riot Los Angeles, recollections of the pre-AIDS world, and the discovery that even more friends have now died of the disease.

It is AIDS that fuels the novel, and if the book has a flaw it is that Baker takes one's knowledge of the politics that swirled around the epidemic for granted. As the epidemic emerged, Republicans and their fundamentalist Christian allies had a very distinct tendency to offer a smug "let the homosexuals die" smile. The Reagan Administration was particularly horrific in this regard, and Tim, Pete, and their various friends are acutely aware of it. They respond in kind: if they don't care if we die, why should we care if they do?

The book is chock full of brutal, grotesque, and hilariously funny conversations in which the characters imagine how much they would like to see such individuals as Pat Robertson and Jesse Helms meet the sword in particularly brutal and highly public ways--fits of revenge fantasy that Tim and Pete, although boiling with anger and frustration, do not take literally. But then the novel takes a chilling turn: they stumble into a group of radical, HIV-infected homosexuals who are determined to take the next step, and their targets are no less than former president Ronald Reagan and wife Nancy.

Clearly this is not a book that will greatly appeal to Republicans, Southern Baptists, or the-then emerging neo-cons who find themselves in Baker's crosshairs. It is worth mentioning, however, that neither does Baker paint the gay community in a particularly flattering light: in a very real sense they emerge as ineffective, self-absorbed, and superficial. Funny though it may be, it's pretty bitter stuff. But Baker had the gift. As the novel goes from escapade to another it twists you from laugh-out-loud hilarity (I can think of few books that have made me laugh as hard as this one) to sudden dismay and back again, riccoheting from one subject to another, cuting first with one side of the blade and then the next.

TIM AND PETE provoked such outrage in 1993 that it went out of print very quickly. More than a decade later, it and Baker's other novels are slowly but surely enjoying rising admiration by critics and the reading public and the book is available once more. It's strong stuff, no doubt about it, but it is more than worth the effort of latching onto a copy. Recommended.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer

This was my second book by James Robert Baker, so obviously there was something in the first book I read by him (Testosterone) that made me want to know more of his work. I think with this one I've had my fill. If this and Testosterone are two of his best works, I've had enough.(btw, I thought Testosterone much the better of the two.)

What is interesting about this book was the way Baker described the 80's and 90's and an era of AIDS angst in southern California. He does capture the mood and the anger that were 'out there' in the gay community in the Regan and early Bush (the pappa) years (I am ten years younger than Baker and was living in Los Angeles in the same time.) So from that perspective the book was a time capsule. But what was overly annoying were the overdrawn situations and the relationship of Time and Pete. It just didin't ring true to me. What did ring true was the anger and the over-the-top obsessive / compusiveness of the protagonist Tim (clearly drawn from Baker's own life experience). It is sad (but not surprising after reading these books) to learn that Baker committed suicide in 1997 at age 51. He was clearly a man with lots of issues on many levels. And a lot of the issues Baker deals with are not different than issues gay men deal with today (HIV, aging, the superficiality of many gay communiites). Baker's responses all seem so extreme.

All in all, the book has become a period piece of the days when Act Up and Queer Nation were out there in a big way, which is an interesting counterpoint to the passiveness of the gay community today. Also, one does wonder if Baker would have toned-down his brash and outlandish writing style with the advent of some maturity that comes with age.

I first read this book when I was fifteen, and five years later, I still love to read it all over again. It has never lost its appeal to me. "Tim and Pete" has the best damn dialogue I've read in a long time - it's sarcastic and witty, and you'll feel like you're living the characters' lives in no time. This book is funny and subversive, and has more than enough black humor to make a conservative person have a heart attack. I recommend "Tim and Pete" to anyone who's ever felt out of place or rejected in this world, be it male or female, gay or straight.

...which is too bad. This is truly one of my favorite novels, when it first appeared in the early 90s. I was sad that it was out of print, until recently. But now that I have a new copy, I will be able to share this story with friends again. I loved the pace at which Tim and Pete made their adventures though Orange County and LA; it reminded me of my own un-real road trips. And much like Brett Easton Ellis' Glamorama, it is hard to fathom a group of gay artists-slash-terrorists; yet, their existence in an anti-gay society is not completely impossible. This book challenged my very safe notion of what it means to be gay--and that is never a bad thing.

"Tim and Pete" is the first novel I've read by James Robert Baker, an author who has achieved a certain notoriety for his unorthodox and extreme subject matter (or so I'd heard). After reading other reviews, I figured that "Tim and Pete" would be a pretty good place to start; I'd already seen the god-awful film version of Baker's allegedly edgy "Testosterone", and I wasn't anxious to revisit those characters, no matter how superior the book might be.

"Tim and Pete" finds the two, so-named gay men living separate lives in the L.A. area following a nasty breakup some years earlier. Tim is a film librarian who is now celibate; most of his old friends and many old lovers have died from AIDS and Tim is terrified that he's going to catch it. Pete is an aspiring musician, now residing in Laguna Beach, leading a relatively closeted life and working at a mechanic's garage; his mother is the secretary/bedmate of a bigoted, homophobic politician who's out to crucify Pete (and the gay community, in general). One weekend, Tim agrees to accompany an older friend to Laguna; when the friend makes advances towards Tim, he is shocked and repelled, a plot device that is as degrading as it is unbelievable. The way that the Tim character is written, he's much too smart to NOT know that the man has ulterior motives. And the older man himself is portrayed as a pathetic, old poof, an insulting stereotype that a progressive writer would seemingly want to avoid, or at least present in a different light. At any rate, Tim finds himself dumped by the roadside and must rely on the angry, bitter (but gorgeous) Pete to get him back to L.A. Over the course of their journey, they are besieged by various predicaments that include being taken hostage by a drug-fueled quartet of gay avengers.

Far-fetched as it sounds, there is a certain truth to the book. Los Angeles is fairly represented, with its suburban sprawl and the diversity of its denizens. And the AIDS epidemic is recounted with chilling authenticity--the book was published in 1993 and the element of fear in the gay community hadn't yet been diminished by the development of so-called "AIDS cocktails".

Though both Tim and Pete start out as fairly unlikable characters, I found myself rooting for them by the end of the book. Altogether, it is a quick read that is not as raunchy, or as pessimistic, or even as edgy as it pretends to be. While I didn't love "Tim and Pete", I liked it enough to recommend it, and to read further work by author James Robert Baker who, unfortunately, committed suicide while still relatively young.

This is kind of a schizophrenic book. I tried to enjoy it for the romance between two ex-lovers, a filmmaker and a rock musician, who are thrown together and, over the course of one eventful night in L.A., must come to terms with their lingering feelings for one another. Even though, for me, the fate of this love affair was the most engaging aspect of the book, it's obvious that the late author, James Robert Baker, had another agenda in mind. This very black comedy/satire is primarily concerned with communicating the level of rage felt by the gay community against the right wing conservative powers-that-be during the height of the AIDS crisis in the early nineties. Set against, and certainly finding parallels in, post-riot Los Angeles, the story follows the eponymous ex-lovers as they traverse the city looking for one of Pete's fellow AA members who has fallen off the wagon...hard.

Along the way they meet a recovering alcoholic movie star, a reactionary Republican congressman, a pair of feuding, mismatched lesbian lovers, an AIDS sufferer newly converted to Christianity and ready to renounce his "sinful" ways and, most significantly, a band of artists-cum-terrorists plotting to bomb the La Jolla church attended by a popular Republican ex-President.

I very much enjoyed this book on one level because, as with all my favourite LGBT books, the two leads aren't mincing stereotypes. Both are attractive, complicated, unique individuals. Plus, as a rock music and film lover, the glimpses into their respective careers was definitely cool. And, with the exception of a few lengthy, didactic speeches, the copious dialogue is convincingly written.

On the downside, I found most of the secondary and minor characters (although not necessarily poorly drawn or wooden) were not fully realized individuals, but merely props used to justify the author's anger against particular societal ills. I was also majorly turned off by the violence. Although most of the violence doesn't actually happen on the page, it's still omnipresent - in the bitter, angry lyrics of Pete's songs, in the deliberately offensive, provocative artwork of the radical queer terrorists (who also orchestrate a wholesale massacre on a conference of conservative bigwigs that takes place sometime shortly after the book's denouement) and in the elaborate gore-filled revenge fantasies shared by the two leads as they drive through bombed out L.A. While I certainly agree with the book's politics, most of this stuff, played for laughs, struck me as nothing more than impotent bombast.

My recommendation - read TIM AND PETE for the love story. If you're anything like me, you can stop in the middle of Chapter Ten and have your happy ending without the huge side order of implied and impending violence.

What a book! The author has packed in one of the most eventful days one could ever imagine, and yet makes it all highly plausible. Most of the other reviewers here seem to have gotten the same basic idea, except that Kirkus guy(gal?) - who seems highly subjective in his interpretation. And, heterophobia? I've only seen raging homophobes use that word - clearly he was unprepared and unable to grasp the fundamentals of the book he's reviewed. Anyway, Tim & Pete is a terrific, powerful, hopeful and at the same time believable read. Read this book - it's a true antidote to the insipid schlock that would win the approval of William Bennett.

Tim and Pete is a great book. Well written story of the reconciliation of two ex-lovers (gay) who happen upon eachother through less then ideal circumstances. My only advice would be to take the gay-extremists in the book as the fictional constructs they are. (Late in the book, extremists plot the assanination of former president Reagan.) Also, a quote attributed to President Bush, saying Bush was on CNN saying there was a "giggle factor" in the White House regarding AIDS is fiction and, despite a lengthy search, was proved fictional. The book is not centered on extreme characters, however, and is quite entertaining.

was the perfect book for me to read tat my time in Los Angeles, in the midst of gay hollywood, in an all but done relationship that still had burning love for each another, it was just a time for me to move and this book moved me...and it was not easy to move on.

it spoke directly to all my struggles, it felt like finally I was reading what I was having so hard to articulate. Being gay at that time in LA was no easy feat, there was so much angst, so much sex, so much rawness then... it was both good and bad but all extreme. exactly what this book is.

James Robert Baker unapologetically hilarious post-modern adventure novel goes right for the jugular and the funny bone and refuses to let go. Thelma and Louise on acid, Tim and Pete is a scathingly accurate portrait of everything insane: arch-conservatism, radical liberalism, gay life, straight life and everything LA. How it's title character's manage to find love amidst the ruins is astonishing and heart-wrenching. Above all, Tim and Pete is an empowering work for almost any reader, so long as you're not a Republican.