Customer Reviews

Us Ones in Between

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

 

 

I saw the writer Blair Mastbaum read from his novel at a bookstore here in San Francisco, where he gave a good account of himself and totally slipped into the voice of Kurt Smith, the narrator, so that in retrospect having read the book I find it hard to keep myself from collating the two, the man and his fictional invention. I guess the biggest difference is that Kurt is pretty severely disturbed, while Mastbaum seemed no more or less neurotic than any other novelist I've ever known. (He kept his cap on through the reading, claiming he had driven all day from Portland and his hair wasn't fit to be seen.)

Kurt's sort of a mess, halfway between a former career as an artist (well, a Cooper Union student) and a possible future as a novelist. I wonder why Mastbaum decided not to have Kurt continue on with his art, because his art school days and his reminiscences of his practice account for some of the book's sharper passages, while his jealousy of Sherlock, a former friend who is now one of New York's hottest young painters, gives the somewhat heavy book a leavening of good old-fashioned spite. Mostly Jurt just sits and stares (the book opens with him trying to get down the forty-eight wooden steps from his East Village apartment where he has been holed up for over a week), mooning over his former boyfriend, Billy, a talented musician who can't deal any longer with Kurt's Kurtness. Like his name implies, our hero is an unstable combination of Kurt Cobain and Elliott Smith, but picture those two roaming through the NYC subway system and fantasizing about doing away with cute guys by pushing them into the rails.

Up to a certain point we identify with Kurt, for who hasn't lost a lover to the arms of another? Who hasn't seen their dreams of a successful career run off the tracks? But then when the subway pusher plot comes into play, Mastbaum has a trickier game to play, keeping us guessing as to whether or not our little Kurt is capable of the heinous acts of a serial killer. Insofar as we believe it, we draw back from a once comfortable identification, and insofar as we doubt it, well, frankly it gets a wee bit annoying the constant Roger Ackroydism of the narration. It's like Kylie Minogue saud, "Stick, or twist, the choice is yours."

The brilliant David Rylance has put forward a convincing case for seeing US ONES IN BETWEEN as a poetic drama of the real vs. the "non-existent," while another reviewer has torn the book to shreds for its alleged resemblance to Mastbaum's first (a book I haven't seen). I didn't understand how the frighteningly grim and repressed Kurt could be mistaken for any of "us ones in between," but otherwise, I'll be looking forward to reading his previous book now, and any other of Blair Mastbaum's books that come thundering out of his brain like locomotives.

I just finished this book a few minutes ago. It was just what I was looking for. Since I'm only a teenager, I never really had access to gay novels, and this was my first. I loved it. It was enjoyable, and had an excellent main character. Mastbaum creates a very realistic and very dark mood throughout. It was thrilling, interesting, and very sexy. I drained myself in Kurt Smith's world and will probably do it all over again in a few days. Worthy of a sequel for sure.

In his second novel (the first, "Clay's Way", won him the Lamda Literary award for best debut gay novel), Mustbaum sticks with telling the story of a dysfunctional, obsessed gay young man, in this case in the persona of Kurt Smith, a would-be artist/writer three years out of college with an art degree, living in a run-down Manhattan studio apartment. The somewhat naturally shy, introspective Kurt admits being obsessed by his ex-boyfriend, the bisexual and charismatic Billy, who is achieving some fame as member of a popular local band. Kurt's days seem to revolve around getting stoned and either remembering their times together, or fantasizing how he will "win him back" so they can be together again. Billy has made it clear to Kurt that reconciliation isn't possible, although he offers friendship, which is not enough for his obsessed and insecure ex. In between his bouts of depression and fantasies of getting Billy back, Kurt has started on a novel about an alienated young gay man who pushes strangers he desires to their death in front of subway trains. It becomes clear that this has also become a obsession and fantasy of Kurt's, one that his friends fear has become a reality, after several such incidents are reported. Has Kurt's frustration with not being able to have Billy resulted in his not only being incapable of considering a relationship with anyone else, but also compels him to enact revenge on young men he desires, hurting them before they can reject him?

Very well-written dark novel, though not exactly the thing to cheer you up on a cloudy or rainy day. Conveys an excellent NYC "vibe" in its characters and situations, and provides a good case study of how alienation and compulsion can ruin an otherwise promising young life. Not for everyone, but I give it five stars out of five.

The self absorbed loser narrative is very prevalent in literature and I wonder if writing such accounts is a cure for writer's block. Sadly it is not much fun for the reader. Kurt Smith is a 25 year gay man trying to write a novel and overcome his grief rfom a recent love affair with Billy who has gone on to become a very successful musician. The near reclusiveness of Kurt and his self pitying lament raised little interest for me and the plot of his novel about a young man who pushes people under oncoming trains coinciding with a real pusher failed to raise this from being a very unappealing read.

After reading Blair Mastbaum's first book "Clay's Way" in 2005, then rereading it twice in 2006, then reading it yet again in 2007, I was super psyched this week when I received my pre-order copy of "Us Ones in Between." Unlike Clay's Way which I couldn't stop reading once I picked it up, Us Ones leaves much to be desired. First of all the author doesn't tread much new ground here. The story recycles a lot of the themes and language from his first book, and yet lacks the character development and imagery that made Clay's Way so strong. If you are expecting another Clay's Way, you may be dissapointed. If you're not, you still may be dissapointed. I would avoid this one.

I just got this book, and started reading it this week. I really love it so far. It's amazing how well Mastbaum catches people's ennui, their desperation, their motivations. I realy don't understand the 1st review at all. A friend and I were looking at the reviews to see what other people thought about about it and found this. This guy is completely off base, and not worth listening to. Blair Mastbaum's stuff is awesome! I'm going to re-read this book when I'm done and read his next book.

Blair Mastbaum has never been one to paint a pretty picture of love as seen in the eyes of today's youth. His first novel, Clay's Way, transported readers to the salty shoreline of Hawaii, where the bitter aftermath of a first love soon became a feeding ground for hysteria and rage. Much of the same tale is evident here, except we're in Manhattan, where a lonely struggling writer attempts to complete a novel without losing his mind over a past love. Quick, fun, and an interesting new twist on fetishes (pushing people in front of trains, anyone?), this is a quick fast-paced read that places you in the deteriorating mind of the narrator, an emo kid destined to track down the right way to love. A great addition to the universe of gay publishing.

Blair Mastbaum's accessible, fearless and subtly poetic writing is a must. Despite what the prior reviewer says, the only thing this book has in common with 'Clay's Way' is how astonishingly good it is. Mastbaum deals in familiar coming-of-age narratives to arrive at far darker and vastly more confronting conclusions than this form - in its emphasis on transition rather than impasse and collapse - can traditionally allow. More than that, he tirelessly investigates the styles of certain youth cultures that are - in a sense - much more than just random aesthetic accidents but are actually quite purposeful and substantive ontological expressions, modes of 'being' implicated in the formation of set kinds of persons, in much the same way that style was used to delineate seperate modes of existence in Indian caste systems. In particular, Mastbaum's books compassionately and critically examine how the sheer charisma of certain styles is so simultaneously compelling to the point of devastation for some young people - something that fills the entire world with *this* specific desire, to the exclusion of any other - and yet how utterly inaccessible this charisma can also be for them, how utterly non-existent they look beside (or inside of) it. While 'Clay's Way' situates itself at a place where surf culture meets the sentimental ennui of a 'Catcher in the Rye', lovingly drawing off both while turning each inside out, 'Us Ones In Between' has its sights set on the 'Less Than Zero' tradition of literature and turns its attentions to certain stereotypes or archetypes that are 'models' (Mastbaum was once one himself) of a certain kind of urban culture, one where desire is channelled and looped through being 'seen', a feature which touches not only on a fashionable undergound social setting limited to cities but on the trend phenomenon of myspace culture more broadly, in each of which exists a kind of non-stop party atmosphere where the partying, the fashion, the involvement in edgy art scenes is less important somehow than the representation of this in glamour shots, frozen and immaculate still life imagery, this imagery being exactly what the people in this book are gripped to become themselves. In such a context, the desire of our lead character, Kurt, is bent around a situation where the charisma of his ex-boyfriend is as much the thing he desperately wants to keep a hold of as the person himself - if indeed there is a difference between the two, the embeddedness of the people in this novel in their particular subcultural situations, in their popularity among others, and in their visual perfection of a certain kind of sexual aesthetic being as much the elements that make them 'themselves' as any supposedly prior interiority, or 'real' 'true' self. This is not to say, however, that Mastbaum wishes to dismiss these new social spaces or their occupants as 'superficial' because he doesn't. Rather, what he is fascinated by is by how deep they are indeed, how much they mean to the persons both inside their orbit and without, and how the productive and destructive directions these 'models' take can mean so much to someone that the ground between 'reality' and 'fantasy' seems to slip, as progressively happens when Kurt tries to work out how crazy his isolation in relation to his desires is making him (the train angle), where he needs to find out just how seriously he is starting to take this whole thing without even knowing it, and where he needs to ask himself how much any and all of this actually does matter to him anyway. In short, then, Mastbaum's new novel is a startling achievement, full of cool focus and itinerant daring, touching on emotions and their relation to social situations in a way I could only nod along to and marvel at, transfixed. The reviewer preceding me unfortunately has read this book without reading it at all. Don't let that short-sightedness ruin this work of art for you.

It's about time we had another young gay author who knows what the hell is going on. I used to think I would have to keep reading the same two Thorn Hillsbery books over and over again.

If I had to read one more book about a sad old gay man looking back on his life in the pre-AIDS 70s I was going to lose my fu*cking mind.

I'm sure this book "isn't for everyone" as other people have said. Yeah, it's not for the boring illiterate crowd. However if you want to read something fresh, innovative, and cool you've found your book. And for those who read it and didn't like it...beat it! I don't want you around.

Anyway, I loved it. The book is kind of like me-dark, depressing but a lot of fun! Blair is just a wonderful, intelligent writer and I love what he does. He is the best young author out there right now.

Blair is like a literary Diane Keaton. You know. Quirky and an individual. Yet Blair gets points for not wearing gloves and a jacket during summer.

This book is exactly like his first novel, only worse.

In his first novel, there was an obsessive guy in love with a dude who wasn't comfortable with his sexuality. In this one, there's an obsessive guy in love with a dude who is apparently just using his sexual experiences to look edgy.

More similarities:

First novel: Boy becomes delusional and tries to be the boy he loves.
This one: Boy becomes delusional and may or may not be pushing guys onto subway tracks.

First novel: Boy never bathes and likes to piss out the window.
This one: Boy never bathes and likes to piss in his tub/sink.

First novel: Best friend is supportive despite the wackiness.
This one: Ditto.

First novel: Boyfriend is super-popular, which makes boy jealous.
This one: Ex-boyfriend is super-popular, which makes boy jealous.

First novel: Boy writes bad haikus.
This one: Boy used to be an artist.

First one: Boy masturbates all the time.
This one: Ditto.

First one: There is some other dude that is better for the boy, but the boy isn't interested.
This one: Ditto.

First one: Parents just don't understand me! Sob!
This one: Ditto.

Also, the font in the book is like Arial 14pt, which means that it's a lot shorter than advertised.

In short: Do not buy this book. I really don't even know how it got published.