A hard-edged look at the seamy underside of New York City follows the travels of Apollo, a heroin addict hiding out from Casio, a porn theater bouncer, bringing to unforgettable life the world of prostitutes, transvestites, and other denizens of the night.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Benderson's second novel (after Pretending to Say No ) plunges the reader into a wretched, liminal community of transexual hustlers, street people, debased cops and bohemian junkies congregating in and around New York City's Time Square. Careening through the center of Benderson's multilayerd story is Apollo, a wired, hypermasculine prostitute of mixed racial descent who, in a fit of existential rage, nearly kills Casio, the bouncer at a porno theater. Dogged by the police, stalked by Baby Pop, Casio's vengeful son, and possessed by an unrelenting drug habit, Apollo moves through a lurid Baudelairian demimonde of numbed souls orbiting around fly-by-night transvestite clubs and after-hours bars. Benderson's New York is a multicultural city of the damned populated by extraordinary characters: Baby Pop, the gifted son of two junkies who sleeps in an abandoned train in the tunnels underneath Grand Central Station clutching an algebra book and a Steven King novel; Abuela, Casio's superstitious Latino great-grandmother; Apollo's unnamed, "once preppy," HIV-infected friend and patron, who hovers at the seedy margins of the city preparing his "death diary." Benderson's supple and polyglot prose gives voice to a discordant chorus of characters; although the plot is fragmentary and the ending abrupt, he invests their oppressed lives with profound authenticity and horror.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
A startling and eerie second novel by Benderson (Pretending to Say No, 1991, etc.) provides an unvarnished glimpse into a netherworld of drug dealers, transvestites, transsexuals, and prostitutes. When Apollo, a male stripper and hustler who has been doing large quantities of drugs, attacks Casio, the ex-con junkie turned bouncer at the porn theater in which Apollo works, it sends out ripples that reverberate throughout the sleazy world of strip joints and rip-off joints that both men inhabit. Pargero, a cop with a more than sentimental attachment to the transvestite strippers of that milieu and a familial tie to Mrs. Huxton, its unseen empress, begins looking for Apollo. Baby Pop, Casio's 14- year-old son, a math genius who lives in the Port Authority bus terminal, vows revenge. Apollo goes in search of a hiding place, ending up with his only real friend, a nameless white middle-class gay man with AIDS. Swirling around the action are a strange cast of hustlers, lowlifes, and no-hopers--crack addicts, sex addicts, transsexual junkies, and would-be beauticians--held together in a sinister dance of sex, money, drugs, and need. Benderson depicts this sphere in a merciless light, without judgment but unflinchingly, in a prose that is hypnotically descriptive and powerfully rhythmic. He moves easily between the voices of his protagonists, from the sullen suspiciousness of Apollo to the wry self-knowledge of the nameless man with AIDS. The result is a book that echoes the universe of Hubert Selby (who is invoked in one passage) and the teeming sexuality of John Rechy. An impressive book, but one that many readers will find relentlessly unpleasant. Benderson has a tremendous talent and a real feel for the night-world of New York; the question is how much readers can take. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Genet and Dickens Updated for the Millenium,
By A Customer
This review is from: User: A Novel (Plume Books) (Paperback)
Benderson's stage is NYC in the Giulliani era. The main characters are the down-and-outers and no-hopers born into the cruel urban world where survival of the fittest is the law of the land: Apollo the male prostitute, Casio -- the injured bouncer, Baby Pop -- the streetwise kid with big dreams and no way to realize them. Minor characters are those who exploit this class directly and live by a set of laws that is far from civil and often more malicious than those they consider themselves above: Mrs. Huxton -- the wealthy widow who makes big money from porn, Tina -- the drag queen who has managed to get ahead by running bars and after-hours clubs, as well as the several pushers, johns, and denizens who populate this world. This book works at times like a documentary and at others it is nothing but great story-telling. It gives us a look into the minds of society's cast-offs and brings us to examine our own views and our relations to these people. It reminded me many times of "Querelle" by Genet because of its simple exposition and matter-of-factness. And the scope put me to mind of certain works by Dickens where we see many levels of society and their inter-workings. This is a well-written novel which deserves wider attention.
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Manlust,
By alexander laurence (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: User: A Novel (Plume Books) (Paperback)
In the center of the transvestite bars, Times Square, the male huslters, the heroin addicted, the crack smokers, User rises out of the ashes and mainlines a beautiful fix. This is a story of a Times Square that doesn't exist anymore, and has been driven more underground. Bruce Benderson is an important American writer. He tells the story of Apollo, heroin user and hustler, and his long descent into his private hell. Apollo's story is both tragic and tender. We care about what happens to him. Benderson brings us into his real life. The fragmented narrative which switches point of view from character to character: from third person to first and to a stream of collective consciousnessthat forms a mosaic that both outlines "being on drugs" and creates a realism of urban strength. Apollo gets in a fight with Casio, a bouncer, and that sends Casio to the hospital. This makes Casio's son, Baby Pop, want to seek revenge on Apollo. Baby Pop is Benderson's very original and moving creation, who lives in the bus terminal at Port Authority. He studies math and dreams of going to college. Apollo is on the run, spiraling down deeper into the bowels of Times Square and Port Authority. This book has strength and is rich in deatil, written directly, and with great heart and compassion, recalling the better days of that other underworld figure and prisoner, Jean Genet. Bruce Benderson definitelt shows us the frontiers in a wolrd where people only pretend to be hard. This is also a farewell song to old Times Square that has been captured in such movies as Taxi Driver. That sleazy urban cesspool has been bought up by Disney and turned into a mall. After 1996, little of this world still existed. It's all very underground and in strange corners.
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