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Is that Gilbert Gottfried
on the cover? An odd choice, to be sure, but somehow appropriate given
the first act of this book, which is filled with angst, anger and
teenage alienation. I certainly took to the subject matter of this
book right off the bat--the life and times of Marc Spitz and his on
and off love affair with The Smiths. I'm just a couple years younger
than Spitz, who chronicles his parents' divorce, his descent into
juvenile delinquency and his eventual deliverance at the hands of
Morrissey and his gang. Along the way he and his group of high school
friends in Long Island are tortured by jocks and JAPs, and are relegated
to the art room for lunch. Their world revolves around the rock radio
station and the chance to hear a snippet of "Hand In Glove" over the
airwaves. It sounds similar to my high school experience--well, without
the jock harassment, art room and group of reject friends. I went
to a nerdy all-guys school where even the jocks got 1450s on their
SATs and my friends skated and smoked weed whenever it was available.
That aside, I did listen to The Smiths in junior high, and had the
strange feeling that they were talking to me. Spitz does a wonderful
job of describing the blinding horniness and confusion that comes
with adolescence and young teen years. He sums up the need to find
"a look" and an attitude for young males. He actually had a reason
to play the wounded, angry guy. I tried it, but just ended up looking
like a jackass. We see Spitz's evolution from wounded teen to drug
addled college student (who isn't at Bennington, anyway?) to East
Village junkie. After a bunch of stuff he ends up as a rock journalist
(of course) and, after years of thinking The Smiths abandoned him
in his youth, he decides with a co-worker to try to reunite the later
day fab four. Anyway, the book is filled with a bunch of displaced
idol worship and unrequited love. I loved the first part of the book.
Watching our protagonist evolving from child of divorce to fake punk
to raging Anglophile. The second act, which is devoid of Smiths, as
he has blamed them for the downfall of his life, is a little less
inspired, and wanders a bit like his life does. The third act--the
denouement, some might say--kind of degenerates into the haze of his
obsession to both reunite The Smiths and pursue his partner in crime.
It drags a bit (how many times can the guy go to that shitbox, The
Library?) and gets repetitive at times. There's what I imagine
to be a pretty narrow audience for this book, but I am certainly right
in that target. I wouldn't call it a great piece of literature, but
it is certainly worth a read if you're in the mood to be kinda depressed.
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