Type of bind: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN num: 9780688152154
ISBN number: 0688152155
Label: William Morrow
Manufacturer: William Morrow
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 208
Printing Date: October 08, 1997
Publishing house: William Morrow
Release Date: October 01, 1997
Sale Popularity Level: 1567478
Studio: William Morrow
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Product Description:
A stark and stunningly realized post-grunge novel in the tradition of John Rechy's City of Night. Set in the Pacific Northwest, the book follows a small bunch of drugged-out street kids. With astonishingly gritty depictions of America's underside, the author brilliantly captures daily existence for these anesthetized teens and includes hypnotic scenes of gay and straight sex--usually performed for cash or drugs. It is a powerful and original novel and as real as the kids sleeping on the streets in any city or town in America.
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Rated by buyers -
This novel tells the story of Davy, Nikki, James, Jody and Branch, a group of street kids living in a squat in Portland, getting by on "slither" for pay, in other words, hustling. We see their day-to-day existence through Davy's point of view, a loose and rambling prose that relates every incident in the same casual style, whether it be negotiating the use of a coupon to buy deodorant in a grocery store or a paid sexual encounter turned unexpectedly violent. While Davy's matter-of-factness makes the book's more unsavory, possibly disturbing, aspects more palatable, it also purposely, and cleverly, masks any potential despair over his lot in life. To his credit, Williams doesn't try too hard to make the vernacular sound overly hip or colloquial; he strikes just the right tone so the reader can believe that these are the hurried, slightly scattered thoughts and voices of teenagers. In addition, the Pacific Northwest of the grunge-era nineties is nicely evoked as the kids flit between various locales and fuss over the more popular rock bands.
Although Davy and Nikki are the high school sweethearts who hitchhike from Eugene together at the start of the book, the true love story at the heart of the novel is between Davy and James, a sensitive young hustler they hook up with in a Portland park. Davy's special affection for James becomes apparent only very slowly, emerging in direct correlation with the escalation of danger and discomfort in their lives, of which James has a lower tolerance than the others. While most of the book's sex is quite clinical and impersonally portrayed, there is one scene between these two that is quite different. Davy and James are encouraged by their pimp, Branch, to spend their "vacation day" in a gay bath house and once there, they have an incredibly erotic, but surprisingly tender, sexual encounter that takes the concept of PDA to a whole new level. Very hot.
Rather than indulge in a lot of navel gazing or dwell on the tragedy of his life, Davy merely focuses on getting through each day. Watching the mundane struggles of these kids, whether it be in securing a new squat, feeding themselves, earning money, shopping or negotiating free time, we come to recognize ourselves and our own very compromised, often unsatisfying, lives. Highly recommended.
Rated by buyers 
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A bit vapid, a bit glamorized...Williams' view of street life is one that seems right on if you are a gay prettyboy and your tastes in drugs run more to ecstasy and the psychadelics. As someone with two strikes against me (being that I adore opiates and that I do not possess a penis), I found this book somewhat lightweight. Perhaps because Williams either is or is fascinated by gay males himself, the female characters in this book seemed one dimensional and peripheral. They exist only to prop up the males' existence and do not have the same pathos, torment, and beauty as the male characters. Now, 99% of all films/books have this problem so I should really blame society for this flaw, not Williams...but if you are at all irked at this tendency, particularly in portraits of countercultures, do not buy this book. If however you are lucky enough to be an attractive young hipster boy you will probably adore this book and its depictions of sex, drugs, sleazy johns, parties, and Portland street life.
Rated by buyers 
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Sometimes you read a book, and it never leaves you. Well, I can't get this book out of my mind. It was just so good because it was so 90s, so post-grunge, so my generation. Who can't relate to listening a worn tape of Bleach through your headphones? This is THE book for anyone who remembers what it was like right after punk broke.
Rated by buyers -
At one point, the characters Lee William's very first novel, After Nirvana, find themselves in a Safeway with a coupon book shopping for a single stick of deodorant to handle the five hustling runaways. They are five street kids teens, two girls and three boys, who banded together to watch after each other and collectively earn what they can in the park bathrooms, highway rest areas, and adult video booths along I-5 between Eugene and Seattle. This mission to buy deodorant is probably one of the most complicated tasks undertaken in the course of the story, which sort of makes After Nirvana sound like a chronicle of five mental deficients, but really illustrates how alien buying dry goods like make-up or toilet paper are to these street kids. They loiter in front of the confusing row of choices.
"I was standing subsequent to Branch in the soap and pit-stick aisle and he was going through the Soft $ Dri's, popping the tops, sniffing and holding them out to me, one at a time, asking `Does this smell like snatch?' but before I'd say anything he'd sniff the stick again, say, `Yeah, too much,' put the top back on, put the thing back on the shelf. "Dude, there's gotta be one that doesn't reek like chick."
But before they stop at this Safeway to buy some deodorant they accomplish a series of tasks with as much fluent ease as my own tired trips to the Thriftway where I automatically pick up non-perishables and odds and ends, that is the things I need to survive and the various not essential to my survival items like deodorant to hide my own stinky presence. These kids have identified johns and hustled tricks at dusk in Eugene. They have hustled in video booths. They have engineered an appearance in a cheap triple x video and sold acid in back water towns in Oregon. But they can't manage to buy one stick of neutral deodorant to cover the smell of the five of them.
Lee William's doesn't seek a cause and effect chain which ultimately leads to a prime mover, some action or sequence that resulted in these kids ending up the street. There isn't any moral in this book about abusive parents or drug use. And there isn't a progression toward recovery or redemption or any other artificial Aesop style moral. Unlike the movie of a couple of years ago that plays out the hackneyed story of street kids, Where the Day Takes Us, which aside from flat characters followed the street exploits of a character named Lion who benevolently watched over his pack, After Nirvana is a naked narrative following the story of how these kids meet together and then aren't together anymore.
Consequently, the narrative feels effectively fragmented and episodic. The novel isn't about why these kids are like this but shows the way that they are. This book is sex, drugs, and rock and roll irony lived out on thirteen year old bodies where the equations are so basic that irony is the only form of clothing these kids have. Such values as straight or gay or love or powder fresh pH balanced really are just a little more expensive than they can afford.
Rated by buyers -
This book was of fairly good quality. I don't know if I would have enjoyed it as much though, if I were to live outside of Portland, OR and know nothing of the area. It was very good at offering insight into the world of street kids and their lives. And of course it was good for the familarness of the Portland setting.
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