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The antihero of Human Punk is Joe Martin: poor white trash from the council estates of Slough. In the novel's first third, set at the "arse-end of the 70s", Joe is a teenage no-hoper into cheap booze and cheaper girls. He's also into the new punk music that has finally percolated down to the Middlesex hinterlands.
King captures Joe's humble yet never-to-be-forgotten adolescent excitements--"the tingle of the cider" and the "smell of Bev's perfume banging into me"--with such empathy and verve that, in its praise, you can't help sensing the autobiographer at work rather than the novelist.
Unfortunately, the following sections of the novel aren't as telling. First it flashes forward to the late 1980s, when Joe is a backpacker returning to Blighty, as the prodigal son, on the Trans-Siberian railway; then it moves on to glitzy New Labour London of the millennium, where Joe is a moneymaking DJ. Throughout it all Joe broods on a childhood incident when a friend was nearly drowned, and the solving of this "puzzle"--his pal's fate--is what provides the book with its denouement. However, these later sections fail to grip the reader as it is difficult to afford the older, harder Joe the same sympathy one gave his youthful incarnation, and without such identification the whole book lacks psychological Semtex.
Fans of King's bleak, staccato, first-person narratives will not be disappointed by his now familiar but explosive insights into the male psyche.--Sean Thomas -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine andere Ausgabe: Taschenbuch .
Pressestimmen
“King’s eye for detail is as sharp as his characters’ tongues, and his creations are eminently three-dimensional: insightful and funny one minute, bigoted and ******-up the next.” –The Face
“Unique and brutal fiction...King is a master of idiom and street slang.” –The Times
“King’s most accomplished and compelling story to date.” —Esquire
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British author John King's Human Punk, however, stands out as a more genuine coming-of-age story, prominently featuring the fictional Joe Martin's punk rock lifestyle without passing judgment on the phenomenon itself.
For many teenagers growing up around the London suburbs in 1977, punk is a way of life. Joe and friends Chris, Dave and Smiles get off on listening to the Clash, stomping poseur fashion punks with steel-toed DMs, wooing bleach-blonde girls at the dance clubs, and joyriding into London to catch the best concerts. Told from Joe's perspective, the story follows the boys as they get into trouble with girls, drugs, the police, and elder punk rocker Gary Wells, who tosses Joe and Smiles in a canal with lasting and tragic consequences.
Eleven years later, in 1988, Joe returns to England after years spent working in a Hong Kong bar when shocking news draws him back to hometown Slough. On the train ride through China, Russia, and Germany, he contemplates the injustices of human society in the context of reminiscences of fading childhood friendships. By the time Joe's story wraps up in the year 2000, Joe discovers that idle decisions affect legacies, and that some wrongs should not be forgiven.
As a study of boot-boy counterculture, what makes Human Punk interesting is that it is not about punk at all. To be sure, the music and influence is there, but King's novel focuses on characterization, creating a believable band of friends who have the qualities of punk rockers but are by no means emblematic or representative of the movement as a whole. With an emphasis on the "human," King is able to portray with a natural continuity the chronicles of an anarchist, as Joe does not "turn establishment" as he ages but rather matures and develops within his punk rock mind frame.
King's novel feels like an oral account, as if the reader is along with Chris, Dave, and Smiles to hear Joe's story. This approach certainly has its strengths and weaknesses. On the one hand, it allows a more intimate and first hand understanding of life in Slough as seen through the main character's eyes, and multi-page stream of consciousness passages give a sense of immediacy to the events describe.
Unfortunately, these same stream of consciousness passages are sometimes difficult to follow from leap to quantum leap, and occasionally the chronology of events discussed in flashback are difficult to place.
American readers will find an added obstacle in deciphering the numerous Anglicanisms, which when added to 1970s punk jargon can make Human Punk read a bit like A Clockwork Orange. This challenge can be surmounted relatively easily by paying attention to context, but remains somewhat distracting.
John King's Human Punk provides a valuable snapshot of a particular cultural phenomenon at a particular moment in time. Joe's experiences blend youthful aggression with ageless compassion, fortified by a raw honesty that would make his punk idols spit with pride. The book is rough, at times sloppy, and may very well be distasteful to upstanding members of society. Just as it should be.
>This review originally appeared in a college newspaper, back in the day.
and the tragic parts really brought
tears in to my eyes.
i reccomend this to anyone whos looking for an easy to read story and interested in such music.
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