Teeth - Softcover

Gallagher, Hugh

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0671551663 ISBN 13: 9780671551667

Publisher: Atria Books, 1998

Synopsis

Neil is a dentally challenged, reluctantly hip downtown scribe whose life's work is Dusted, the 'zine that once earned him the title of New Jack Poet Warrior. But when the mag folds, Neil is left with an aching mouth and the realization that the icons of his time are either dying young, cashing in, or dropping out. It's a time of reckoning - the perfect moment to cancel dental appointments and take off on a drift through the global ghetto. From the gritty grind of New York to the dark glitter of Hollywood, through the tropical wilds of Indonesia and the crumbling squats of East London, Neil embarks on a soulful search for a woman to love and a place to call home. But answers will remain elusive until the roaming writer tests both his friends and his beliefs, and commits to a plan to make peace with his teeth.
Hugh Gallagher captures the conflict of finding one's way in a culture that mocks ambition while craving celebrity.

About this title

About the Author

Hugh Gallagher has written for Harper's, Rolling Stone, Wired, Dirt, Grand Royal, and Flash Art. He has performed on National Public Radio, recorded spoken work under the name Hugh Brown Shü, and his college application essay is an Internet classic. He lives in New York City.

Reviews

This first novel from a popular 'zine writer has youth-cult exploitation written all over it, and Gallagher lives down to a publisher's worst expectation: His portrait of the artist as a young punk journalist combines all the self-pity and self- aggrandizing one could expect in such a callow effort. The conceit here is painfully obvious: The narrator's badly damaged teeth, which he delays getting fixed, are a correlative for his slacker angst. Twenty-two-year-old Neil is ``fame hungry,'' but clings to his self-image as a ``struggling downtown writer,'' ``New Jack Poet Warrior,'' and ``Irish Samurai.'' Skipping college, and leaving Nowheresville, PA, Neil drops-in at NYU while churning out punk/gonzo prose for the Manhattan-based skateboard 'zine Dusted. Having smashed his mouth while diving from a window at a high- school brew bash, Neil makes his dental trauma the recurring motif of his manifesto in progress, Neil Before God, a few chapters of which appear in Dusted before its sudden demise. While his colleagues ``sell-out'' to skateboard companies, their rival mainstream mag, Bop Cheese, and Hollywood, Neil stays true to his punk ethos. Which means he's broke, has no job, no woman, and an unfinished book. The California wedding of his former editor draws Neil west, where he's disgusted by his erstwhile friends, especially Flash, who now hosts an ``alternative rock'' show. Worse, he discovers that Flash's East Coast poverty was a pose. Full of class resentment, Neil decides it's time to leave the country. In search of his dream woman--an Italian he once met in London--he takes off for her homeland, a nation of bad dentistry, and there he gets involved with a band of punk anarchists determined to turn a concert into a full-scale riot. At last, after a long night of bad drugs, Neil returns stateside to have his teeth, finally, repaired. Gallagher chews on more than he's bit off in this puerile bit of self-puffery. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Gallagher's first novel tells a coming-of-age story, albeit a relentlessly hip one with an odd conceit. Youthful narrator Neil's dental health functions as a central metaphor: Neil broke his teeth by jumping out of a window to escape the police, and he is unable to afford the extensive dental required to repair his mouth. But now he faces even larger problems. His 'zine Dusted has folded, leaving him at loose ends. He takes off for L.A., where he discovers that his former punky comrade-in-arms is really a trust-fund baby who has landed a gig hosting an MTV-like rock show. This betrayal of the punk ethic leaves him reeling. Subsequent adventures in Java, England, and Ireland finally convince him to head home and fix his teeth. Gallagher's exuberant prose style cannot mask the weakness of his plot, but fans of Jeff Gomez's work (Our Noise, 1995) will no doubt snap this title up. Joanne Wilkinson

Neil is a twentysomething writer whose column in a defunct underground youth 'zine has made him a cult hero. Now unemployed, he's become a tortured and confused dreamer desiring to travel the world (at the advice of a young actor who has since overdosed a la River Phoenix). He also hopes to reunite with his exotic European girlfriend, to win back a comradeship with his supercool former editor, and mostly to correct his nagging problem teeth. Talented first-time author Gallagher fleshes out an interestingly sympathetic hero and uses his broken teeth, the result of a rebellious leap taken through a second-story window, as a clever metaphor for the fragmented and damaged life being led. Comparable to the novels of Jay McInerney and Bret Easton Ellis, Gallagher's story of a young man's love/hate relationship with our pervasive youth culture and rock'n'roll celebrity as he tries to get a foothold in the adult world is funny, insightful, sensitive, and bold. Recommended for fiction collections, this should be on top of the MTV generation's reading list.?David Nudo, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Atria Books
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0671551663
• ISBN 13: 9780671551667
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320