Bongwater - Softcover

Michael Hornburg

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0704302527 ISBN 13: 9780704302525

Publisher: Interlink Publishing+group Inc, 1995

Synopsis

This novel of young slackers in 1990s Portland and New York City is “a swift, exhilarating read [and] a surprisingly sweet-natured love story” (Madison Smartt Bell). Set against the backdrop of the grunge era, and ranging from the Pacific Northwest to a pre-gentrified East Village and Brooklyn, Bongwater is a novel of the much-misunderstood nineties generation. Following aspiring filmmaker David, his ex-girlfriend Courtney, a stripper named Mary, and other characters, author Michael Hornburg creates, in precise, startlingly original prose, a neo-Beat classic that was the basis for the film starring Luke Wilson and Alicia Witt. “Ridiculously well-written.” — NME

About this title

From the Back Cover

'Bongwater is one of the coolest books of the year. Hornburg explodes the whole grunge mythos by taking it out of the realm of the flash photo spread and giving us the seamy, unimaginative days upon days of fear and hopelessness.' -- Alternative Press

From Publishers Weekly

Set in coffee-cluttered Portland, Ore., and New York City's East Village, this first novel palpably vies for the honor of generational mouthpiece as it observes a handful of 20-something Americans looking for meaning, or at least for epiphanies?so they can talk about meaning. David, a not particularly committed filmmaker, narrates the Portland segments. He is a romantic, aimless fellow, and his scattershot affections land him in several beds. The New York sections, written in the third person, concern Courtney, David's former girlfriend. Her adventures include a move into an abandoned building, a visit from friend Jennifer and a dangerous party in Brooklyn. Back in Portland, while chasing the same Jennifer and falling in with a stripper named Mary, David remembers Courtney from time to time. But his memories rarely wax romantic: he dwells on the fact that Courtney let his house burn down before she left. In what must be the novel's central scene, David visits his childhood friend Phil, who grows pot in the mountains. On a naked dip in an edenic glen, possible meaning surfaces when Mary the stripper posits that "a man who leaves his natural state lives with darkness forever." The novel has no dramatic conflict but, like its characters, is content to amble stylishly along without much sense of progress or satisfaction.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Interlink Publishing+group Inc
• Publication date: 1995
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0704302527
• ISBN 13: 9780704302525
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 240