|
REVIEW FROM ALBANY
TIMES UNION, JANUARY 28, 2002
GOOD REASON TO ROOT FOR EPONYMOUS
Dark, well-crafted
satire of band life is set in the Capital Region.
BY LISA STEVENS
Collie Hay is a
washed-up musician who is now a music critic in J. Eric Smith's fast-paced
novel, Eponymous.
Collie, full of self-hate and loathing, is writing a self-hurt book to try
and alleviate the guilt that consumes him following a horrible accident
involving his on-again, off-again girlfriend, Kris Dennison, a bassoonist and
a school teacher. Cause of the accident? "Toxic stupidity,'' Collie
explains.
The Capital Region is the backdrop of this dark satire, which Smith deftly
crafts. The author's in-depth knowledge of band life and his talent for rich
character development makes for great reading. You'll find yourself cheering
for Collie's smart-mouth, smart-aleck attitude and wanting to scream
"grow up" all in the same sentence.
Eponymous (Writers Club Press; 339 pages; $18.95) in its darkness, is
also a laugh-out-loud page turner. We can only hope Smith is at work on his
next book.
The author, who is a music critic for Metroland, lives in Latham.
REVIEW OF EPONYMOUS
BY WILSON SMITH
I loved this book;
let's get that out of the way. I'm not sure when I've cared about a
character, and the people who fill that character's world, as much as I cared
about "Eponymous"'s protagonist, Collie
Hay. Collie is a darkly humorous -- no, make that hysterically funny --
self-loather, one who seems to do bad things mostly in order to justify
feeling bad about himself. He's a slacker who, perhaps deliberately,
sabotages himself repeatedly and thereby avoids the pain of failure that he'd
feel were he to shoot for success and not quite make it. He seems to realize
these things about himself, and yet he's helpless to curb his compulsive
misbehavior.
"Eponymous" is a hall of mirrors. Eric Smith, the author, who's
been an upstate New York rock critic, has
written a book about an upstate New
York rock critic who is himself writing a book. The
book-within-a-book device is hard to pull off, but when it works (see "Tristram Shandy" and
"Adaptation") -- and it works well here -- it's lots of fun. In his
"About Eric Smith" section, he states "Eric Smith is not
Collie Hay. Honest." Right.
Smith's style is accomplished, seemingly effortless, and lean, yet there's a
richness of detail that enlightens every scene and draws you in thoroughly.
Although it helps, it's really unnecessary to be a record geek, or a
musician, or a journalist. I know zero about "prog
rock," the genre of choice for Collie Hay, and that didn't matter a bit:
Smith explains everything that needs explanation, so his audience is just
about everybody. Buy this!
REVIEW OF EPONYMOUS
BY ROBERT BEVERIDGE (EXCEPTS)
Collie Hay is a failed
musician making his way as a music critic. Eponymous is the story of how he
got that way, from his childhood working in the family music store in South Carolina to his
band Arctangent's shot at stardom on a little Sony sublabel.
It's also an exposure of self-loathing. Collie Hay does not like himself
much. At all, actually. And while self-denigrating humor is pretty easy, to
beat yourself up for this many pages with that kind
of bitter cynicism rings both horrifying and oddly true. No one plots
emotions this much, and that reality in the main character is the book's
strongest point. No matter how out of control things get, there's not a
single thing in the book that doesn't ring true. You will find yourself
wanting to grab Collie by the shirt and smack some sense into him (and you
will likely find yourself wanting to do this with a number of other
characters in the book at various times) on a fairly regular basis, butt
here's nothing here you haven't seen a hundred times in various friends and
acquaintances of yours. Well, okay, in order to really see some of it, you
may have to turn on Jerry Springer now and again, but it still rings true
nonetheless . . . It's funny, in a gallows-humor sort of way, the same way
Takashi Miike's movies are funny. It's
thought-provoking. But more than anything else, it's real.
ABOUT EPONYMOUS
Notes from
the Publisher.
J. Eric Smith's Eponymous
paints a darkly humorous, yet reality-rooted, portrait of frustrated musician
(but successful music critic) Hutson Colcock "Collie" Hay, III.
Collie's story is crafted with a detailed understanding of the forces that
drive and foibles that define the music industry on both a national and a
local plane, focusing heavily on the regional element of the music-making
experience, where the vast majority of contemporary musicians and writers
spend their careers, far removed (literally and figuratively) from the
bustling industry hubs of New York City, Los Angeles or Nashville.
This accessible, entertaining, thought-provoking novel is written as a first
person memoir, an exegesis being drafted while Collie awaits the outcome of a
civil suit filed by his longtime girlfriend--a musician herself who suffers
life-altering injuries as a direct result of Collie's actions, leaving Collie
to ponder the rock and roll dream (and its impacts) as he's never done before.
BUY EPONYMOUS FROM AMAZON
BUY EPONYMOUS FROM BARNES AND NOBLE
DIRECT ORDER FROM J. ERIC SMITH
RETURN TO MY WEBSITE
|
