Fast Sofa

by Bruce Craven

Rick Jeffers takes his nihilistic, hedonistic lifestyle on a cross-country jaunt after his apartment is looted and picks up a homeless mall rat and a tantalizing porn queen on the way

Genres: Fiction

331 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 1993

About the author

I teach leadership at Columbia Business School and write fiction & poetry.

Reviews

[Patrick · Rating 1 out of 5]

This fucking sucked. The main character is a gen-x caricature who likes to drink all the time and is constantly using the word "crucial." For some reason, he picks up a mentally impaired guy who either has a bird or keeps talking about birds and they drive around doing nothing. I remember reading a funny review of this book where it was called "the shortest road-trip novel of all time," because they only drive like 60 miles.

[Printable Tire]

An atrocious novel, reminiscent of the worst of the Generation X literature fad. The characters are at best terribly flat and at the worst totally unlikeable. Story arcs are picked up and then haphazardly crumble away. Coincidences of the worst kind abound. Novel also suffers from the "pointless bad endings are so hip" denouement.

Although the novel was repetitious and the two characters not the main character's P.O.V. sections could have simply been left out, the book wasn't a total failure to me. Some of the slang I thought was catchy (if embarrassingly so) and there was a good smattering of prose throughout the book, showing that the author does have some talent, and if he wasn't such a slacker himself he might actually have been able to come up with something more perceptive than this book. But this only makes me more furious, as this slacker author got a book deal because of good timing and right connections, and many more adept writers do not for the lack of the same.

A must-read for those into Generation X literature, but a must-not-read for basically everyone else. Came with a flexidisk record I could not play because my copy was a library book (the fact the record hasn't been stolen yet shows just how many times this book's been taken out).

[Robert Jr. · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't think I could read Fast Sofa and find anything worthwhile or redeeming in it now that I am 40. I found it on my bookshelf a couple of months ago, opened it and read some from it and wondered why I'd ever skipped class to read this book. But it's a fact that when I read it 20 years ago I thought it was awesome. And it came with a red vinyl record ... a book with a soundtrack? That's what I'm talking about.

Anyway, if you're 20, give it a go. If you're 40, maybe not.

[Caroline Crawford · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book kicked-ass and came with a vinyl record inside.

[April · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this sometime in the 90s. It was on the discount rack at a now non-existant bookstore. It did have the paper thin 45 record in it, which I probably did play on my record player.
All are long gone now (the book, the record and the record player)
If you ask me what happened in this book right now 20 years after I read it - I'd say something along the lines of Dada's Here Today Gone Tomorrow. Which is a really good song and the book might have done better had they included a 45 of that song.
I do remember liking the book though.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book long ago, and I think I found it really amazing at the time, but in retrospect, I think that is only because I was inexperienced with books abouts things that I enjoyed. This book came with a flexi-7" when I bought it by the Fleshtones. Very mediocre.

[Jerry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Movie was a disappointment. Then again, why would you even try to make a movie out of this? Read the book, if you can find it. Then watch the movie anyway. It's a fascinating failure, but you just can't turn away.

[Rich · Rating 4 out of 5]

a good example of "Gen X Fiction" aka Stuart Copeland

[Tim · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was probably too sophisticated of a book at the time I read it. It probably deserves a re-reading.

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fast-paced, hard-core, somewhat pornographic post-modern novel complete with soundtrack. Somewhat similar to Generation X, with elements of Rainman. A hard-edged portrait of modern day L.A.