Technicolor Pulp: A Novel

by Arty Nelson

With a pocket full of borrowed money and a head full of rain, Jimi sits in a pub in London, where he has traveled for no reason except that London isn't Boston, or Manhattan, or the college where Jimi wasted four years, or the brick alleyways where he's puked and made love and crawled and laughed at the night.
Jimi Banks is 23: went to school as a hockey player and now just skates: diseased and innocent, criminal and pure. His summer love that started on a posh island crashed on the dusty mainland. And his best friend is dead.
From London in a cloud of hashish and tobacco, booze and beer...to Paris to stay with the daughter of a banker who wants to be a patron of the arts...back to London, broke again, where a man named Rosie declares his undying love and it's all right with Jimi if it just comes with a meal....Jimi Banks is dodging shadows. There's his friend, Ray, who hung himself in a gorge outside Aspen; his family who won't return his phone calls anymore; and the vast quantities of booze he has to drink to call them.
Out of money, out of favors, Jimi is just not out of places to run.

Genres: Fiction

204 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 1995

Reviews

[gumpreader · Rating 1 out of 5]

not worth the read at all... i gave up by pulp 15.

[melvinhiddenelder · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you are looking for a good pulp or noir, this ain't the book. Sure there is the bleakness, the idea of inevitable doom, but there isn't the feeling of randomness that is so integral to noir. The idea that fate has put its finger on you. Don't get me wrong, this guy is screwed (until that horrible last chapter), but he is screwed because he wants to be screwed. Then there is the 1990's gimmiciness that must have seemed cool at the time, but now ... meh.

[Lilian · Rating 1 out of 5]

I think I only bought this book because there was a blurb by David Navarro. Then it languished in my bookshelves as a 'rainy day' book. I saw it again when I was rearranging my books and decided to read it already. I did try really. Maybe if I read this book in the 90s, I would have been able to finish it, but I just couldn't. There was really no plot. It's a short book, yet it couldn't even hold my attention long enough for me to finish in one day.

[Tim Greathouse · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I read this a decade ago I loved it, but it always bothered me that the protagonist never found - or even considered looking for - redemption. It left me feeling depressed. But I guess that's what books are supposed to make you do - feel something.

[Bryan Davis · Rating 1 out of 5]

Horrible, disgusting, and not worth your time.

[Danielle · Rating 2 out of 5]

You'll feel good about yourself because you're not this guy...