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Highway Zero
Highway Zero is a road trip novel through the heart of America that follows Jack Tortis from north to south and east to west as he struggles to find direction in his life. Jack has moved on from his troubles in the old town, but now he stands at a crossroads with an uncertain vision of his future and an urge to leave behind everything he's ever known. Join Jack in the final years of the 20th century, where gas is 99 cents a gallon, cassette tapes have given way to CDs, and the internet is just warming up. From New York to Florida to California to Oregon, Jack circles the country searching for love and home. Along the way are friends and foes; brushes with rock stars of the past, present, and future; and events that change the course of history. Jack finds salvation in the most unexpected places, between music and highways, where the old road ends and the new one begins. But can he hold on to it?
312 pages, Paperback
Published November 22, 2023
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809 people want to read
About the author
Billy Lawrence
3 books34 followersLibrarian Note: Also writes under the pen name William K. Lawrence.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
August 8, 2024
Where Jack's first story, The Punk and the Professor, was about escaping the black hole of a self-destructive social community (notably, Plato's Allegory of the Cave is used to describe a world people don't realize is holding them prisoner), author Lawrence's sequel is about Jack taking the shattered parts of what his life might have been and using those pieces to assemble something new.
Jack has matured. He hasn't reached his acme, but he has a nascent plan. The plan unfolds erratically, but it's tenacious and Jack sticks to it. He's determined to change. But, as we discover, even though things change, sometimes they just change form to harry us anew.
While Highway Zero has the same characters as The Punk and the Professor, the tone of the work has altered. Jack in PatP was caught in a derailing train, wrecking itself without ever coming to a stop, and alternately feeling trapped within the juggernaut and looking for an opportunity to leap free. While Highway Zero initially feels less stressful, with Jack attempting to put distance between himself and the wreckage of his childhood, it becomes clear there's another more subtle snare from which he needs to free himself.
The main character is beset by a recurring restlessness that takes him back and forth across the country, working in New York and the Florida Keys, and school on the east and west coasts. As a continuation of the first book, Jack maintains a sense of concern about getting trapped in an uncertain situation, and his instincts, even though they lead to a haphazard existence, are pretty good. Jack is able to recognize when he's in a situation that could prove detrimental, almost to the point of sabotaging relationships (but more often saving himself from bad ones). Even so, what the reader may recognize but Jack initially overlooks is that even though he can identify situations from which he needs to extricate himself, he nevertheless falls into the same patterns of behavior that put him there over and over again.
This is the cycle he needs to break, to stop his recurring sense of anxiety and restlessness, as well as recover psychological and physiological health. Though an innate feeling of wrongness recurs frequently, he doesn't identify the cause before spiraling all the way to the bottom, at which point he does the one thing George Patton identified as the distinction amongst successful people--he bounces. How high? Well, that question may be answered in a subsequent work. For that we'll have to ask the author.
Many chapters in Highway Zero are song titles that serve as a tonal introduction or a relevant musical topic. This book, like its predecessor, is very much a nostalgic trip back to the late 80s and 90s, and music frequently serves as the opening back to that tunnel into time.
I grew up at roughly the same time as Jack, so the music and the environment, the style, and the world in general is a familiar place. It's certainly cliche to say so, but the book is a period piece for young GenX kids and reading it makes one understand (if not empathize in the same way as someone who grew up in the same era) why Jack Keroac's beat novels about his travels were so popular--people recognized and felt nostalgia for the things he described in the comparatively recent past, even though they weren't very far away. He was describing, if not their own experiences, experiences they imagine they Could have had, were their path shifted just a few degrees one way or the other. There are also allusions that require a specific brand of knowledge only a GenX kid would possess without aid from a search engine (e.g., without saying his name, Jack goes to a concert with what I suspect was Corey Feldman's band).
To draw that Keroac comparison closer, the titular Jack spends a large amount of this story "on the road."
Also like its predecessor, Highway Zero is not short on characters. Jack is all over the place, meets an abundance of people everywhere he goes, and remembers everyone's names. I have not done the math, but I'm sure the characters-to-pages ratio is astounding.
But Jack is a social guy. He's an extrovert who likes talking to people and has an uncanny, Forrest-Gump-like predilection (without the cognitive penalty) for running into people he knows, famous and otherwise.
The big shock comes around 40 pages in when you discover the title of the book and a possible answer to the main character's restlessness is provided by no less than Izzy Stradlin after a chance encounter on a Key West beachfront. Lawrence pulls off this scene with casualness akin to describing a supernova as "a star that went poof." It's a deft and powerfully reserved scene, but no less significant for the character or the reader to accomplish without hair-on-fire hyperbole. The scene screams plausible deniability that Lawrence acknowledges ("Not a single autograph. Not a single photograph. Just a moment in the heart."), but that makes it so much more remarkable and personal and magical.
Much of the seemingly random encounters with old friends can be explained by Jack's desire to move forward with his life while sewing past wounds closed and demonstrating how people mature or degrade. Though not all experiences heal, some create new injuries, and Jack finds it necessary to tie them off until they reduce the bleeding.
Late in the book there's a scene where Jack finds himself suddenly choking. He doesn't know why. Cannot make himself stop. Cannot relieve the pressure. He panics. He tries fluid. He asks for help. In his desperation he visits a hospital and eventually recovers. But even then the cause is uncertain and the explanations are speculative.
That's very much a good encapsulation of Jack's experience. Jack is beset with something, an anxiety he doesn't understand, and while he can sense something is wrong, he is in constant search for a diagnosis, but because he can only feel the symptoms rather than know the cause, he constantly finds himself in the same situation. He doesn't know how to stop it.
What Jack doesn't realize is though he believes he has escaped his own Platonic Cave, the invisible tendrils of his old existence are holding him, even drawing him back. And until he can sever those ties he can never truly escape.
Jack has matured. He hasn't reached his acme, but he has a nascent plan. The plan unfolds erratically, but it's tenacious and Jack sticks to it. He's determined to change. But, as we discover, even though things change, sometimes they just change form to harry us anew.
While Highway Zero has the same characters as The Punk and the Professor, the tone of the work has altered. Jack in PatP was caught in a derailing train, wrecking itself without ever coming to a stop, and alternately feeling trapped within the juggernaut and looking for an opportunity to leap free. While Highway Zero initially feels less stressful, with Jack attempting to put distance between himself and the wreckage of his childhood, it becomes clear there's another more subtle snare from which he needs to free himself.
The main character is beset by a recurring restlessness that takes him back and forth across the country, working in New York and the Florida Keys, and school on the east and west coasts. As a continuation of the first book, Jack maintains a sense of concern about getting trapped in an uncertain situation, and his instincts, even though they lead to a haphazard existence, are pretty good. Jack is able to recognize when he's in a situation that could prove detrimental, almost to the point of sabotaging relationships (but more often saving himself from bad ones). Even so, what the reader may recognize but Jack initially overlooks is that even though he can identify situations from which he needs to extricate himself, he nevertheless falls into the same patterns of behavior that put him there over and over again.
This is the cycle he needs to break, to stop his recurring sense of anxiety and restlessness, as well as recover psychological and physiological health. Though an innate feeling of wrongness recurs frequently, he doesn't identify the cause before spiraling all the way to the bottom, at which point he does the one thing George Patton identified as the distinction amongst successful people--he bounces. How high? Well, that question may be answered in a subsequent work. For that we'll have to ask the author.
Many chapters in Highway Zero are song titles that serve as a tonal introduction or a relevant musical topic. This book, like its predecessor, is very much a nostalgic trip back to the late 80s and 90s, and music frequently serves as the opening back to that tunnel into time.
I grew up at roughly the same time as Jack, so the music and the environment, the style, and the world in general is a familiar place. It's certainly cliche to say so, but the book is a period piece for young GenX kids and reading it makes one understand (if not empathize in the same way as someone who grew up in the same era) why Jack Keroac's beat novels about his travels were so popular--people recognized and felt nostalgia for the things he described in the comparatively recent past, even though they weren't very far away. He was describing, if not their own experiences, experiences they imagine they Could have had, were their path shifted just a few degrees one way or the other. There are also allusions that require a specific brand of knowledge only a GenX kid would possess without aid from a search engine (e.g., without saying his name, Jack goes to a concert with what I suspect was Corey Feldman's band).
To draw that Keroac comparison closer, the titular Jack spends a large amount of this story "on the road."
Also like its predecessor, Highway Zero is not short on characters. Jack is all over the place, meets an abundance of people everywhere he goes, and remembers everyone's names. I have not done the math, but I'm sure the characters-to-pages ratio is astounding.
But Jack is a social guy. He's an extrovert who likes talking to people and has an uncanny, Forrest-Gump-like predilection (without the cognitive penalty) for running into people he knows, famous and otherwise.
The big shock comes around 40 pages in when you discover the title of the book and a possible answer to the main character's restlessness is provided by no less than Izzy Stradlin after a chance encounter on a Key West beachfront. Lawrence pulls off this scene with casualness akin to describing a supernova as "a star that went poof." It's a deft and powerfully reserved scene, but no less significant for the character or the reader to accomplish without hair-on-fire hyperbole. The scene screams plausible deniability that Lawrence acknowledges ("Not a single autograph. Not a single photograph. Just a moment in the heart."), but that makes it so much more remarkable and personal and magical.
Much of the seemingly random encounters with old friends can be explained by Jack's desire to move forward with his life while sewing past wounds closed and demonstrating how people mature or degrade. Though not all experiences heal, some create new injuries, and Jack finds it necessary to tie them off until they reduce the bleeding.
Late in the book there's a scene where Jack finds himself suddenly choking. He doesn't know why. Cannot make himself stop. Cannot relieve the pressure. He panics. He tries fluid. He asks for help. In his desperation he visits a hospital and eventually recovers. But even then the cause is uncertain and the explanations are speculative.
That's very much a good encapsulation of Jack's experience. Jack is beset with something, an anxiety he doesn't understand, and while he can sense something is wrong, he is in constant search for a diagnosis, but because he can only feel the symptoms rather than know the cause, he constantly finds himself in the same situation. He doesn't know how to stop it.
What Jack doesn't realize is though he believes he has escaped his own Platonic Cave, the invisible tendrils of his old existence are holding him, even drawing him back. And until he can sever those ties he can never truly escape.
June 2, 2024
In the sequel to The Punk and the Professor, we find Jack Tortis searching for meaning in a fast-paced series of road trips that take the young man from Florida to Seattle, New York to Portland.
The journey involves yes, Sex, Drugs, and Rock and Roll, as we careen through the 1990's to a soundtrack that includes music pouring through the speakers of cars, dorm rooms and Karaoke bars. I found it to be an enjoyable followup to the first book, and here's hoping we hear more from Jack Tortis down the road. Meanwhile, let's crank up the CD player, Izzy Stradlin and Billy Joel and meditate on what it all means, this highway of life.
The journey involves yes, Sex, Drugs, and Rock and Roll, as we careen through the 1990's to a soundtrack that includes music pouring through the speakers of cars, dorm rooms and Karaoke bars. I found it to be an enjoyable followup to the first book, and here's hoping we hear more from Jack Tortis down the road. Meanwhile, let's crank up the CD player, Izzy Stradlin and Billy Joel and meditate on what it all means, this highway of life.
December 24, 2023
With a nod to Jack Keourac, Highway Zero is an entertaining story of a restless young guy's journey during the 1990s to find himself and experience his American homeland along the way. As much as the story is about the road and destinations, it is also about the people and personalities that shape our lives. I appreciate the story's universality; we all, in our own ways, search for meaning in our lives, but the journey is the living. Congrats to Mr. Lawrence for crafting this compelling American adventure.
August 27, 2025
A roadtrip through America and a young man's coming of age, I felt I was sitting in the passenger seat with Jack Tortis, experiencing his highs and lows, triumphs and tragedies. It's a romantic, classic, and hopefuly view of America and the promise of youth. For better or worse, the dream is stripped away in favor of reality, but Jack comes through this stuggle with grace and clarity.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews