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Small Town Punk
" Small Town Punk is full of raw feeling and taut smart prose. John Sheppard gets that Reagan-era rage and humor just right. This novel is an ode to those kids at the dead-end jobs who knew that the Morning in America was really dusk at best, but had each other, a little weed, some beer, and gas.--Sam Lipsyte Trapped in dreary Sarasota, Florida in the early 1980s—during Reagan’s “Morning in America,”—going to high school with junior fascists by day, working at Pizza Hut by night, his family a dysfunctional nightmare, 17-year old Buzz Pepper feels that nothing matters in life beyond drinking, drugs and punk rock. As the country around him is becoming more conservative and corporate, and adulthood seems like the ultimate corrupt existence, Buzz can only find solace within a close-knit group of fellow disillusioned teens, which includes his devoted younger sister, Sissy. As they drive around in Buzz’s beat-up van, encountering redneck cops, mocking the local “geezers,” and wondering if there is any meaning in what seems to be a meaningless world, Small Town Punk perfectly captures how it is to be young, yet feel that you have no future. In the tradition of Hairstyles of the Dammed and Perks of Being A Wallflower , Small Town Punk is a brutally funny and poignant coming of age story that brilliantly evokes the surging joy, confusion and rage of youth.
188 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2001
About the author
John Sheppard
147 books6 followersA veteran of the U.S. Army, John Sheppard's short stories have appeared in Bridge magazine, the2ndhand and Exquisite Corpse. He is a frequent contributor to ParagraphLine.com and B2L2.com.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
February 3, 2013
I'm getting more and more into Sheppard the more I read of him.The writing is raw and gritty, but the emotion is heartbreaking and tender. That's the really marvelous thing for me, how different the starkness of the prose and the content is contrasted against the quiet melancholy of the emotions it evokes. I'm still trying to figure out whether this one or "Alpha Mike Foxtrot" is my current Sheppard favorite.
May 22, 2008
I am usually not the biggest fan of MFA lit; however, this is a great coming of age story. Smart, not over written and the efficiency of the writing works very well. I look forward to reading more from Sheppard.
January 15, 2018
Set in the early eighties, 'Small Town Punk' focuses on a group of teens trying to find themselves in a haze of cheap beer, drugs, and dead end jobs in Sarasota, Florida. Though I grew up in Michigan (I'm more or less the same age as the kids in the book), I see lots of similarities to people I knew. Bonus points: A close friend's teenage hardcore band who were from Florida (Hated Youth) gets name checked early on. From stories he's told me, Small Town Punk seems very authentic. It's a short, fast read, leaving you wanting much more, just like the music it embraces.
May 19, 2008
The concept of motive is so narrowly defined in both fiction and existence. The word is so often defined in the most Newtonian nature--a strict, measurable sequence of events that are reversible. Sure, there are precipitating stimuli in the world of Buzz, the main character of this novel (an abusive father, alcoholic mother, crazy grandmother, the Reagan era), but these don't satisfyingly explain this boy's hatred for the world and himself, nor his drive to maintain a close and deep relationship with his sister, Sissy. He keeps his job at the ratty Pizza Hut though he despises the Half-Price Wednesday clientèle, and he relishes visits to his grandmother if only to raid her medicine cabinet and replenish the stash he keeps in his genitalia-shaped change purse. He finds the love of his life, but is almost just as satisfied making people hate him. The boy is quite simply a torrent of rage and emotion. John Sheppard has already proved his mastery at breathing life into the lost and ejected with books like Midnight in Monaco and The Runner-Up and handles Buzz with the proper mixture of humor, insight and revulsion. Buzz is horrifying as well as familiar, and his insights are both spot-on and laughably trite.
But what exactly is the source of Buzz's motivation? It's the whole world around him--flat, featureless Sarasota, home to the unimaginative and dangerously oblivious. Even many of the local punks provide no haven, for they are rich copycats of English weirdos who can afford leather and dye jobs. Sheppard captures with an icy lens how the weight of existence can drive a young man to sit on a curb, plant his feet in the gutter, smoke a cigarette and say that he's having a good time...well, maybe just a bit better than having his face kicked in by a couple of football players, but still...
This is one of Sheppard's strongest works--emotive and accessible, while also a kick in the gut. Buzz is a psychological puddle of vomit worth picking the pepperoni out of.
But what exactly is the source of Buzz's motivation? It's the whole world around him--flat, featureless Sarasota, home to the unimaginative and dangerously oblivious. Even many of the local punks provide no haven, for they are rich copycats of English weirdos who can afford leather and dye jobs. Sheppard captures with an icy lens how the weight of existence can drive a young man to sit on a curb, plant his feet in the gutter, smoke a cigarette and say that he's having a good time...well, maybe just a bit better than having his face kicked in by a couple of football players, but still...
This is one of Sheppard's strongest works--emotive and accessible, while also a kick in the gut. Buzz is a psychological puddle of vomit worth picking the pepperoni out of.
December 29, 2008
Maybe I'm being generous by giving this 2 stars. I would say that I can appreciate that someone would paint a picture of small town teen punks living in the deep south, but there was still a lot lacking in this book.
The novel was relatively bland. I mean, I didn't come away from it feeling like I actually emotionally connected with the characters. Maybe that was the whole point. The characters themselves were disconnected and disillusioned with their lives, their town, their families, and "the way things are".
The drugs and the drinking... well yeah, it's probably an accurate depiction (or at least I've known a few people who, during their teen years, experimented with this), but I just wish I could have sympathized more with Buzz. He was an asshole in this book (well, most of the time).
But lots of kids this age are assholes, so if we're going to be realistic, then, okay. But, this is a novel. If you want to draw the reader into it, there has to be more than just an asshole kid who hates his life. There has to be something about the character that makes you feel for him. I mean, sure he was beaten by his father and had it rough growing up in Sarasota, so you could feel sorry for him, but I still felt like there was something lacking.
And the kids were actually pretty stupid, but that's mainly because they just didn't care. It was a brutal book. There were some funny moments, and the narrative was highly sarcastic, but it was on the verge of being heartless... which again was probably intended. Very blasé.
The writing? Well, it's not a great American novel. Not even a good one. It was so-so. It's a MFA creation that somehow, got published... but still could use a lot of work.
The novel was relatively bland. I mean, I didn't come away from it feeling like I actually emotionally connected with the characters. Maybe that was the whole point. The characters themselves were disconnected and disillusioned with their lives, their town, their families, and "the way things are".
The drugs and the drinking... well yeah, it's probably an accurate depiction (or at least I've known a few people who, during their teen years, experimented with this), but I just wish I could have sympathized more with Buzz. He was an asshole in this book (well, most of the time).
But lots of kids this age are assholes, so if we're going to be realistic, then, okay. But, this is a novel. If you want to draw the reader into it, there has to be more than just an asshole kid who hates his life. There has to be something about the character that makes you feel for him. I mean, sure he was beaten by his father and had it rough growing up in Sarasota, so you could feel sorry for him, but I still felt like there was something lacking.
And the kids were actually pretty stupid, but that's mainly because they just didn't care. It was a brutal book. There were some funny moments, and the narrative was highly sarcastic, but it was on the verge of being heartless... which again was probably intended. Very blasé.
The writing? Well, it's not a great American novel. Not even a good one. It was so-so. It's a MFA creation that somehow, got published... but still could use a lot of work.
March 1, 2008
"Small Town Punk is full of raw feeling and taut smart prose. John Sheppard gets that Reagan-era rage and humor just right. This novel is an ode to those kids at the dead-end jobs who knew that the morning in America was really dusk at best, but had each other, a little weed, and gas."--Sam Lipsyte
"...authentic..with a sense of natural, unforced humor."--Booklist
Trapped in dreary Sarasota, Florida in the early 1980s—during Reagan’s “Morning in America,”—going to high school with junior fascists by day, working at Pizza Hut by night, his family a dysfunctional nightmare, 17-year old Buzz Pepper feels that nothing matters in life beyond drinking, drugs and punk rock.
As the country around him is becoming more conservative and corporate, and adulthood seems like the ultimate corrupt existence, Buzz can only find solace within a close-knit group of fellow disillusioned teens, which includes his devoted younger sister, Sissy. As they drive around in Buzz’s beat-up van, encountering redneck cops, mocking the local “geezers,” and wondering if there is any meaning in what seems to be a meaningless world, Small Town Punk perfectly captures how it is to be young, yet feel that you have no future.
In the tradition of Hairstyles of the Damned and Perks of Being A Wallflower, Small Town Punk is a brutally funny and poignant coming of age story that brilliantly evokes the surging joy, confusion and rage of youth.
JOHN SHEPPARD's short stories have appeared in Bridge Magazine and Exquisite Corpse. He has an MFA from the University of Florida.A veteran of the first gulf war, he currently lives in Chicago.
"...authentic..with a sense of natural, unforced humor."--Booklist
Trapped in dreary Sarasota, Florida in the early 1980s—during Reagan’s “Morning in America,”—going to high school with junior fascists by day, working at Pizza Hut by night, his family a dysfunctional nightmare, 17-year old Buzz Pepper feels that nothing matters in life beyond drinking, drugs and punk rock.
As the country around him is becoming more conservative and corporate, and adulthood seems like the ultimate corrupt existence, Buzz can only find solace within a close-knit group of fellow disillusioned teens, which includes his devoted younger sister, Sissy. As they drive around in Buzz’s beat-up van, encountering redneck cops, mocking the local “geezers,” and wondering if there is any meaning in what seems to be a meaningless world, Small Town Punk perfectly captures how it is to be young, yet feel that you have no future.
In the tradition of Hairstyles of the Damned and Perks of Being A Wallflower, Small Town Punk is a brutally funny and poignant coming of age story that brilliantly evokes the surging joy, confusion and rage of youth.
JOHN SHEPPARD's short stories have appeared in Bridge Magazine and Exquisite Corpse. He has an MFA from the University of Florida.A veteran of the first gulf war, he currently lives in Chicago.
January 15, 2013
Kinda disappointed in this average book. I'm giving it 3 stars, while it should get 2.5.... While there were some moments of clarity, robust and real descriptions of the hell of working at crapholes like Pizza Hut, and terrific passages like this:
there was just too little here to invest in.
Two additional quibbles: (1) Maybe it's that I had friends in college there so it seemed like a destination, but I never really thought of Sarasota (pop. ~55,000) as a "small town". (2) a book called Small Town Punk that largely leaves out any reference to punk rock seems odd. There are a tiny handful of alluded to lyrics, but I expected (and wanted) a playlist of sorts to appear throughout the book.
"Every time I'd go to a friend's house, I'd excuse myself and go to the master bathroom and thieve out of the medicine cabinet. It was a tense world. Moms and dads needed pharmaceuticals to get through the day. Reganomics may have been great for stockbrokers and other bandits f*$%ing Armerica up the a**, but it didn't do dick for working stiffs."
there was just too little here to invest in.
Two additional quibbles: (1) Maybe it's that I had friends in college there so it seemed like a destination, but I never really thought of Sarasota (pop. ~55,000) as a "small town". (2) a book called Small Town Punk that largely leaves out any reference to punk rock seems odd. There are a tiny handful of alluded to lyrics, but I expected (and wanted) a playlist of sorts to appear throughout the book.
April 29, 2008
Most reviews I've seen of this book talk about how it reminds the reviewer of him or herself growing up as a small town punk rocker. I grew up as a small town punk rocker, and while I could see similarities (hanging around with nothing to do, stealing beer, smoking cigarettes, casual sex etc) the differences were more obvious. The kids in this (I'm assuming semi-autobiographical) book are nihilistic and dumb. I just couldn't relate to some of the things being said and done.
That said, it's not all bad. There are a couple of scenes that made me crack up, and a few more the could have literally been torn from my journals as a 15 year old.
Worth a read if you were a punk rock kid growing up (or you still are!)
That said, it's not all bad. There are a couple of scenes that made me crack up, and a few more the could have literally been torn from my journals as a 15 year old.
Worth a read if you were a punk rock kid growing up (or you still are!)
Read
June 28, 2007Spot on story of teenage rage.
Read
January 14, 2008about the same kind of writing style as hairstyles of the damned.
April 2, 2009
Realistic to the point of having no likable characters. Sheppard must've done something right, though, as I finished it in 2 or 3 sittings over the course of one evening.
May 31, 2019
3.5 stars
Many glitters of promise here. I loved the raw grit, the not shying away from reality, some downright hilarious characterizations of bit players, that many chapters felt like self-contained short stories.
Did not love: no discernible plot arc, TYPOS/MISSPELLINGS AHOY, arbitrary and seemingly out-of-character animal abuse.
Many glitters of promise here. I loved the raw grit, the not shying away from reality, some downright hilarious characterizations of bit players, that many chapters felt like self-contained short stories.
Did not love: no discernible plot arc, TYPOS/MISSPELLINGS AHOY, arbitrary and seemingly out-of-character animal abuse.
August 21, 2007
"Oh, I'm an angry teenager in Sarasota! Woe is me!" Other than that, not a bad snapshot of life in a crappy town.
January 7, 2009
A modern Catcher in the Rye. There's a certain nostalgia there for those of us who were small town punk rockers in the 80's.
June 10, 2010
I loved this simply told story about high school kids simply living their lives and being teenagers living in the 1980s in Florida. A great read
March 18, 2014
This book helped me better understand myself as a person.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews