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Bongwater
This novel of young slackers in 1990s Portland and New York City is “a swift, exhilarating read [and] a surprisingly sweet-natured love story” (Madison Smartt Bell). Set against the backdrop of the grunge era, and ranging from the Pacific Northwest to a pre-gentrified East Village and Brooklyn, Bongwater is a novel of the much-misunderstood nineties generation. Following aspiring filmmaker David, his ex-girlfriend Courtney, a stripper named Mary, and other characters, author Michael Hornburg creates, in precise, startlingly original prose, a neo-Beat classic that was the basis for the film starring Luke Wilson and Alicia Witt. “Ridiculously well-written.” — NME
240 pages, Paperback
First published April 30, 1995
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September 8, 2008At first I was like, "Oh, great. Here I am, a twentysomething unemployed loser sitting in a arty coffee house in Boston reading about a twentysomething unemployed loser sitting in a arty coffeehouse in Portland." But then I realized this guy gets more chicks than me. Does this make the book less interesting? Well, yes, when the plot falls into the predictable foibles of multiple relationships. Also, note to Gen X writers: Please, please stop the fucking cross-chapters of multiple viewpoints in different parts of the country (here it's between Portland and New York City). It's such a stupid shtick to avoid developing the main character. Courtney's story was sometimes interesting (although suffered from the "New York City is a gritty porno salad" cliche) but more care should have been shown to the principal character.
I'm starting to get tired of the same Gen-X novel ingredients: trouble with girls, no direction or employment, life is pointless consumerism and cubicles, drag queens are gross and everywhere, my parents are divorced, something traumatic happened to me in the past but I shrug it off (but I don't really shrug it off and it is inexplicably poster-boy-Freud connected to my very existence), brand names, malls, pop culture reference, babyboomers are naive idiots, The Brady Bunch, there's something beautiful in the way the sun sets over garbage lots, etc. I've yet to read anything by a Gen-X author that matches the insight and morbid hilarity of a Hate comic, and I'm starting to think it's because Peter Bagge had the necessary distance to portray slackers as they really are.
I'd say it's a little better than the Rules of Attraction because it at least has heart, but apply this book only when recommended.
I'm starting to get tired of the same Gen-X novel ingredients: trouble with girls, no direction or employment, life is pointless consumerism and cubicles, drag queens are gross and everywhere, my parents are divorced, something traumatic happened to me in the past but I shrug it off (but I don't really shrug it off and it is inexplicably poster-boy-Freud connected to my very existence), brand names, malls, pop culture reference, babyboomers are naive idiots, The Brady Bunch, there's something beautiful in the way the sun sets over garbage lots, etc. I've yet to read anything by a Gen-X author that matches the insight and morbid hilarity of a Hate comic, and I'm starting to think it's because Peter Bagge had the necessary distance to portray slackers as they really are.
I'd say it's a little better than the Rules of Attraction because it at least has heart, but apply this book only when recommended.
November 26, 2017
I hated this book. The plot was aimless. There are entire pages that are just passages describing the names of the streets and descriptions that are completely pointless. There's not a single character in this book that is fully formed and I found it impossible to care about any of them. But the biggest problem I had was with the dialogue. All the conversations the characters have are awkward and do nothing to contribute to the story whatsoever. This books only redeeming quality is that it's less than 200 pages.
July 21, 2012
Not as bad as some of the other reviewers think, imo, but not a great work by any means. It had a pleasant familiarity because Portland was my party town during that time, but while I went to the same clubs, I never met these people. Bongwater is a despair ridden novel of the terminal boredom and manufactured drama that some people prefer to actual lives. It's not badly written, but suicide through boredom is in itself boring. Actual people who do nothing but leach and bitch are bad enough without having to read about fake ones.
April 9, 2008
Not good. I only finished the book because I hate leaving books unfinished. I wouldn't recommend it, and thought it was a waste of my time.
February 19, 2009
Probably the worse book I've EVER read. Yet I read the entire thing. Ugh.
February 10, 2025
Benson rec! This was all over the place but ultimately loved the writing. The storyline was brief but I can appreciate that.
Spoilers:
I don’t know how to feel about the rape storyline and David joking about first sexual experience being sexual assault. Obviously I don’t feel good about them, I am referring in terms of how it relates to the overall storyline and character developments.
Overall, entertaining book that was easy to pick up between classes or on bus rides, although sometimes a little too explicit for my taste. I don’t know! Enjoyed.
Love you Benson <3
(awe thanks i love You! -benson)
Spoilers:
I don’t know how to feel about the rape storyline and David joking about first sexual experience being sexual assault. Obviously I don’t feel good about them, I am referring in terms of how it relates to the overall storyline and character developments.
Overall, entertaining book that was easy to pick up between classes or on bus rides, although sometimes a little too explicit for my taste. I don’t know! Enjoyed.
Love you Benson <3
(awe thanks i love You! -benson)
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 5, 2020
Seems like lots of people are not very happy with this book, but for me this is quite a good example for the 90s underground scene. In Bongwater, the plot seems aimless, but for me this is really enjoyable. You’ll never know what’s going to happen to these protagonists as you’re observing there pointless daily-life activities, which is totally okay for me. Sometimes you don’t need books to give you life motto, just the nice narrative that can portray some visions in your head, and you absorb those atmosphere like you were one of those people in the novel. Like Bongwater, it gives me the funny ‘what the hell’ feelings by its unpredictable stories. So, highly recommended for those hippie heads, druggies, free spirited, scene kids, and ravers to share your life experience through this book.
January 15, 2022
Should the ghost of Ernest Hemingway return to haunt bookstores (on line or, more rarely, in “actuality”), he would not find reincarnations of his first novel, The Sun Also Rises, lacking. If he visits in 1984, he can settle into Brights Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney and see Brett Ashley, Jake Barnes, et. al. under other names mucking about New York instead of Paris and Pamplona. They are still rootless writers, and fashion conscious people who work in offices. Such types endure! If he comes back in 1996 or later, he can open Michael Hornburg’s Bongwater for the same result. This time the scene is New York and Portland (Oregon), but the same dissipations obtain. Sexual liaisons, betrayals, and chemical alterations of mind chug along in the same relatively uncentered, plotless schema. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
The dust jackets or covers of these books trace the arc from shock to indifference. The Sun Also Rises shows a listless figure draped in a toga, at once classical, art nouveau, and decadent. Bright Lights, Big City, as literal as the first paperback for The Catcher in the Rye, is more literal and shows a man looking at a restaurant or music hall called the Odéon. Shades of Paris! No classicism there. Bongwater gives up. It lets the depravity and repellence of the title suffice; the word is superimposed on a 1950’s style design of pink and lime stars and asterisks set against a yellow background suitable for a formica table top.
Hornburg’s characters go under the names Courtney, Jennifer, Mary, David, Tony and Robert. They smoke cigarettes as often as Lady Brett Ashley, Mike, Bill, and Georgette drink. They do coke as often as the folks in Bright Lights, Big City. Tony and Robert are gay, but, hey, it’s 1995, no biggie. The paean to nature in Spain at the center of The Sun Also Rises, contrasting to depraved urban life, is transferred to the woods outside Portland, but it’s grubby: an abandoned shack rather than the pristine woods and bars and hotels at a fiesta. There is no Montoya or Jake against which to measure a reader’s repellence. These characters are detached from the dissipations that might seem to have given them pleasure. However, as Ecclesiastes, The Divine Comedy, or “Babylon Revisited” points out, that is how dissipation ends.
Whatever exhaustion The Sun Also Rises may be heading for, Hemingway’s book is distinguished by its author’s (then) distinctive terse style. (It has been so influential that now one scarcely sees it.) Its cast of characters is intelligently and crisply differentiated. Bright Lights, Big City, whose dramatis personæ are more fungible, has this much of the literarily experimental in it: it is written in the second person (“you”). Quite a trick—one that for 50 pages, or until one no longer notices it, is striking. Bongwater, at 189 pages is the shortest of these three books; it has no particular stylistic eminence. It blithely shifts point of view as it maneuvers its figures through their paces and then stops, like the others, short of conclusive resolution, as though exhaustion had taken over its prose.
The dust jackets or covers of these books trace the arc from shock to indifference. The Sun Also Rises shows a listless figure draped in a toga, at once classical, art nouveau, and decadent. Bright Lights, Big City, as literal as the first paperback for The Catcher in the Rye, is more literal and shows a man looking at a restaurant or music hall called the Odéon. Shades of Paris! No classicism there. Bongwater gives up. It lets the depravity and repellence of the title suffice; the word is superimposed on a 1950’s style design of pink and lime stars and asterisks set against a yellow background suitable for a formica table top.
Hornburg’s characters go under the names Courtney, Jennifer, Mary, David, Tony and Robert. They smoke cigarettes as often as Lady Brett Ashley, Mike, Bill, and Georgette drink. They do coke as often as the folks in Bright Lights, Big City. Tony and Robert are gay, but, hey, it’s 1995, no biggie. The paean to nature in Spain at the center of The Sun Also Rises, contrasting to depraved urban life, is transferred to the woods outside Portland, but it’s grubby: an abandoned shack rather than the pristine woods and bars and hotels at a fiesta. There is no Montoya or Jake against which to measure a reader’s repellence. These characters are detached from the dissipations that might seem to have given them pleasure. However, as Ecclesiastes, The Divine Comedy, or “Babylon Revisited” points out, that is how dissipation ends.
Whatever exhaustion The Sun Also Rises may be heading for, Hemingway’s book is distinguished by its author’s (then) distinctive terse style. (It has been so influential that now one scarcely sees it.) Its cast of characters is intelligently and crisply differentiated. Bright Lights, Big City, whose dramatis personæ are more fungible, has this much of the literarily experimental in it: it is written in the second person (“you”). Quite a trick—one that for 50 pages, or until one no longer notices it, is striking. Bongwater, at 189 pages is the shortest of these three books; it has no particular stylistic eminence. It blithely shifts point of view as it maneuvers its figures through their paces and then stops, like the others, short of conclusive resolution, as though exhaustion had taken over its prose.
April 20, 2025
Bongwater is a messy, moody slice of 90s slacker life, drenched in grunge, apathy, and the ever-present haze of weed smoke. Set between Portland and New York City, the novel captures a drifting, disaffected generation with raw honesty and occasional flashes of lyricism.
Hornburg nails the atmosphere—the book oozes a sense of time and place. But while the vibe is strong, the plot feels more like a meander than a march. The characters are often more interesting as archetypes than as people you fully connect with, and the narrative sometimes feels emotionally distant, like it’s staring at its own navel and wondering if you’re still watching.
That said, there’s something magnetic about the way it explores the aimlessness of youth, artistic ambition, and emotional dysfunction. It’s a quick read that flirts with being profound, but doesn’t quite stick the landing.
A solid 3/5 for mood, aesthetic, and cultural snapshot—just don’t expect a tightly woven story or satisfying arcs. It’s like a mixtape: a little uneven, a little hazy, but you might still vibe with it.
Hornburg nails the atmosphere—the book oozes a sense of time and place. But while the vibe is strong, the plot feels more like a meander than a march. The characters are often more interesting as archetypes than as people you fully connect with, and the narrative sometimes feels emotionally distant, like it’s staring at its own navel and wondering if you’re still watching.
That said, there’s something magnetic about the way it explores the aimlessness of youth, artistic ambition, and emotional dysfunction. It’s a quick read that flirts with being profound, but doesn’t quite stick the landing.
A solid 3/5 for mood, aesthetic, and cultural snapshot—just don’t expect a tightly woven story or satisfying arcs. It’s like a mixtape: a little uneven, a little hazy, but you might still vibe with it.
June 28, 2022
I mean, technically it is a book? I guess? Very dark and edgy for the sake of being dark and edgy.
Would I read it again? Probably not. It was very much looking for that gritty Portland/Seattle drug/music scene and it did hit those notes and technically it was well written but it just wasn't enjoyable or interesting despite all the interesting characters/events. It's marinated in its own ennui and a very bitter book.
Honestly it does took a good writer to give a book such bad vibes, but the vibes were so bad that it remains at 1*. If I think about it later and come up with anything redeeming the rating may change but not an enjoyable read. I think the idea of the book may be better than the execution.
Would I read it again? Probably not. It was very much looking for that gritty Portland/Seattle drug/music scene and it did hit those notes and technically it was well written but it just wasn't enjoyable or interesting despite all the interesting characters/events. It's marinated in its own ennui and a very bitter book.
Honestly it does took a good writer to give a book such bad vibes, but the vibes were so bad that it remains at 1*. If I think about it later and come up with anything redeeming the rating may change but not an enjoyable read. I think the idea of the book may be better than the execution.
April 21, 2025
Not as bad as the other reviews are saying. By I'm a bit biased when it comes to this type of material. I am exactly the target audience. I've always had an affinity for slacker, gen-x characters, and this story is full of them. It's the 90s version of Catcher in the Rye or On the Road. Are these characters decent people, not necessarily. But they are young and figuring out the lives. And the book ends leaving us a sliver of hope that they might actually learn from their mistakes. As I grow older, I realize that that is one of the biggest things you can hope for a person. I enjoyed it so much, I might check out the author's other book some day. Until then, it will live fondly in my memories.
December 31, 2024
I dont understand the negative reviews. Yes it's slow but the scenes are described beautifuly. You really feel like you are in the bongwater with them. A good representation of the grunge 90s, hopelesness, underground scene.
The rape scene might look unnecessary but to me it just showed how unwelcoming the world was especially for women. I appreciated the aftermath of it and the description of her pain. It is understable that it isnt mention after that since the lifestyle of these characters were to just go on and look like nothing has happened.
It is real raw and sad but somehow leaves you hopeful in the end.
The rape scene might look unnecessary but to me it just showed how unwelcoming the world was especially for women. I appreciated the aftermath of it and the description of her pain. It is understable that it isnt mention after that since the lifestyle of these characters were to just go on and look like nothing has happened.
It is real raw and sad but somehow leaves you hopeful in the end.
July 5, 2020
I didn't like this book as much as I'd hoped to, & there's a sexual assault scene in loving the "Courtney Love" character that serves no purpose to the plot other than to brutalize a character very obviously & intentionally modeled after a real human being. I spent a lot of time tracking this book down because of its connection to the music scene & immediately put it back into circulation. Not a book I would revisit.
May 29, 2020
Brilliantly clever, cool, and alluring, Hornburg takes us to the 1990s grunge scene, alternating between characters in Portland OR and New York City. We feel the sticky floors of the clubs, grit of the music, and enchantment of the styles. Very cool descriptive language, and very spicy intimate scenes.
March 21, 2021
Dialogue is good and real. Gets better as it goes along. Takes me back to a '90s that I never lived, although despite taking place mostly in Portland, OR, it isn't really obsessed with grunge. In fact, it seems more reminiscent of NY glam. Characters all have extremely generic names and it takes a while to differentiate between them because of this.
February 16, 2022
This book was a whole vibe. I appreciated the meandering tone of the characters because I can’t think of anyone who hasn’t had a phase in their 20s of feeling the ways portrayed in the book. Good read for those who want something in the realm of coming of age filled with drugs, drawn out points and peak 90s humor and aesthetic.
January 30, 2019
Kind of enjoyable from a nostalgic perspective (having lived in Portland in time period of the book). The interactions between the complicated lives of the characters was okay, but the book feels like it ran out of steam and just threw the loose ends together to try and end the book.
August 26, 2022
A short, fast read about a group of American "stoners". Rather two dimensional and very mid 90's. Reminded me of the group in Philip K Dick's seminal "A Scanner Darkly" and Hornburg included a passing reference to PKD, which I thought was a nice touch.
July 20, 2024
perks of being a wallflower in portland oregon but the characters are all driven by like an unbecoming and rejection or themselves rather than the coming of age very emotionally driven relationships in perks. way to fast i think but had me laughing at some parts. meh.
December 22, 2017
Boring...only read the first three chapters
March 9, 2022
excellent, m'as redonné goût en la lecture, exactement le genre de livres dont je suis cliente
June 27, 2022
Like a romp down memory lane for anyone who survived the early 90s. Like all things grunge and skatepunk this novel serves no purpose other than an entertaining way to pass time. 5 Star Slacker Lit.
April 28, 2025
vibes. no plot… misogyny and casual homophobia. rape scene?? hm. still somewhat entranced tho. read in croatia…
July 12, 2025
i am a sucker for a bunch of messy edgy twenty somethings and no coherent plot
May 1, 2025
Le néant
July 7, 2022
Michael Hornburg's 'Bongwater' is perfectly readable in that it has large text and under is 200 pages. I sincerely appreciate this as someone who is getting back into casual reading outside of academia. However, this novel is not on par with the promise of its curious title. Hornburg's characters are as convincing as cardboard cutouts. They are empty, vapid vessels reminiscent of the some of worst people I have ever met IRL. They lack substance. They are not interesting in the least bit. Hornburg put those micro niche influencers you've never heard of on paper and made them all posture as if they are really doing something to the culture! The dual storyline comes together in the most arbitrary way...I won't even dignify it by calling it a plot twist. I was not invested in the lives of Hornburg's characters enough to even care about the ending of this book. There are moments within this story that are wholly unnecessary to the development of anything at all other than my growing irritation with the hollow space I found between the covers of this book! But it was an OK read that I finished in a day, good enough to pass the time at work.
April 5, 2025
DNF.
Long story short, it was about a bunch of horny losers who didn’t know what to do with their lives.
What a waste of a pretty cover and an interesting title.
Long story short, it was about a bunch of horny losers who didn’t know what to do with their lives.
What a waste of a pretty cover and an interesting title.
October 31, 2008
Of course I saw the film before I read the book. I was surprised by the fact that the book was capable of being more aimless than the film. It's really terrible. I can hardly think of a more extreme example of some schmuck writing a novel lamenting his own sad bastard existence. Oh wait, this isn't a book, but the film Garden State draws a pretty close artistic comparison. Also, the book is just swelling with myriad gen-x cliches, which is ironic because Hornburg seemed to have a bone to pick with the homogenization of the subculture that he tyrannically claims some vague proprietorship over. Michael Hornburg is a stupid asshole. I suppose writing the novel was cathartic for him though; he's probably never seen that much action. If Stephen Baldwin were to write a secular account of his experience in acting in the film Bio-dome, then I would probably rather have read that.
September 20, 2012
I mean it's clearly not something that will inspire people to great things, But the situation these people are in is a very real and a very common one.
I mean i've lived some of the moments in this book and if not there are many things i wouldn't put past people i have lived with.
I don't think this is as much as a character driven story as much as it is about the whole situation... The day to day struggles of the common man in and around the alternative lifestyles(Whichever one you might belong to), We all seem to function together in our own underground world and to me you either get this book or you don't... It's not meant to grab everyone...it's meant to grab the ones who have been there before.
Good read for people who just grew up around people outside the norm... It's definitely a book for freaks!
Not very long but it makes a good toilet book.
I mean i've lived some of the moments in this book and if not there are many things i wouldn't put past people i have lived with.
I don't think this is as much as a character driven story as much as it is about the whole situation... The day to day struggles of the common man in and around the alternative lifestyles(Whichever one you might belong to), We all seem to function together in our own underground world and to me you either get this book or you don't... It's not meant to grab everyone...it's meant to grab the ones who have been there before.
Good read for people who just grew up around people outside the norm... It's definitely a book for freaks!
Not very long but it makes a good toilet book.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 55 reviews