Nirvana Blues

The New Mexico Trilogy #3

by John Nichols

The seventies are over. All across America, the overgrown kids of the middle class are getting their acts together -- and getting older. The once-tight Chicano community of Chamisaville is long gone, and the Anglo power-brokers control almost everything. Joe Miniver -- faithful husband, loving father, and all-around good guy -- is about to sink roots. To buy the land he wants, he embarks on a coke scam and ends up in erotic adventures with three headstrong women....

Genres: Fiction, Novels, Magical Realism, Humor, Literature

527 pages, Paperback

First published December 10, 1981

About the author

John Nichols is the author of the New Mexico trilogy, a series about the complex relationship between history, race and ethnicity, and land and water rights in the fictional Chamisaville County, New Mexico. The trilogy consists of The Milagro Beanfield War (which was adapted into the film The Milagro Beanfield War directed by Robert Redford), The Magic Journey, and The Nirvana Blues.

Two of his other novels have been made into films. The Wizard of Loneliness was published in 1966 and the film version with Lukas Haas was made in 1988. Another successful movie adaptation was of The Sterile Cuckoo, which was published in 1965 and was filmed by Alan J. Pakula in 1969.

Nichols has also written non-fiction, including the trilogy If Mountains Die, The Last Beautiful Days of Autumn and On the Mesa. John Nichols has lived in Taos, New Mexico for many years.

Reviews

[Lorna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nirvana Blues: A Novel is the third book in The New Mexico Trilogy authored by John Nichols, The Milagro Beanfield War and The Magic Journey. While this may be my least favorite book of the trilogy, the lessons imparted were deep as we witness the continued deterioration of the fictional Chamisaville where in the eighties, with unrelenting progress and the drugs, cults and therapies promising instant salvation have taken over the beautiful valley controlled by the relentless Anglo power-brokers driving the Chicano community away. But there is hope in one hold-out, one Chicano farmer that has refused to relinquish his property that has been in his family for centuries. Eloy Irribarren has agreed to sell his land to an all-around good guy and family man, Joe Miniver. But will Joe be able to transact the deal and move into the dream property that he and his wife, Heidi, envision with their two children, Michael and Heather. This is a blend of comedy and tragedy as well as reality and fantasy, as we witness one week in the life of Joe Miniver as he embarks on what is a farcial and self-destructive journey as he seems to lose track of his values and beliefs.

"As the seventies, neared extinction, things calmed down in Chamisaville. The transition, so to speak, had completed itself. . . Chamisaville's agriculturural heritage had finally gone the way of the dodo, and a new society reigned, teeming with adventures of a different mettle. Middle-class America ruled the picturesque valley: Progress had triumphed."

"But what we had that was very valuable was a sense of identity and community. We were a part of this home that had a continuity of almost four hundred years--much longer for the Indians at the Pueblo, of course. We were the caretakers of the land, like our abuelos and bisabuelos before them. The land and the people belonged to each other. The mountains and the vegas lived in our hearts instead of our pocketbooks. Then they discovered the hot springs and the devolopment began."

"It was enough to make you weep for joy; it was enough to make you bawl in outrage. My God, Joe wondered frantically, how could anybody protect this fragile earth, or the few people--like Eloy Irribarren--who truly cared for it?"

This is a cautionary tale about what is happening in our world as some very troubling truths are being brought to light. Having grown up in northern New Mexico, it long ago has captured my heart. On a recent trip to Santa Fe and Taos, it is apparent what John Nichols was trying to warn us about in 1981 as so many beautiful and haunting places in the Southwest are being lost to progress and development but at what cost? Nirvana Blues is a troubling metaphor for our times.

[Kitap Yakıcı · Rating 1 out of 5]

I thought the other 1-star ratings of this book were extreme until I slogged through this piece of shit. The writing is occasionally brilliant, but far too often it reads, as another reviewer put it, like Nichols got paid by the word. The protagonist has to be one of the more reprehensible, unlikable characters in fiction; an NYC-power-player-turned-Communist-garbage-man, he pities himself as he abandons his wife and children to chase after a handful of different women and he plumbs the depths of the late-70s decadence around him. And the end, God help me, the end. It brought the review from 2-star solidly into 1-star territory; I finished the book by throwing it across the room.

Please, please, please if you are a fan of the delightful The Milagro Beanfield War do not read either this book or The Magic Journey —they add nothing.

[Gary · Rating 2 out of 5]

I gave up on this book after 77 pages. With hundreds more pages ago, I felt there were much better books to be read than to slog through this one. The narrative seemed rambling and the dialogue bloated, with characters who were eccentric but not engaging, and there seemed to point to any of it.

Too bad, because I enjoyed the rather lengthy prologue, which traced the recent history of Nichol's fictional town of Chamisaville--a thinly-disguised Taos, where Nichols resides. Having spent some time in Taos myself, I found his depiction quite humorous: what was once a nice little place where Anglos, Natives, and Chicano farmers enjoyed life together, only to find it all turned into something else when all the New-Agers and developers moved in.

[Brett Fernau · Rating 1 out of 5]

Right up there as one of the worst books every written. The Milagro Beanfield War was a delightful read, funny, tragic, touching, well-written. Nirvana Blues is nothing like that. Whimsical and absurd are good qualities in a book, this one is just stupid. It insulted my intelligence from the first page.

My recommendation: Read The Milagro Beanfield War. Don't bother with this one. I don't trashcan very many books, perhaps two in my lifetime, but this one goes in the trash. The Milagro Beanfield War stays on my shelf.

[Susan DeFreitas · Rating 3 out of 5]

For over-the-top humor, literary maximalism, and sheer heart, I return to John Nichols's New Mexico trilogy. Any writer who deals with environmental issues and the (still) wild politics of the Wild West cannot avoid doing so any more than they can avoid Ed Abbey, but I'm always struck by Nichols's great love for humans in general while brooking no BS. Like its predecessors, this book has a million literary warts (too many characters, overwrought plot), but you'll hardly even notice, because what's good about it is so good, and there's nothing else like this anywhere. Cheers to JN, and thanks.

[Matt Jones · Rating 1 out of 5]

One star from me. Like many other reviewers state, the plot has a million holes, the protagonist is a horrible human being, and the ending is a big problem.

I found this final book in the New Mexico trilogy disappointing because I enjoyed the Milagro Bean Field war and Magic Journey so much.

I'm ashamed that I asked my library to purchase this book..

[Stan Pedzick · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Man true to his beliefs, and how I remember the Taos of the '70s.

[skye · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had high expectations for this book. It was the only book on my lifetime bucket list, based on how much I loved its predecessors. I finally bought a copy and was so excited to read it.

Bummer.

Maybe, like in Percy's Lancelot, you're supposed to hate the main character. I don't think that works well though, as a strategy... readers just end up hating the book.

The first half was pretty bad, slow, way too wordy and needed an editor. The second half was actually a gripping ride through a wild plot. And it was a fitting, truthfully sad finale to the series. There's no happy ending to the story of manifest destiny in northern NM. And as an indictment of the greed is good US capitalist culture, it's spot on.

But the plotlines about his affairs... just seemed like the author wanted to put all his fantasies down into a book. Cardboard / hokey.

If you could take out the domestic abuse and violence and borderline pedophilia... it might be worth reading.

[Roger Bradbury · Rating 1 out of 5]

John Nichols has had the career writers dream about. Nine of his novels are in print. Two of them have been made into films, one by Redford. Having come of age along the Front Range in Colorado, I should admire his efforts to novelize the clash of cultures: the Anglo versus the Hispanic. But I don't, despite a reviewer at the Chicago Tribune comparing him to John Steinbeck. A more apt one would have been to James Michner, or maybe, given the way "The Nirvana Blues" ends, O'Henry.

[Andrew MacNeill · Rating 4 out of 5]

I never heard of Nichols or the New Mexico series before stumbling upon this in a used book store, but it’s now one of my all-time favorites. This is hardly surprising, as I think it blends elements of Catch-22 and The Monkey Wrench Gang.

[R J K · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved the whole series. Witty, chaotic, mystical. Don’t read if you believe society is as it should be and others’ past actions can’t negatively and greatly affect a person’s wellbeing today.

[Brandon · Rating 3 out of 5]

We could call John Nichols’ “New Mexico Trilogy” “How the West Was Lost,” but the three books are about more than that as evidenced by the epilogue of Nirvana Blues, the final novel in the trilogy. Joe’s afterlife in Cuba promises trouble, but not as much as if he’d chosen Dubai. Whereas Magic Journey covers much of The Cold War, Nirvana Blues covers only a week in Joe Miniver’s life as he vacillates between holding his family together by buying 1.7 acres of the last idyllic land in Chamisaville—a burgeoning municipality in Northern New Mexico—or finding a “different magic” with Nancy Ryan or two other women interested in him.

Joe’s cocaine-for-land deal serves as metaphor for the delusion of “development” (taking something pure and “stepping on it” for profit). Nichols seems to say that destroying a community to make way for people who couldn’t get along with the communities they grew up in is a bad plan. Back from Magic Journey is Joseph Bonatelli, only in one significant scene long enough dramatize the futility of Manifest Destiny. The conflict of the mafioso and The Other dramatizes the stupidity of exploiting any other guy’s family to ensconce one’s own family in paradise.

Although the novel feels long and might’ve improved with a stronger antagonist, the conclusion felt worth all the pages, to me. The tragic magic of Joe and Eloy cleaning the acequia seems to dramatize among other things the devaluation of agriculture, an idea prescient for a novel published in 1981 considering the subsequent problems of NAFTA, illegal immigration and budget-busting debt that have hit western states. Would the novel have benefited from this magic earlier in the story?

The trilogy is a glorious mess. Joseph Miniver and April McQueen from Magic Journey stand as alternatives to Joe Mondragon from Milagro Beanfield War. Whatever the structural flaws or ideological excesses of the last two novels, they contain hard truths that temper the political fantasy of the first. As Neo-Western Literature, Nirvana Blues is indispensable to balance the trilogy and to point to whatever must emerge next from The West.

[BLRBrazil · Rating 1 out of 5]

What a let down! Even though I haven't read the other two books in the series, I had some expectations, based on Milagro Beanfield reviews.
Early on there were bits I found amusing and I quickly sensed that the author was attempting to write his own variation on "Garp". The problem was that the character the author decided to pin all his hopes on was a total idiot lacking any serious compass bearing; what in the USA I believe is described as trailer trash (despite his NY yuppie background). He had theories but they all fell by the wayside whenever they were tested, quickly over-ruled by his penis, ego and good ole American assumption that any problem can be resolved by violence, not necessarily in that order.
The story stopped being amusing as it painted an ever clearer picture of what a total jerk this (supposedly typical?) Joe is and by the time I got to p.596 it was painfully obvious that his intention to try and start all over again was doomed to abject failure, since he had blatantly failed to learn anything from his experiences over the previous 500+ pages.
The only positive I can derive from this experience is that I can now say I've read The Nirvana Blues, but sticking with that task isn't anything to be proud of! The reviewer who gave up on p.77 did the right thing.
At least Tom Sharpe can bring a bunch of interesting characters together in a setting to create chaos that is fun to read. This was just depressing and more than a little sordid.

[Samilja · Rating 1 out of 5]

Finished this weeks ago and really didn't have much ambition toward reviewing it. This is the 3rd of Nichols' loose New Mexico trilogy, the first of which was The Milagro Beanfield War , a book I really enjoyed. Admittedly, I didn't read this one in order - the 2nd book, The Magic Journey, wasn't around during my last visit to my local 2nd hand bookstore but this was and those are the breaks. Anyway - this book, like Milagro, delves into mystic realism, existentialism, and the like, in the context of the relevant cultural zeitgeist. But in this case, the plot is so heavy-handed and our protagonist so completely loathsome that the points in the book with any promise at all are annihilated by bad prose and even worse character development. To be fair, the focal point of the book, a Mr. Joe Miniver, is an anti-hero. But there is a keen difference between a flawed hero and a total schmo miscast as a hero. Miniver's the latter. In a quick scan of other reviews I've seen mention of the comedic side of this book and I must confess to finding almost nothing here funny. I found exactly one character endearing, Eloy Irribarren, but in the end, his appeal just underscored the repulsion I felt for the rest.

[Neil · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unlike many here, I did not read this book as part of a trilogy, but on its own. Although I can see why others gave it bad ratings, there are several reasons that I feel it deserves to be read and appreciated. First, the writing style is delicious and delirious! Second, he manages to be (at once) starkly realistic and hallucinatory. The style does not quite derive from anyone else, as far as I know. There are many novels in which the characters create situations that spiral out of control, but Joe spirals and spirals in a way that is gut-wrenching and in character. The sexual situations were vivid not as a fantasy, but as an honest, cold-light-of-day examination of real people. Finally, the book made me think! There were neat parodies and take home messages placed here and there within the book, but still, why did Joe self-destruct? What does the book "mean"? Is the epilogue one more example of bad decisions, or does it show an indominable spirit of never giving up? Any book that makes me think deserves 5 stars, eh.

[Bern J · Rating 2 out of 5]

With a thud-thus ended The New Mexico trilogy of John Nichols. I really liked the first book in the series-The Milagro Beanfield War (I gave it 5 stars).It was light & playful. The second book , The Magic Journey, was less so but I enjoyed it enough to give it 4 stars.
However, I thought this concluding book of the trilogy was a stinker.
It felt forced, labored & tedious,like Nichols was being paid by the word.It should have been edited down by 100 pages or so.
I was hoping that the story would redeem itself in the last 50-75 pages but then it really turned weird with it's existential ending.
Unless you're really into ivy league educated cocaine dealers & dopers take a pass on this one.

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

The final installment of the New Mexico Trilogy. If you've got a brain, the minute you finished the first chapter of The Milagro Beanfield War, you were destined to read this book. You might be disappointed, but not by the quality of the book. Much time passed between the end of The Magic Journey and The Nirvana Blues, and the setting is more modern. While TNB keeps the same framework as the first two books, the plot closely follows just one man as he bumbles, at times bravely, at times farcically, through his life. It is brilliant, tragic, and very funny.

[Dennis · Rating 4 out of 5]

The 2nd best of the "Milagro Beanfield War". Although the 2nd one, "The Magic Journey" wasn't so great, reading it did make this third installment all the better. A crazy, lilting attempt by one man to become real. Imagine "The Velveteen Rabbit" on LSD.

Kept My Attention - 5
Well-written - 5
Accessible - 5
Must Read - 3
Important - 1
Plus some stray points, just b/c this book deserves a 4 star rating.

[Sharon · Rating 1 out of 5]

A 250 page novel crammed into 500 pages. Overly silly, contrived . . . . just trys too hard. This is the third of his New Mexico trilogy beginning with The Milagro Beanfield Wars which happens to be one of my all-time favorite books - unfortunately this one was sadly disappointing. One day I'll read the middle book, but I'm not overly exited to do that anytime soon. Oh and p.s. I hated the ending, HATED it.

[Paul · Rating 1 out of 5]

I must admit that I didn't get very far. It seemed like a bunch of characters got introduced very quickly, and every single one of them was quirky/goofy/whimsical/enchanted/flakey. It was like staring at a dinner composed of nothing but frosting blobs and sugary multicolored jimmies. No thanks...

[Tcrane · Rating 4 out of 5]

The same brilliant writing as Milagro Beanfield War, but the story struck me as much darker, sadder. It lacks much of the hilarity of the first book, which balanced out the tragedy. Still, I will be reading the final of the trilogy sometime soon.

[Michelle · Rating 2 out of 5]

A novel about how to really mess up your life in just a few days, but have fun doing it (sort of).

[Jessica Hansen · Rating 3 out of 5]

very sexual...interesting though

[Deena · Rating 1 out of 5]

I hated this one. I'm not sure I even finished - and it was bitterly disappointing because I loved Milagro Beanfeild War so much.

[Roger Burns · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was very strange yet I liked how this dude managed to screw up his world so quickly. It was difficult to follow at times with the weird shit the author was trying to describe.

[Miranda · Rating 1 out of 5]

very queer book didn't read the first two, don't want to. Just not my style I guess.

[Steve · Rating 1 out of 5]

I loves Milagro Bean Feild Wars so much. I just figured this would be great too. What a depressing ordeal. I don't think I read another book for a year after that.

[Beth · Rating 2 out of 5]

I would have liked this book better if it was a logical conclusion to the New Mexico Trilogy. Instead, it was all over the place. Mostly just a long, awkward read.

[David Roberts · Rating 4 out of 5]

The final book in his New Mexico Trilogy, with more wacky characters, satire, and New Age parody.

[Tim O'Neill · Rating 3 out of 5]

3rd book in the New Mexico trilogy featuring Joe Minerva with hissocialist philosophy and newly found sexual ambitions. Bit too long and drawn out but a good read.