Never Mind NIRVana

by Mark Lindquist

Book Overview

"Hip deep in music,Never Mind Nirvanais a telling inside view that perfectly captures the rhythms and sights of late-nineties Seattle." - Peter Buck, guitarist of R.E.M. Pete Tyler is at a crossroads.... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0375757554
• ISBN13: 9780375757556
• Release Date: May 2001
• Publisher: Villard Books
• Length: 239 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.5" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

Nirvana Itself

This very funny, sharp, and intelligent novel has absolutely the best line ever written about Tacoma in it, but it can't be printed here. People from the Northwest will love this novel because of the local knowledge, but the novel is also quite knowledgeable about universal things like love, lust and music. "High Fidelity" is an obvious comparison, but not a good one. This is a much different, funnier, more intelligent, more subtle, and more stylized book. Recommended to all, but especially to Tacomans and Seattlites.

100 Most Eligible Bachelor Guy

The author Mark Lindquist is one of People magazine's '100 Most Eligible Bachelor' guys and it's not hard to figure out why. Pete Tyler, the hero, apparently has a lot in common with the author and he - Pete - is the ultimate bachelor. It's kind of scary. He decides to get married when he doesn't even have a steady girlfriend and shows no ability - no ability at all - to keep one. But Pete is intelligent and introspective, and basically a good guy, very witty. So you end up liking him the same way you could like Bridget Jones even though she was nutty. I recommend this book to women for its honest and entertaining portrayal of men.

The New Richard Ford (if possible)

If there can be a new Richard Ford while Richard Ford is still alive, Lindquist is the guy. This book is Richard Ford with a sense of humor, pop culture sensibility, and a perfect rock music soundtrack. There's also a touch of the Bridget Jones "Is This Really My Life" tone, but Lindquist's hero Pete Tyler is more intelligent, and Lindquist is more literary. Never Mind Nirvana is a great summer book if you happen to be in an existential summer mood. This is commercial fiction that keeps the reader turning the pages, but done with depth and insight.

Never Mind Nirvana Taps into Seattle's Heartbeat, Finds Life

Mark Lindquist's novel, Never Mind Nirvana, is about several things, really. It's about sex. It's about drugs. It's definetely about rock and roll. But it's also about a few other things. Soul searching. Being lonely. Growing up. Knowing what your next turn off on the freeway of life should be but not being sure you want to know, or have the guts to take the exit.The book takes the reader on a whirlwind of experiences. The well-written dialogue makes you feel as if you are actually sitting with the characters and listening to their conversations. This could be sitting with them at a table in a well-known Seattle restaurant, at a music-filled strip club in a very different part of downtown, lying on a futon in a spartan Seattle apartment, smoking a cigarette at the Crocodile, hanging out on a bar stool with a Rainier in Pete's mother's sun-drenched kitchen. Be it the neighborhood Seattle bar, a live music show, an "ascetic" loft apartment with a view of the much loved Seattle skyline, a car late at night in the rain with some live Nirvana in the background, a courtroom, a church confessional, or walking the streets of Seattle watching people walking by, you feel as if you are there, experiencing all of it. The "characters" in this novel are much more than one-dimensional, much more than written words. They are brought to life...breathing, heart-pounding, sweat on the forehead and smoke smell in their hair life. This is not so much accomplished with extensive descriptions of their physical characteristics as it is with a real infusing of personality into each person, which shines through their experiences and their conversations, both the words, and the pauses between them. I know what people have said about the book being not completely fiction. And I would agree in part, having met the author briefly and having known as acquaintances a couple of other people upon whom characters in the novel are based. But perhaps this is what lends the characters their very real feel. And I don't think it really matters where the punch in the book comes from, because readers everywhere will be able to enjoy it, and feel as if they are a part of the action, ie: authentic, live, late '90's Seattle.The main character, Pete, is looking for love in all the wrong places. He is an ex-grunge musician who has traded in life in a band for a job as a Deputy County Prosecutor and a Burberry's suit. He's 36 years old, and quite successful as a lawyer. Along comes a date rape case, which on an average day, would be an "easy" case to try. But this one is different. This one accuses a well-known Seattle rock figure of date-raping a young girl (18 yo) who also knows many musicians, but is mainly friends with the new, younger Seattle scenesters. The case asks a lot of Pete. He has to own up to who he is, who he has become, with the knowledge that his own past and current private life really put him on both sides of the case. This plot serve

Believe the Hype

I read about this book in the Wall Street Journal's "Biggest Buzz of the Summer" Issue or whatever it was called, and I've heard a lot of hype that reminded me of when Jay McInerney's "Bright Lights Big City" was published, but I finally broke down and bought this slickly packaged book anyway. And I'm glad I did, because it's exceptionally smart and surprisingly genuine. There's a date rape plot as the lead character Pete has to prosecute someone who, like himself, was once in a grunge band, but what the book's really about is what it means for a guy to be a grown-up these days as everything's changing, and how music helps, and doesn't help. It's a hip contemporary version of Richard Ford's "The Sportswriter," but the writing has the wit of Jay McInerney as well as the depth of Richard Ford, and a totally original style that is engaging and modern (postmodern?). This book is one of the few that lives up to it's hype (and to its blurbs from R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck and Brat Pack writer Bret Easton Ellis).