F
250
Bud Smith. Piscataway House, $13
paperback (236p) ISBN: 978-0996352659
From
the very first pages of Bud Smith’s recently released novel F 250, I felt myself in familiar
territory. Spider Bar could have easily been Lucky’s back home, and the
characters crashing through the novel’s pages had the faces of friends and
enemies, drinking buddies, guys in the band and that one dude who always hung
around for every show, hoping someone would spot him a beer. In short, Smith’s
tale of music, mayhem, bad decisions and lost dreams is as authentic as it
gets. Many a novel has tried to walk the line Smith takes here and the story
ends only in hipster posturing and pretention. Without a doubt, Bud Smith’s F 250 is the real deal.
With
this in mind, I’d have to say that F 250
is for real readers of this genre as well. With an abundance of sex, drugs and
rock n’ roll, this isn’t your mama’s novel. The main character Lee Casey is
floating through life on a tide of desperate, drugged-out friends and half-way
talented musicians. The fact that Lee’s main band, Ottermeat, is a noise band
is indicative of Lee’s life; it’s messy, distorted, full of heart, but often
directionless. A description of Lee playing a gig in a nearly empty bar perfectly
captures his state of mind: “I tried my best to fake it through the songs, but
it was pretty obvious that shit was all wonky. It was just me and Seth up
there; I didn’t have any place to hide.”
F 250 is weak on plot, but in this case
such a deficiency works because it mirrors Lee’s life. In many ways, F 250 is an intense character study. It
is the relationships in Lee’s life—with his friend and drummer Seth, with two
listless but sex-crazed girls K-Neon and June Doom—that are at the core of this
story. The actual events that throw these characters together are second to how
they react with one another: pin-balling into each other in volatile, often
humorous and often heartbreaking ways. In one of the most honest passages in
the novel, as Lee contemplates the convoluted love triangle he has wandered
into, the crux of both the character and the story is illuminated: “I took
whatever opportunity presented itself to show them the depth of my oddness and
the way I belonged nowhere and everywhere at the same time.”
In
contrast to the fluidity of Lee’s character, Bud Smith’s prose style is
staccato and sharp. His sentences smash into one another in a cacophony of
hyper-realism that sounds overwhelming, but works perfectly on the page.
Smith’s attention to detail is spot on and while at times perhaps too much
information was provided, the world that is spray-painted across the page is
raw and vivid. Bud Smith reminds me of a young Bret Easton Ellis, if Ellis were
slumming it in New Jersey. With F 250, Smith has most certainly stamped out his mark and I
can’t wait to read what he hurls at us next. (May 2015)
Purchase F 250 HERE.
Reviewer bio: Steph Post is the
author of the debut novel A Tree Born Crooked. Her short fiction has
most recently appeared in Haunted Waters: From the Depths, The Round-Up
and Stephen King’s Contemporary Classics. She currently lives, writes
and teaches writing in St. Petersburg, Florida.
