User

In the center of the transvestite bars, Times Square, the male huslters, the heroin addicted, the crack smokers, User rises out of the ashes and mainlines a beautiful fix. This is a story of a Times Square that doesn't exist anymore, and has been driven more underground. Bruce Benderson is an important American writer. He tells the story of Apollo, heroin user and hustler, and his long descent into his private hell. Apollo's story is both tragic and tender. We care about what happens to him. Benderson brings us into his real life.The fragmented narrative which switches point of view from character to character: from third person to first and to a stream of collective consciousnessthat forms a mosaic that both outlines "being on drugs" and creates a realism of urban strength.Apollo gets in a fight with Casio, a bouncer, and that sends Casio to the hospital. This makes Casio's son, Baby Pop, want to seek revenge on Apollo. Baby Pop is Benderson's very original and moving creation, who lives in the bus terminal at Port Authority. He studies math and dreams of going to college.Apollo is on the run, spiraling down deeper into the bowels of Times Square and Port Authority. This book has strength and is rich in deatil, written directly, and with great heart and compassion, recalling the better days of that other underworld figure and prisoner, Jean Genet.Bruce Benderson definitelt shows us the frontiers in a wolrd where people only pretend to be hard. This is also a farewell song to old Times Square that has been captured in such movies as Taxi Driver. That sleazy urban cesspool has been bought up by Disney and turned into a mall. After 1996, little of this world still existed. It's all very underground and in strange corners.

Benderson's stage is NYC in the Giulliani era. The main characters are the down-and-outers and no-hopers born into the cruel urban world where survival of the fittest is the law of the land: Apollo the male prostitute, Casio -- the injured bouncer, Baby Pop -- the streetwise kid with big dreams and no way to realize them. Minor characters are those who exploit this class directly and live by a set of laws that is far from civil and often more malicious than those they consider themselves above: Mrs. Huxton -- the wealthy widow who makes big money from porn, Tina -- the drag queen who has managed to get ahead by running bars and after-hours clubs, as well as the several pushers, johns, and denizens who populate this world. This book works at times like a documentary and at others it is nothing but great story-telling. It gives us a look into the minds of society's cast-offs and brings us to examine our own views and our relations to these people. It reminded me many times of "Querelle" by Genet because of its simple exposition and matter-of-factness. And the scope put me to mind of certain works by Dickens where we see many levels of society and their inter-workings. This is a well-written novel which deserves wider attention.