Adios, Nirvana (review)

Ever since the death of his twin brother, Telemachus, sixteen-year-old Jonathan has slid into a nihilistic funk, letting his schoolwork deteriorate and squandering the writerly gifts that won him a major young poet's award. His intimidating principal makes him a deal: assist a dying war veteran with his memoirs, hand in the result along with the rest of his missing assignments, and play the principal's favorite song at graduation, and Jonathan can be reinstated to go on to senior year with the rest of his class. Jonathan's narration is all about style, moving between clipped, oneline sentences and heavily imagistic rhapsodies influenced by his heroes Charles Bukowski and Walt Whitman, soaring often into descriptions of his music and the atmospheric West Seattle milieu that colors his sensibilities and returning frequently to Homeric allusion. Jonathan's emotional journey seems largely forced, though, and the veteran's story loses its impact amid the noise. While it's credible that a young poet would romanticize pain and darkness, often in strained metaphors, and overlook his own tendency toward posturing while despising it in others, the book generally treats Jonathan's views and actions overseriously—his climactic musical performance, for instance, is greeted with highly implausible rapture by the assembled. What is really moving here is the continued theme of male closeness, with Jonathan's grief for his lost twin and his regard for his "thicks," his best friends, offering an emotional center amid the descriptive flights. Readers with their own poetic leanings may be taken with the West Seattle atmospherics, and they'll certainly relate to Jonathan's love for his comrades fallen and unfallen.