Hey, Joe

by Ben Neihart

Book Overview

A gay teenager looking for love in Louisiana stumbles into a conspiracy to tamper with a verdict.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0425159728
• ISBN13: 9780425159729
• Release Date: September 1997
• Publisher: Berkley Publishing Group
• Length: 211 Pages
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 4.2" x 7.2"

Customer Reviews

An experience

Since I purchased this book I've read it about a million times, I read a lot and have never gotten so caught up in a story or the characters that are so human they feel like old friends. This is a wonderful book its style is not that of a novel, but of an experience, like spending a night out in the city streets of New Orleans with friends.

Terrific writing compensates for a so-so plot

Ben Neihart is a terrific writer with a fresh, original voice. Those who have read portions of this book as stories might be disappointed that as a novel the book never really comes off, troubled by a so-so plot. Nonetheless, the writing makes up for it, and I eagerly await Ben Neihart's next book.

HEY, BEN! Good New Orleans Atmosphere of Eros and Joy!

This book is a fine delving into the sweet character of New Orleans gay youth, salty southern distric attorney scoops, and a tour of the real places of the city of night. I love the way that the health club is detailed, the way the hugs, kisses, and teenage belly buttons weave with the boney knee passion of the 16 y.o. hero. I was that boy, and many of the men I know were JOE. We answer to Joe, now Ben Neihart has made the call an archetype, an anthem for we who have walked the walk. Ben, YOU'RE THE BEST! No way this is one of those "false southern accent" works. Ben Neihart is a true poet of the south, of men interested in men, and in the special quality of New Orleans at night. Hey, Joe! Or should I say, "Hey, Ben Neihart!" What a great fresh approach to the New Orleans scene. I know it from the bottom up, and can tell you this is THE FLAVOR OF NEW ORLEANS done right. It isn't the syrup jazz place some writers would have it be, no...it is a hip place, with fast mood and atmosphere changes, a taste of salty sweat on a forearm, a moonlit Mississippi River by night and a profound search for the connection that is sensual and at the same time creative and spiritual. I want to hug Ben Neihart and tell him: HEY, BEN! I LOVE YOU! For he has resurrected the longing of youth and the blessing of passion and pathos.

It pulled a dozen emotions at once.

Hey, Joe (Simon & amp; Schuster), by Ben Neihart. As I was getting ready to leave Austin to live in New Mexico, a friend asked, "Before you leave the area, have you considered taking a road trip to New Orleans? You really should." I'm embarrassed to say I have never been to New Orleans. Not physically. But like Robert Stone's acclaimed 1966 novel, Hall of Mirrors, which takes the reader into the seediest and most noteworthy cracks and edges of the Big Easy, Ben Neihart's astounding first novel, Hey Joe, took me like a tornado smack into the center of New Orleans and whirled me around and spat me out and left me breathless. Neihart's bumpy, jumpy, keen prose ignites every sense: "In the opposite direction from the river, there was a cop barricade; above it, the black smoke of a fire hung. A bony rhythm track blew from the open windows of a passing white limo: it was Queen Latifah, rapping. . .î The book begins in the late afternoon of a warm summer day, and ends in the middle of that night. The New Orleans spotlight is shared by the novel's protagonist: beautiful, bright, sensitive, sixteen year-old Joe Keith. "He had the rosy aspect, and the swagger, and the skinny arms, and the bad reputation. He was a brooder, a magazine reader, a swaying dancer at mellow, jazzy rap parties." Joe is unabashedly in love with the supermodel, Linda Evangelista, coveting pages of glossy mags that display her in velvet robes and skimpy skirts. He's sure that he likes women, but he does not long for them. He longs for slightly older boys, and part of this novel deals with Joe's sexual coming of age and his first whole experience with a male. What really takes hold here, and I mean by the roots of the hair, is Joe's brave vulnerability. Joe is able to say what he wants and why he wants it. He is able to think: "Don't you know I want to be in love with you?" then to show it. He is utterly honest about his feelings, so white and black, never indifferent, that one cannot help but fall madly in love with the boy's humanness. One cannot help but think: I remember how vulnerable I was at that age; my body, my face, my hair, my voice - all too awkward and ugly and bare. Joe is accompanied by a cast of rich and rare characters. Among them: Al Theim, Joe's next-door neighbor who is about Joe's age, heterosexual, questing for big biceps and girls. Joe's mother, Sherry, widowed at a young age, a good mom. She worries for Joe and loves him as he loves her. White Donna is a disc jockey of alternative rock; when Joe confides in her, she tells him, "You can love somebody with four or five hearts . . . I know a lot of people say they can take it; they can take whatever heartache gets ladled on top of them. A lot of them are liars. But I'm not." Through White Donna, Joe soon meets up with Welk, a slightly older boy with whom he falls in love. "To have Welk hanging on him, anchoring him to the spot, was a per

Fast-paced, raunchy literary fiction.

"Hey, Joe" is the novel I reread the most this year. The characters are funky and the lines they speak are so palpable that they jump off the page. I found myself reading lines out loud to my friends. New Orleans, where the novel is set, looks and smells and feels exactly as I remember it. Joe, the main character, is the most heartbreakingly open-hearted character of the year. He's a sixteen year old kid who just happens to be gay and who gets caught up in a wicked conspiracy. The fresh supporting cast recur at just the right frequency, as in the best novels; just when you've forgotten about one great character, he or she returns. There's plenty of sex, plenty of great food and booze and dancing. Gentle breezes. Wet kisses. All of the best things in life