How Soon Is Never?

by Marc Spitz

Book Overview

There is a light and it never goes out . . . or is there? Welcome to the big Reagan '80s, where ketchup is a vegetable and the Cold War looms large and chilly. If like Joe Green you were coming of age... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0609810405
• ISBN13: 9780609810408
• Release Date: September 2003
• Publisher: Broadway Books
• Length: 400 Pages
• Weight: 0.71 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.2" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

How Soon Is Never?

I absolutely loved this book and was surprised to see the negative and ambivalent reviews on this site. I guess it's not for everyone, but it was perfect for me. I think the best books, like the best music, allow the reader to form an emotional connection with the protagonist and the subject matter. I connected with the book because I know what it's like to get into music for the first time and have a very favorite band, and then to get older and realize that I was a different person when I got into that band and that their music and shows will never be able to take me back to that time. Maybe not everyone can relate to a book about (as it says on the back cover) "the power of hearing a record that changes your life, and the dangers of nostalgia." I can. If you like fiction about music and coming of age novels, especially "The Perks of Being a Wallflower," I highly recommend that you read "How Soon is Never."

A odd, but, great read.

This book is an odd read, and may not appeal to most. But in Marc Spitz's weird tale of Joe Green and his life, and his journey to re-unite The Smiths, it touches you in some form or another.

Lovely and True

This is simply an amazing, pure-hearted book about being young/not so young and loving a band. Both a coming-of-age tale and homage--Somewhere Morrisey is reading this novel, singing [Respect]. Not just for all you lovers of the Smiths, but for anyone looking to read a truly beautiful and special novel.

tragically true

After finishing this book I think that I'm a pretty horrible kid. I picked it up because I'm a spin reader, and after reading marc Spitz's interview with himself I found it wonderfully cheeky that someone would package their life up as fiction for the sake of taking fabulous exaggerations and cruel observations. Similarly, I thought the picture of the two Spitzes talking to eachother in that october '03 issue, kind of neat. Anyway. On to my roundabout point, one of the central themes to this utterly addictive saga is the favorite subject of many a music junkie; though covered with layers of drugs and jealousy, the main conflict is the connection that one feels to their favorite band. Not a normal connection, a strange one, the kind when the songs never get old; you can't accomplish anything with their records on because you know the music too well, you find yourself thinking about every aspect of your daily life in reference to them without realizing it, You have to seriosly consider if in the event of an emergency wether you'd save you mother, or their records. (you decide on the autographed record and the mother only because neither is replaceable) I think that because Spitz is a music junkie it allows him to write from his own "life" with less of a degree of cheek than i'd forseen; mostly with honesty and a frightneing sense of devotion. This book is something to be feared, admired, envied, and most importantly read. I would recommend it to anyone who knows an obsessive music fan, even mothers of obsessed music fans, just so they can begin to understand what exactly is running through their children's minds. This is it. This is your brain on the smiths. However, I'm 14. I don't deserve this book. I'm too young to deserve this book. I read it for I felt that I was an old soul, but now? I wonder why I haven't found any band worth obsessing over. I'm worried that by the time they're here I'll be too old; or that they'll never come. Until then I have my guilt-trip, illegally downloaded, smiths collection. My dark rooms. My sunglasses. My woe. my teenagerdom that began tragically late. This book showed me that the smiths cannot be mine. I will try to have them, but indefinitely will fail.

Purely Honest and Highly Readable

I must admit that I got this book out of a blossoming addiction to the Smiths, and once I started reading it I realized that it was much more than a rock and roll novel. Despite his angst and loneliness, Joe Green is a pure soul, recounting those old days when he heard the album that changed his life, and many of us can relate to that. It's a different album for every generation and subgroup, and each generation claims these albums as their own, angry at having them stolen by the people who hate us or the people who are far younger. I myself will become violently angry when I hear fourteen-year-olds out buying all of Nine Inch Nails' CD's and comparing their own pain next to the songs. It isn't allowed. Nine Inch Nails' is mine, and no one else can claim it, just as Gerneration Y cannot claim the Smiths. This is an honest book, so honest that I am convinced that it is almost entirely autobiographical. If it wasn't, I would call it genius. As it is, it's a great read. I highly recoment it not only to Smiths fans but to everyone else who has ever had a favorite band, the kind of music that makes you young again despite yourself.