Grunge noir

>> Sleeping around in Seattle with Never Mind Nirvana

by JULIET WATERS

It's a novel idea, having a promotional soundtrack to go with a book set in post-grunge Seattle. Except they didn't send the soundtrack. I only read about it in this item in The Stranger online, after I'd finished Never Mind Nirvana.

"SOUNDTRACK CITY: A cool promo CD's floating around town, pressed in honor of local author Mark Lindquist's upcoming novel, Never Mind Nirvana. The CD features local bands, including the Murder City Devils (who?), the Fastbacks, Love as Laughter, and the Melody Unit. Lindquist, who went to high school with Fastback Kim Warnick--how's that for cred?--was recently spotted engaging in late-night slumming at the Hurricane with rock god Peter Buck."

It certainly occurred to me that this novel should have a soundtrack. Without one, I had to depend entirely on my memory of '80s and early '90s alternatrivia to fill in the ambiance Lindquist attempts to create by dropping the name of a song into every third or fourth paragraph. This means negotiating a narrative that pauses for lines like "Glass in hand, he pulls up a stool in front of the stereo system stacked on milk crates, loads a six-disc cartridge into the CD player, cues up the Replacements' Let It Be, circa 1984."

Whatever. I got past that music nerd authorial voice in High Fidelity. And the premise of Never Mind Nirvana sounded interesting. Our hero, Pete Tyler, used to be in a seminal Seattle grunge band, circa Nirvana. Not able to face the prospect of becoming a has-been rocker, he goes to law school and becomes a deputy prosecutor specializing in sexual assault cases. Unfortunately, the suit is not enough to get him over the hump to maturity. At 36 ("almost 40" as he likes to whine), he's still hanging out in showbars trying to pick up multi-pierced, underaged groupies, who usually only sleep with him if they remember his band from their older sisters' record collection.

Tyler is a desperate loser obsessed with getting laid. Sympathy is due for a brief moment when one of these girls pukes on him after snorting smack in his bathroom, but quickly evaporates when he wonders if he might still get her to sleep with him. To make matters worse, he already has an on-and-off girlfriend, Winter, a sexy, funny stripper. So, basically this is all about getting some "new," as one of his creepy lawyer colleagues likes to call it.

However, when Tyler gets assigned a case prosecuting a fellow musician from the good ol' scene for the unambiguous date rape of a young girl dangerously similar to the kind of girls Pete's been trawling, he realizes things must surely change (pause for him to put on the The The song that goes "This is the day your life must surely change").

Pete decides to marry. He meets the perfect girl, Esmé, an A&R executive for Sub Pop, who knows as much about music as he does, is very well groomed, and has been accepted into Yale Law School. Perfect, except she dumps him when he won't totally commit to her after a few weeks of dating. This is, apparently, all part of his pattern of sabotaging relationships (though some may see it as part of a pattern of attracting women who are about as desperate and clueless as he is). Next stop, deciding to settle for Winter. Except that she's just become engaged to another lawyer.

The end. Now our hero must settle for a life of bitter regret and nothing but memories of the 300-plus girls he banged during his wasted youth. Novel or grunge noir mood piece? Never mind. Skip the book, keep an eye out for the soundtrack. :

Never Mind Nirvana by Mark Lindquist, Villard, hc, 239 pp, $33