Author: John Shepard

|ISBN: 0977197255

It was 1984 when my sister came home with a safety pin in her lip and a newly dyed, jet-black, mullet spiked high on her head. She was wearing a black leather jacket and swore me to secrecy about the lip piercing so our mother wouldn’t find out. Although I was only in elementary school at the time I thought it was the coolest goddamn thing I’d ever seen.

Many of us remember the 1980s by the horrifying tide of conservatism that swept across the country. Others remember it as a time of materialistic excess or bullying corporate greed. All of these are valid classifications of the time but many people forget what my sister’s pierce lip showed so clearly to me. The 1980s were the height of punk culture. And what is even more forgotten is that the punk movement wasn’t constrained to the urban centers of New York and Los Angles. It was much more prolific, spreading to smaller cities and towns throughout the country. It was in small town Michigan with my sister’s spiked mullet and her boyfriend’s mohawk. It was in the South too, in cities like Sarasota, Florida the setting of John Shepard’s debut novel, Small Town Punk. In this book, Shepard explores the themes of angst, disillusionment and marginalization through the voice of Buzz Pepper, an apathetic and impertinent teenager living a punk lifestyle, during the Reagan era.

The story centers on the misadventures of Buzz and his friends, a colorful group of degenerates and misfits whose main ambition in life is to drink and do drugs. When not working their menial jobs at a popular pizza chain, they travel around in Buzz’s dilapidated van doing exactly the things you would expect punks to do, having confrontations with preps, old people, cops and anyone else who is irked by their nonconformance.

For Buzz, these events start off rather innocuous, an argument at work or a disagreement with his parents but, slowly they begin to escalate and take an psychological toll. One of his friends is confined in a rehab center, his van is vandalized and he’s harassed by redneck, fascist cops. All these things wear at Buzz’s confidence and force him to question himself and the meaning of his punk existence. Haunted by this new uncertainty, Buzz turns to the only adult he seems to trust and respect. He pays a visit to his grandfather, a retired, old-time union man who’s been fighting the system one way or another for his entire life.

Although his grandfather’s words are pessimistic in outlook, Buzz finds solace in them because they reaffirm his intuitions. There is no point in fighting the system but there’s no point in joining it either.

If you’re looking for happy endings and sensationalistic love stories you won’t find it in this book. Shepard rejects these conventions in what seems to be a deliberate attempt to mirror the punk mentality. Likewise, his use of tone has a genuine punk attitude that would be hard to fake. This is the true success of the book. Shepard captures quite intimately the resentment and alienation of a group of young people growing up without hope and with no promise for the future. This is particularly relevant in our current troubled times and many younger readers will have no trouble identifying with this novel.

However, the book is not without its short comings. Although the themes are presented quite clearly and even artfully to some degree, the book is still not incredibly deep in meaning. Also, there are some evident weaknesses in Shepard’s characterization. The main characters are lacking in development and some of the peripheral characters have been reduced to stereotypes.

Still, the book comes off as an interesting, sort of modern existentialist piece that reflects the angst and apathy of a generation growing up during that unique period in American history. It also falls well outside the mainstream of popular fiction (as do all of IG Publishing’s books) and should be commended for that. Moreover, it is raw and confrontational with a tinge of insightfulness and wry. If you are looking for a quick read with a little bite Small Town Punk is worth a look.

The above review was contributed by: Anthony Squiers who is a writer and professor of English and Creative Writing at Southwestern Michigan College. His writing has been featured in a number of print and online publications including Southwest Michigan Magazine and Recoil Magazine.