| NYU grad explores 'gutter punk' culture, mental illness in new book Wednesday, August 29, 2007
When the popular television show started taking over American living rooms in the late '90s, a twentysomething Furst saw a quiet revolution occur at his alma mater, New York University. The NYU he knew and loved was "a place in New York City to experience culture outside the mainstream," explained Furst. But "the television show was about NYU students: cute little kids who were trying to find themselves," he said. "I had the occasion to walk through Washington Square Park and see many more NYU sweatshirts that wouldn't have been worn while I was there." It was the curse of "Felicity" that drove Furst, then a playwright and an actor, to places like Greenwich Village and Tompkins Square Park. And it was there that he found an oasis of counterculture in the form of young bohemian drifters that he and his friends dubbed "gutter punks."
"My interest in them was political," said Furst. "They were attempting to carry on a certain progressive tradition that goes back to the turn of the century here. They were a lot less educated in that tradition, so they were consumers of that tradition, in a certain way. And yet that tradition was in the process of dying out." Although he never joined their ranks, Furst became obsessed with the idea of writing about these frustrated non-conformists who had so much passion but nowhere to go with it -- and who were considered borderline insane by mainstream society. The material stewed in his mind until he wrote his most recent work and first novel, "The Sabotage Cafe." His main characters, mother Julia and daughter Cheryl, are two generations of gutter punks. When Cheryl runs away at the age of 16, she begins reenacting Julia's experience of being young and on the fringes of society. But if you think the story is just a heartwarming tale of a mother and a daughter, think again. Furst frames the novel as a retelling of Cheryl's experience in Julia's voice. Although the mother is physically absent from her daughter's adventures, she sees her daughter's life in startlingly realistic visions. Julia's battle with schizophrenia complicates the narrative further. "One of the things that fascinated me about writing about someone with mental illness is I've always been uncomfortable with the idea of objective truth, that there's one reality we all have to agree on," said Furst. "Having a main character like this allows me to explore subjective realities." A trained stage actor since childhood, Furst promises that he will be able to "evoke many realities" during his reading at Bookends in Ridgewood. The author hasn't worked onstage or written much for the stage since "Felicity," because of a "nasty habit of firing directors." But North Jersey fans of his fiction will get a peek into his interpretation of passages from the novel. "In this particular scene, and the punk scene in general, women have always had an uncomfortable role," he explained. "It's a subculture full of male aggression, and yet I think that rage and confusion and raw anger is not specific to men. And I thought it was interesting and valuable to explore the way that that same anger can express itself in girls. "It is very much the story of an 'angry young woman,' " he said. E-mail: shih@northjersey.com |
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