Sad Movies, a post-college picaresque drenched in scotch and pop culture, has a reputation as a second-tier brat-pack novel. I think it's a pretty fair reputation. Zeke, the narrator, a writer of bad copy for bad movies, has resolved to kill himself. An old friend shows up out of the blue and takes him on a weekend-long series of adventures designed to help Zeke discover whether or not he has a reason to live.

Sad Movies is light on substance. Naively gloomy throughout, then naively hopeful at the end. The characters are not especially vivid-- for the most part they are types. This is not a vivid Los Angeles, either. About the only thing that's vivid, here, is the suffocating oppressiveness of 80s party culture. That's thick on the page.

What the book has to offer is mainly a brisk narrative that never gets bogged down in the excesses of some of his contemporaries. The heavy use of song lyrics and pop music references anticipates High Fidelity by nearly a decade. But unless you grew up on Siouxsie Sioux and Bauhaus, many of the references will seem dated or obscure, adding little.

If you haven't taken a special interest in the brat pack, there's little reason to read Sad Movies.

(Some of the core components of the story-- the alcohol fueled adventures and the shamanic figure who swoops in to organize the action-- are sort of pet peeves of mine. So it's possible I'm not giving Sad Movies a fair shake.) ( )