The Hottest State

AUTHOR: Ethan Hawke (yes, that Ethan Hawke)

PUBLISHED: 1996

GENRE: Fiction

Just something to know: I really like Robert Sean Leonard.  I saw him on stage once, in a Moliere play at McCarter Theatre.  It was the highlight of my French language learning experience.  And supposedly, Robert Sean Leonard is really good friends with Ethan Hawke.  Which, to get around to my point, is why I picked up this book.

This book, to put it succinctly, is exactly the story you would expect an Ethan Hawke character to write.  It’s from 1996, but is timeless in that way that mournful, emo love stories of skinny dudes in tight jeans will unfortunately always have a place in culture.*  The main character – Michael? Paul?  No, William.  It doesn’t really matter – is a sometimes actor from Texas living in New York when he meets Sarah.  She wears green dresses with matching shoes!  She sings in a band, but is terrified to perform in front of people!  She won’t have sex with him!  It’s looooove.  Until she dumps him.  The love remains on his end but it’s not enough for her, even though she has begged him to never leave her, begged him to basically force himself on her no matter what she says.  You can see how he might be a little confused by it all.

This isn’t a spoiler because he tells you all this in the first few pages, about how she broke his heart and it shattered in to a million pieces and now he doesn’t know if he could ever love again and GET A GRIP, man, pull yourself together.  It’s so stereotypically hipster, beat poet, struggling artist who wants to be Jack Kerouac or Bob Dylan, that’s it’s almost a farce.  The painting she gives him, see, it’s a bleeding heart, because he’s wounded, man, he’s so wounded.  (The fact that she has invited him over to give him birthday presents after they’ve broken up and she’s told him she never wants to see again leads me to believe she’s not an artist, she’s just a bitch.) 

William’s sexual dysfunction is of particular interest to Hawke (he can’t perform with a condom on! Ooh, deep!), as is his parents’ divorce, his mother having been knocked up at 16 and divorced by 20, and his and his mother’s move hundreds of miles away from his father.  It’s all supposed to come together – the fear of condoms, the fear of kids, the scars from his childhood traumas – but it’s just a jumble of facts and whiny emotions, meaning nothing.  He falls in love, she falls in love, she breaks it off.  He calls her, calls her again, calls her again.  She threatens police action, invites him over for birthday presents.  He sits, so very alone, in his threadbare apartment.  Cue a ballad from the Cure.  I’m over it. 

LENGTH: 208 pages

MAINSTREAM OR NOT?: No.

SO, SHOULD I READ IT OR NOT?: Ehhhh… If this sounds like your sort of thing, then sure, why not.

*The same cannot be said for the book-jacket picture, which I’m pretty sure is his cast photo from Reality Bites.  It’s so angsty-looking.  All that’s missing is Winona Ryder in a sundress and Doc Martens and some Lisa Loeb playing in the background.