Greg Hewett: NO NAMES • Book Reviews

Fiction by Greg Hewett, reviewed by Madeline Mundkowsky
NO NAMES (Coffee House Press)

I was initially drawn to Greg Hewett’s novel No Names because I am, first and foremost, a music lover. Though my childhood soundtrack included John Denver, Dolly Parton, and Barbara Mandrell, I wanted to venture into unknown territory. However, growing up in rural America, people who dressed in emo or punk clothes were out of the ordinary, the type of people who were described to me as “dangerous” or “weirdos” by youth pastors and doting grandparents. If there was a punk scene in my Appalachian hometown, I certainly didn’t know about it. So, when I began reading this book, I worried initially that I wouldn’t ‘get’ the punk culture and lingo, but No Names brought me in and made me a member of the community, an insider.

No Names has two main storylines—the 1970s story of Mike and Pete, and the 1990s story of Issac. We follow Mike and Pete as they meet in high school and become friends who dream of being in a punk band. Mike is scrappy; he can’t read music and comes from a relatively poor family that is still reeling from his brother’s death in the Vietnam War. Pete is sophisticated and middle-class, not the type of person Mike would usually be friends with. Yet, Mike is drawn to him nonetheless. Pete is compelling and smart: he loves philosophy; he knows about Roman tradition, etymology, and poetry; and he speaks of it all with conviction and passion. He’s the kind of character that a reader can easily fall in love with—just as Mike does. The two boys bond over Emily Dickinson and write their first songs using her lines as lyrics. (Who knew Dickinson could be punk?) Alongside two other men, Mike and Pete form a band called The No Names and shortly after, become small stars on the punk scene, both domestically and internationally.

Woven in between the 1970s storyline, we follow Issac, a typical angsty teenager in the 1990s. He’s non-conformist and can’t stand his mother nor the pressure she puts on him to go to college and ‘figure his life out.’ After finding vinyl of The No Names’ album hidden in his attic and becoming enamored with their music, he discovers that they all grew up in the same town. Issac frantically searches for any information he can find on the band, why they suddenly disappeared, and why they stopped making music. He eventually meets Daniel, an old friend of the band, and the two storylines collide.

The novel is told from the switching points of view of Mike, Issac, and Daniel (with a few interludes of Pete’s mother). Each character’s voice is distinct and contains its own quirks and personal styling. Daniel, a classical pianist, is formal in his mannerisms and distinctly European in both his speech and actions. Issac has the most distinctive voice—and probably the most compelling. He’s sardonic and sarcastic but ultimately sincere in his interest in music and the band. His sentences are choppy, wandering, and playful, but over the course of his quest for discovery, he matures into a young man who is passionate about punk music, about math, and about finding a family that understands him.

As a poet with five published collections, Greg Hewett’s attention to language and detail in No Names, his debut novel, is unsurprisingly poetic, even when describing a bar full of vomiting and moshing punks, reaching their hands out towards the band. Though I can’t hear the music, the lyrics that Hewett writes are like poems themselves—anti-establishment and anti-capitalist poems that speak to the band’s audience. Not only is No Names a beautifully written book, but it’s also just a damn good story. The prose is immersive, and each time I sat down to read, I felt pulled into the pages—surrounded by Mike and Pete and the crowd cheering for them. I tore through the chapters, hungry to know more.

While No Names may offer a glimpse into an unfamiliar world (it was certainly one that I hadn’t seen before), at its core, the novel is about coming of age, falling in love, and dealing with grief. The queer elements of this story are omnipresent, looming in the background of every interaction between two of the main characters. They are lovers; they are best friends; they are a strange sort of in-between. No one ever says “gay” or “queer” to describe them, nor do the boys identify as such; they just know they love each other. I think that’s punk as hell.

Some other elements of the plot were to be expected in a story like this—the drugs, the groupies, the touring shenanigans—but none of it felt trite or stereotypical. Mike and Pete are violent men, they are gentle little boys, and they are so incredibly human. The story is expertly crafted, with small pieces of information scattered across timelines and narrations, ultimately building to a twist that is obvious in hindsight but deeply surprising in the moment.

I can’t relate to Mike and Pete’s dedication to The Ramones, The Clash, Dead Boys, and The Dictators. But I can relate to being passionate about music and the way it connects us to each other and the world. I can relate to being a young person desperately trying to sort out feelings around sexuality, grief, and their relationship to home. I may never be truly comfortable in the punk scene, but thanks to Hewett’s captivating characters and well-drawn world, I might not be an outsider anymore either.

Madeline Mundkowsky is an emerging writer, native Texan, and undergraduate student at Hendrix College in Conway, Arkansas. She has been published in The Aonian and won first place in the Trieschmann Playwriting Contest. Madeline loves to write about nature, haunted houses, and family.