The book starts off promisingly enough, but quickly
descends into a tedious tromp through the
uninteresting efforts of a suburban kid to make his
life seem interesting to his peers without really
pissing off his parents.  If I wanted that, I could
talk to any number of ex-girlfriends, if any of them
were still talking to me, which they are not for the
most part.


Bridges with Spirit is billed as 'part journalism,
part fiction' although I can't imagine which parts of
the book Voith bothered to make up.  There are tedious
tales of driving to shows in his freshman year of
college, and then some more tedious tales of driving
to the East Coast from Indiana on a Road Trip.  The
Road Trip included stays in Philly, NYC DC and Boston,
and featured one of the narrator's little friends
running low on cash  (the bank machine said he only
had 1.46 left!)  What would happen?  Would they have
to go home early?  No worries-the friend simply had
some money wired from home.  Punk fucking rock.


The thing is, I don't care that the book is written
from the point of view of somebody who grew up in an
ordinary, comfortable home in the suburbs.  I don't
care that the narrator spent his youth as a
church-group attending, mommy loving faux punk, or
even that he spent his freshman year at college being
a ridiculous punk rock cliché '90s style.  What I do
care about is that the stories are dull, the
pontification worse, and the writing style immature.


And just when I had grown accustomed to the
dreadfully dull stories about punk shows and girls and
college, so that though uninteresting they no longer
pained me (the way you eventually get used to spending
hot summer days without air conditioning, if that is
the only available way to live) he shifts gears and
devises an even more devious way to torture me:  tales
of he and his friends pontificating while playing
chess and thinking about life.  


"We should write a movie about us" they say.  "We
should re-write the rules of chess," they say.  They
have the sorts of conversations that make me leave
rooms or become belligerently insulting to all
concerned in real life-and now I am reading about
them.


You know what, I have been reading this book all
wrong.  I ought to read it in the spirit of charity. 
It isn't actually supposed to be entertaining or
engrossing.  No, it is a satire on the current punk
scene.  Please tell me that is it-it is the work of
some overly subtle modern day Swift, showing us for
once and for all why the punk scene has grown stagnant
and rotten.


Hmm - actually I had had quite a lot to drink before
writing that last paragraph, and I fear my overly
ebullient sentiments once again give way to cold, hard
facts-this book is no satire.  Voith apparently thinks
that it is of interest to some segment of society. 
Doubtless it is - to he and his friends.  This book is
an autopsy of punk rock, a sad chronicle of how far
things have fallen, and why they will never rise
again.  


I leave you with an entire chapter from the book,
entitled 'Magnetic Poetry on a Refrigerator in
Seattle'
		Drive fast like wind

		Are we gone yet

		Did they follow us

		Are we gone

No, my friend, I am afraid you are not gone yet.  And
you and your ilk never will be gone.  Whenever there
is something meaningful and intense, a few years
later, you will always scurry over to play in its
ruins and yell to the world 'HEY LOOK AT ME'.