Teenager

My new novel drops from Vintage May 10th

First thing’s first, there’s going to be a release party for Teenager on May 8th at the Freehand Hotel, at 23 Lexington Ave. in NYC, in the Georgia Room. 7pm and on and on. I love books, I love writing them, but I love a good party even more. I hope you’ll come to this one. They're gonna have copies of the novel, laying around, just to take, zero bucks, in thanks, to you. I mean that. Tell a friend. Lots of incredible readers, 3 DJ sets, hosted by Forever Magazine and Christian Lorentzen.

It’s Saturday here, and raining here, and I’ve got the week coming up off from work. I woke up this morning to news that an interview I did with Scott Simon for NPR’s Weekend Edition went up. Scott is really cool. It was an honor to talk with him about Teenager and other life things. Check that out here

Maybe you’re wondering what these drawings are. Well, they are illustrations in the novel, they appear a lot of the times at the beginning of a chapter, like how Charles Dickens had those big giant dropped letter illustrations, well, in this novel, you get sketches of demented animals, melting people, roses, implements of destruction, and valentine’s hearts, all thanks to my partner in crime in real life and in this project, Rae Buleri. 70 drawings throughout the novel. Like this one:

It’s getting real close to the release of Teenager. I’ve lived so closely with the novel that I kind of can barely get a bird’s eye view of it anymore. Luckily the other day, this little blurb came in and I thought, ah, that’s a nice succinct way of saying it.

“Drawing on such symbols of Americana as Elvis Presley, Bonnie and Clyde, and Jack Kerouac’s road tripping, Teenager is the sort of offbeat love story that proves Bud Smith can sit comfortably beside Denis Johnson as a poet laureate of rundown carnivals and dimly lit bars.” —Chicago Review of Books

The great Todd Portnowitz, who edited the novel, wrote this up for the back cover:

‘Two teenagers, in love and insane, journey across the United States in this Bonnie and Clyde–like adventure, pursuing a warped American dream, where Elvis is still king and the corn dog is the “backbone of this great country.”
 
“There is a typo on page 14. Other than that, this book is perfect.” —Bill Callahan

“He told her he was a one-woman man and she was it for him. Teal said that was good because he was it for her. It and It. Both of them were It.”
 
Kody Rawlee Green is stuck in juvie. Tella “Teal Cartwheels” Carticelli is packing her bags for Rome–on the orders of her parents, who want her as far from Kody as possible. But teenage love is too strong a force for the obstacles of reality. And the highway beckons.
 
Leaving their abusive pasts behind them in Jersey, Kody and Teal set off on a cross-country road trip equal parts self-destruction and self-discovery, making their way, one stolen car at a time, toward bigger, wider, bluer skies. Along the road, of course, there’s time to stop at Graceland, classic diners, a fairgrounds that smells of “pony shit and kettle corn,” and time for run-ins with outsize personalities like the reincarnated Grand Canyon tour guide Dead Bob and the spurious Montana rancher Bill Gold. On their heels, all the while, is Teal’s brother, Neil Carticelli, who’s abandoned his post in the navy to rescue the sister he left behind. But does she really need saving?
 
These all too American tropes find new expression in Bud Smith’s own freewheeling prose—and in Rae Buleri’s original illustrations—filling Teenager with humor, poetry, and a joy that’s palpable in every unforgettable sentence.’

You can get a copy of Teenager at just about any book store, or (I hope) your public library. It’ll be out on audiobook too. If I know you and you have my phone number, you can call me up and I’ll just read you some of it some night if you can’t fall asleep, or something.

“Read it on a plane, read it on the beach, and throw it into the ocean, and then buy another one. Read it to know where the American Dream has gone. This book is our new myth . . . Teenager is one of the few great books about teenagers because it is funny without condescension, sad without sentimentality, and has no moral at the end. It made me feel alive without lying to me . . . The whole thing rolls out like a beautiful song . . . Almost every chapter has a line illustration by Rae Buleri that would make an excellent tattoo. There are sixty-four and a half chapters. You could get a tattoo of a goldfish in a glass, a Garfield clock, a bunch of bananas, a milkshake, a coyote stalking a hen, and more. That’s a lot of tattoos!.” —Conor Hultman, The Local Voice (Mississippi)

“A whirlwind journey through a mythic America . . . Smith has mixed violence with fable to create this modern-day tall tale about two teens who love each other and say to hell with everything else. Each small chapter is akin to a section from The Odyssey or Don Quixote, snapshots that could stand alone but merge together to create a greater story . . . A new American folktale with teeth.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Evokes the surreal contrasts of the American landscape in smart, jittery prose. Smith makes this a trip worth taking.” —Publishers Weekly

Here is Tyler Comrie’s cover:

All right, well I have babbled on long enough. It’s almost time to share Teenager with the world. Thanks so much for reading. Rae says thanks too. It was so much fun to make this book together, as I was retyping in one room, she was painting and drawing and carving out blocks for printing in the other. Somehow it all came together as an arts and crafts project made here in our apartment during the worst days of the initial wave of the pandemic.

Much love to you,
Bud Smith