There've been some lines which he still utters in different interviews from time to time. Who knows why!

But the conversation between Chance and Cristy on virginity and womanhood was phenomenal; it may almost make one forget that the writer of the novel is a male.

Powerful and engaging text, an interesting pattern of writing, and a journey on the highway by a botch-up car to sort out a screwed up relation; overall, a solid reading material to have a devastating fun.

Brief synopsis: The story of Jimmy, a drug using soldier who is still reeling from his father’s death not long before, fiercely in love with Christy, who having discovered she is pregnant with Jimmy’s baby then having him break up with her before she tells him, decides ro flee Albany and return to Houston where her politician father lives whom she hasn’t seen in two years after their estrangement. Jimmy chases.

I first read this not long after it came out, as I had previously read Hawke’s first novel, The Hottest State, and enjoyed it. My recollection over twenty years later was that I did not like Ash Wednesday much, finding the two main characters not only mostly unlikable (annoying I think) but also not interesting. I usually need one or the other from my main characters. I just reread The Hottest State last year (I’d kept that book, but did not keep Ash Wednesday) and decided to pick up a used copy of Ash Wednesday and give it another read wondering if this older more well read version of myself might like it more.

The main charcters Jimmy and Christy were as I had remembered; hard to like. Jimmy is a hyper jackass and I’ve known too many people like him. The friend you are always having to bail out of trouble until you finally break free and move on. But the author does give him an interesting personality buried within. If nothing else I admired the fierceness of how he felt about everything. That said I think the amount of time spent with him in this book is about the limit of tolerance. Christy is that cute, imperfect, introverted, and slighly manic girl many angst ridden Gen Xers young men craved. Till you hooked up with one. Then you found how exhausting they are. But here the author gives her a big heart and we are able to see it appear for moments. And I couldn’t deny this trainwreck of a couple was made for each other. Here they get a wonderful sweet story. In the real world these two are the codependent couples who are constantly breaking up, getting back together, cheating on each other, threatening suicide to manipulate, beating each other up, then willingly going to jail to show how much they love the other person, usually in between bouts of alcohol and drug abuse. Realistically, that is probably the true future for Jimmy and Christy, no matter how smart and hip they are here. Really they felt like extreme versions of the couple from Hawke’s previous novel, The Hottest State. I guess these are the types of characters Hawke finds interesting and inspiring.

Their parents are more interesting as characters. I loved this line by Jimmy’s father who loathed everything about the cookie-cutter neighborhood they lived in: “If the big bad wolf comes, open the door.” Jimmy’s Priest was also a fun character to see. But all these side characters unfortunately come and go quickly.

This is a road trip story which helps conceal the sometimes meandering nature of the plot, the characters at least are literally going somewhere even if the plot is barely doing anything. It is more a story of the things that happened to these people over the course of a week or so. There is maybe some growth and arc for the characters I guess. Its an ok story.

The setting is bleak, most of the story takes place in winter in the rust belt. There are a few pop culture references to events which occured in the recent past in backstory so the best I could come up with was the story was set in the late 90s. I hate this kind of vagueness as I end up focusing too much on trying to figure this out as I am reading and probably miss aspects of the story. It was published in 2002 but no mentions of 9/11 make me think the late 90s timeframe is correct.

Much of the dialogue read like a Richard Linkletter or Whit Stillman film, which I think Hawke loves and is well suited for. Lots of psuedo psychological and philosophical deep ramblings that in high quantities come off as pretentious. And here these scenes can be too long and too frequent, especially with Christy who seems the more intelligent and nuerotic of the couple. It was just excessive.

There are numerous errors so far as the Army references go. Really its probably fare to say most everything to do with the military in the novel is wrong. Jimmy is introduced as a Staff Sergeant, apparently after only two and a half years in the Army. No. Later he considers “resigning” from the Army. No, it doesn’t work like that. Everything mentioned about the dishonrable discharge stuff, from the ramifications to who has the authority to issue them is wrong, it felt like Hawke knew the terms and just used them willy nilly. This is annoying because silly errors like this take me out of the story, they ruin suspension of disbelief. And so many other writers do so much better, you don’t need 100% accuracy but this just terrible, its basic stuff. Just do a little research or ask someone, this book came from a major publishing house. But ignoring all that, I did appreciate the author showed the other side of the military with a character; the real junior enlisted jackassery that exists and is rarely depicted. Not that the Army is filled with Jimmys but there are plenty like him. And really Jimmy being in the military is not in of itself central to the story. It plays a role of course, when you are in the military you have literally given up your freedom, he has to deal with that, his AWOL status is a major issue he has to deal with, etc... But again, this is not a story about a soldier or the Army, its a story about a dude who happens to be a soldier. That is one thing that drew me to the book originally, I appreciate seeing servicemembers depicted as characters in books and film beyond a traditional military story where its the focus of the story.

All in all I probably did like this more upon rereading it all these years later but I don’t know that I would go so far as to call it good. More like ok. Not bad. 2/5, it probably gained a star from what I would have rated it twenty years ago.

Della categoria di quelli che "mi è piaciuto anche se non mi è piaciuto".
Protagonisti francamente insopportabili: non fanno che deprecare lo squallore delle loro vite e al tempo stesso non fanno altro che crigiolarvisi dentro come suidi nel fango. È una contraddizione urticante. Ma suppongo che, se questa contraddizione la si trova così spesso nei romanzi, deve esistere realmente nel mondo reale, per tante persone.
In questo romanzo c'è tutto il lato un po' squallido delle periferie d'America: ma è innegabile che tale squallore possa anche arrivare ad avere un suo fascino. E sì, in questo romanzo ci arriva. È la stessa America raccontata nelle canzoni dei Pearl Jam, quindi non posso non ritrovarmici almeno un po', sebbene poi viva in un contesto e con un metodo completamente diversi. Ed anche la psicologia dei due, certe loro trovate e riflessioni, non sono per nulla scontate.
Ad un certo punto il racconto inizia a mostrare un aspetto inedito di tutta quanta la faccenda, si rivela un romanzo molto religioso, quasi mistico. La cosa non è molto nelle mie corde, a tratti ho perso un poco l'attenzione ma poi ci sono arrivata in fondo volentieri. Del resto, per intuire che potessero esserci riferimenti religiosi nel racconto, bastava fare caso al titolo. Sono io che sono tarda. C'è una fede fatta più che altro di illuminazioni improvvise ed estemporanee, pentimenti e ripensamenti.
Aspetto non di poco conto: è scritto bene. Dopo di che, poco importa sapere se veramente è stato scritto da un attore famoso o da un ghost-writer.

n  The Low -- n

Competing First Person Narration: first person is tricky at the best of times, but going for multiple perspectives ramps up the level of trickiness for even the best authors.  William Faulkner pulled it off in As I lay Dying, but Ethan Hawke is no Faulkner. The specific issue here is that Jimmy and Christy often speak with the same cadence and vocabulary. Maaaayyyyybbbeee some of that can be written off as a result of their relationship, but it doesn't really feel like that, and the result is a fairly regular breaking of the spell Hawke is actually (and almost successfully) weaving.

The Hollywood Ending: I will talk about "truth" in Ash Wednesday again later on, but one of the "truths" that Hawke was heading towards, and an expectation he sets up, falls off the cliff of his day job. Remember when Hawke stood up on a desk and squeaked out "O Captain! My Captain!" to Robin Williams? Well the ending is a little bit like that, and it derails the "true" ending he'd been heading towards. It's a shame because he really missed an opportunity to shine, and what he settled on doesn't have the emotional impact of Dead Poets Society, although who knows, maybe onscreen it would actually work (any plans to shoot this, Mr. Hawke?).

n  The High -- n

Jimmy and Religion: Jimmy, Hawke's male lead, is a Catholic. Not terribly devout, but trying hard to return to the fold, and his desire to enrich himself through religion plays a massive role in his relationship with Christy, who eventually reveals her agnosticism. It is, of course, where Ash Wednesday gets its title, and everything from Jimmy's sketchy remembrance of the rites of his own religion to the messiness his devotion creates with Christy is well handled. Plus, there is an old Massachusetts-Irish priest who I loved, and I wish Hawke would write a short story or two about him. Religion is the strongest thread in Hawke's messy tapestry.

n  The Middling -- n

Emulating Hemingway: as Dr. Jane Drover once told me, "You men will never escape the shadow of Ernest," and that is certainly true of Mr. Hawke. More than once I felt him stretching for that Hemingway "truth," and he approaches it occasionally, but he lacks the discipline of Papa, and he always falls just short. But just short of Hemingway is better than most, so there is something valuable in Hawke's failures. Perhaps if Hawke had better control of his adjectives, like Hemingway did, or had done more with the father-son thread, he'd have snuck a touch closer to the truths he sought, but even so, being overshadowed by Ernest isn't the worst thing here.

This book is one of only two books I have read twice since I started logging my reads in 2003. I rate it as one of my favs. It's about fatherhood. A somewhat reckless young man has to navigate the changes in his life that come with becoming a dad. I read this shortly after I was married and had my first kid so the timing was appropriate. I found the Jackie Robinson reference extremely profound (you'll have to read the book to see it). If you're a dad and husband, you'll understand.

How can characters who are so multi-layered and so well-developed somehow be problematic?

The problem is that the two characters at the center of this book -- the fledgling couple Jimmy and Christy -- are flaky (or eccentric if you prefer a term with a positive connotation). The problem is that eccentric people are always interesting -- but for arbitrary reasons. They are quitting jobs, doing drugs, getting married, quitting drugs, finding God, cleaning up their bad habits, starting up new bad habits, all for reasons that are hard to relate to. They are anti-heroes in their flakiness (Achilles, the Greek hero of the “Iliad,” is the classic example of flakiness -- refusing to fight a war out of stubborn pride).

Both characters are likable in their own ways, but this likeability is overwhelmed by their unlikeable flakiness. In so many ways these are people you know -- people who seem very talented but can’t get out of their own way and inexplicability do dumb things. I’ve worked in education, so I meet these people all the time. It’s too frustrating and normal to be tragic. It’s mostly just frustrating.

Flaky characters present a particularly difficult problem for fiction. Fictional characters are often expected to go through some kind of meaningful change. But though eccentric characters change all the time, can their changes be described as meaningful?

It’s also the reason artists’ lives are rarely interesting, at least beyond short anecdotes. Hang out with someone like Andy Warhol for a night and it’s a story. Hang out with him for a year and it’s an ordeal.

Now that I have that (major) gripe out of the way, there is another secret to this book. Every reviewer is bound to underrate it because it’s written by Ethan Hawke. It’s easy to dismiss this book as the amateurish work of a vain actor, with a main character that mirrors many of his slacker roles (these reviews are in no short supply on Goodreads). But once you get beyond the Hawke name, the big secret of this book is that it is very finely crafted. The story is disciplined, every chapter works as a short story, polished and refined. The characters are well thought out. If anything, the story seems too deliberate and perhaps a tad overwritten. These faults, however, are the signs of an author who is trying to overcompensate for the missteps of a previous work (I haven’t read Hawke’s first book so this is just my guess.

What does this amount to then? A great book and a great second step in the maturity of a writer.

So where is the third book? Did Hawke give up after this one? Did he write a third book but never publish it? Or did he realize the overwhelming disadvantage of publishing under the Hawke name? Perhaps there is a third Hawke book out there hidden under pseudonym.

Is that all I have to say about this book? Well, not quite. I will be blasphemous. I will use Hawke and Hemingway in the same review. And why not? In some parts of this book, the characters disgusted me. This seems like a sin -- and then I remembered that Hemingway could disgust me. “The Sun Also Rises” had absolutely disgusting characters doing disgusting things, and I still think of it as a classic “youth and its discontents” novel. Can a good novel make you feel dread? Yes! Ash Wednesday at one point evoked a terrible sense of dread -- a sense that things couldn’t work out for the characters. This was the same feeling I had reading “To Have and Have Not,” a book I finished in two nights.

There is a manic energy that drives this book. “It’s amazing anyone lives to thirty” the young male protagonist says at one point. I used to feel exactly the same way. The characters, these two young characters who evoke dread and disgust, are people I know. They are EXACTLY like people I know. That makes the book necessary, horrible to read, and invigorating.

Is it possible to give a flawed book five stars? Sure it is. When you’re young and starting out as a novelist, you can only write imperfect novels. But this is a very, very good one.

mercoledì delle banalità e dei fessi che non crescono mai


Jimmy è un coglione della specie peggiore: quello che cerca la mamma

Christy Ann è la mamma, nel senso che cerca un coglione da adottare

la frittata è fatta e lei è incinta di un fesso che più che marito vorrebbe essergli figlio

la storia va avanti e indietro per un po', quindi non va da nessuna parte e il lettore, che presumibilmente ha superato i 15 anni, si annoia e gli viene voglia di prenderli a sberle, tutti e due...

poi gli viene in mente di rivendersi il libro...e dimenticare questi due fessi che non fanno nulla di cui valga la pena parlare...

Partly from the perspective of James Heartstock and partly from the perspective of his young wife Christy, this novel is a volatile road trip with each lover wondering who they are and how they got there. Hawke writes with comfortable phrasing and has great lines sure to stir the thoughts of readers, even those who don't want to like this just because the boy can act.

"It's all right to cry son, it doesn't mean anything important; it's just natural." Again for a moment, he was quiet. "People think when they cry that something monumental is happening. But it isn't. Emotion doesn't mean much of anything."

Still pretty good.

ETA 13/12/2021 - A slow burner in the heart and the memory. I SO MUCH underrated this dark and vicious charmer on first perusal. SO FRIGGIN' MUCH.

27/03/2023 - yet another re-read. the melancholy is just brutal. Glorious genius and compassion for the human condition.

This is a funny one.... with all the detailed description of the almost neurotic thought process of the protagonists and the plot building slowly up one does expect a major catastrophe to happen. I confess I kept on reading as I wanted to see what kind of catastrophe it will turn out to be. Just to learn at the very end: none.

I got this for 50 cents at an Opportunity Shop. Boy meets girl, some trials and tribulations ensue, will there be a happy ending? Not terrible. Worth the 50 cents for sure. Better than a lot of stuff out there.

Well, Ethan Hawke is someone I admire too much. I may be biased in seeing his work from this perspective, by the way. However, can anyone point me flaws in this novel which are otherwise absent when a so-called 'novelist' writes such a work? Ash Wednesday reminds us of the novels that we used to read during our university years, the novels by writers in the early 60s and 70s... dark and negative but still wonderful to the core.