No One Left to Come Looking for You
by Sam Lipsyte
2022
No One Left to Come Looking for You is a mystery set in the underground music scene in Brooklyn in the winter at the very start of the Clinton administration, in the last week of January 1993.
Our narrator is Jack Shit, bassist for the struggling noise rock band the Shits, as he goes in search of his missing roommate, the Shits' lead singer the Banished Earl, and his missing bass. Jack's stint as an amateur detective starts when he gets a call from the pawn shop that the Earl was just there trying to trade Jack's bass for cash to buy heroin to feed his 'bag fever.' Jack's on the clock, because the Shits have a big show in a week. What seems like a simple task quickly becomes complicated when the Earl isn't at any of the band's usual haunts, the person most likely to've seen him is found dead, the police get involved, and Jack gets entangled with a punk femme fatale. It's like if the cast of Scott Pilgrim got trapped in the plot of Inherent Vice.
The mystery here isn't particularly complicated and would probably annoy whodunnit fans. For all the Jack spends his time retracing his friend's steps, going over his memories of their time together as bandmates and roommates, and even prying into some of the Earl's private business, what's really going on has almost nothing to do with the singer himself. He's just collateral damage in a feud between his father, who owns a small construction company in the Bronx, and a certain real-life real estate figure who's infamous for not paying his contractors. There's nothing else really to figure out, especially since the audience already knows what Jack refuses to accept, which is that no one with the power to hold this particular man accountable has ever been willing to do so.
The inclusion of Donald Trump was my least favorite part of No One Left. I am so, so fucking tired of this guy. And I know that New Yorkers have hated him since the 80s, so his inclusion isn't exactly anachronistic ... but still, I don't think if Lipsyte had really written this in the 90s that Trump would've appeared in it by name. All the bands in the book are made up. The only other real people are Thurston Moore, who gets name-checked because Sonic Youth is the most successful band making the kind of music the Shits aspire to, and Andy Warhol, who appears in Jack's mom's oft-retold anecdote about the time she almost got to have sex with a celebrity, if not for her meddling husband. If this book weren't written in 2022, I doubt Trump would've made the cut.
What I did like was Jack Shit's narrative voice. He's a guy who is deeply, almost religiously immersed in and committed to the Brooklyn music scene. He knows all the people, he can describe all their bands, both how they sound and their relative status within the scene, he uses all the slang. Jack desperately wants to be cool, and of course, precisely because he's such a try-hard, he isn't, and can't be. The Banished Earl, a sort-of GG Allin figure, who founded the Shits, who chose his war name based on a book he found while dumpster diving, who's the only working class boy in a band full of college kids, IS cool, with an effortless authenticity than Jack can only dream of. He's also on a trajectory to be dead by 27, unless the current misadventure ends him sooner.
That ironic perspective, that gap between who Jack wishes he could be and who the reader clearly sees that he actually is, is what makes him such an appealing narrator. Jack's other friends soemtimes slip up and still call him Jonathan Litpak. His band isn't popular; even within the scene it's somewhere between obscure and unwanted. Lead guitarist Cutwolf barely seems to care about his friend's disappearance; drummer Hera has already joined another, better-liked group. The big concert Jack's so worried about is the Shits opening for two other, bigger acts. The cops find him annoying. Multiple characters repeatedly lecture Jack for being a tourist, a gentrifier, a wannabe.
But Jack has a determination borne of commitment, of being a true believer in Art generally and his own art in particular, and his never-say-die optimism had me routing for him to find his friend and his axe and to get to his concert in time, even if it'll probably be the Shits' last-ever show.
Reading about Jack trudging through the snow, ducking into cheap bars and diners, running into people he vaguely knows, trying to project the persona of who he wants to be, reminded me of winters when I was in college, when I walked and bused all over and my favorite places had all-night hours and dollar specials. It reminded me of grad school, when the overlap between the trans community and anarchist community meant that I, a total square, got to hang out with people who turned their rental houses into communes and never used their government names, and when I got really into a couple local bands and went to all their shows. But my nostalgia isn't really a reason for you to read this. I kind of think you'd be better off with Pynchon. But if you like 90s alt rock, dramatic irony, and Nick Carraway narrators, you might still give it a try
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