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Last Call in the City of Bridges
It’s the eve of the Obama election. Change is in the air and hope is running high. And for twenty-five-year-old, self-proclaimed cool man Michael Bishop, so is the alcohol and the bluster. Working a dead-end job proofing subtitles on third-rate videos, Michael has kept his future at bay through a stream of boozy nights or by blowing time in front of his Nintendo. That is, until he meets Ivy Chase, the smart, pretty pastor’s daughter whose innocent charm takes his breath away. But Ivy turns out to be much more than Michael bargained for, and in a moment that surprises even him, he makes the decision of his life.
Smart, funny, poignant, and very, very timely, Last Call in the City of Bridges is a Bright Lights, Big City for the new millennium. With its memorable characters and unforgettable scenes, this insightful look into twenty-first-century America is a book you won’t want to put down.
“Like the comic book heroes he obsesses over, Michael Bishop has an origin story, the story of the first wound that makes his powers necessary. In Last Call in the City of Bridges, Michael at last faces into that tragedy, resurfacing suddenly at the mid-point of his twenties, those years of snark and expectation spent proofreading DVD subtitles, drinking literature-themed cocktails, and pining over preacher’s daughters and college crushes. In this witty and charming debut, Salvatore Pane reminds us that while you can’t retcon your past, you can perhaps learn to live up to its responsibilities, by using your powers not necessarily to save the ones you love from loss, but to care for those left behind in its wake.”
–Matt Bell, author of Cataclysm Baby
“Quite obviously, Salvatore Pane’s mind has been dunked in video games, social media, comic books, the WebNet, and everything else our august literary authorities believe promote illiteracy. I’d like to hand the authorities Pane’s novel–a funny, moving, melancholy, sad, and immensely literate book about what being young and confused feels like these days–and tell them, ‘See? Things are going to be fine!’”
-Tom Bissell, author of Extra Lives and Magic Hours
“Last Call in the City of Bridges is Goodbye, Columbus 2.0, a poignant novel about looking for something real in a plastic world where Irony is Everything. This generational anthem is ultimately, despite all the 21st century detritus, an old-fashioned page turner, full of old verities and truths of the heart. Salvatore Pane’s voice is both new and necessary, one I know I’ll be reading for years to come.”
–Cathy Day, author of The Circus in Winter and Comeback Season
“Salvatore Pane is the acknowledged Hipster Prince of Pittsburgh, PA, which is the acknowledged Paris of Middle America. If his publishers had taken my advice they would have titled his groundbreaking first novel: A Hipster’s Guide to the Galaxy, the Book of Laughter and Longing. His very humorous novel is voice and character driven, a virtual page turner. Yet for all its humor, the novel has an underpinning of real humanity. I was laughing out loud while at the same time gritting my teeth in shared, profoundly recalled embarrassment.”
-Chuck Kinder, author of Honeymooners and Last Mountain Dancer
“Like his post po-mo Facebook generation, Michael Bishop, the manic narrator of Last Call in the City of Bridges, has reached the end of his irresponsible youth. Stuck and unsure, he looks back at those eight-bit Nintendo years with tender nostalgia while trying to feel his way forward. Like The Moviegoer, Salvatore Pane’s debut novel is a romantic ironist’s plea for authenticity in a fantastic age. It’s telling–and hilarious–that his hero’s model for male adulthood isn’t William Holden but Super Mario.”
–Stewart O’Nan, author of The Odds: A Love Story and Snow Angels
Smart, funny, poignant, and very, very timely, Last Call in the City of Bridges is a Bright Lights, Big City for the new millennium. With its memorable characters and unforgettable scenes, this insightful look into twenty-first-century America is a book you won’t want to put down.
“Like the comic book heroes he obsesses over, Michael Bishop has an origin story, the story of the first wound that makes his powers necessary. In Last Call in the City of Bridges, Michael at last faces into that tragedy, resurfacing suddenly at the mid-point of his twenties, those years of snark and expectation spent proofreading DVD subtitles, drinking literature-themed cocktails, and pining over preacher’s daughters and college crushes. In this witty and charming debut, Salvatore Pane reminds us that while you can’t retcon your past, you can perhaps learn to live up to its responsibilities, by using your powers not necessarily to save the ones you love from loss, but to care for those left behind in its wake.”
–Matt Bell, author of Cataclysm Baby
“Quite obviously, Salvatore Pane’s mind has been dunked in video games, social media, comic books, the WebNet, and everything else our august literary authorities believe promote illiteracy. I’d like to hand the authorities Pane’s novel–a funny, moving, melancholy, sad, and immensely literate book about what being young and confused feels like these days–and tell them, ‘See? Things are going to be fine!’”
-Tom Bissell, author of Extra Lives and Magic Hours
“Last Call in the City of Bridges is Goodbye, Columbus 2.0, a poignant novel about looking for something real in a plastic world where Irony is Everything. This generational anthem is ultimately, despite all the 21st century detritus, an old-fashioned page turner, full of old verities and truths of the heart. Salvatore Pane’s voice is both new and necessary, one I know I’ll be reading for years to come.”
–Cathy Day, author of The Circus in Winter and Comeback Season
“Salvatore Pane is the acknowledged Hipster Prince of Pittsburgh, PA, which is the acknowledged Paris of Middle America. If his publishers had taken my advice they would have titled his groundbreaking first novel: A Hipster’s Guide to the Galaxy, the Book of Laughter and Longing. His very humorous novel is voice and character driven, a virtual page turner. Yet for all its humor, the novel has an underpinning of real humanity. I was laughing out loud while at the same time gritting my teeth in shared, profoundly recalled embarrassment.”
-Chuck Kinder, author of Honeymooners and Last Mountain Dancer
“Like his post po-mo Facebook generation, Michael Bishop, the manic narrator of Last Call in the City of Bridges, has reached the end of his irresponsible youth. Stuck and unsure, he looks back at those eight-bit Nintendo years with tender nostalgia while trying to feel his way forward. Like The Moviegoer, Salvatore Pane’s debut novel is a romantic ironist’s plea for authenticity in a fantastic age. It’s telling–and hilarious–that his hero’s model for male adulthood isn’t William Holden but Super Mario.”
–Stewart O’Nan, author of The Odds: A Love Story and Snow Angels
224 pages, Paperback
First published November 6, 2012
1 person is currently reading
475 people want to read
About the author
Salvatore Pane
18 books47 followersSalvatore Pane was born and raised in Scranton, Pennsylvania. He is the author of two novels, Last Call in the City of Bridges and The Theory of Almost Everything, in addition to a nonfiction book about video games, Mega Man 3, published by Boss Fight Books. He is currently co-writing a textbook about writing video games for Bloomsbury with Julialicia Case and Eric Freeze. He was awarded the 2022 Autumn House Fiction Prize, and his winning short story collection, The Neorealist in Winter: Stories, is forthcoming in October 2023.
He is the writer/narrative designer of RetroMania Wrestling on Steam, PlayStation, Nintendo Switch, and Xbox and has written and designed many other video games. He served as a Freelance Localization Editor for NIS America on Trails to Azure and is currently an Associate Professor at the University of St. Thomas where he teaches creative writing, video games, and Italian film. He lives with his wife and Martin Scorsese the Cat in St. Paul and can be reached via Twitter.
His short fiction has been nominated or shortlisted for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Web, Best of the Net, and Wigleaf’s Top 50 [Very] Short Fictions. He won the Turow-Kinder Award in Fiction judged by Stewart O’ Nan, and his work has appeared in Prairie Schooner, Indiana Review, Story Magazine, American Short Fiction, Paste, Kotaku, BOMB, The Rumpus, The American Book Review, and many other venues. He is the co-creator of the graphic novel, The Black List, and co-hosts The Jabsteps, a podcast about the NBA. His video games have been exhibited at WordPlay and BAR SK, and he has presented his work in Italy, Iceland, and elsewhere internationally.
Visit his LinkedIn or get in touch at salpane@gmail.com. His work is represented by Andrianna deLone at CAA.
He is the writer/narrative designer of RetroMania Wrestling on Steam, PlayStation, Nintendo Switch, and Xbox and has written and designed many other video games. He served as a Freelance Localization Editor for NIS America on Trails to Azure and is currently an Associate Professor at the University of St. Thomas where he teaches creative writing, video games, and Italian film. He lives with his wife and Martin Scorsese the Cat in St. Paul and can be reached via Twitter.
His short fiction has been nominated or shortlisted for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Web, Best of the Net, and Wigleaf’s Top 50 [Very] Short Fictions. He won the Turow-Kinder Award in Fiction judged by Stewart O’ Nan, and his work has appeared in Prairie Schooner, Indiana Review, Story Magazine, American Short Fiction, Paste, Kotaku, BOMB, The Rumpus, The American Book Review, and many other venues. He is the co-creator of the graphic novel, The Black List, and co-hosts The Jabsteps, a podcast about the NBA. His video games have been exhibited at WordPlay and BAR SK, and he has presented his work in Italy, Iceland, and elsewhere internationally.
Visit his LinkedIn or get in touch at salpane@gmail.com. His work is represented by Andrianna deLone at CAA.
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Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
December 5, 2012
Ugh, this book is really funny and sad and satisfying and good. It will make you want to pull out all your hair. Sal Pane's future is so bright, you'll want to wear shades and also throw up from jealousy.
November 29, 2015
Terrific generation Y coming-of-age story, engaging all the malaise, irony, and self-reflection (self absorbtion?) of twenty-somethings. In prose that is engaging and quick, a voice that is self deprecating but self aware, and with characters who are both likable and loathable at the same time, Salvatore Pane has written a terrific first novel.
January 1, 2016
Okay, this book is something else. It came to me when I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life, and I devoured the book in one sitting. I loved everything about the book. The writing is elegant, but has a voice that is simple enough that anyone can relate. This book really spoke to me. I really enjoyed this.
July 25, 2013
When I first heard this novel might be about subtitling movies, I'd hoped someone was finally telling the story of long-suffering 20th Century close-captioners. But the main character gets fired pretty fast, so that was basically my only disappointment regarding the book. It may anger the author to hear a Tao Lin comparison, but the banter here reminded me a bit of Shoplifting From American Apparel. However, here Pane deftly avoids the usual problem of depicting digital obsession and dead-eyed G-chats with its requisite apathy. In fact, this book is full of genuine feelings and satisfying motivations, sometimes quite alien to the cynic inside this reader. Even more surprising, one particular late-night G-chat in this book was quite haunting and packed its emotional punch because it was lost in that digital ether. The relatively small-stage of a love triangle here is also blown open with magical realism interludes, media asides, superhuman Kanye West sightings, experiments in 2nd-person, even a comic strip interpretation of a key moment is included as a bonus, making the book feel bigger than it looks. Oh, and tons of Pittsburgh blarney, too, for the locals. Also, the main dilemma of the guilt-wracked narrator is solved in a unique and heartfelt manner. As a Generation X'er, I'm too old to completely understand all the crazy DuckTales talk, but I was with the narrative all the way, even rooting for the little narcissist. Great debut.
March 30, 2014
This is a terrific debut novel by a talented writer. Pane breathes life into his characters and I cared deeply abouti each of them, especially Michael Bishop, the tormented narrator. For me one characteristic of a worthwhile book is when I begin to imagine the lives of its characters going forward as I am reading the last lines of prose.
Where will Michael be in five years? What will be the nature of his friendships? Will Ivy be happy or feel that she has settled for something less? What about Sloan? I would like to think that Sloan and Michael remain friends and maybe more. Maybe they meet again in a few years. And then there is Oz. His tale could become another novel in itself. Think about that one, Sal (if you haven't already). What will become of Oz?
Last Call also gave me insights into the millennial generation. As a 54-year old boomer with a 21 year old son, I found these insights helpful in understanding the millennial perspective, replete with its own angst, almost a digital existentialism, but rooted in long standing truths of the human condition. We all want real and enduring and intimate connections with others. And we have to be willing to work at them, but also be able to confront, know and value ourselves, despite our fears and weaknesses, as we come to know and value those about whom we care. This is a coming of age story and Michael Bishop has an interesting future.
Thank you, Sal, for a beautifully written debut novel. I look forward to reading more!
Where will Michael be in five years? What will be the nature of his friendships? Will Ivy be happy or feel that she has settled for something less? What about Sloan? I would like to think that Sloan and Michael remain friends and maybe more. Maybe they meet again in a few years. And then there is Oz. His tale could become another novel in itself. Think about that one, Sal (if you haven't already). What will become of Oz?
Last Call also gave me insights into the millennial generation. As a 54-year old boomer with a 21 year old son, I found these insights helpful in understanding the millennial perspective, replete with its own angst, almost a digital existentialism, but rooted in long standing truths of the human condition. We all want real and enduring and intimate connections with others. And we have to be willing to work at them, but also be able to confront, know and value ourselves, despite our fears and weaknesses, as we come to know and value those about whom we care. This is a coming of age story and Michael Bishop has an interesting future.
Thank you, Sal, for a beautifully written debut novel. I look forward to reading more!
December 29, 2012
I liked this book a lot. It felt much longer than it actually was, just 216 pages. It took me no time at all to read, would have gone even faster if life hadn't intruded, but I felt more of a connection to these characters than I did to either of the other two books I read last week by powerhouse authors (John Gardner & Phillip Pullman). I think a lot of that has to do with how Sal set out to write a story, and to make it a good story, instead of to see how far he could push the story form.
This is Pane's first book, and you can sometimes tell. The writing falters occasionally, but there was so much worthwhile in here, so many different concerns interwoven neatly with an excellent, consequence driven story.
Two things I was really impressed with:
1. The honest way the author dealt with religion. The main character's relationship to religion was real. He understood believing and he also understood how that faith could be lost. It wasn't the focus of the story, but it also was dealt with.
2. The framing of the story on Obama's election night. The way Pane set us up to believe that everything would NOT work out, but how we still wanted to believe it would. It created a building momentum. And I liked how Pane wrapped it up, showed how nothing can change and yet things can also change immensely.
I'm looking forward to a re-read!
This is Pane's first book, and you can sometimes tell. The writing falters occasionally, but there was so much worthwhile in here, so many different concerns interwoven neatly with an excellent, consequence driven story.
Two things I was really impressed with:
1. The honest way the author dealt with religion. The main character's relationship to religion was real. He understood believing and he also understood how that faith could be lost. It wasn't the focus of the story, but it also was dealt with.
2. The framing of the story on Obama's election night. The way Pane set us up to believe that everything would NOT work out, but how we still wanted to believe it would. It created a building momentum. And I liked how Pane wrapped it up, showed how nothing can change and yet things can also change immensely.
I'm looking forward to a re-read!
November 8, 2015
I'm too old to be much of a fan of coming-of-age novels. Blah, blah, heard it all before. You kids didn't invent sex, angst, irony, having a hard time starting a career, rejecting your parents' religion, or any of the other things you think are excruciatingly unique to your generation. And by the way, get offa my lawn. I bought this book mostly because it's by a local author, published by a local publisher and takes place in my beloved home town.
But I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it. Like all topics in fiction, coming of age HAS been done a thousand times before, so the secret to a good coming-of-age novel is authentic characters, a well-done setting in time and place, and an interesting story. This novel offered all three. Michael Bishop has something traumatic in his background, that he can't stop reliving, and he deals with it badly - as confused young people tend to do. Meanwhile, he has the challenges that all twenty-somethings have: finding the right woman, getting a foothold in the world of work. He and his friends felt real and sympathetic to me. I saw similarities between them and my own children and their friends. And the Pittsburgh setting was very well-done.
Like my reviews?
Check out my blog at http://www.kathrynbashaar.com/blog/
But I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it. Like all topics in fiction, coming of age HAS been done a thousand times before, so the secret to a good coming-of-age novel is authentic characters, a well-done setting in time and place, and an interesting story. This novel offered all three. Michael Bishop has something traumatic in his background, that he can't stop reliving, and he deals with it badly - as confused young people tend to do. Meanwhile, he has the challenges that all twenty-somethings have: finding the right woman, getting a foothold in the world of work. He and his friends felt real and sympathetic to me. I saw similarities between them and my own children and their friends. And the Pittsburgh setting was very well-done.
Like my reviews?
Check out my blog at http://www.kathrynbashaar.com/blog/
November 21, 2016
As a Millennial Pittsburgher and Pitt English graduate, I was pretty much destined to come across this book and love it. Unsurprisingly, I did, and I did. But after I got over the novelty of the familiar and faithfully depicted setting (which includes my favorite breakfast spot and third-favorite bar in Pittsburgh), I found that there was so much more to enjoy.
This novel is the first I've read that captures the sea of digital media each of us is swimming in today and wrangles it into a compelling storytelling tool. Technology and social media become as much a setting as Pittsburgh itself. Sal Pane also weaves technology into America's hyper-political culture of the last decade-plus and takes a surprisingly accurate stab at the origins of Generation Y's endemic levels of irony. (The Mr. Rogers article was genius.) By the last page, I feel like Michael Bishop has been convincingly exorcised of the uglier qualities of his and my generation after years as an exemplar of them.
It's a truly unique take on coming-of-age stories, and a great novel in its own right. Absolutely worth a read.
This novel is the first I've read that captures the sea of digital media each of us is swimming in today and wrangles it into a compelling storytelling tool. Technology and social media become as much a setting as Pittsburgh itself. Sal Pane also weaves technology into America's hyper-political culture of the last decade-plus and takes a surprisingly accurate stab at the origins of Generation Y's endemic levels of irony. (The Mr. Rogers article was genius.) By the last page, I feel like Michael Bishop has been convincingly exorcised of the uglier qualities of his and my generation after years as an exemplar of them.
It's a truly unique take on coming-of-age stories, and a great novel in its own right. Absolutely worth a read.
March 28, 2016
Articulates without beating you over the head how digital culture is radically changing how we interact with other people and how we cope with loss, fear, and other big capital-E Emotions. Michael Bishop is the kind of guy you want to take by the shoulders and shake him so hard in an attempt to knock some sense into him. But you also want to move your arms around his shoulders, give him a hug, and tell him everything's going to be OK. And then give him a slap upside the head. He is a jerk, but by novel's end he's actually trying: trying to deal with his past, trying to look into the future, trying to pull his life together. The book's ultimately hopeful ending doesn't erase the frustration and terror felt when reading about the lives of the characters (maybe I'm exaggerating), which works. The good and bad live alongside one another, each making the other more keenly felt.
July 14, 2013
The wordplay and dialogue is alive and dynamic.
More - http://bentanzer.blogspot.com/2013/07...
More - http://bentanzer.blogspot.com/2013/07...
December 1, 2012
[This review originally appeared at http://htmlgiant.com/reviews/last-cal...]
Remember the slog of the 2004 presidential campaign – the long months of desperate hope that we'd send Bush back to Texas and finally turn the corner? At the same time, of course, that hope was tempered by the reality of John Kerry – his awkwardness, his lack of passion, his John Kerryness. But still, it felt great to believe, even just a little: to believe that the election was about something bigger, something more important than just changing the White House china. For those of us who grew up in the 80s and 90s, it seemed like our generations (I hate the hair-splitting of Generation X, Generation Y, Millennials, Internet Generation, etc.) were dropped into a cultural void, searching for meaning in a century filled with greatness. Salvatore Pane’s debut novel, Last Call in the City of Bridges, is steeped in this feeling, in this desperate quest for generational identity. The book asks the same questions we've been asking ourselves for a decade or more: why is my generation here? What is here for us? How can we matter – and if we can't, how can we at least get through this world alive?
The novel is bookended by the 2004 and 2008 elections. The false excitement and squashed hopes of Kerry. The thrill of watching our country leap forward, if only briefly, to elect Obama. More than any book I’ve read in years, this novel is grounded in a firm sense of its own place in history. In it, Pane writes of the importance of small events among uncertain times, of the longing for a larger myth – for something more to believe in:
"We mailed in our absentee ballots a month earlier, and now it was nearly upon us, November 2nd, the day we dreaded, the day we dreamed about…. We attended the rallies, those nervous gatherings of students in sandals and vintage t-shirts, boys with patchy goatees and girls with hair down to their waists. We chanted his name, all the while glancing nervously from side to side, hoping this was all some elaborate joke, as if this monotone robot named Kerry was just a pretender, as if we were still waiting for a superhero of yore to swoop down and save us."
This is a book about hopes and dreams, about waiting for a future that never comes, about the withering of traditional institutions like family and church, about instead turning to video games and superheroes for a moral compass. And so Pane has written not a book about pop culture, but rather a book about how pop culture has come to be our measure of human progress, and what that might mean – good and bad – for all of us. At a climactic point in the novel, the main character compares the collapse of his world to the switch from the Light World to the Dark World in The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. He muses about the pointlessness of the old religions in the face of a new kind of myth-making: "no one who grew up in the age of Nintendo, no one who witnessed the rise of Facebook and Twitter could possibly believe in a magic book written under divine inspiration two thousand years ago.” At moments like this throughout the book, Pane expertly taps into the cultural zeitgeist of our time, into the brain of every kid who dreamed about Mario, Mega Man, and Wonder Boy. (Okay, maybe not Wonder Boy.)
There is a poignant beauty in the way humans connect, or fail to connect, in this book. Friendships and jobs and goals and communities fall apart. The “Odyssey Years” hold adulthood and contentment forever out of reach, while childhood memories fade away and lose their power to comfort. One of the main characters sits in front of a webcam counting until she reaches 250,000. A Facebook profile set up for a long-dead friend speaks to the need for immortality, if not of the soul then at least of the digital self. The chapter “The Son of God Complex” tells how Kanye West struggled with himself to become a superstar, and links to an earlier moment when Kanye appears to the remnants of the human race on Mars to cast down fire and brimstone. After a romantic encounter turns sour, Mega Man 2 provides comfort and solace:
"I played in absolute darkness, the compressed music of synthesizers and microchips returning me to my youth, to the 1980s, a world where I was the hero, where all bodily awareness evaporated and where I could become beautiful, light, electric, where I could become the machine, the final resident of a post-human earth."
I was sad to finish Last Call in the City of Bridges. It was a godsend, the kind of book I’m always hoping I find when I go to the bookstore. I had to read it in one sitting, pausing only to eat, sleep, and bring my cats to the vet. I had to know what happened next, what brought these characters together and what drove them apart. I wanted to know these characters in real life, to grab a beer with them and meet them for pancakes. At times I felt like I fell in love with them. Salvatore Pane’s writing is funny as hell, too. His use of pop culture factoids and video game or comic lore is controlled and masterful. This is the voice of a generation that knew the Konami Code by heart but never bothered learning the Gettysburg Address. This is a love letter to anyone who ever reached for an NES controller, dropped another quarter in the machine, or opened an old issue of Nintendo Power when life in the past was more livable than the present. This is a book that speaks for me.
Remember the slog of the 2004 presidential campaign – the long months of desperate hope that we'd send Bush back to Texas and finally turn the corner? At the same time, of course, that hope was tempered by the reality of John Kerry – his awkwardness, his lack of passion, his John Kerryness. But still, it felt great to believe, even just a little: to believe that the election was about something bigger, something more important than just changing the White House china. For those of us who grew up in the 80s and 90s, it seemed like our generations (I hate the hair-splitting of Generation X, Generation Y, Millennials, Internet Generation, etc.) were dropped into a cultural void, searching for meaning in a century filled with greatness. Salvatore Pane’s debut novel, Last Call in the City of Bridges, is steeped in this feeling, in this desperate quest for generational identity. The book asks the same questions we've been asking ourselves for a decade or more: why is my generation here? What is here for us? How can we matter – and if we can't, how can we at least get through this world alive?
The novel is bookended by the 2004 and 2008 elections. The false excitement and squashed hopes of Kerry. The thrill of watching our country leap forward, if only briefly, to elect Obama. More than any book I’ve read in years, this novel is grounded in a firm sense of its own place in history. In it, Pane writes of the importance of small events among uncertain times, of the longing for a larger myth – for something more to believe in:
"We mailed in our absentee ballots a month earlier, and now it was nearly upon us, November 2nd, the day we dreaded, the day we dreamed about…. We attended the rallies, those nervous gatherings of students in sandals and vintage t-shirts, boys with patchy goatees and girls with hair down to their waists. We chanted his name, all the while glancing nervously from side to side, hoping this was all some elaborate joke, as if this monotone robot named Kerry was just a pretender, as if we were still waiting for a superhero of yore to swoop down and save us."
This is a book about hopes and dreams, about waiting for a future that never comes, about the withering of traditional institutions like family and church, about instead turning to video games and superheroes for a moral compass. And so Pane has written not a book about pop culture, but rather a book about how pop culture has come to be our measure of human progress, and what that might mean – good and bad – for all of us. At a climactic point in the novel, the main character compares the collapse of his world to the switch from the Light World to the Dark World in The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. He muses about the pointlessness of the old religions in the face of a new kind of myth-making: "no one who grew up in the age of Nintendo, no one who witnessed the rise of Facebook and Twitter could possibly believe in a magic book written under divine inspiration two thousand years ago.” At moments like this throughout the book, Pane expertly taps into the cultural zeitgeist of our time, into the brain of every kid who dreamed about Mario, Mega Man, and Wonder Boy. (Okay, maybe not Wonder Boy.)
There is a poignant beauty in the way humans connect, or fail to connect, in this book. Friendships and jobs and goals and communities fall apart. The “Odyssey Years” hold adulthood and contentment forever out of reach, while childhood memories fade away and lose their power to comfort. One of the main characters sits in front of a webcam counting until she reaches 250,000. A Facebook profile set up for a long-dead friend speaks to the need for immortality, if not of the soul then at least of the digital self. The chapter “The Son of God Complex” tells how Kanye West struggled with himself to become a superstar, and links to an earlier moment when Kanye appears to the remnants of the human race on Mars to cast down fire and brimstone. After a romantic encounter turns sour, Mega Man 2 provides comfort and solace:
"I played in absolute darkness, the compressed music of synthesizers and microchips returning me to my youth, to the 1980s, a world where I was the hero, where all bodily awareness evaporated and where I could become beautiful, light, electric, where I could become the machine, the final resident of a post-human earth."
I was sad to finish Last Call in the City of Bridges. It was a godsend, the kind of book I’m always hoping I find when I go to the bookstore. I had to read it in one sitting, pausing only to eat, sleep, and bring my cats to the vet. I had to know what happened next, what brought these characters together and what drove them apart. I wanted to know these characters in real life, to grab a beer with them and meet them for pancakes. At times I felt like I fell in love with them. Salvatore Pane’s writing is funny as hell, too. His use of pop culture factoids and video game or comic lore is controlled and masterful. This is the voice of a generation that knew the Konami Code by heart but never bothered learning the Gettysburg Address. This is a love letter to anyone who ever reached for an NES controller, dropped another quarter in the machine, or opened an old issue of Nintendo Power when life in the past was more livable than the present. This is a book that speaks for me.
October 11, 2012
Every generation face the same challenges in life. The same fears in life. The difference is each generation has new and improved resources they use to process those fears and challenges allowing them to go on with their lives.
Last Call in the City of Bridges is a must read for every generation. I am sure that the majority will be the “twenty something” reader. But my review is directed towards another group of readers. If you are a person that has found yourself sitting across the table from your child, your nephew, niece or any person that you know that are 28 and younger and questioning why they think the way they do…then you must read this book. I feel that Sal has given us a great insight into the “twenty something” mind and world. Sal writes each character so brutally honest and he exposes their strengths and weaknesses on each page. Nothing is held back. As I read, I cried, I cringed a lot and I laughed out loud. I found myself (a middle aged woman) identifying most with Michael Bishop. Michael Bishop is a person like many of us that continues to battle through life trying to find one’s self worth. A battle that surpasses any generational gap.
Last Call in the City of Bridges is a must read for every generation. I am sure that the majority will be the “twenty something” reader. But my review is directed towards another group of readers. If you are a person that has found yourself sitting across the table from your child, your nephew, niece or any person that you know that are 28 and younger and questioning why they think the way they do…then you must read this book. I feel that Sal has given us a great insight into the “twenty something” mind and world. Sal writes each character so brutally honest and he exposes their strengths and weaknesses on each page. Nothing is held back. As I read, I cried, I cringed a lot and I laughed out loud. I found myself (a middle aged woman) identifying most with Michael Bishop. Michael Bishop is a person like many of us that continues to battle through life trying to find one’s self worth. A battle that surpasses any generational gap.
December 11, 2012
Solid debut novel from a young writer with noticeable talent. Last Call reads like Michael Chabon's "Mysteries of Pittsburgh" for the facebook generation. Pane captures a generations need to be noticed, to chase fame, even if the "fame" is 1000 followers on Twitter.
The plot works and pretty seamless. At times it gets self indulgent and reads like a hipster diary (which is the point). The story itself is based on internal struggles; with religion, with fading youth, and with guilt and confusion brought on by advances in technology we have yet to master.
A nice read and recommended.
The plot works and pretty seamless. At times it gets self indulgent and reads like a hipster diary (which is the point). The story itself is based on internal struggles; with religion, with fading youth, and with guilt and confusion brought on by advances in technology we have yet to master.
A nice read and recommended.
January 12, 2013
though capably written on a page-to-page basis theres never a moment in 'last call in the city of bridges' where the drama feels real. there is a tragedy as prestige element that makes trauma seem more like a stepping stone to authenticity than an actual event in an actual life. while the book subsisted mainly on pop culture 'hey i remember that'isms and a more general charm and wit there is a twist in the books primary romanticc relationship toward the end that sapped any of the goodwill that remained.
September 27, 2012
This book packs in some real, vivid emotion. I found it kind of interesting that I connected with the book so well given the theme of the modern disconnect between people. Regardless, it got to me. Sandwiched in the frame of a night of hope, Pane takes us back to when Michael didn't even question hope, through loss of that kind of blanket, and then where the hell Michael can go from there. The story is emotional, intense without being forced, and graceful.
August 16, 2014
Great story by my friend Sal Pane. 20-something Pittsburgher Michael has to navigate his way through complex social situations thanks to his own neuroses and personal issues. Pane does a great job of making Michael a Class A jerk who I both felt sorry for and wanted to grab by the shoulders and shake vigorously.
April 12, 2015
Loved it. A well crafted first novel. Can't what to see what he writes next.
July 20, 2020
Maybe I missed something that the plethora of good reviews saw, but this book just didn’t do much for me. Michael is a disenfranchised, to put it bluntly, loser recounting how his stunted emotional depth from never processing a death of a close childhood friend affected his life and that’s basically it. I get being in a job that feels meaningless and just having zero clue what the future holds for you, but there’s no message or growth that happens in this book. He and his friends just continually do awful things and don’t really make any steps to better themselves or change anything. In the end Michael has become less sarcastic and more honest with the shit state of his life that he depicts in his comics soo yay? Idk, I just don’t understand what message I’m supposed to gather from this read and it left me just feeling empty. I definitely had to buy this book for some creative writing class in college, it reeks of that pretentious complaining white male bullshit that my professors ate up. Eh, just not my thing at all. Maybe it’ll mean more to others, but not for me.
July 23, 2020
I learned a lot about Kanye! Loved this apocalyptic novel set in Pittsburgh. And by an alum of the Writers Institute at Susquehanna University, no less. I've recommended this book to many creative writing students at SU.
April 14, 2024
Existential crisis in Pittsburgh aka your 20's....
March 24, 2014
This book was so up and down, it's almost hard to rate.
I love books about Pittsburgh. Authors who are from, or who have lived in Pittsburgh, have a tendency to write novels that are love stories to their city. And this is no exception. I don't live in Pittsburgh, but it is one of my favorite cities ever, and I'm a sucker for a good story set in the 'Burgh. I got this, because it sounded like it would be kind of similar to Mysteries of Pittsburgh, one of my all-time favorites.
That said, Last Call started off incredibly slow and painfully. It takes until nearly halfway through to even begin to like the main character, Michael. But once you get into the groove of accepting Michael as someone who is legitimately running from something in his past, rather than a whiny millennial, he's much easier to like (and sometimes - despite being over a decade younger than me - even to relate to.) The millennial thing is a little overplayed; so much ironic self-awareness and a little too strong on the technological references.
The supporting cast are all strong. Oz the unstable academic, Sloan the girl who's just a friend and her fiance, the serial cheater, Noah, Ivy the cute girl Michael falls for who is inexplicable religiousness is a total mystery to Michael and to the reader. I think the problem with the book is that the protagonist is really the weakest link.
I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this to anyone looking for a twenty-something coming-of-age story, though it wouldn't be on the top of my list, it certainly wouldn't be at the bottom either.
I love books about Pittsburgh. Authors who are from, or who have lived in Pittsburgh, have a tendency to write novels that are love stories to their city. And this is no exception. I don't live in Pittsburgh, but it is one of my favorite cities ever, and I'm a sucker for a good story set in the 'Burgh. I got this, because it sounded like it would be kind of similar to Mysteries of Pittsburgh, one of my all-time favorites.
That said, Last Call started off incredibly slow and painfully. It takes until nearly halfway through to even begin to like the main character, Michael. But once you get into the groove of accepting Michael as someone who is legitimately running from something in his past, rather than a whiny millennial, he's much easier to like (and sometimes - despite being over a decade younger than me - even to relate to.) The millennial thing is a little overplayed; so much ironic self-awareness and a little too strong on the technological references.
The supporting cast are all strong. Oz the unstable academic, Sloan the girl who's just a friend and her fiance, the serial cheater, Noah, Ivy the cute girl Michael falls for who is inexplicable religiousness is a total mystery to Michael and to the reader. I think the problem with the book is that the protagonist is really the weakest link.
I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this to anyone looking for a twenty-something coming-of-age story, though it wouldn't be on the top of my list, it certainly wouldn't be at the bottom either.
January 13, 2013
"Last Call" had depth and a good sense of direction. Pane clearly knew the settings (the strange, ever-mutating digital landscape as well as the strange, already-mutated landscape of Pittsburgh) and keeps the plot moving as he explores both.
Despite references to Twitter and musings about the Facebook generation, this novel is deeply rooted in human concerns: Michael Bishop, a subtitler and self-proclaimed nerd, comes to terms with the horrors of his past failures while navigating two different love triangles and drinking remarkable quantities of alcohol in a rusty post-college malaise.
The book almost trembles with an urgency that undercuts the characters' wit and irony. The characters (and especially their conversations about pop culture and meaning) are relentlessly interesting, but what distinguishes this novel is its utter sincerity, which is laid bare by the end.
I'd recommend this book to anyone who loves Pittsburgh or the weirdness of the internet, or anyone who enjoys a solidly-built and well-told story. So much of our reality is incredibly strange if you take a step back, and this book ambitiously dissects the cumulative effect of that strangeness.
Despite references to Twitter and musings about the Facebook generation, this novel is deeply rooted in human concerns: Michael Bishop, a subtitler and self-proclaimed nerd, comes to terms with the horrors of his past failures while navigating two different love triangles and drinking remarkable quantities of alcohol in a rusty post-college malaise.
The book almost trembles with an urgency that undercuts the characters' wit and irony. The characters (and especially their conversations about pop culture and meaning) are relentlessly interesting, but what distinguishes this novel is its utter sincerity, which is laid bare by the end.
I'd recommend this book to anyone who loves Pittsburgh or the weirdness of the internet, or anyone who enjoys a solidly-built and well-told story. So much of our reality is incredibly strange if you take a step back, and this book ambitiously dissects the cumulative effect of that strangeness.
September 2, 2013
I don't really want to put stars on this book. I will say I read it very quickly, in long sessions over three or five days. It was a joy to read at work, something about the pacing was perfect; often I find "getting in" to the book and being "forced" out by work duties jarring and tiring, I didn't feel so much that way with this book. I think a very large portion of my "enjoyment" of this book was due to it being set in Pittsburgh, and "my" Pittsburgh at that, temporally and geographically. It made being a twenty something seem "romantic" in self-conscious "one foot in one foot out" way, like dressing up in a suit for an event. This is also hard to explain but it seems like a very well written book by someone who is not a writer, who is "fundamentally" an artist/comic strip-ist; in some of the descriptions of his inward "fantasies", like ninja dropping his boss or whatever, I sensed a longing to "have it happen", that an "instant" image would have been "preferable" (maybe just more natural?) to description. I feel like I have to stress that that is just an observation, not necessarily a criticism.
August 13, 2013
The only reason I picked this up was because it's set in Pittsburgh, and published by Braddock Ave books. The author is from Scranton, but I figured he must've spent some of his undergrad years in Pgh. It really tells, because he makes some obvious mistakes that no real 'Burgher would make: Phipps is a university greenhouse; once through the Fort Pitt tunnels, the terrain becomes rapidly rural (this, on a drive to Dormont!); comments about pollution; the incline rising out of the decadence that is Station Square; Oakland becoming deserted when it snows. If I hadn't been curious about how he portrayed the city, I never would've finished this. Generation Y angst that is almost painful to read; once again, I'm amazed at the hutzpah of people who blame the digital age for all of their problems and troubles, as well as blaming all the generations before them for ruining the world for them. Grow a few, Mr. Pane!
April 22, 2013
Funny debut novel about a college grad who tries to make sincere human connections with people in an electronic, anti-social world.
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