The Last Bongo Sunset

Budapest-born Plesko's first novel is a darkly lyrical, semi-autobiographical account of a drug addict's life in Venice, Calif., in the early 1970s. When a prostitute, Cassandra, puts a needle full of heroin into the arm of a young man who calls himself College, he instantly responds to the drug. Soon he's addicted and sharing his apartment with Cassandra and her pimp, Gary. Haunted by memories of his mother and of his life with her in Hungary before his escape from that country, College observes his new conditions and companions with a feverishness that, ultimately, proves as numbing as the life it describes. The problem is that the novel's lush, imagistic prose reproduces the self-involved state of the addict too well; after a while, reading Plesko's descriptions of drug-induced lassitude becomes an exercise in aggravation. The overwrought language invariably aims at producing indelible images, and the truly moving moments (Cassandra's stories about her past; College's memories of his mother and his fears for the new girl in the group, Maria) become lost in all the florid excess-as does, at times, the stark horror of addiction. Despite its intensity, this is another first novel with more promise than delivery. (Jan.)