S.F.W.

Hand-me-down nihilism, cruising and boozing pervade this portrayal of messed up, alienated youth. Its antihero, Cliff Spab, has survived 36 days as one of five hostages in a suburban Detroit 7-Eleven, held there by antinuclear terrorists. For shooting two of the masked gunmen, Cliff got his picture on the covers of Time and People , but now he's hiding to avoid more publicity, living above a rundown movie theater, getting his head together. Through flashbacks the reader is introduced to his girlfriends and to his buddy Morrow, who engages in violent gay-bashing and, later, holds an alcoholic girlfriend at gunpoint and urinates on her. Transcripts of videotapes made in the 7-Eleven at the terrorists' insistence are interwoven with the main narrative; the effect is hackneyed. The initials of the title stand for ``so fucking what?''--a shorthand emblematic of the novel's trendy, self-indulgent writing, which mostly substitutes attitude for insight. Wellman, age 21, won the 1989 Playboy College Fiction Award. (Jan.)