The Last Open Road (1994) by Burt Levy

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

The Last Open Road (1994)

by Burt Levy

Passaic, New Jersey

New Jersey: 10/13

  The Last Open Road is about the world of auto racing in the era when rich white guys could just drive to some backwoods locale and close off all the streets and race around in their Jaguars, MG's and Ferrari's.  If you are like me, you didn't know that this world even existed, ever, so in that regard it is an interesting novel.  Burt Levy, I gather, is telling the tale from a fictionalized version of himself, the son of Union chemical plant worker in Passaic, New Jersey who catches the "racing bug" while starting his career as a mechanic at a Sinclair filling station.  Along the way he befriends a local scrap metal dealer who is rich and the owner of a Jaguar which is in need of constant attention.  Seeking guidance, he falls in with a lower Manhattan foreign car mechanic/car salesman, who show him the ropes and provide his entree into the world of dilletante car racing in the early 1950's. 

   But beyond that appeal there isn't much going on here besides the uninteresting bildungsroman of a New Jersey foreign-car mechanic. 

The Hasheesh Eater (1857) by Fitz Hugh Ludlow

 Book Review

The Hasheesh Eater (1857)

by Fitz Hugh Ludlow

   The Hasheesh Eater is generally considered to be the first book that extols the "drug culture" of America.  Obviously, it was written decades before such a culture actually existed, and was then revived by writers from the Beat Generation and so forth.   To be clear, Ludlow was a fan of "hasheesh" which is a concentrated form of cannabis- not a form of opium.  Despite a professional career in the criminal justice system I was still fuzzy on the distinction going in to The Hasheesh Eater.  Ludlow's frame of reference is assuredly classical in terms of his subjective experience- the hallucinations and so forth.

   The hallucinations he describes sound more like what a modern person what associate with hallucinatory drugs like LSD, magic mushrooms and ayahuasca.  He also describes a level of psychological dependence that reads as ridiculous in 2024, more in line with how marijuana was depicted at the height of the War Against Drugs of the 1980's.  Even though we now live in a country where marijuana is legal in half the states (and all the important states) in America it is still hard to imagine the state of  American society BEFORE marijuana prohibition- when marijuana was legal, as was cocaine and opium. 

   

The Coldest Winter Ever (1999) by Sister Souljah

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

The Coldest Winter Ever (1999)

by Sister Souljah

Brooklyn, New York

Brooklyn/Queens/Long Island/Staten Island: 20/26

New York: 97/103

 The official page for the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America map has the wrong publication date (2005) for The Coldest Winter Ever, Sister Souljah's best selling and in many ways pioneering novel from the "street literature" genre or "Urban Fiction" as it is known to differentiate itself from the 18th and 19th century tradition of selling pamphlets on the streets of cities like London, Paris and Berlin. There are some continuities- the idea of a criminal biography is present across all times and places.  I certainly remember Sister Souljah from my childhood- I was an avid listener to Public Enemy when she joined after Professor Griff was "fired" for antisemitic remarks, and I remember Bill Clinton attacking her, which gave rise to the idea of a "Sister Souljah moment" i.e. repudiating a putative ally.

  After reading the book, I realized that Souljah is a long time friend of Puff Daddy and was actually responsible for running his home for minor children, Daddy's House Social Programs and if any representatives of the Southern District of New York are investigating Diddy for racketeering they should certainly be asking questions of Sister Souljah about what went on at Daddy's House.  Here's an excerpt from a paywalled 1999 LA Times article detailing Daddy's House trafficking:

    There is a Daddy’s House International Travel Group that takes 10 to 15 of the programs’ students each year on a trip. Last year it was to South Africa.

     Anyway, I mention that because this book is frequently and graphically about underage girls having sex with adult men.  Winter- the name of the narrator and protagonist is a 17 year old going on 40 child of the Brooklyn projects, the daughter of local crack kingpin Ricky Santiaga.  The novel picks up with everything going splendidly- Winter is Daddy's little princess, she has everything she could want, etc.  When Ricky proudly announces that the family is moving to a suburban mansion on Long Island, everyone but Winter knows that a downfall is coming.

   The downfall is swift and Federal- although her narrator is young and considers herself 'street smart,' readers of classic literature will recognize her as a "rake's progress" type of girlie making her downward descent into an underworld.  It's not hard to see why this book was a hit with it's audience- which is probably not an audience that spends much money on books- which makes Souljah's achievement impressive.  I was also impressed by Susan Straight's decision to put this book on her list of titles- it's the edgiest book on the entire list so far.  I was astonished that my paperback copy arrived via the YA section of the Los Angeles Public Library.  I'm a big supporter of libraries but holy cow, this book's narrator describes her 12 year old self having her "tunnel painfully widened" by a big n-word male genitalia in addition to the graphic descriptions of crack addiction and general urban ennui.  

  I mean I applaud the prose and the authenticity of her narrator but it's hard to imagine giving it to a 12 year old to read.

Half-Resurrection Blues (2015) by Daniel Jose Older

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Half-Resurrection Blues (2015)

by Daniel Jose Older

Brooklyn, New York

Brooklyn/Queens/Long Island/Staten Island: 19/26

New York: 96/103

  Half-Resurrection Blues is the first pick in Daniel Jose Older's fantasy-genre series, Bone Street Rumba.  I had to read it on the native Libby app because Older has some kind of exclusive deal with Amazon which seems to prevent one from checking out E-books from the library and reading them on your Kindle.  This book was another reminder of how much I prefer science fiction to fantasy.  What makes fantasy so uninteresting to me is that ANY fantasy scenario is just a stand in for human emotions and characters, so why not spare us the sad vampires and angry werewolves and write about human characters instead.  

  This book is about a half living/half dead Latino who is working as a kind of agent for a council of the dead that operates in New York City.  The entire book has heavy Brooklyn vibes, and from that perspective it is a good fit for the 1,001 Novels project.  Otherwise though, it was a forgettable work of death-obsessed fantasy for me.

A Visionary Madness (2003) by Mike Jay

Book Review

A Visionary Madness (2003)

by Mike Jay

   I heard about this book on Instagram, via an account of an academic I follow.  Despite widespread acceptance of the idea that the internet makes everything available forever, this simply isn't proving to be the case.  A good example is the journalism written during the internet era for outlets like Vice Media or the Gawker blog family.  All that stuff is just gone.  I've observed this interesting dynamic between the operation of copyright upon the ability of audiences to spread a given work vs. the dynamic of public domain materials which conversely effects the ability of publishers to generate interest in a given work.   This dynamic tracks the release cycle for a specific work, with the former dynamic operating at the beginning and the latter taking over after a certain number of years.

   I mention that because I'd never heard of The Air Loom Gang before I saw it on instagram.  It's a good example of a book that exists as a cult classic, though not a particularly succesful example of that genre.  Jay writes about James Tilly, a real person who lived in the UK (with short trips to France) around the time of the French Revolution.  He showed up in London after said Revolution and demanded an audience with Lord Liverpool and when he was refused he made public accusations that Liverpool was a traitor to the crown.  He claimed he was part of a secret mission to France to broker a peace between the UK and revolutionary France.

 At Lord Liverpool's request, he was committed to the then new insinuation of the insane asylum, known as Bedlam where he spent the next couple decades loudly proclaiming his sanity.   The book delves into the nature of his madness, which is revealed as the first technologically driven episode of paranoid-schizophrenia.  He makes this argument because Tilly claimed to be the victim of a secret influencing machine that was hidden below the streets of London.  He sketched the device, which was equally intricate and insane.  As Jay makes clear, Tilly was insane, but in a very interesting way.  It's a book that deserves to be on any shelf where Discipline and Punishment by Michel Foucault resides but I'm pretty sure finding a hard copy outside a library is rough.

Big Man (1966) by Jay Neugeboren

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Big Man (1966)

by Jay Neugeboren

Brooklyn, New York

Brooklyn/Queens/Long Island/Staten Island: 18/26

New York: 95/103

 

   Again, I was left wondering why Susan Straight left The Basketball Diaries by Jim Carroll off the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America list when I was reading Big Man, about the aftermath of the 1950-1951 point shaving scandal that rocked organized basketball.  Mack Davis, the narrator, is working at a car-wash in Brooklyn five years after he was banned for life (but not imprisoned) for agreeing to shave points.  Big Man is the second book in the New York chapter written from the perspective of an African American but written by a white man. It's almost impossible to imagine a similar book being published today but it seems like it was accepted practice at least through the 1960's. 

   Mack Davis is recognizable as an alienated young person from the 1950's.  Perhaps because of the trans-racial authorship, Mack seems less concerned with the disabilities of race then just getting by- living with his Mom in Brooklyn, working at the carwash.  The extremely low-stakes plot involves Mack signing up as a ringer in a B'nai B'rith fundraising game where he is playing opposite another banned player who has embraced a life of organized crime whole-heartedly.  Meanwhile, a local journalist tries to enlist him in a scheme to sue the NBA for illegally banning him via the "blacklist."  Mack isn't exactly a dim-bulb narrator- his virtuosity on the basketball court elevates those portions beyond the hum drum of an impoverished Brooklyn existence circa the mid 1950's, but he isn't exactly a paragon of light and virtue.

  There's a love interest in the form of a single mom who is herself a surprisingly good player and a host of minor New Yorker stock-types, including the journalist, who I'm presuming represents the author, since he is a middle-aged Jewish guy. 

Preparation for the Next Life (2014) by Atticus Lish

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Preparation for the Next Life (2014)

by Atticus Lish

Queens, New York

Brooklyn/Queens/Long Island/Staten Island: 17/26

New York: 94/103

   Preparation for the Next Life was published by Tyrant Press.  Tyrant Press was in the news in April of this year because its publisher, Giancarlo DiTrapano, died what can only be described as an untimely death at the age of 47.    His New York Times obituary described him as a "defiantly independent publisher," which I believe means he refused to sell his company for a comfortable sum and then later made bad financial decisions.  This book was one of his career highlights as a published because it won a PEN/Faulkner award.  Here is the relevant portion from the NYT April Obit:

The next year, Mr. DiTrapano published the first novel by Atticus Lish, “Preparation for the Next Life,” a love story about an Iraq war veteran and a Chinese Muslim immigrant set in Queens. Mr. Lish, a Harvard dropout who once taught English in China, had labored on the novel for years. After reading the manuscript, Mr. DiTrapano became convinced that he had discovered a bold new literary voice, so he ordered his largest print run yet: 3,500 paperback copies.

Reviewing the book in The New York Times, Dwight Garner proclaimed it “perhaps the finest and most unsentimental love story of the new decade,” and it became the talk of the literary world. Mr. DiTrapano scrambled to print thousands more copies. Mr. Lish was recognized with a PEN/Faulkner Award.

     Anyway, the cause of death was not released.  Within the context of the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America Preparation for the Next Life was an absolute joy.  It pulses with the energy of post-Iraq War I NYC- you can practically taste the garbage in your mouth.  There are moments of shocking action- any discussion would be spoiler-adjacent, but wow, it did get my attention.  The character of the Chinese Immigrant woman who forms a relationship with a damaged Iraq-war veteran is well drawn, Lish doesn't patronize her.   RIP Giancarlo DiTrapano. I'm sure he would have been amused to read his own obituary in the New York Times.