Lucky You

Here's a book review of a book you will probably never get to read. Look at it this way - the opposite of this book review of a distinctly non-ubiquitous book is me talking to you about The Da Vinci Code, and you wouldn't want that, would you?

I picked up Lucky Man by Ben Tanzer in the 23rd Street bookshop in Portland, mostly because I liked the cover. Still do like the cover, actually, although I haven't found who out the designer/illustrator was yet. I also love to read small press stuff; independent publishing and the DIY aesthetic, that kind of thing, something that Waterstones couldn't even order for you (although Powell's could). It was an alright book, I suppose? Here is my review:



*SPOILER WARNING*

Lucky Man is a coming-of-age roadtrip type novel set, when exactly? I do not know. They listen to The Grateful Dead a lot and live in a nicely grimy and authentic America full of easily obtainable drugs and no tourists, even when they head for the big city. Late 70s, early 80s perhaps? I'm guessing it's set in whatever time period the author grew up in. It's about four young guys (try finding a 3D woman character here, btw) who progress from high school to college age to the first couple of years in a job, but I have to tell you, [SPOILER] not all of them make it. In fact, each of the four - Gabe, Jake, Louis and Sammy - have their own section of the narrative, and they have a tendency to bite it by the time they get to the end of their bit (unconvincing gay-guilt suicide, drugs, car accident). Therefore I was not holding out much hope for the life expectancy of Louis by the time I got to his third section. Sammy gets to live, I suppose because he is a lucky man, but is he really so lucky, because life is hard. Sammy finishes up the book as an unreliable narrator having bizarrely appropriated the memories of the other three, but doing more or less ok being a scruffy social worker in the city with his cipher girlfriend, who I could never quite convince myself existed. Also: alcohol, weed, shrooms, ecstasy, mowing lawns, bad father-son relationships, passing college without apparently working, a nicely familiar roadtrip, unconvincing side plots.

It wasn't bad, I suppose. I could imagine some of the conversations actually happening, but the sense of doom and the immersion in the un-insightful 1st-person narrative voices of these dudes got rather wearing. Plus any feeling for character differentiation gradually petered out. First they seemed to have vaguely different personalities, then they had traits to tell them apart (one drinks too much, one runs a lot, one is angry), but by the end they might as well have all been the same passive, indistinct person, which may have actually been the point. I couldn't tell. I guess the book could be pretty true-to-life though. It isn't my life, but it sounded like it could be someone's.

No, I tell you what my real beef with this book was: the spelling. Oh my god, Mr.Tanzer, you are releasing a novel here. Could you not have gotten someone to read it through for you. Clumsy typos, confusion between they're and their, you get the picture; it drove me crazy. If the good people at Manx Media do not do a better edit job with Tanzer's next novel, Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine (cool title), then they deserve a kick in the teeth. I imagine it's not hard. You need a highlighter, and the ability to spell.

Ben Tanzer has a blog called This Blog Will Change Your Life. It won't. It is relentless self-promotion and a forensic attention to Amazon to see if anyone has bought a copy of Lucky Man lately. (They haven't.)

Ok, that all made me feel much better. Sorry for this post: possibly cathartic for me, boring for you.