Post by pimpinainteasy on Aug 29, 2019 7:21:53 GMT
A novel filled with wonderful sleazy low life characters made vivid purely through dialog and very little description. Dennis Lenehan, who talks himself into a job as a show diver at a lodge-casino in Tunica, Misissippi, witnesses a murder one day, while he is sitting atop the 80 foot ladder from where he usually jumps into a 9 foot pool. Robert Taylor, an ambitious hustler staying at the casino, witnesses Dennis witnessing the murder. Robert, who is impressed by Dennis' individualism and daredevil diving act, tries to lure him into a plot to takeover the local drug trade from the Dixie mafia.
There are many interesting set pieces in the novel - the diving show at the casino, the redneck honky-tonk and the civil war reenactment. But the crackling working man dialog, endowed with anecdotes about blues musicians (according to one of the characters, the famous Iggy Pop/The Stooges song "I wanna be your dog" was inspired by "I'm a doggy" by Afro-Jewish musician Marvin Pontiac) and redneck culture (naughty child pie!), is what really makes the novel. An array of beguiling characters - a cocktail waitress, a prostitute, a mistress, an Italian bombmaker, a baseball legend turned announcer, murderous Mexicans, rednecks and Indians provide support to the main cast.
There are many interesting set pieces in the novel - the diving show at the casino, the redneck honky-tonk and the civil war reenactment. But the crackling working man dialog, endowed with anecdotes about blues musicians (according to one of the characters, the famous Iggy Pop/The Stooges song "I wanna be your dog" was inspired by "I'm a doggy" by Afro-Jewish musician Marvin Pontiac) and redneck culture (naughty child pie!), is what really makes the novel. An array of beguiling characters - a cocktail waitress, a prostitute, a mistress, an Italian bombmaker, a baseball legend turned announcer, murderous Mexicans, rednecks and Indians provide support to the main cast.
Hollywood has sacrificed the factotums, barflies, men in chain gangs, traveling performers and other weirdos for the nerd, the superhero nonsense, the middle class and other apostles of the metastasizing global mono-culture. It is American novels (read by middle class guys like me, living in India) that continues to eulogize the hard men and women hustlers who hit the road and do not settle for the mundane and the mediocre.
(10/10)