jkkelley's Full Review: Richard Perez - The Losers' Club
Losers' Club is a trade paperback fiction novel about a young Hispanic guy who is trying to become a boyfriend and an author, and failing miserably at both. That's one of the two major themes of the book. The other is the preternatural oh-so-cool eccentricity of the New York City club scene. That's pretty much it.
Story: the author has come up with a concept that could be entertaining in the hands of another author. As it is, there isn't much wit. I didn't find myself laughing much, and I was more than willing to do some laughing. The main character spends most of his time having his desires frustrated. An area that could have been very funny--but was not--was his workplace, where he is a shipping serf for a Japanese company. I don't get it: if you don't really have much of a story, you frankly have to hustle a little, add other forms of appeal.
Setting: Greenwich Village. Now, I don't know much about the place, and I have no more interest in it than most people in Greenwich Village have in my hometown. But I do know that it's in New York City, and that it has to do with the Village People at some level, and it's apparently the place you go if you want to show off your authentic cool. (If you want to show off your phony cool, it seems, you go to LA. As for the difference between the cools, I leave that up to people shallow enough to consider it important.) Each person who shows up in the book seems a little weirder and kinkier than the last. If Perez' portrayal of The Village (I am told that it is so culturally important that all you need to say is 'The Village,' and people will nod in a hip manner) is at all accurate, it's a place where people feel strongly motivated to work diligently at out-strangeing each other.
That may well be true, but as far as the book goes, there's just too much. I know damn good and well there are plenty of normal, sensible people in and around New York City. It would be great if a few more of them would put in appearances in the book. The effect of the freak overdose is to convey a sense of pretense, though: the desperate 'trying' to be 'cool'--whatever 'cool' is--conveys a sense of poseurism. Maybe that's accurate, but I doubt it. If there's one vibe I get from New York, it's genuineness, authenticity, be yourself. The people in the book are supposed to be living this honest self-expression, and the author tries, but can't pull it off--and I think the reason is the overdose.
Characters: some of these are kind of interesting. The protagonist isn't very sympathetic; his heap of rejection letters from publishers seems possibly to be the author's self-portrait, and if so, I can see why. His series of personal-ad dates, now, tend to be uniquely developed and moderately entertaining. They're certainly realistic, at least in my limited experience of personals dating: everyone I met that way seemed to have at least one major glaring issue that explained why they had to resort to personal ads (me included).
Technique: ok, I want it known that I'd really rather not talk about this. It's my duty. I hope you appreciate the way I queased myself out for you here by revisiting this aspect of the book, because it cost me and I had to take Alka-Seltzer.
Well, there you have one major weakness in the writing: italics. The author uses them for emphasis, but as I did above, too often. The effect is to make the characters seem slightly hysterical even when they really aren't. I had always read that overuse of italics was a tool of writers who were not able to vividly communicate the emphasis through skillful writing flow, but this is the first time I've really gotten a clinic on it. You know what the effect is? Think of the stereotypical gay male mode of speech: you know, that sort of flaming, prissy lilt that is not by any means the norm, but will occasionally light up your gaydar like a casino? That's exactly what the book sounds like. It's like it's being narrated by a guy straining to flame. Which would be fine, if it were a gay-themed book--but this one is painfully, earnestly hetero.
But italics aren't the only difficulty. The writing simply does not flow. Have you ever been on a gravel road in the country where it had that washboard effect? You know, like wave patterns in a streambed? When you drive on such a road, the intermittent shaking is similar to the sensation of operating a small jackhammer. Reading this is like driving a washboard road. It bumps, rattles, lurches, halts, spills your coffee. It's hard to read.
Then there's the 'huh?' factor. This is best illustrated with an example from real life: one time George Bush (the elder), was giving campaign speeches in his bid to get re-elected President. He was apparently trying to demonstrate his sensitivity to the downtrodden when he said: "Don't cry for me, Argentina. Message: I care." A nation went "say wha?" all at once. What the hell, George? If your speechwriter gave you that one, don't just fire him, don't just shoot him; tie him up a la Clockwork Orange and make him watch eternal Friends reruns until he gibbers.
So many of the scenes in the book leave you with a 'huh?' effect that I saved one for you. You're not going to thank me for this. Here, the main character is reflecting on his lousy relations with his mother, who went nuts and died young:
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_____He recalled another time, years before, the two tranquilly reclined on her wide bed, taking an afternoon nap, facing each other, when Martin, suddenly bored, mischievously reached over and yanked down hard on her pajama bottom, his jaw dropping at the sight of her thick, hairy PÛSSY!*
_____"¡Cochino!"--and WHACK!--his mother slapping his face so hard his ears rang for a full fifteen minutes.
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The author managed nine commas in the first sentence, gave us vaguely incestuous overtones, and left me saying what I said dozens of times throughout the book:
"Huh?" And then: "Jesus H. Christ. Do I have to finish this?"
Shill factor: due to all the erratic behavior, threats, multiple identities and so forth I've seen, I suppose I have to protect myself here and specify that these are my perceptions. They are based upon what little of the soap opera surrounding this book I have been able to force myself to read. It's possible that I'm wrong about some of this, though if I am, a lot of the reasons have to do with the way representative(s?) of the publisher handled themselves on this very site.
If you go to www.ludlowpress.com, you get the impression that it has published two books, one of which won the coveted 'Ludlow Press Breakthrough Fiction Award.' This publisher is reported to have originally solicited reviews from Epinions reviewers, provided the reviews were not negative. They (he?) got varying reactions, including some negative reviews anyway. In the resulting controversy, I got the impression that 'Ludlow Press' is basically a front name for a self-published book, just as if I paid someone to print a book and decided that it would be by 'Parrotfez Press'.
If that is the case, then the 'Ludlow Press Breakthrough Fiction Award'--which mysteriously has no history of past awards--is essentially a medal given by the author to himself, like some generals do when they never got into combat. I can't say for sure, but it's considered worthy of a full page of black ink after all the laudatory 'reviewer' comments in the beginning, as well as a little medal on the front.
Speaking of the included comments, they mystify me. They gush, of course, like most quoted reviewer comments; would an author choose to include advance comments such as "a strong argument for the merits of book burning"?
Who are these people? Maybe they're too cool for school, and certainly for a bumptious rube like myself, which would explain why I never heard of any of them before this. Here's an example: Barry Gifford, cited as author of Wild At Heart, is supposed to have said: "Richard Perez has the ears of the angels--lend him yours." That's a fair sample. Well, I looked up Barry, and he has his own website; there's no reason not to believe he's for real. Maybe he's a great author. But why would a successful author say something like this about a book that struggles as ineffectually as The Losers' Club? I don't get it. Something's weird with all these comments. There cannot possibly be this many authors who love novels that fail.
There is definitely enough reason for me to believe that the author has used multiple identities, has spoken abusively to reviewers who did not flatter the book, has created multiple Eps accounts, and so on. You'd think that an 'award-winning' author wouldn't stoop to such behaviour. Based on my other experiences, I can assure you that one might.
It's not commonly known on Eps that I'm a reasonably-sized fish in the Amazon.com reviewing ocean; for what (little) it's worth, out of however many hundred thousand reviewers at Amazon, I've been 'ranked' as high as #73 in the past. As a result, I have received lots of offers from (mostly first-time) authors wanting reviews. I have gotten to watch a lot of authorly behaviour with regard to the promotion of their oeuvres, and I can assure you that there are few limits to the lengths to which some will go.
I do not start from a position of hostility toward aspiring authors, but dealing with enough of them got so fatiguing that I pretty much slammed the door. I have been spammed, revenge-rated, spoken snidely to, received strange red-herring e-mails, and so forth. Thus, if you're saying, "Come on, there is no way that an author would act in such a way," take it from me: there is, and they do.
Overall: I trust that by now it's redundant to say that I do not consider this to be the next literary thunderbolt to reshape the world of fiction.
If it turns out to be a seminal work, I plan to do two things:
Have my seminal vesicles surgically removed.
Switch over to exclusively non-fiction.
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* Circumflex added by reviewer. I know that you are not stupid, and that you know this. With this author/publisher, I'd best spell it out. Likewise, the underbars used to simulate indents are not part of the original.
Set in downtown New York City, The Losers Club tells the story of Martin Sierra, an unlucky writer addicted to the personals. His journey brings us in...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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