Picano expands on the autobiographical essays of his previous book, True Stories (2011).
In this sequel, Picano reflects on family, relationships and the various cities of his past, most notably New York, where he was active in the pre- and post-Stonewall gay community of lower Manhattan. There, he took part in “ad-hoc vigilante protection squads” for gay men, enjoyed a bourgeoning literary community and frequented the seediest bars of Greenwich Village. Picano also examines in depth his relationship with his older brother, Bob. Like Picano, Bob was gay, but unlike Picano, he was struggling financially, addicted to drugs and most likely HIV-positive. In light of this, Picano revisits the tension in his early family life and his father’s “plan for feudalizing his sons” as well as his mother’s favoring the older boy above all else. These tensions forced Picano to eventually run away from home—he “led the exodus out of Queens and into Manhattan”—and perhaps to his becoming the more successful brother. This sense of success shows in Picano’s prose, as his narration can be melodramatic and boastful. He casually name-drops literary superstars such as Michel Foucault or hints at the celebrities he might have kissed in dark restaurants. He also lists the glamorous places he’s visited and the fabulous apartments he’s inhabited. But Picano keeps his stories from feeling too overindulgent through brief, carefully reconstructed moments that expertly reveal character and complex dynamics. The bittersweet last words of his soul mate or the whole of the collection’s best piece, “The ‘Nick’ Diaries,” in which his brief journal entries relate a confusing pseudo-romance with a straight man in LA—it’s in these moments that Picano’s stories become the most engaging. His writing is most moving when he’s reflecting on AIDS and HIV, a theme that connects each story and has affected so many people in his life. “When I first moved to L.A.,” he writes, “people here, eager or pleased to know me, always asked why I had moved so relatively late in life. ‘Everyone died,’ I told them.”
An intensely personal collection centered on the survivor of a fascinating, chaotic time.
Pub Date: June 19, 2014
ISBN: 978-1937627157
Page Count: 278
Publisher: Chelsea Station Editions
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An extraordinary true tale of torment, retribution, and loyalty that's irresistibly readable in spite of its intrusively melodramatic prose. Starting out with calculated, movie-ready anecdotes about his boyhood gang, Carcaterra's memoir takes a hairpin turn into horror and then changes tack once more to relate grippingly what must be one of the most outrageous confidence schemes ever perpetrated. Growing up in New York's Hell's Kitchen in the 1960s, former New York Daily News reporter Carcaterra (A Safe Place, 1993) had three close friends with whom he played stickball, bedeviled nuns, and ran errands for the neighborhood Mob boss. All this is recalled through a dripping mist of nostalgia; the streetcorner banter is as stilted and coy as a late Bowery Boys film. But a third of the way in, the story suddenly takes off: In 1967 the four friends seriously injured a man when they more or less unintentionally rolled a hot-dog cart down the steps of a subway entrance. The boys, aged 11 to 14, were packed off to an upstate New York reformatory so brutal it makes Sing Sing sound like Sunnybrook Farm. The guards continually raped and beat them, at one point tossing all of them into solitary confinement, where rats gnawed at their wounds and the menu consisted of oatmeal soaked in urine. Two of Carcaterra's friends were dehumanized by their year upstate, eventually becoming prominent gangsters. In 1980, they happened upon the former guard who had been their principal torturer and shot him dead. The book's stunning denouement concerns the successful plot devised by the author and his third friend, now a Manhattan assistant DA, to free the two killers and to exact revenge against the remaining ex-guards who had scarred their lives so irrevocably. Carcaterra has run a moral and emotional gauntlet, and the resulting book, despite its flaws, is disturbing and hard to forget. (Film rights to Propaganda; author tour)
Pub Date: July 10, 1995
ISBN: 0-345-39606-5
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The memoir of George Dawson, who learned to read when he was 98, places his life in the context of the entire 20th century in this inspiring, yet ultimately blighted, biography. Dawson begins his story with an emotional bang: his account of witnessing the lynching of a young African-American man falsely accused of rape. America’s racial caste system and his illiteracy emerge as the two biggest obstacles in Dawson’s life, but a full view of the man overcoming the obstacles remains oddly hidden. Travels to Ohio, Canada, and Mexico reveal little beyond Dawson’s restlessness, since nothing much happens to him during these wanderings. Similarly, the diverse activities he finds himself engaging in—bootlegging in St. Louis, breaking horses, attending cockfights—never really advance the reader’s understanding of the man. He calls himself a “ladies’ man” and hints at a score of exciting stories, but then describes only his decorous marriage. Despite the personal nature of this memoir, Dawson remains a strangely aloof figure, never quite inviting the reader to enter his world. In contrast to Dawson’s diffidence, however, Glaubman’s overbearing presence, as he repeatedly parades himself out to converse with Dawson, stifles any momentum the memoir might develop. Almost every chapter begins with Glaubman presenting Dawson with a newspaper clipping or historical fact and asking him to comment on it, despite the fact that Dawson often does not remember or never knew about the event in question. Exasperated readers may wonder whether Dawson’s life and his accomplishments, his passion for learning despite daunting obstacles, is the tale at hand, or whether the real issue is his recollections of Archduke Ferdinand. Dawson’s achievements are impressive and potentially exalting, but the gee-whiz nature of the tale degrades it to the status of yet another bowl of chicken soup for the soul, with a narrative frame as clunky as an old bone.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-375-50396-X
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1999
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