An unfiltered and often disturbing treatise on male violence.
Bradley’s debut book mixes personal stories with tips for surviving in a knockdown world of impromptu brawls.
From 1993 to 2013, the author was a street fighter—part of what he defines as a “class of individuals, primarily male, primarily ages 18–30” who “engage in violent altercations on a regular basis for various purposes, generally to establish dominance or end a disagreement.” He offers two causes for his immersion in this brutal subculture: a childhood marred by physical and emotional abuse, followed by a stint in the U.S. Army overseas. When he got out of the military, he says, he was a “dangerous sociopath” who’d learned to channel his rage into combat. He also battled drug addictionand endured homelessness and jail time; as a result, he has compelling stories, which he relates here. Bradley also offers some practical advice for those who find themselves in similar circumstances; for example, he says that after a fight, one should leave the location immediately, whether one wins or loses. The author’s prose is simple and direct, which fits with the book’s how-to presentation; in a chapter titled “Grooming Witnesses,” for instance, Bradley writes, “It really helps to have a crowd on your side. The best way to get a crowd on your side is to have them begin on your side….I’ve had a whole bar swearing to the cops that the other guy started it just because I was a regular and he was not.” The author makes it clear that he doesn’t advocate for to others rush out in search of the world that he left behind: “I’m no longer the man in this book,” he writes early on. “I’m the man that was once that man.” At one point, however, he still threatens graphic violence to some of his enemies; there’s also an entire chapter about “how (and why)” to have sex with strippers. Fans of transgressive literature will undoubtedly be intrigued by such sections, but others may find the author’s reflections too misanthropic to be enjoyable.
An unfiltered and often disturbing treatise on male violence.Pub Date: Jan. 30, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-9888180-3-3
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Movement Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 29, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
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