A colorful tale of a long, strange trip that doesn’t really go anywhere.
A junkie treads a wide and crooked path toward God in this frenzied tale of despair and redemption.
Abel, a bright kid from a well-off black family in a California university town, has two big problems. The first is a personality hobbled by fear, guilt and resentment. The second is the existential pain of being, which he first experiences during birth, when the pangs of delivery are alleviated by a jolt of Demerol–and so it is established that therapy and drugs will rule his chaotic life. By high school, Abel’s using and dealing pot, acid and mescaline, but what hits the spot is heroin’s “orgasm of peace and safety,” which returns him to “the womb…the paradise from which he was exiled.” An inevitable downward spiral ensues. Abel occasionally detoxes in jail, rehab or the army; finds a job or builds a relationship, only to re-encounter heroin–or Dilaudid, Percodan or crack–and swan-dive into degradation, crime and betrayal. A latter-day Candide, Abel also partakes in the casual sex, drugs and spirituality of the post-1960s counterculture. He joins the cult of a Salvadoran messiah who claims to be “actually greater than God,” follows a “breathatarian” diet guru who hopes to wean followers off food entirely and discovers “reawakening,” a new-age therapy that briefly leaves him feeling reborn. Hammond (Identity Theft: How to Protect Your Most Valuable Asset, 2002) paints an engrossing picture of a junkie’s desperation and a vigorous, if broad, satire of nutty modern pseudo-religions. But there’s no arc to the random, whirlwind narrative. The story is a circular roller coaster, repetitively elevating Abel to a promontory of stability or misguided enthusiasm, only to have him fall to a shrieking valley of despair. Abel’s final embrace of Christianity seems no more climactic than his other conversions to either religion or drugs.
A colorful tale of a long, strange trip that doesn’t really go anywhere.Pub Date: April 7, 2007
ISBN: 978-1-60266-353-4
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
These letters from some important executive Down Below, to one of the junior devils here on earth, whose job is to corrupt mortals, are witty and written in a breezy style seldom found in religious literature. The author quotes Luther, who said: "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." This the author does most successfully, for by presenting some of our modern and not-so-modern beliefs as emanating from the devil's headquarters, he succeeds in making his reader feel like an ass for ever having believed in such ideas. This kind of presentation gives the author a tremendous advantage over the reader, however, for the more timid reader may feel a sense of guilt after putting down this book. It is a clever book, and for the clever reader, rather than the too-earnest soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1942
ISBN: 0060652934
Page Count: 53
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1943
This first novel, ostensibly about the friendship between two boys, Reuven and Danny, from the time when they are fourteen on opposing yeshiva ball clubs, is actually a gently didactic differentiation between two aspects of the Jewish faith, the Hasidic and the Orthodox. Primarily the Hasidic, the little known mystics with their beards, earlocks and stringently reclusive way of life. According to Reuven's father who is a Zionist, an activist, they are fanatics; according to Danny's, other Jews are apostates and Zionists "goyim." The schisms here are reflected through discussions, between fathers and sons, and through the separation imposed on the two boys for two years which still does not affect their lasting friendship or enduring hopes: Danny goes on to become a psychiatrist refusing his inherited position of "tzaddik"; Reuven a rabbi.... The explanation, in fact exegesis, of Jewish culture and learning, of the special dedication of the Hasidic with its emphasis on mind and soul, is done in sufficiently facile form to engage one's interest and sentiment. The publishers however see a much wider audience for The Chosen. If they "rub their tzitzis for good luck,"—perhaps—although we doubt it.
Pub Date: April 28, 1967
ISBN: 0449911543
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: April 6, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1967
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