DSL May Read: Gwen's Pick
Drive Like Hell: A Novel by Dallas HudgensHere's the book I picked for May. I hope it's not too hard to get ahold of. Like I said, I don't know much about it but happened upon a description and the rumor that Mike Cooley thinks it's awesome, and that's all I needed to know.
From Booklist: "When Luke Fulmer was just 10 years old, his father--an amateur stock-car driver--taught him to drive, saying, "It's best to learn young." Luke turns 16 in 1979 and finally gets his much-anticipated driver's license, but he immediately steals his neighbor's car and smashes it, so the local magistrate suspends his license. His overwhelmed mother, Claudia, has had enough: her oldest son, Nick, is already a two-time felon. She decides to spend the summer elsewhere, and she sends Luke to live with his brother Nick, hoping he'll learn from Nick's mistakes. So begins an endless summer during which Luke works pit crew for a stock car driver, dates a kleptomaniac, meets Jack Nicklaus (the golfer), and retrieves a duffel bag of cocaine for his brother. He also does a lot of illegal driving and learns that there is nowhere in the world he feels more in control than behind the wheel of a car. It's a good thing, too, because young Luke must keep it together while his family, his girlfriend, and maybe even his future are all taking a dive."
posted by Gwen @ 3:22 PM
27 Comments:
Got it, and plan to read it on the plane during my red-eye to Pennsylvania tomorrow night.
If Cooley likes it, that's good enough for me. Now, if I ever meet this member of my "guilt-free three," we'll have something to talk about.
I found the website I came across that claims Cooley loves the book:
http://alabamaasswhuppin.blogspot.com/search/label/BT%20WIR
Be sure to scroll down to see the DBT/Jack Daniels NASCAR race car. Excellent!
Well, the link doesn't quite work--go to the February 23, 2007 archives and the post is there.
i like the book a lot. it pisses off my wife because i lay around reading and laughing.
poor white people sure are funny, huh?
i like how everything is just depicted as so ordinary. the brother is a drug addict drug dealer. the momma is a loose woman who ships her son off to live in a drug house while she goes to the beach with a man she only wants for his money. and yet it's funny and not Bastard out of Carolina tragic. it's not This Boy's Life. i guess it's all just how you see the world.
Oh, I'm glad you're liking it. I'm still waiting on my copy.
I'm still waiting on my copy to arrive...and just FYI, I'll not be as active as usual over the summer, what with limited internet access and all. I'll chime in when I can.
I finally got the book today. Mary, you haven't commented on it, which makes me nervous...
And in other bookclub-related experiences, while in Phoenix I went to a Pakistani restaurant and ate what they assured me was authentic Baltistan food.
Hmmm...I'm having an online conversation with myself at this point. I suspect by the end of the summer on the farm, I'll actually be talking to myself.
Anyway, I'm about halfway through the book (the librarian giggled a *lot* about the title when I picked it up... Utah). I'm not entirely won over by it, although at times I do enjoy it.
I really like the racing scene with Cash and Speedy in the middle of the book--the writing in that part didn't seem forced to me.
Other times, I don't quite buy the writing--not that it's awful, it just feels a little forced, like he's trying to name-check lots of '70s bands to make the book authentic, but it just comes off as a little gimmicky. I read on the back that it's his first novel, and I think you can see that--like, there's definitely promise there, but he needs a little more experience at how to fit details in smoothly so it doesn't look like a sentence exists just so he can mention a band or TV show. Or he needs a good editor to sort of shave off some of the over-the-top stuff, like the passage about Yuri telling Paul Newman to start his own salad dressing business--that felt a little too Forrest Gump-y to me, trying to create some little off-hand encounter that has later historical significance so you're all like "oooh!"
And when they're at the restaurant with Speedy and talking about Brute, the dog, Nick says something like "God himself would put that dog to sleep." Dude. It was 1980 in rural redneck Georgia. You KNOW he wouldn't have said "put to sleep." He would have said "shot." I know my country people, and I'm certain about this point. A small thing, I know, it just stuck out to me.
So I guess what I'm saying is, the book works best for me when he just tells the story of this kid and his love of racing, as opposed to when he's trying a little too hard to show that he *really, really* knows about '70s TV and stuff.
What do y'all think?
Also, I looked at his picture on the back, and he looks like that Chris Klein kid that Katie Holmes dated pre-Cruise insanity.
i liked the setup of the book a lot, but then it lost me when it kind of lapsed into a Dukes of Hazard episode. it just got too outlandish and stupid for me, too Smokey and the Bandit for me.
see, i can name drop 70's shows too.
i have to admit i enjoyed reading it poolside on a hot day at pismo beach, something i rarely do.
ps. i think his picture makes him look like a dumbass. i mean, the guy's almost 40. why's he dressing like a sk8er boy.
yes, i wrote, sk8er.
Gwen,
You're not having an online conversation with yourself. My copy hasn't arrived yet. Mary keeps singing the praises of the Denver Library system, but so far they haven't had a single book we've read and are getting slower and slower with getting them to me. Hope you enjoyed the Pakastani food.
Well, I finished the book, and overall I found it acceptable, but disappointing considering how good it *could* have been. I mean, you've got the elements there of a fantastic Southern novel--a love of cars, an alcoholic mom, a super-problematic but nonetheless lovable dad, etc. I guess my hopes for it were too high, maybe.
I hadn't really been able to look at the front cover b/c it's covered up by the interlibrary loan form, but I saw a Chevelle in the Wal-Mart parking lot the other day--not a Super Sport, a Malibu--and I have to say, certain passages in the book that describe driving a Chevelle made a lot more sense when I realized the car my mom used to drive when I was a kid was a ChevETTE, and that the car in the book was a whole different animal. I had been really confused by the descriptions of the car as really powerful and fast, which just didn't fit with what I remembered about our old car at all.
And yeah, I don't get the author's picture either--is he just trying too hard to look semi-delinquent or something, to make up for having a respectable job at the Washington Post or whatever?
I did feel like the book was sort of a literary account of the DBT's songs "Never Gonna Change" and "Daddy's Cup," though. I wonder if Cooley really likes it.
So overall, I guess I'd stick with my earlier evaluation--if the guy had an editor who would push him a little more to get rid of some of the trying-to-be-clever stuff and to instead focus on his STORY, the book would be a lot better.
I'm about 50 pages in right now, and am having the same reaction as Gwen. It's a good book, and it's funny, and I like the characters, but I wonder, does it have to be so long?
I mean, the book has, like, no margins.
There's a saying that when you write you have to "kill your darlings," and I don't think ole Dallas was too diligent about that. But I press onward.
I did like the ending well enough, in that it seemed like everything was going to be all figured out and tied up neatly with a little bow, which was understandable in that books often end that way, but then things DON'T get all figured out and they're not all happy and redeemed. I liked that his mom's life isn't suddenly all transformed and her problems overcome--if anything, she seems to be heading down a long, bad road. And that seemed a lot more realistic to me.
And his girlfriend is a nutcase.
i'm about 30 pages from the end and can't seem to get interested enough to finish it.
that drug-chase sub-plot bores me to no end.
i just like when he writes about regular life w/o all the gbi fbi crap.
such a promising opening . . .
is the ending worth pushing on, or does someone just want to tell me what's up?
i'm gonna dress like that from now on too, looking all hat pulled down and stuff
dust
what's the next book? i like to order them ahead of time.
i've really gotten into reading again lately after a two-year hiatus.
i'm reading all Kaye Gibbons books. and I'm reading 3 biographies of Faulkner, plus I'm brushing up on Faulkner's own stuff too.
I used to be like this, love reading, before I got my MFA in writing. I'm glad it's back.
Yeah, I thought the drug sub-plot was a bit much, too. Maybe just read the last 4 or 5 pages. Or when Karen and Mary are done, I can tell you the ending.
I just kept thinking, if you could cut out all the crap and just tell the story of this kid who loves cars and pot and is surrounded by people who make bad choices but aren't totally irredeemable, it'd be a great book. It's like he was trying to make it more than it was, which was a perfectly good tale of some crazy folks, so he had to throw in stuff to give it a Plot-with-a-capital-P.
It did give me ideas of pitfalls to avoid when I try to write a book (which I'm supposedly going to start working on ANY DAY NOW).
Who has the next pick? I also like to have a little lead time, since it takes a while to get books in rural Utah.
i used to live in Utah. for three years. i was in salt lake,and really got into skiing and backpacking and whatnot. it was a good time. what part are you in?
(2) i'm a writer. novels. stories, the works. i just won 3rd prize in the penknife fiction contest and was finalist in the zoetrope contest too. i hope to win some more contests. i like bragging too.
what are you writing about? i'm very interested.
i got my m.f.a. too, which might have been a big mistake.
any questions -- just ask me
dusty.whales@gmail.com
"I just kept thinking, if you could cut out all the crap and just tell the story of this kid who loves cars and pot and is surrounded by people who make bad choices but aren't totally irredeemable, it'd be a great book."
Sigh. That sounds like the kind of book Larry Brown would have written. It would have been awesome.
Whose turn is it to pick a book next?
After me it was Brady's pick last time, but he seems to have dropped out...So then it would be your pick again, I think, Mary.
I'm in Cedar City, down in the southwest corner. Near enough to Colorado City to see polygamists pretty frequently.
I think I'm going to write a fictional account with a character based on my crazy grandpa--the one-legged former heroin-addict, convict, alcoholic, compulsive liar who once lost my grandma's horse in a bet. You know: a good Southern scoundrel who should be completely hateful and who has no clear redeeming qualities except that he's less hypocritical and judgmental than the uptight people around him.
We'll see how it goes.
Oh, and obviously, congrats on the award, Dusty!
Just perfect...I'm the only non-writer in the group! Supposedly, I'm very good at it...but I think I'm just good at writing grants and editing. My one attempt to write a story in college was a disaster. Just ask Mairs!
If you are referring to me as a writer, you are VERY optimistic. I WANT TO WRITE a novel. I think about it at night. I imagine possible plotlines. I have not yet written a single word.
You might as well call me a millionaire because I have $15 in my wallet.
So I'd say we're about equal, Kar.
oh, writing is compulsive, like biting your nails. but then again, lots of my favorite writers started late in life.
robertson davies --age 65.
larry brown --age 30
frank McCourt (he's okay) --he started in his 50's i think.
if any of you do write, i'd love to see some of it. i know hardly anything about grammar but i can fix a story like fixing a flat tire.
what's the next book then?
i give lots of bad advice to writers on somalit.com. bad advice is my specialty
dust
Since he was mentioned twice in the comments, I picked up a Larry Brown book yesterday ("Joe). Hope it's good.
One thing I was thinking about "Drive Like Hell" is that he sort of brings up the way that non-Southerners (in the form of his girlfriend) think it's funny to talk with an accent, and Luke suspects at some points she may be dating him just because he fits the stereotype of the delinquent Southern rabble-rouser. But he doesn't explore that at all. I really wish he would have, the idea of the Southern redneck as a romantic character other people like to go slumming with...briefly, before they run back to their gated communities and the Eddie Bauer store.
So, I'm about halfway through. I think I may be in the minority here, but I don't like how the book makes you pull for the delinquent.
This is a pet peave of mine, and one that I've had with other popular books/movies like Shawshank Redemption (which I love, don't get me wrong).
When you read the story, you can't help but pull for Nick, Luke, Rachel, Speedy, Cash, Rachel etc. But let's face it, these are not characters we should be pulling for. Yes, deep down they are all good people, but they still steal, run cocaine, almost kill people on several occassions, talk about droping out of high school.
Being a good person doesn't make up for poor choices and I dislike it when a contrary message is portrayed like it is in Drive Like Hell.
I'll step off my soap box now.
I'm sorry to have been a bad book club participant this month, but I just couldn't get into the book, and there was this big stack of review copies laying around that I was really excited about, and I figured that if I forced myself to read Drive Like Hell instead, I'd just wind up liking it less.
So embarassingly, this is the first book club book I haven't finished. But I also kind of believe in the Nancy Pearl rule of 50 - give a book a chance for 50 pages, then don't beat yourself up.
I think this is one of those titles that had lots going for it - good reviews, endorsements, good characters, intriguing set-up, and then somehow, still just didn't work. For me, anyways.
I'll pick something for next month, and will post it in the next day or so.
Meh. Sometimes I book seems like it'll be great, and then it just isn't, for whatever reason. Ah well. I'm reading "Joe," and one character in there mentions an SS Chevelle. Now THAT'S a good book. His characters are scoundrels, but Larry Brown doesn't necessarily try to make them loveable (so I think you'd like it better, Karen). I mean, I'm only halfway through, but so far I haven't gotten any sense that I'm supposed to particularly LIKE Joe, and there certainly aren't any redeeming qualities in Gary's alcoholic dad.
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