Night Train Donald O'Donovan 9780615722832 Books
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Jerzy Mulvaney, jack of all trades and master of none, lives by wits and nerve, alone and broke on the streets of LA, bumming booze and meals where he can, befriending the friendless, bolstering the downtrodden and hoping, finally, for a miracle that will justify a life lived on the fringe for the sake of art never accomplished. But will such a miracle present itself? Will his memories of the mysterious Tarantula Woman somehow materialize on the printed page? Will his stories of the road somehow yield the depth and wisdom he has sought through an unorthodox and adventurous lifetime? Will the illusive Night Train, its whistle ever distant yet beckoning like a siren, arrive in time to carry him to a better life and the fulfillment of a lost dream? If indeed it does, it will be just in time for Jerzy Mulvaney.
Night Train Donald O'Donovan 9780615722832 Books
This is an excerpt from my review at Dear Dirty America:Night Train is a brutal, yet humorous testimony to the least understood among us. O’Donovan’s experience comes firsthand and details the lives of men and women not found in most other novels. Instead, it showcases a vast parade of unique, exuberant characters trudging through the underbelly of the Great American Beast.
There’s Jack, the chronic liar with delusions of grandeur, who’s successfully dug out a series of tunnels beneath an abandoned building, which eventually houses vagabonds, bums, and even a family thrown into the street due to financial hardship.
And then there’s aging Corliss, a rich, lonely dame from Brentwood who takes in the impoverished narrator, Jerzey Mulvaney, and puts him up in her pool shed, except he starts to realize he’s expected to “shtup her off”, and he can’t do it because he can’t bear that her “…hands were fish-belly white and they were speckled with brown spots” (55).
These characters are only the beginning of the cast Mulvaney meets throughout his voyage of odd jobs and strange bedfellows.
Night Train’s themes are not always pleasant ones, but they are more agreeable particularly because of the inspiring strength and good nature of the narrator. Aptly fitting the novel’s microscopic gaze of the medieval squalor on the grimy streets of the Kingdom of Los Angeles, Mulvaney likens his existence in Big Bluto’s sweatshop, as well as his underpaid band of ragged coworkers, to that of intestinal parasites in the guts of a bustling society where big capitalists and wealthy property owners are the slumlords, and everyone else must be constantly working and sweating for their daily bread.
“We’re the parasites, aren’t we? We’re the hookworms, the tapeworms, the liver flukes and the pinworms. We’re everywhere now, there’s no escaping us. March us off to war, starve us out, banish us to the streets, a million more spring up” (32), he thinks.
There’s not a better novel or American novelist who depicts with enduring clarity the confused, bright, leering, dirty faces of the millions of beleaguered opportunists in this country, both rich and poor, some with good intentions, and others who would slit another’s throat for a nickel.
Night Train is very funny, but sobering and unsuspectingly heartbreaking, too. The narrator is so pleasant and amiable throughout his dealings with the good and bad folks he finds on the streets, that often the wretchedness and misery of poverty, addiction, and superficial emptiness plaguing the characters aren’t pondered upon until many moments later, when O’Donovan’s musical language and lurid descriptions finally settle in the psyche and, all at once, the depth of despair is realized.
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Night Train Donald O'Donovan 9780615722832 Books Reviews
Really puts you there! A unique writer... a bit on the tart and bawdy side. Boring? No way! Have read his "Tarantula Woman" twice and made me a fan! Looking for more of his expression to come out!
One of those rare gems I was fortunate to find, it's both suspense and humor. I recommend it! Looking for more.
Jerzy lives on the streets of L.A., taking dozens of low-level, dead-end jobs, hooking up with one person or group after another, of varying adaptability and resourcefulness--in danger, squalor, hunger. His lack of exclusivity provides him with opportunities to earn money, for shelter, sex, food, drink--without losing his hearty appetite.
"Suddenly the place was crawling with cops.... I dived into a bush. It was dark in there. The foliage was amazingly thick.... A man was crouching...filthy...munching a baguette. Without a word he broke the baguette in two and solemnly handed me half.... His fingers were black, shiny with ground-in dirt, but I was hungry and the bread was good. I grabbed his hand and thanked him. He grimaced and pointed to his mouth. Apparently, the man was a deaf mute.... His bedroll was on the ground along with some sheets of cardboard and empty cans. He'd made a little place for himself inside that bush...."
"You have to listen to your parents," one pal says. "Then the bastards pack you off to school, and the lousy teachers are standing over you.... Next comes the Army.... If you're lucky enough to come away...with your arms and legs intact...it's the boss.... By this time...you know how to...say yes when you mean no. Then you get married, and the wife starts...."
"I was filled with such joy!" another says. "Tears were streaming down my face. My life had completely gone in the toilet, but I was alive, walking around, breathing, eating, digesting, blood circulating.... It was all gone; the guilt, the burden of failure, all of it...."
O'Donovan is a full-fledged great American novelist.
This is an excerpt from my review at Dear Dirty America
Night Train is a brutal, yet humorous testimony to the least understood among us. O’Donovan’s experience comes firsthand and details the lives of men and women not found in most other novels. Instead, it showcases a vast parade of unique, exuberant characters trudging through the underbelly of the Great American Beast.
There’s Jack, the chronic liar with delusions of grandeur, who’s successfully dug out a series of tunnels beneath an abandoned building, which eventually houses vagabonds, bums, and even a family thrown into the street due to financial hardship.
And then there’s aging Corliss, a rich, lonely dame from Brentwood who takes in the impoverished narrator, Jerzey Mulvaney, and puts him up in her pool shed, except he starts to realize he’s expected to “shtup her off”, and he can’t do it because he can’t bear that her “…hands were fish-belly white and they were speckled with brown spots” (55).
These characters are only the beginning of the cast Mulvaney meets throughout his voyage of odd jobs and strange bedfellows.
Night Train’s themes are not always pleasant ones, but they are more agreeable particularly because of the inspiring strength and good nature of the narrator. Aptly fitting the novel’s microscopic gaze of the medieval squalor on the grimy streets of the Kingdom of Los Angeles, Mulvaney likens his existence in Big Bluto’s sweatshop, as well as his underpaid band of ragged coworkers, to that of intestinal parasites in the guts of a bustling society where big capitalists and wealthy property owners are the slumlords, and everyone else must be constantly working and sweating for their daily bread.
“We’re the parasites, aren’t we? We’re the hookworms, the tapeworms, the liver flukes and the pinworms. We’re everywhere now, there’s no escaping us. March us off to war, starve us out, banish us to the streets, a million more spring up” (32), he thinks.
There’s not a better novel or American novelist who depicts with enduring clarity the confused, bright, leering, dirty faces of the millions of beleaguered opportunists in this country, both rich and poor, some with good intentions, and others who would slit another’s throat for a nickel.
Night Train is very funny, but sobering and unsuspectingly heartbreaking, too. The narrator is so pleasant and amiable throughout his dealings with the good and bad folks he finds on the streets, that often the wretchedness and misery of poverty, addiction, and superficial emptiness plaguing the characters aren’t pondered upon until many moments later, when O’Donovan’s musical language and lurid descriptions finally settle in the psyche and, all at once, the depth of despair is realized.
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