East Bay Grease (Audible Audio Edition) Eric Miles Williamson Johnny Heller Recorded Books Books
Download As PDF : East Bay Grease (Audible Audio Edition) Eric Miles Williamson Johnny Heller Recorded Books Books
Eric Miles Williamson has collected glowing critical praise for this novel, which Newsday hailed as "exceptional" and "a remarkable literary debut". East Bay Grease is an authentic look at surviving an impoverished and neglected childhood by whatever means necessary.
In late 1960s Oakland, young T-Bird Murphy's life is more miserable and frightening than most kids can imagine. His mother spends her time with the local Hell's Angels, drenched in alcohol and drugs. His father is a volatile ex-con. Struggling in a community plagued by gang violence and racial feuding, T-Bird picks up a trumpet and finds solace in the soulful wailing of jazz music.
This powerful novel pulls no punches, offering a rare glimpse into a world typically ignored. Narrator Johnny Heller beautifully captures the transformation of T-Bird from a scared kid into a confident, trumpet-blowing young man.
East Bay Grease (Audible Audio Edition) Eric Miles Williamson Johnny Heller Recorded Books Books
I found this novel exhilarating. T-Bird Murphy is the fat smart kid without a father in a dangerous neighborhood, with an abusive mother who eventually abandons him. His first job is to learn to survive in a situation in which he's often got no food, the power to his home is cut off, and gang members are preying on him daily.He learns to fight back against the people who are victimizing him and stop the physical torment, but the victory is emotionally and morally complicated, and ultimately teaches him empathy. He grows further in his understanding of people and the world around him as he starts to become an artist--a trumpet player in a Mexican band.
Williamson borrows from Joyce's Dubliners and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in depicting the world and events of the novel from the perspective of T-Bird's own changing level of emotional and intellectual maturity. Some reviewers here have mentioned that in parts of the novel, the emotional reaction to tragedy seems muted or absent--I believe what they're missing is that Williamson is filtering the experience through young T-Bird's head. A 10 or 12-year-old poor kid in a violent neighborhood tends not to react to events with poetry. Instead, T-Bird's emotional reactions to events often come out as subsequent action. I found it a real treat to be trusted to get into this character's head this way.
As T-Bird grows, Williamson's language changes and develops into full-out poetry, at the same time as T-Bird's emotional reactions get more direct and his understanding of the world matures and gains complexity. The novel ends with an homage to Joyce's story The Dead, in a scene in which T-Bird achieves transcendence over the negative forces around him. It's a beautiful riff on another artist's work for the purpose of a completely different kind of effect.
When I closed the book, I felt blown away.
This is one of those books that reveals more on every reading. I recommend it highly.
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East Bay Grease (Audible Audio Edition) Eric Miles Williamson Johnny Heller Recorded Books Books Reviews
I read East Bay Grease with growing admiration for the language, courage and honesty. By the time I finished the book, I had tremendous respect for the writer. That he lived through the world he describes is a triumph. That he subsequently wrote such an eloquent novel is a testament to the power of art, and to Mr. Williamson as an artist.
"Like a pearl is formed from a grain of sand, Eric Miles Williamson's kernel of truth about life in the underenvirons of California becomes a gem of a novel. In East Bay Grease, his words are a parallel to the oyster with each rasp and grind of the raw truth until they become a rich, emotionally impacted masterpiece, one that can't be put down. I congratulate my son for he, indeed, is an inspired writer."
To sit down with this book is to stay seated with this book until you are finished with this book. Talk about compelling narrative. This writer does not show off his writing technique, does not aim for literary accolades, yet his narrative IS literature. His writing is breathtaking and brave. Direct and painfully honest. LOVE THIS BOOK. Can't wait to send it to a friend. One of those, "You gotta read this," kind of books. (Not for the faint of heart however.)
I read this book several years ago, but it is still sitting in my bookshelf, along with the classics and the forgotten/unknown classics that I like to surround myself with. Williamson's gritty tale of a poor white kid trying to survive the daily torments of his condition and upbringing leaves you breathless as you run along with him, hoping for escape or at least a temporary hiding place. But T-Bird Murphy, our protagonist, has a couple of cards up his sleeve a talent for the trumpet and, more importantly, a pretty good brain in his head. Life is often hard for so many kids that grow up in the manner in which Murphy does, but to the author's credit, the boy survives on his talent and wit to eventually triumph in some small way, which is sometimes all we can do.
Coming-of-age novels tend to be highly autobiographical, and true to form, Williamson's own youth provides much of the fodder for this novel set in late '60s to mid '70s Oakland. The story starts with adolescent T-Bird living with his Hell's Angels-groupie mother in a ramshackle house in a largely Latino blue-collar part of Oakland. T-Bird's life consists of trying to get by in elementary school while avoiding the tough black and Mexican kids who prey on him daily. These years are lonely ones, sprinkled with a few touches of humor and compassion. Especially memorable is his friendship with Hiro, a Japanese-American nerd in his class who he plays chess and collect baseball cards with.
The second part of book begins with his father's parole from prison, and his mother's abandonment. T-Bird and his father move to a trailer next to the gas station where his father works, and his two brothers come from foster homes to live with him. T-Bird starts to follow in his father's trumpeting footsteps as well, playing in the school jazz band. While he enjoys more of a family life, his father's bigotry also starts to warp T-Bird's world. A conflict with a local family of Latinos escalates into a deadly vendetta that is handled with odd detachment.
Eventually T-Bird gets work as a trumpeter in "Los Assassinos" a local Mexican band that takes him into the Latino world of Northern California. He then finishes school and moves on to a series of manual jobs, as a gunite (concrete blown at high speed) man and a demolitionist. All of these vocations are treated with the level of detail that only an insider can provide. In that sense, the book is a great insight into blue-collar life. However, the book suffers from a curiously detached approach to tragedy. Perhaps this is because the storyline is too close to Williamson's own life, and thus too tough for him to write about, but whatever the reason, the book suffers somewhat for it. On the whole, it's not exactly inspirational or uplifting, but it is a whole lot more real than most coming-of-age novels.
I found this novel exhilarating. T-Bird Murphy is the fat smart kid without a father in a dangerous neighborhood, with an abusive mother who eventually abandons him. His first job is to learn to survive in a situation in which he's often got no food, the power to his home is cut off, and gang members are preying on him daily.
He learns to fight back against the people who are victimizing him and stop the physical torment, but the victory is emotionally and morally complicated, and ultimately teaches him empathy. He grows further in his understanding of people and the world around him as he starts to become an artist--a trumpet player in a Mexican band.
Williamson borrows from Joyce's Dubliners and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in depicting the world and events of the novel from the perspective of T-Bird's own changing level of emotional and intellectual maturity. Some reviewers here have mentioned that in parts of the novel, the emotional reaction to tragedy seems muted or absent--I believe what they're missing is that Williamson is filtering the experience through young T-Bird's head. A 10 or 12-year-old poor kid in a violent neighborhood tends not to react to events with poetry. Instead, T-Bird's emotional reactions to events often come out as subsequent action. I found it a real treat to be trusted to get into this character's head this way.
As T-Bird grows, Williamson's language changes and develops into full-out poetry, at the same time as T-Bird's emotional reactions get more direct and his understanding of the world matures and gains complexity. The novel ends with an homage to Joyce's story The Dead, in a scene in which T-Bird achieves transcendence over the negative forces around him. It's a beautiful riff on another artist's work for the purpose of a completely different kind of effect.
When I closed the book, I felt blown away.
This is one of those books that reveals more on every reading. I recommend it highly.
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