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Lucky Man

by Ben Tanzer (Goodreads Author)

4.27 of 5 stars 4.27 · rating details · 45 ratings · 16 reviews

Lucky Man is a quintessentially American tale about friendship, growing-up, moving-on, and whether or not it takes luck to do so. It is also about sex, drugs, death, and road trips, not to mention the profound insights provided by the Twilight Zone, the Grateful Dead, and The Greatest American Hero.

Paperback, 220 pages

Published March 15th 2007 by Manx Media

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Feb 05, 2008 Kelly Moran rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: my-reviews

I just finished reading/reviewing this book for the author, Ben. Findings are below...
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In this book, Lucky Man, by Ben Tanzer, I found many grammatical errors, such as commas needed in several places and words missing to complete phrases, such as the/and/a. I found misspellings and words used out of context, such as their/there, and anyways/ any way. At times the language can be abusive, but given the situation and the characters I don’t feel it takes away from the story. In my...more

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Jul 27, 2007 Don rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: novels

A really fast-paced read, and character-driven, which I like. I've been sort of lucky, myself. This is only the fifth novel I've read in four years (the rest being story collections, mostly), and it was a decent read.

Was a little thrown by the ending, but it's my own fault, not the author's (I met him at the reading he had in town, here). When you've been reading stuff like the anthologies Interfictions and Paraspheres , your mind expands into weird places, much like some of the characters in...more

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Mar 19, 2008 Gerald rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: fans of fratire

To the extent that Lucky Man is a first-person narrative about young men coming of age, you could say it’s fratire. But this is damned serious stuff, making the book much more ambitious, I think, than some of the other puke-on-my-own-shoes books in that genre.

This is, as the reader will guess soon enough, a last-man-standing story. In the end, the question is, “What’s it all mean?” Tanzer gives no clue, but I do give him a great deal of credit for at least raising the question.

A longer review is...more

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Jul 27, 2009 Brandon Will rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, chicago-authors

God damn this book is good! It takes a few short chapters to get used to the format (which is confusing at first, switching P.O.V.s without saying who's who when you're still trying to figure out who's who and whom's whom and where they are and what's going on), but if you give it that much, you'll be wrapped up in no time.

The story moves fast. Huge events happen, little moments happen, all the while it keeps moving forward, rolling along, like the neverending calendar-page-flips of life itself,...more God damn this book is good! It takes a few short chapters to get used to the format (which is confusing at first, switching P.O.V.s without saying who's who when you're still trying to figure out who's who and whom's whom and where they are and what's going on), but if you give it that much, you'll be wrapped up in no time.

The story moves fast. Huge events happen, little moments happen, all the while it keeps moving forward, rolling along, like the neverending calendar-page-flips of life itself, which is I think what the book is about. It's about friends growing up, and growing apart, and having to live in themselves in the day which contains all the days you've had to live through before. The rolling pace makes it feel almost like the cliff's notes to the saga of a group of friends' dissolving ties. Which is really kind of depressing, in a "The Adventures of Milo and Otis" kind of way. That movie really depressed the hell out of me when I was a kid, going around compressing the whole journey of life (birth-childhood-friendships-adolescence-love-coupling-copulating-birthing-growing old) into eighty minutes narrated by the great Dudley Moore.

So basically, Dudley Moore can tell you every major stage of your life through an allegory with dogs in eighty minutes, and Ben Tanzer can map out for you the disconnect that happens in so many groups of friends with archetypes that are actually real characters in 220 pages. Life is simple, and that's depressing.

But also kind of beautiful in it's reassurance for the things we do that we wish we could re-do, the things that we did't know how to do that we had to, and on and on and on. The lessons we had to learn, and now have to live with. It captures that late-teens-into-twenties-what-the-fuck-is-going-on-here-people-paradigm-shift that we all have to claw through.

What ads to the bigger-than-itself feeling of the book is how we don't ever really get to know many specific details about the setting. But we sense it: small town, maybe a 'burb - but it could be many settings.

Each character, even the ones who aren't as naturally introspective, are respected and given their due. You like 'em all, you feel for 'em all. You feel like you know them all intimately.

As for the actual printing - there are some typos, but I mean, really - it's a small press book. These things happen, and it's not like we can't figure out when "their" should be "there". We're grown-ups, after all. Yeah, it would be better if those typos weren't there, but they are, and the book is what it is, and it's pretty damn good! Plus, I'd give Manx Media extra props for the cover art, which is so often sadly lackluster on small press books, but here is fantastic and sums up the feel of the book before you even know what it is.

So, this is a pretty great book about friends sitting by as each other drown in the depths of despair and die in one way or another one by one, too afraid too acknowledge what they need before it's too late. It's about how unspoken care and love lead to doubts and rifts and frustration and fights and really we all just want and need to be told that we're appreciated by our friends, but at the same time often we're afraid to tell people we appreciate them, maybe because we're afraid they don't feel the same way and that we're weird or something, or that they do but they won't say it like we almost didn't - and how that can lead to bad things and it can get really sad and fucked up when people are changing but still have those ties to what they were.

So one thing I took out of this book is that you just have to say when you appreciate things, old friends and new friends alike. The book inspired me to call up an old friend who needed a call - a call I'd been putting off.

Lucky Man, I appreciate you :)(less)

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May 09, 2013 David rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

It's suddenly amusing me that I'm trying to wrap my head around a book centering on the lives of four guys who epitomize how we spend our entire lives hopelessly trying to wrap our heads around what the heck we're doing and what our lives mean. Regardless, I dug this book. I dug the characters, the interrelation both between them and their internal problems, and the way that this was manifested in the structure of the book. There are some absolutely stunning moments, at least partially from how...more

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Oct 09, 2008 Ginnetta rated it 5 of 5 stars

I was drawn in and became captivated. The drug trips were vivid to my imagination as was the escapism.
Update:
I changed my mind and gave this book 5 stars instead of
4 stars. From now on. In my world every writer gets 5 stars and poops Pulitzers.

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Oct 01, 2010 Beth A rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: all good readers!

Ok, Ben, FINALLY!!!!! A+...last chapter, A+++

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Oct 23, 2008 Maria rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: everyone

This is a book about four friends, Gabe, Jake, Louie and Sammy, following their last years in school/college; however, it is not only a book for teenagers. I think everyone, young and old, will enjoy reading this book. It is a book about growing up, relationships, family problems and teenage social behaviour. The writing style is unconventional - there are no quotation marks used to signify speech, which first seems very unusual, but once you get used to it, doesn't seem that bad. Each chapter i...more

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Aug 27, 2008 Ken rated it 4 of 5 stars

Full disclosure: I know Ben Tanzer (although we’ve yet to meet in person) and will actually be reading with him at Freebird Books in Brooklyn, NY on September 28. (http://www.kenwohlrob.com/2008/08/mar...)

Some books have a way of winning you over. I remember the first time I picked up John Fante’s Wait Until Spring, Bandini. It was not Ask the Dust. When the former was written, the author had not developed into the great teacher of Bukowski that can be found in the latter. And yet, as I delved d...more Full disclosure: I know Ben Tanzer (although we’ve yet to meet in person) and will actually be reading with him at Freebird Books in Brooklyn, NY on September 28. (http://www.kenwohlrob.com/2008/08/mar...)

Some books have a way of winning you over. I remember the first time I picked up John Fante’s Wait Until Spring, Bandini. It was not Ask the Dust. When the former was written, the author had not developed into the great teacher of Bukowski that can be found in the latter. And yet, as I delved deeper and deeper into Wait Until Spring, Bandini, my perception of the novel changed. While the book is not a definitive example of Fante’s greatness as a writer (Ask the Dust is his most memorable book for a reason), it has great heart, it has soul. The scene of Bandini’s mother and father laying in bed together in the first chapter just about made me weep. It was a beautiful piece of writing. I was won over.

Ben Tanzer’s Lucky Man also won me over. Perhaps because the book starts so unsuspectingly, providing no grand opening or sudden launch into the action. It starts with a conversation — between the four main characters and the reader who serves as an impromptu listener of their life stories. But I think there is a simpler answer. There isn’t an ounce of pretense in Tanzer’s writing, something lacking among a lot of my peers. You never get the sense that Tanzer is trying too hard to convince you of his writing skill. His dialogue fits his characters. The situations always feel real. All of this helps the reader settle in and go along with what at first seems like a standard coming-of-age story.

Once the book gets moving however, the story takes flight (as do the characters). Lucky Man reads like a 220-page long prose poem, told by the four main characters who speak directly to the reader in present tense. One often feels like they’re reading transcripts of reality show confessionals strung together. This is even taken to an absurd pretense when one of the characters has an unfortunate incident. But it is also the four perspectives of Sammy, Louie, Jake and Gabe that deliver a great sense of seeing the world of Lucky Man from all sides, or rather all camera angles. Along the way, there is a lot of humor and a ton of sadness. But Tanzer never uses the breakups, suicides, adultery, car crashes, drug abuse, or sudden death as cheap thrills. This is life in all its grimness.

Ultimately, the title is a grand joke. And that is what really won me over in the end. Lucky Man can be dark. And anyone who has read my work knows I have a penchant for the dark and strange and cynical. But the last page of Lucky Man nicely turns a dark, cynical outlook into a great punch line.
(less)

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Nov 30, 2007 Jason Pettus rated it 4 of 5 stars

(My full review of this book is larger than GoodReads' word-count limitations. Find the entire essay at the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. IMPORTANT DISCLOSURE: Some of Tanzer's newest work is currently being considered for CCLaP's upcoming publishing program, which starts in spring 2008. The person ultimately making the decision is the same person who wrote today's review.)

As regular readers know, it can be a real crap shoot with me sometimes when it comes to t...more (My full review of this book is larger than GoodReads' word-count limitations. Find the entire essay at the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. IMPORTANT DISCLOSURE: Some of Tanzer's newest work is currently being considered for CCLaP's upcoming publishing program, which starts in spring 2008. The person ultimately making the decision is the same person who wrote today's review.)

As regular readers know, it can be a real crap shoot with me sometimes when it comes to the subject of deliberately flawed characters, and especially when it comes to such characters making the same mistakes over and over; see, for example, my much-hated scathing pan of Darren Aronofsky's usually much-loved Requiem for a Dream, which in my case just rubbed me the wrong f--king way. It's not that I don't like flawed characters, because I do in certain cases; and it's not like I deliberately hate all creative projects where such characters make the same mistakes over and over, because I understand that that is part of most humans' nature and can sometimes make for great narrative stories. But I'm also just one of those people who personally can't stand most "weak" people out in the real world, or at least let's put it here as "people who let their vices control them, not the other way around;" I guess what really determines what I think about creative projects on the subject depends ultimately on that particular artist's skill level. As fans of these types of stories can tell you, the right tale of the right deeply flawed person can be a heartbreaking, breathtaking experience, a deep and profound look at what it really means to be human; the wrong look at the subject, though, I think can feel like a clawing chore as an audience member, a dreary job that that artist thinks they have the right to "put you through," not an elevating experience that you voluntarily want to be a part of.

And that brings us to Lucky Man, a striking coming-of-age tale that is also the first novel by Chicago author Ben Tanzer, and on top of that is the very first book by new basement press Manx Media. And I'm happy to report that the novel falls into the first camp of flawed-character stories when it comes to what I was saying above; that I ended up enjoying the story and its deeply screwed-up characters quite immensely, precisely because of Tanzer's deft personal style and of the brutal minimalism used to tell its Larry-Clark-style story. It is an unflinching look at the late teens and early twenties of the typical American male, a sometimes horrid stare into the maw of cruelty that can exist between such people in such a milieu; but it is also a survey of the American casual drug scene from the early '80s to the millennium, told in the order that so many Midwestern rural males actually experience it, from beer and weed in high school to acid and ecstasy at the state college, to cocaine and crack after school when the crushing reality of grown-up redneck life comes crashing around them. As someone who grew up in a rural area of Missouri myself, I can attest that Lucky Man spoke deeply to me, in a true voice that mirrors many of my own experiences from the years being discussed here; I mean, granted, it's an exclusive look at the bad side of such experiences, a bleak cautionary tale that is much more Sam Shepard than Garrison Keilor, but as long as you're up for a dark story that relies on a white-trash setting for its flavor, this is a pretty great tale indeed.

Told as a series of first-person reminisces...(less)

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Aug 11, 2008 Ross rated it 2 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Oct 03, 2008 Jason Jordan rated it 4 of 5 stars

Structurally similar to Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, or Dills’s Sons of the Rapture contemporarily speaking, Ben Tanzer’s debut novel Lucky Man (Manx Media, 2007) splits the narration among the four chief characters, who are otherwise known as Gabe, Jake, Louie, and Sammy. And as the back of the book aptly puts it, “Lucky Man follows four friends from their final days of high school through their first couple of years out of college. Each has personal demons they are battling – anger, substance ab...more

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Feb 11, 2008 S. added it

It is funny, but also sad and strange and surprising and many other engaging ‘S’ words. I was especially impressed by his range of emotion and for his clever plotting. As the novel went from coming-of-age to On the Road-like road trip, I was happy to bum along, expecting it to end in the requisite literary epiphany, but I was excited by the deft turn in the book’s conclusion. Lucky Man makes me eager for more from Tanzer.

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Mar 15, 2012 Ben rated it 5 of 5 stars · (Review from the author) · review of another edition

It most definitely changed my life.

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Nov 29, 2008 Rusty rated it 4 of 5 stars

Yeah, so this has only taken me months to review(I don't really know how long (Sorry Ben!). This is a very slick debut. I'd call it a coming-of-age novel, but it's more complex than that. I found all the relationships (esp the father/son dynamic) to be right on target. Some layout issues and typos make the book feel less than professional sometimes, and that's too bad: this book deserves better.

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Sep 07, 2009 Ben rated it 5 of 5 stars · (Review from the author)

It changed my life.

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Jun 03, 2013 Sam marked it as to-read

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May 10, 2013 Kimberly marked it as to-read · review of another edition

Apr 23, 2013 Civil Mechanisms rated it 5 of 5 stars

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Feb 22, 2013 Joseph Michael marked it as to-read

Feb 08, 2013 Barry marked it as to-read · review of another edition

Jan 25, 2013 Russ marked it as to-read

Jan 12, 2013 Joey Pizzolato marked it as to-read

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Dec 09, 2012 Cassandra Gillig rated it 5 of 5 stars

Nov 19, 2012 Black Coffee Press marked it as to-read · review of another edition

Oct 18, 2012 Matt Gardner marked it as to-read

Jul 10, 2012 Ariane marked it as to-read

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About Ben Tanzer

I am the author of the books My Father's House, You Can Make Him Like You, So Different Now and the forthcoming Orphans and Lost in Space, among others. I also oversee day to day operations of This Zine Will Change Your Life and I can be found online at This Blog Will Change Your Life the center of my growing lifestyle empire.

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