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Lucky Man
by Ben Tanzer (Goodreads author!)

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<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/133728.Lucky_Man?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="Lucky Man" border="0" src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/photo.goodreads.com/books/1172027687m/133728.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/133728.Lucky_Man?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">Lucky Man</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/77161.Ben_Tanzer">Ben Tanzer</a> 
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/9782327?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a>
 rating: 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 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...
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/147289?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>

Jason's review
rating:

(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 mistak...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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