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Slam
Released from prison after serving a sentence for tax evasion, Dave finds a job as a caretaker for a luxurious beach house, only to have his life transformed by his discovery of the joys of skateboarding and by the arrival of Terrell, an old friend and prison escapee
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First published January 1, 1990
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Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews
September 24, 2019
I enjoy Shiner's writing style very much. The subject matter however, was just too cringey.
Had to stop.
Had to stop.
July 14, 2016
Picked this up as part of an 8 for a dollar sale at the Friends of the Library bookstore. It got many rave reviews when was published in 1990. Twenty-six years later, it has not aged well. Dave could have been a poster-child for the "Failure to Launch" 39-going-on-40 slacker, except that he's not living in his parents' basement. It started well but quickly turned stupid, immature and tiresome. I'm probably giving it 2 stars instead of one just because of all the positive reviews when it first came out.
January 9, 2010
Is it possible to give a book less than one? I'm sorry, but I couldn't help but see this as male drivel. Gee, cry for me because I want to do whatever I want but "the man" won't let me! Boohoo! I'm going to rebel by going to jail and sleeping with emotionally volatile 18-year-olds and running away. I'm so special.
Please.
Please.
January 9, 2013
I first Read Slam in the early 90s and it made a huge impression on me. Still one of my favorite books, i could not recommend it more. Well, no i could. I'm going to make it into a Graphic novel. That's what i said to myself when i first read it, and i'm going to begin adapting the book in Revolver in late 2013.
April 28, 2012
Lewis Shiner at his typical entertaining peak. Characters are weirder than ever. The prison rapist who really wants to be loved and respected. Slackers, skate-punks, gold diggers, lawyers. Ex-con becomes caretaker for a house with 23 cats and sets his eyes on the proprietors fortune.
February 6, 2021
It's not a very good sign when one of the BEST things you can say about a novel is that it was short! Less than 200 pages, I never really found any sort of identity with this book. To quote the famous line from Jerry Seinfeld " It was a story about nothing". I mean things happened, there was a sort of a plot, but it was all contrived and none of it added up to anything with any sort of meaning. The characters were weak and poorly developed. The characters were misfits, weirdos, oddballs, criminals or just a motley collection of life's 'deplorables'.
Advertised as a story about "society's newest outlaws" it failed even to project any true radicalism and ended up a bunch of hollow cliches about society in the 1980's. It was a stereotypical collection of oddballs, like a poorly cast sit com with people randomly dreamed up to be as ridiculous and eccentric as possible. I was deeply disappointed by the lack of any insight or point to this novel.
I mean I 'get' the idea of a simple 'slice of life' portrait being effective. Written in 1990 this was very much a warm up type of exercise for Lewis Shiner. Novels trying to capture the existential wasteland of modern life are common. Shiner's prose is complex enough with lots of subtle nuance, so it reads well. But his characters were simply more cardboard cutouts than any reflection of real people. They are devoid of any charm other than being strange. Dave, the main character whose point of view structures the novel, is presented as sympathetic and an antihero at the same time. It all just doesn't compute. And as I said earlier, the rest of the characters are just irritating stereotypes and 'out of the blue' quacks.
I bought this based upon my 5 star experience with Shiner's 2020 novel " Outside the Gates of Eden", his brilliant portrait and history of the Baby Boomer, Woodstock Dream generation. I'm sure " Slam " was an important building block for Shiner as a writer. I own a copy of his 2010 novel "Glimpses" as well, and hope that lives up to it's award winning buzz.
Advertised as a story about "society's newest outlaws" it failed even to project any true radicalism and ended up a bunch of hollow cliches about society in the 1980's. It was a stereotypical collection of oddballs, like a poorly cast sit com with people randomly dreamed up to be as ridiculous and eccentric as possible. I was deeply disappointed by the lack of any insight or point to this novel.
I mean I 'get' the idea of a simple 'slice of life' portrait being effective. Written in 1990 this was very much a warm up type of exercise for Lewis Shiner. Novels trying to capture the existential wasteland of modern life are common. Shiner's prose is complex enough with lots of subtle nuance, so it reads well. But his characters were simply more cardboard cutouts than any reflection of real people. They are devoid of any charm other than being strange. Dave, the main character whose point of view structures the novel, is presented as sympathetic and an antihero at the same time. It all just doesn't compute. And as I said earlier, the rest of the characters are just irritating stereotypes and 'out of the blue' quacks.
I bought this based upon my 5 star experience with Shiner's 2020 novel " Outside the Gates of Eden", his brilliant portrait and history of the Baby Boomer, Woodstock Dream generation. I'm sure " Slam " was an important building block for Shiner as a writer. I own a copy of his 2010 novel "Glimpses" as well, and hope that lives up to it's award winning buzz.
July 28, 2020
For much of this book I kept asking myself, why am I reading this book? Somewhere I had a recommendation for the book, which became the hook. The book was short enough that I wanted to see where it would lead.
Dave is released out of prison as the book opens after serving six-months for evading taxes, not paying them, somewhat out of principle. Dave comes across as someone who just floats through life, see what happens next and doesn't have any ambition to speak of, and is running up to aged forty.
There is some weird stuff that happens, weird people show up, while Dave tries being a caretaker of 23 cats all in this one house. I found myself being reminded me of the movie Pulp Fiction, although this book really is completely different. I guess it was the odd stuff that kept happening. Dave hooks up with a grocery store clerk who is half his age, and squatting in an abandoned art house with a few other runaway skaters. Dave befriends one of them too.
Things seem full of despair in this story, but somehow Dave starts to do the right things, by some accounts. There is some philosophy about how to live, and society, and a couple other ideas that actually saves the book. Yet it comes so late in the book that it’s a slog to get there.
Book rating: 2.5 stars
Dave is released out of prison as the book opens after serving six-months for evading taxes, not paying them, somewhat out of principle. Dave comes across as someone who just floats through life, see what happens next and doesn't have any ambition to speak of, and is running up to aged forty.
There is some weird stuff that happens, weird people show up, while Dave tries being a caretaker of 23 cats all in this one house. I found myself being reminded me of the movie Pulp Fiction, although this book really is completely different. I guess it was the odd stuff that kept happening. Dave hooks up with a grocery store clerk who is half his age, and squatting in an abandoned art house with a few other runaway skaters. Dave befriends one of them too.
Things seem full of despair in this story, but somehow Dave starts to do the right things, by some accounts. There is some philosophy about how to live, and society, and a couple other ideas that actually saves the book. Yet it comes so late in the book that it’s a slog to get there.
Book rating: 2.5 stars
August 2, 2020
Definitely not a book for everyone, and probably past its sell-by date as far as cultural relevance goes, but for the right reader, this is an essential book.
If you are around 20, disaffected, bourgie but open-minded, and idle enough to have time to contemplate the "point of it all," this is your manifesto.
I am none of those things--well, idle--but I loved it anyway. I like the way Shiner puts sentences together.
If you are around 20, disaffected, bourgie but open-minded, and idle enough to have time to contemplate the "point of it all," this is your manifesto.
I am none of those things--well, idle--but I loved it anyway. I like the way Shiner puts sentences together.
October 18, 2023
Random library find. The synopsis and cover snippets made it seem like it had a bit of weirdness going on that I would like. Turns out not -- the main character is so gross, it's a lot about what women give him a hard-on, I kid you not. Uhg.
May 5, 2017
Lewis Shiner always tells a gripping tale.
September 12, 2019
Notes from my journal of 1997 say: "Very good. I like novels with complicated conflicts and big casts of wacky characters."
January 29, 2024
i love a middle aged man protagonist who is all out of options
August 6, 2024
3-1/2. What a character!
December 31, 2015
What the hell, Dave? You've just gotten out of a six-month stretch in a Texas penitentiary—an experience that you do not care to repeat—after being imprisoned for Federal tax evasion, and thanks to your buddy Fred (the lawyer with the endless stream of lawyer jokes), you've got a sweet (if weird) gig as caretaker for a houseful of cats in Galveston, twenty-three feline beneficiaries of a widow who appears to have had much more money than sense. And your parole officer is a Bible-thumping harridan. So why would you want to mess everything up with your booze and your sex and your collection of subversive rock-n-roll from the Sixties?
Well...
For one thing, Dave doesn't even like cats...
As his online autobiography relates, Lewis Shiner had already led an eventful life by the time Slam was published in 1990. This novel really has suffered from its passage through time, though—I should have read it earlier (and now I'm not quite sure why I didn't). Remember when riding a skateboard was equivalent to being an anarchist? Me neither, although I'm willing to believe that 25 years ago, skateboarding really was an outsider activity, rather than the ordinary big business it's since become. Dave uses cassettes in a Walkman to listen to his music, and while the widow Johnson turns out to have had a computer, Dave doesn't even know what a modem is. He drives the widow's pristine K-Car, and uses her telephone—a wired device with a rotary dial, that is—because cellphones aren't even a thing to mention in passing.
Dave also reads books from the long-departed anarchist publisher Loompanics (I was a customer myself, back in the day), research that helps him acquire, through appallingly simple means that would almost certainly fail miserably these days, a new identity—which is, though I probably shouldn't say so, crucial to the book's unrealistically happy conclusion.
All these bygone elements seem jarring now, rather than evocative—I guess because they haven't yet been gone long enough to become period pieces, for the most part. Fonthill is, though—the bizarre all-concrete mansion where Dave's new skater friends hang out is a real place, although Shiner did relocate it from Pennsylvania for the novel.
In Slam, Lewis Shiner had not yet found the science-fictional groove that would serve so well in Glimpses, which I thought was truly amazing, but even from this now-dated effort, it's already clear that he can tell a damned fine story.
Well...
"Work ain't natural," Marc said.Through not much fault of his own—although Dave's passivity does contribute heavily both to his predicament and to his relative unlikeability as a character—his sweet situation does go rapidly (and humorously) awry.
"Amen to that," Dave said.
—p.7
For one thing, Dave doesn't even like cats...
As his online autobiography relates, Lewis Shiner had already led an eventful life by the time Slam was published in 1990. This novel really has suffered from its passage through time, though—I should have read it earlier (and now I'm not quite sure why I didn't). Remember when riding a skateboard was equivalent to being an anarchist? Me neither, although I'm willing to believe that 25 years ago, skateboarding really was an outsider activity, rather than the ordinary big business it's since become. Dave uses cassettes in a Walkman to listen to his music, and while the widow Johnson turns out to have had a computer, Dave doesn't even know what a modem is. He drives the widow's pristine K-Car, and uses her telephone—a wired device with a rotary dial, that is—because cellphones aren't even a thing to mention in passing.
Dave also reads books from the long-departed anarchist publisher Loompanics (I was a customer myself, back in the day), research that helps him acquire, through appallingly simple means that would almost certainly fail miserably these days, a new identity—which is, though I probably shouldn't say so, crucial to the book's unrealistically happy conclusion.
All these bygone elements seem jarring now, rather than evocative—I guess because they haven't yet been gone long enough to become period pieces, for the most part. Fonthill is, though—the bizarre all-concrete mansion where Dave's new skater friends hang out is a real place, although Shiner did relocate it from Pennsylvania for the novel.
In Slam, Lewis Shiner had not yet found the science-fictional groove that would serve so well in Glimpses, which I thought was truly amazing, but even from this now-dated effort, it's already clear that he can tell a damned fine story.
September 21, 2015
Sometimes you come across an author who seems to be writing just for you.
With Frontera, Lewis Shiner was part of the early cyberpunk movement, and Frontera was excellent.
With Glimpses, he takes on music (particularly the late 60s), and how important and worldchanging it can be/ought to be.
In Slam, we get skateboarding, around the early-90s, when the anarchist spirit of using concrete to traverse, against the will and desires of those who had put these paths down for us, was still important and secret. There's more to it than that - the book reads like a slightly tamer Chuck Palahniuk - but it's a brilliant, brilliant book.
So far, every one of Shiner's books has transported me back to the past and to my childhood (the temptation to dig out my skateboard is currently running pretty high); whilst writing about characters, generally men, in their late 30s.
Can't wait to see what's next.
With Frontera, Lewis Shiner was part of the early cyberpunk movement, and Frontera was excellent.
With Glimpses, he takes on music (particularly the late 60s), and how important and worldchanging it can be/ought to be.
In Slam, we get skateboarding, around the early-90s, when the anarchist spirit of using concrete to traverse, against the will and desires of those who had put these paths down for us, was still important and secret. There's more to it than that - the book reads like a slightly tamer Chuck Palahniuk - but it's a brilliant, brilliant book.
So far, every one of Shiner's books has transported me back to the past and to my childhood (the temptation to dig out my skateboard is currently running pretty high); whilst writing about characters, generally men, in their late 30s.
Can't wait to see what's next.
June 4, 2016
The form was perfectly fitted to content in this testosterone-driven novel. The prose was sparse, and the scenic description was apt and appropriate. I was biased in favor of this story because of my own ideological leanings, and was therefore selfishly disappointed when the story did not follow what would have been my authorial intent. I found that it did not resolve what I wanted to have answered, and it tied in neat bows several aspects of the novel-Dave’s involvement with the skaters, his constant flipping between romantic relationships-in ways that felt excessively neat.
January 28, 2008
Ok. I finally threw this book across the room, and hard, when I realized he wasn't going to let up with the "cats are getting out, cats are getting out, two more cats are getting out" thing. It's not just the cats, it's one thing after another happening to this poor guy, the pacing is annoying the fuck out of me. The thing is, it's still pretty good so I'll probably pick it up again when I run out of other things to read.
August 21, 2016
I picked this up from the DC library's "eccentric summer reading" shelf, motivated by a promising back cover summary and an interesting cover. Slam is one of those novels that has enough redeeming qualities to make it worth the cover-to-cover read, but it's just not a good book overall. It was quirky enough to warrant a strong two stars and it took place in Texas - good enough for a summer Sunday afternoon pool read.
June 15, 2009
I've had this book for a number of years, and always thought it was some sort of non fiction that I might or might not be interested in. But, I've hauled it through a few moves, and finally started reading. The cats took me. The distinct characters. I really enjoyed it. I've now passed it on to my reluctant reader library because it has to do with skateboarding.
December 31, 2007
So this guy gets out of jail, moves in to a house with 20 cats to take care of them, and ends up falling in love with a minor who lives in a house where everything including the toys is made of concrete.
Funny stuff.
April 7, 2011
So, I read this based on the fact that Lewis Shiner created one of my favorite Wildcards characters, Fortunato (who derives his superpowers through tantric sex). It's actually pretty good, and if I didn't know better, would have thought Elmore Leonard wrote it.
October 12, 2011
The setting and characters are intriguing. I guess I should have been annoyed by the romantic relationship with the young girl but I for some reason I wasn't. The anarchist overtones struck a chord, too. Nice book. I think he is a good writer.
April 23, 2010
Very quick read. I kept waiting for something to happen and when it finally did, it's hard to say it was worth the wait.
October 4, 2011
I always try to remember the name of this book because I think about it a couple of times a year, so I'm glad I finally found it written down in an old journal.
Read
December 13, 2015Sometimes, it's hard to tell if it's the narrator or the main character who is sex-obsessed. But eventually that goes away. And it's a really good story in the end.
February 18, 2018
This book was okay. I did the audio version. I'm not sure where I heard about it; maybe a magazine. I made the mistake of reading Goodreads reviews mid-read.
Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews