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Welcome to Oakland
The sheer energy and passion and intensity, the linguistic virtuosity of Eric Miles Williamson's latest novel, WELCOME TO OAKLAND, will leave readers breathless. The vigor and uncensored redneck honesty of T-Bird Murphy's blue-collar voice will at turns delight, offend, amuse and enrage readers as T-Bird gives us what we're not supposed to the groans, gritos and war-whoops of men when they're not behaving like gentlemen, when they're out of sight and earshot, when they're wrapped around their drinks at Dick's Restaurant and Cocktail Lounge or your local workingman's watering hole. In WELCOME TO OAKLAND, the T-Bird Murphy of Williamson's internationally acclaimed novel, East Bay Grease, is now a man. He's been divorced twice, and he finds himself hiding out in a garage in rural Missouri for a reason we're never told, confused and stunned, shell-shocked by the hand life has dealt him. He opens his story, "I'm always happiest when I live in a dump, and I've lived in some serious shitholes," but it's difficult to believe him. What unfolds is the story of a workingman who tries his hardest to escape the hell of the Oakland ghetto, who finds honor in squalor, kinship among the broken divorcees of Dick's Restaurant and Cocktail Lounge, dignity and beauty at the garbage dumps where he sleeps in the cab of the scow he drives for a living.
- GenresFiction
236 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2009
3 people are currently reading
78 people want to read
About the author
Eric Miles Williamson
19 books17 followersInternationally acclaimed novelist and critic Eric Miles Williamson was named by France’s Transfuge magazine one of the “douze grands écrivains du monde”—one of the twelve great authors of the world. His first novel, East Bay Grease, was a PEN/Hemingway finalist, and its sequel, Welcome to Oakland, was named the second-best novel of 2009 and one of the top 40 novels of the decade by the Huffington Post. Senior Editor of Boulevard, Fiction Editor of Texas Review, and Associate Editor of American Book Review, Williamson served three terms on the Board of Directors of the National Book Critics Circle. He lives in the Rio Grande Valley.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
March 3, 2011
I read the precursor to this novel, 'East Bay Grease', several years ago and thought it was one of the best contemporary American books I'd ever read. It was the trigger for a several year obsession with alternative American writers for me that resulted in some great discoveries, (and a few disappointments). So when I saw (belatedly) that there was a sequel, I jumped at the chance to read it.
Overall this is a very solid piece of writing. It won't be to everyone's taste - it's coarse and raw and vitriolic. In parts it's just about the most angry book I've ever read. But at the same time it's funny, and it's lyrical and it celebrates the down and outs of Oakland in the same way that Bukowski's work celebrates the down and outs of LA.
There is no real narrative thrust to the book, so beware if you're after a taut thriller or steadily building melodrama. Williamson instead focuses on his narrator and strikes out on tangents from this central point, slowly constructing an authentic picture of his life in a more episodic manner. It's a bit like one of those songs that you like, and you listen to it over and over and then suddenly realise it doesn't have a chorus, but it hardly matters because it's so good.
When I was halfway through the book I was convinced this was going to end up being a five star review, but unfortunately I struggled a little bit through some of the final sections which were incredibly densely written. I wouldn't say I didn't like them, but they were reminiscent of Beat prose poetry and really compacted, and from a purely personal point of view, I found myself enjoying these passages less than the rest of the book. And anyway, I'd rate 'East Bay Grease' as a five star book any day of the week. Because this is close to that standard, but perhaps not quite as good as that first novel, then a four star rating seems to fit. I'd definitely recommend it. And I'll look forward to the next installment if the author decides to make it a T-Bird trilogy...
Overall this is a very solid piece of writing. It won't be to everyone's taste - it's coarse and raw and vitriolic. In parts it's just about the most angry book I've ever read. But at the same time it's funny, and it's lyrical and it celebrates the down and outs of Oakland in the same way that Bukowski's work celebrates the down and outs of LA.
There is no real narrative thrust to the book, so beware if you're after a taut thriller or steadily building melodrama. Williamson instead focuses on his narrator and strikes out on tangents from this central point, slowly constructing an authentic picture of his life in a more episodic manner. It's a bit like one of those songs that you like, and you listen to it over and over and then suddenly realise it doesn't have a chorus, but it hardly matters because it's so good.
When I was halfway through the book I was convinced this was going to end up being a five star review, but unfortunately I struggled a little bit through some of the final sections which were incredibly densely written. I wouldn't say I didn't like them, but they were reminiscent of Beat prose poetry and really compacted, and from a purely personal point of view, I found myself enjoying these passages less than the rest of the book. And anyway, I'd rate 'East Bay Grease' as a five star book any day of the week. Because this is close to that standard, but perhaps not quite as good as that first novel, then a four star rating seems to fit. I'd definitely recommend it. And I'll look forward to the next installment if the author decides to make it a T-Bird trilogy...
April 23, 2019
It took two attempts and a lot of perseverance to get into this follow-up to the magnificent East Bay Grease. But it was worth it in the end.
I think the issue is that this novel is so different to anything else. It tells a story, and features characters, that simply don't appear in literature anywhere. The first installment is the same, I must have just forgotten.
These are real blue-collar men. Away from women, away from filters, from political correctness. And they're pretty fucking horrible. Sweary, sexist, racist, violent assholes. But they're also deeply loyal, hard working and have a strict moral and ethical code.
It is a fascinating, offensive ride, characterised by sensational writing.
I think the issue is that this novel is so different to anything else. It tells a story, and features characters, that simply don't appear in literature anywhere. The first installment is the same, I must have just forgotten.
These are real blue-collar men. Away from women, away from filters, from political correctness. And they're pretty fucking horrible. Sweary, sexist, racist, violent assholes. But they're also deeply loyal, hard working and have a strict moral and ethical code.
It is a fascinating, offensive ride, characterised by sensational writing.
July 15, 2012
So as I've said, this book isn't for the faint-hearted and it's taken a lot out of me. It's grim and ugly and subtly sad yet beautiful and critical and just gracefully horrid, and anyone who reads it will feel a sense of shame and contempt and compassion, many times all at once. I found myself wondering, "How many ladies have read this? and what did they think? Do they feel as attacked as I do?" But I've been lucky enough to have Williamson as a professor, and he taught me and my class mates that if you have strong beliefs on a certain subject, you should read what the people on the other side of the fence are yapping about. And so maybe I should be reading more books where there isn't a prominent female presence or where they aren't portrayed favorably for that matter, but to state plainly, Williamson isn't anti-feminist, he's anti-homosapien.
Truth is whether you're a woman, a student, one of those lucky bastards whose had your parents give you everything in life, or any other type of person, Williamson puts you under the spot light and tells you how much of a little cunt you are or a free loading prick you can be, that we can all be and are. No one is safe in the book, not even the working class from which Williamson sprung. In it, they are the honest and the true, but the pathetic and grotesque all at once. But amongst all the condemnation and disapproval are many little glints of hope and love, and in my opinion is a book that's worth working through.
Do I recommend this book to everyone? Definitely not, but if you're even slightly disappointed or disenchanted with the world around you, you might just find something you like in this book.
Truth is whether you're a woman, a student, one of those lucky bastards whose had your parents give you everything in life, or any other type of person, Williamson puts you under the spot light and tells you how much of a little cunt you are or a free loading prick you can be, that we can all be and are. No one is safe in the book, not even the working class from which Williamson sprung. In it, they are the honest and the true, but the pathetic and grotesque all at once. But amongst all the condemnation and disapproval are many little glints of hope and love, and in my opinion is a book that's worth working through.
Do I recommend this book to everyone? Definitely not, but if you're even slightly disappointed or disenchanted with the world around you, you might just find something you like in this book.
February 20, 2024
Not necessarily my cup of tea. The writer is very good and I think does have some profound musings on the poor white experience, but it was also filled with too much racism, sexism, and homophobia for me to rate highly.
April 7, 2017
87/100
March 3, 2016
Mauvaise pioche avec ce titre.
Tentée par le résumé de ce bouquin, proposé en partenariat avec Newsbook, j'ai postulé et eu la chance de le recevoir (Merci à l'équipe de Newsbook et aux éditions Fayard).
Quelques jours après, me voilà en train de découvrir cet auteur. Le voyage promet d'être noir, sombre et bousculant.
Le résumé :
États-Unis, de nos jours. T-Bird Murphy, la quarantaine, fils d’immigrés irlandais, se terre dans un box de parking. On le soupçonne d’un crime qu’il n’a peut-être pas commis. Incarnation du quart-monde occidental, T-Bird écrit sa rage.
Un long monologue intérieur, animé par les figures de son passé, qui vient tromper sa solitude et mettre des mots sur la violence de l’exclusion. T-Bird a grandi dans le ghetto noir et mexicain d’Oakland, une ville industrielle qui rejette les Noirs, les Chicanos et les Blancs pauvres vers les décharges, sur les bords pollués de la baie de San Francisco. Pour faire mentir le destin, il a sacrifié à la sainte trinité : études, mariage et consommation. Il a fait tous les petits boulots, vécu dans les pires conditions. Mais on n’a jamais voulu voir en lui que l’enfant de ses origines, fauteur de troubles en puissance.
Renvoyé à sa misère et du fond du chaos qui l’a englouti, il revendique la déchéance comme nouvelle forme de liberté, et la solidarité comme espérance de dignité.
Lu en à peine 4-5 jours, j'avoue avoir eu quand même du mal à me plonger dans l'histoire de T-Bird, le héros. Je m'attendais à tomber dans un roman noir, avec le "crime" en point central et les dures conditions de vie, ainsi que la critique du monde actuel en trame de fond.
Les premiers mots de T-Bird Murphy sont lourds et acides. Ses paroles sont là pour agresser et être percutantes. De ce côté là, on ne pas nier que l'auteur a bien réussi son travail.
On est de suite immergé dans le côté obscur de notre société; ce côté qui rejette l'autre, celui qui est différent et qui n'apporte rien à la société de consommation.
T-Bird peint sa vie en nous racontant ses souvenirs, depuis le temps où il vivait avec sa mère qui le maltraitait, le temps de ses premiers petits boulots, etc...
Et là où je me suis noyée, c'est quand tout ces récits partent en digressions. Le héros débute une histoire, puis switche sur une autre et encore une autre. Pour moi, lectrice, je n'ai pas réussi à accrocher le fil. Je suis restée coincée en attendant le moment où il allait parler du meurtre, etc. J'attendais une mise en route qui n'est jamais vraiment arrivée pour moi.
Alors j'ai suivi, en spectatrice, le film de la vie de T-Bird, et je ne me suis pas vraiment "amusée". Avalant même certains passages en diagonale.
Évidemment, ce n'est pas un récit de Disney, et le cadre de l'histoire n'est pas gai. Du tout. Néanmoins, je n'ai pas réussi à me passionner pour cette vie. Je ne me suis pas attachée aux personnages et ne me suis pas sentie révoltée face à ces conditions de vie indécentes (excepté le passage où il fait les jardins et qu'il se fait royalement arnaqué. Je pense que c'est le seul passage qui m'a captée).
Bref, ce n'était pas un grand moment de lecture pour moi.
Tentée par le résumé de ce bouquin, proposé en partenariat avec Newsbook, j'ai postulé et eu la chance de le recevoir (Merci à l'équipe de Newsbook et aux éditions Fayard).
Quelques jours après, me voilà en train de découvrir cet auteur. Le voyage promet d'être noir, sombre et bousculant.
Le résumé :
États-Unis, de nos jours. T-Bird Murphy, la quarantaine, fils d’immigrés irlandais, se terre dans un box de parking. On le soupçonne d’un crime qu’il n’a peut-être pas commis. Incarnation du quart-monde occidental, T-Bird écrit sa rage.
Un long monologue intérieur, animé par les figures de son passé, qui vient tromper sa solitude et mettre des mots sur la violence de l’exclusion. T-Bird a grandi dans le ghetto noir et mexicain d’Oakland, une ville industrielle qui rejette les Noirs, les Chicanos et les Blancs pauvres vers les décharges, sur les bords pollués de la baie de San Francisco. Pour faire mentir le destin, il a sacrifié à la sainte trinité : études, mariage et consommation. Il a fait tous les petits boulots, vécu dans les pires conditions. Mais on n’a jamais voulu voir en lui que l’enfant de ses origines, fauteur de troubles en puissance.
Renvoyé à sa misère et du fond du chaos qui l’a englouti, il revendique la déchéance comme nouvelle forme de liberté, et la solidarité comme espérance de dignité.
Lu en à peine 4-5 jours, j'avoue avoir eu quand même du mal à me plonger dans l'histoire de T-Bird, le héros. Je m'attendais à tomber dans un roman noir, avec le "crime" en point central et les dures conditions de vie, ainsi que la critique du monde actuel en trame de fond.
Les premiers mots de T-Bird Murphy sont lourds et acides. Ses paroles sont là pour agresser et être percutantes. De ce côté là, on ne pas nier que l'auteur a bien réussi son travail.
On est de suite immergé dans le côté obscur de notre société; ce côté qui rejette l'autre, celui qui est différent et qui n'apporte rien à la société de consommation.
T-Bird peint sa vie en nous racontant ses souvenirs, depuis le temps où il vivait avec sa mère qui le maltraitait, le temps de ses premiers petits boulots, etc...
Et là où je me suis noyée, c'est quand tout ces récits partent en digressions. Le héros débute une histoire, puis switche sur une autre et encore une autre. Pour moi, lectrice, je n'ai pas réussi à accrocher le fil. Je suis restée coincée en attendant le moment où il allait parler du meurtre, etc. J'attendais une mise en route qui n'est jamais vraiment arrivée pour moi.
Alors j'ai suivi, en spectatrice, le film de la vie de T-Bird, et je ne me suis pas vraiment "amusée". Avalant même certains passages en diagonale.
Évidemment, ce n'est pas un récit de Disney, et le cadre de l'histoire n'est pas gai. Du tout. Néanmoins, je n'ai pas réussi à me passionner pour cette vie. Je ne me suis pas attachée aux personnages et ne me suis pas sentie révoltée face à ces conditions de vie indécentes (excepté le passage où il fait les jardins et qu'il se fait royalement arnaqué. Je pense que c'est le seul passage qui m'a captée).
Bref, ce n'était pas un grand moment de lecture pour moi.
June 26, 2024
Not many people have the luxury of feeling burdened by their upbringing. To come to terms with what it could never provide you in lieu of bastard family members, friends and one-time friends who bite it, and corners of the city that stink not for a council's lack of trying but a council's lack of ever trying because the Ag suits and "plaza owners" never visit that side of the world.
I can never truly speak to the cruelty experienced and thus cruelty inflicted by Williamson's words. He speaks, however, of a time and people my father, uncle, batshit uncle, and dead relatives know, knew, drank alongside, were arrested alongside, and were understandably brutalized alongside. Course, don't go making assumptions about these folks if you weren't asked.
In spite of his unforgiving shell, I'll always take to Williamson's body of work because, like Jack London before him, he grew up being told to navigate or piss off out of the way. This isn't blue collar pornography. These are the words of a dude who wasn't supposed to make it, did, and now spends the rest of his waking life laughing at the pricks who hoped he'd die slow and achievement-less.
So I take comfort in knowing Williamson exists. Pressure makes a diamond out of coal, and shit circumstances create a man so exhausted he might just write about it. I'm glad he has.
I can never truly speak to the cruelty experienced and thus cruelty inflicted by Williamson's words. He speaks, however, of a time and people my father, uncle, batshit uncle, and dead relatives know, knew, drank alongside, were arrested alongside, and were understandably brutalized alongside. Course, don't go making assumptions about these folks if you weren't asked.
In spite of his unforgiving shell, I'll always take to Williamson's body of work because, like Jack London before him, he grew up being told to navigate or piss off out of the way. This isn't blue collar pornography. These are the words of a dude who wasn't supposed to make it, did, and now spends the rest of his waking life laughing at the pricks who hoped he'd die slow and achievement-less.
So I take comfort in knowing Williamson exists. Pressure makes a diamond out of coal, and shit circumstances create a man so exhausted he might just write about it. I'm glad he has.
May 7, 2013
T-bird Murphy is back. This book is so rough and raw. A good sequel to East Bay Grease. I don't read as much literature as sci-fi and fiction, but this is worth reading. The language is NSFW but fits the voice and what T-bird has been through. A third book would be very, very good to have.
So much struggle of the working man, so much disdain for the wealthy, T-Bird endures.
Reading this, I can hear Eric reading aloud.
So much struggle of the working man, so much disdain for the wealthy, T-Bird endures.
Reading this, I can hear Eric reading aloud.
July 3, 2014
East Bay Grease was a fantastic read, which got me excited to read something else by Eric Miles Williamson. While I still enjoyed reading Welcome To Oakland and there are some classic passages, vitriolic humor and some sharp, broken-glass pieces of wisdom...I felt this book to be a bit muddy, thick with sludge. It took me awhile to finish, as if I was wading through the very garbage dumps and Oakland carbon air that the author filled the pages of this book with.
August 12, 2012
La fin ne sauve pas ce livre bêtement prétentieux et agressif.
June 26, 2013
Eric Miles Williamson has been compared to Henry Miller. More like Charles Bukowski on crack. 4 stars for this book.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews