Customer Reviews

Ablutions: Notes for a Novel

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I'm sure everyone is familiar with the mythological bartender, the one with the comforting visage, friendly attitude and kindly ear to listen to the ramblings of stool warmers and offer trenchant, considered and helpful advice to patrons in search of a little professional assistance from the ostensible psychological analysts' of the real world. This ain't one of `em. The unnamed barkeep of Ablutions is little more than another of the social misfits that frequent the fading tavern of his employment, albeit it with benefits...all the top shelf whiskey he cares to imbibe. This is a man absent genuine friendships which is fortunate since he seems extraordinarily gifted in destroying any relationships he establishes.

Written in an adaptation of the second person epistolary/journal style, the anti-hero documents the comings, goings and exquisite failures of a morose assortment of regulars, irregulars and irremovable denizens of the establishment that almost affords him the opportunity to maintain a subsistence lifestyle. He considers his musings on the idiosyncrasies of the clientele notes for a future novel but what he presents to the reader is the lurid descriptive of societal detritus and he inadvertently places himself at the head of the refuse pile. Slowly, but absolutely not methodically, he begins to realize he is nothing more and quite possibly, much less than the individuals he often ridicules. One cannot help but to feel as though you are an interloper, an unauthorized observer of the progressive descent of an entire class of people. In the ironical humor of the dark underbelly of modern society, there also lies a perverse satisfaction or affirmation of one's own life not being as traumatic as another's; in this book soul after vacant soul is introduced and further decimated.

At times, especially at the outset, the course of the prose seemed pointless as though one was in fact reading snippets of depravity that would never be organized into a comprehensible flow, as though the incongruent notes represent merely one more objective the protagonist's addictions will place outside his grasp. But as the reader progresses, the notes seem to become correlative and chronological, with the self-absorption of the anti-hero gradually morphing into a quest for self-preservation. In the inimitable style of many with addictive personalities he latches upon a strategy to save himself, regardless of who or what might be diminished by his ploys.

In a terrarium of scorpions, the actions required for survival are not necessarily commendable acts.

As I suggest in my title I found this book to be like a Bukowski book, but without all the self-righteous, condemnation of the world that hasn't seen the light like he has. This made the book much more palatable for me. I normally love this genre so this book found the right audience with me. While not as good as Fante or Hamsun, I think Ablutions will find its place within this genre.

I will say I had a difficult time at the beginning. I found the style to be a little gimmicky, and normally I hate books written in the second person. At the beginning this book was no exception, and I thought about putting it down. What hooked me though were the interesting characters. It was certainly a colorful cast of characters, and with the short length of the book I decided to stick with it. In the end I am happy I did. As I got into the story the second person narrative became background noise unlike many of the other books I have read using this technique. Also what I found gimmicky in the beginning ran its course and the style seemed to mature and smooth out as I read on.

I think anyone who has ever sold booze, and had a tendency towards cynicism and self-destructiveness will be able to relate to this story more than those who have not. It really does something to a person when you see regular customers starting to turn yellow. When a regular lets you know he/she lost their job because they couldn't stay completely sober for eight full hours, and yet here it is your job to keep feeding these people the one thing that is killing them. You're not supposed to tell the guy who no longer has any white in his eyes that maybe he should take a few nights off because he is one of your best customers. It does wear on a person, and there really is only so many times you can be asked to borrow five dollars before your faith in humanity takes a precipitous drop. I can relate to this story on a personal level, and while I was never quite as self-destructive as the protagonist in this book, I can certainly sympathize.

What I would say to anyone thinking of picking up this book is understand the genre. If you don't like the genre you will not like this book. Next I would say to readers stick with it. Get past the beginning and the story takes on momentum, and it is a wild, self-destructive journey that has a bit of a twist for the ending that I found comical and ironic. The characters and their stories are great.

I really enjoyed this book, and I found it to be highly entertaining. I sat down and finished the book in one sitting, so it is an easy read. Once again if you like this genre the story and the characters will suck you in, and keep you reading further. I recommend this short, entertaining book.

Ablutions: Notes for a Novel

Given the major cutbacks among the big publishing houses and the tendency over the past decade or so to go with the promise of commercial success, I am very surprised that this book found a publisher outside the small presses. That isn't a criticism. It's just that the style is somewhat experimental and the author, Partick deWitt's prior publishing credits--three in all--were not exactly in top-tier literary journals.

"Notes for a Novel" is an accurate description of what is mostly vignettes centered around the life of the alcoholic and substance addicted bartender/author working at a well-known but now seedy Hollywood bar. That format along with the second person point of view (you), which I can enjoy in a short pieces but often find tedious in a novel, had me convinced I'd hate this. Instead it managed to draw me in. In fact, I couldn't put it down, despite feeling so grimy I wanted to shower. Scary to think about, but no doubt true that so many people drive our highways with that much booze and narcotics in their systems. And not to give anything away, but I hope the first thing this guy did with his money was visit a good dentist.

I can imagine the author struggling to shape all these notes into a compelling novel, then giving up and deciding to just work at threading them together. The result is something masterful that would have come off rather prosaic had he stuck to a standard form. Ablutions has the potential to become one of those breakout word of mouth novels like A Confederacy of Dunces, only happily the author is still with us to enjoy the praise.

At 163 pages, Ablutions is a one-nighter if you can handle the intensity, but however long you take with it is well worth it.

A searing, dark, often hilarious account of a bartender's descent from somewhere near the bottom, to rock-bottom, and back to something more honest and less trite than "redemption." DeWitt wields words like a surgeon wields a scalpel, cuts deep, and injures as much as he heals. This book is daring, beautiful, and heart-wrenching, and his deft use of the second person pushes the form. This feels like a classic to me, one of the most original and honest depictions of alcoholism and despair since Exley's A Fan's Notes. Highly recommended to any fan of Exley, Fante, or Knut Hamsun.

Dewitt captures the Hollywood bar scene in all of it's greasy, bloodshot glory; the characters, the places, the depths sunk to, all feel so real... Darkly fascinating is this character's self destruction, kind of enjoying it...but not really. The naked ugliness that can be experienced under the protective indifference of a carefully maintained chemical haze felt completely real. It's obvious he's done his time in some soused rathole but this book goes beyond just creating gripping writing out of life experience. The second person voice is technically interesting in it's execution and adds pointed meaning to the story. Almost impossible to put down while reading! I can't wait to see what comes next.

"Ablutions" is a strange little anti-novel about a barman seeking redemption from a life filled with malignant alcoholism and drug addiction. The narrator works in Hollywood at a famous bar gone to seed. The bar is its own little hell, filled with exotic and bizarre characters trapped by their addictions and mired in various forms of mental illness. There is little true friendship among the patrons, and no joy. The narrator spends most of his time drunk or high. He often drives drunk but is never pulled over. He wife leaves him and he engages in a ridiculous series of loveless but bizarre sexual encounters, described in prurient (and purulent) detail. By the end of the novel, he is a physical wreck, bleeding profusely from his nose, unable to control his bowels, and worried that he has contracted hepatitis and cirrhosis of the liver.

Patrick deWitt has an amazing talent for observation and a rapier-sharp wit. These talents serve him well, particularly in the first half of the novel, which is spent describing the sort of freak show represented by the bar patrons. Wealth and fame exist side-by-side with degradation and poverty. Crack addicts mingle with former child stars. Occasionally, as if grabbed and hoisted up by the claw in a dime-store machine, one of the characters is elevated out of the cesspool of the bar into the glitz and glamour of Hollywood. But mostly, the characters just get more and more pathetic as time goes on.

Toward the novel's end, the barman tries to escape the bar. He travels as far away as possible, conceptually speaking, taking the great American Road Trip Cure and engaging in a series of misadventures in Mormon Utah and the Grand Canyon. But he finds that the bar follows him in the form of unbreakable habits and chains on his soul that he has acquired there. Only by betraying the bar and everything it stands for does he have a shot at redemption, and even then, by the end of the book, we are uncertain whether he can really escape.

"Ablutions" made me laugh out loud at times, and at other times it made me cringe. DeWitt has a spectacular voice. He is well worth reading.

Pathetic but not self pitying. A trip straight to hell with no excuses offered. If you'd like to know what it's like to hand your life over to an all consuming appetite/need then read this book and don't say I didn't warn you about it not being pretty. In fact there were times when I felt I needed a shower after a reading session but that never stopped me in the end from getting back into the story.

This novel makes a good cause for staying on the straight and narrow. It's funny...human beings don't really want to be told what to do but if we are shown what to do (or what not to do) - well, that might be acceptable and we might actually pay attention to the lesson. Patrick deWitt has shown me never ever to be an alcoholic in a dead end job. I don't ever want to be in his main character's situation. To lose everything important to me, to live for the next drink as my body literally falls apart, to not have anything to look forward to beyond that next drink....it's all part of the education. This lesson is imparted not with moralistic preaching but with a skewering wit. I appreciated this book, as depressing and degrading as it was to read it.

Patrick deWitt is also a talented writer- I love his writing style. Even though I can't really say I enjoyed the subject matter I did enjoy the way it was handled. The best writers can manage to teach their readers and entertain them at the same time regardless of what they are writing about. I also take pleasure in a good, character driven novel...which this was. Great characters, great sense of humor, and a great (if dismal) subject matter. All of this in a debut novel too! Very impressive effort. I look forward to seeing what deWitt has in store for his readers, I'll definitely be following up on any new releases in the future...

In a variation of the epistolary novel, Patrick deWitt weaves a story of dereliction, self destruction, taking no prisoners. Instead of letters, the story is presented in a series of notes purportedly to be used in the creation of a novel. This is no feel good study of a repentant substance abuser, but the style used hints at the possibility of redemption to come after the writing runs out. Some characters are presented in less than thumbnail portraits, and others are fleshed out more subsantively. But there is little depiction of life outside the bar where the majority of the action takes place. Except for one road trip, the life of the nameless protagonist is only presented in its periphery. The fact that the notes are presented in second person singular gives tension and immediacy to a story that is by turns hilarious and horrific.

This book came as a complete surprise. I'm not a Bukowski fan and I generally like more upbeat subject matter. But the writing blew me away-- DeWitt has a scary eye for the morbid detail. I found the book compelling and page-turning, although it is written in note form. This guy is the real deal. We all have a lot to look forward to with his next novel.

I loved Ablutions - and it wasn't just the voyeurism, no matter how much I enjoyed following the protagonist through this sick, painful, yet somehow totally pleasurable nightmare. It was de Witt's writing as much as anything. Without a lick of showiness, he's entirely himself. The book is funny as hell and one of the most honest pieces of prose I've read in a long, long time. I don't know how anyone could read this book without falling platonically in love with him.