Customer Reviews

Donald Writes No More

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THIS BOOK HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH THE LIFE OF DONALD GOINES. THE BOOK GAVE SUMMARIES OF ALL HIS BOOKS. THIS BOOK DID GIVE YOU AN IDEA OF HOW HE GREW UP AND HOW HE WAS KILLED. OTHER THAN THAT THE BOOK WAS JUST GIVING YOU SUMMARIES OF HIS BOOKS. MAYBE THE PERSON WHO WROTE THIS BOOK SHOULD HAVE KNEW ENOUGH ABOUT DONALD GOINES TO WRITE ABOUT HIM. THE BOOK DID NOT TELL WHAT HAPPENED TO HIS KIDS AFTER HIM AND HIS WIFE WERE KILLED. THE BOOK DID NOT TELL WHAT HAPPENED TO HIS MOTHER OR SISTERS. I JUST THINK SOMEONE ELSE NEED TO GIVE US A BIOGRAPHY OF THE BEST AUTHOR EVER!

This is a very ordinary in-house biography of the legendary street writer Donald Goines. The book came out shortly after Goines's death (in 1974) and was commissioned by his very own publisher (Holloway House), likely as a means of capitalizing on their star author's underground fame.

Some corporate bias is evident here, with the biographer Eddie Stone extolling Holloway House's role in Goines's life. Moreover, Stone's glossing of each novel's plot can get tiresome -- it's like having to listen to a high-school book report on Kenyatta when in fact you'd rather just read about Kenyatta himself.

Check out Eddie Allen's more recent Low Road (2004) for a far more balanced account of Goines's life.

This book was a headache!I have never struggled through a book like I did with this one.The author seemed to add what he thought Donald Goines would have thought or said.If you are a collector of Donald Goines books like myself only purchase this book for that purpose or leave it in the store.

A decent read, but I couldn't get past Stone's references to Lake Michigan. "Gray clouds covering Detroit from Lake Michigan", "A cold wind blowing off Lake Michigan", "It was a cold day on the shores of Lake Michigan." What the heck was Stone talking about? The City of Detroit is about as close to Lake Michigan as Phoenix, Arizona is to the Pacific Ocean. There's a Detroit RIVER...and there's Lake Huron and Lake Erie....but it takes a few hours and a few hundred miles to get to Lake Michigan from Detroit. If he couldn't get THAT right, I have to wonder about the rest of his research...