A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints: A Memoir [Paperback]

Dito Montiel (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 8, 2003

As far back as i can remember ... i can remember manhattan. Orlandito "Dito" Montiel, son of Orlando, a Nicaraguan immigrant, and an Irish mother, grew wild in the streets of Astoria, Queens, pulling pranks for Greek and Italian gangsters and confessing at the church of the Immaculate Conception, gobbling hits of purple mescaline and Old English, sneaking into Times Square whore houses—"Kids from nowhere going nowhere." At 14 Dito watched as his best friend and surrogate older brother, Antonio, beat another kid to death with a baseball bat during a gang fight. A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints is the quintessentially American story of a young man's hunger for experience, his dawning awareness of the bigger world across the bridge, and of the loyalties that bind him to a violent past and to the flawed and desperate Saints that have guided him—a streetwise Meetings With Remarkable Men with echoes of Whitman and Kerouac, Saturday Night Fever and Dion and the Belmonts. Dito tasted short-lived notoriety as a model for Versace and Calvin Klein, and as the leader of "the most successful unsuccessful band in history," Gutterboy, a 15-minute darling signed to Geffen for a then unprecedented million-dollar advance. But this book is about the Saints: Dito's father, Antonio "our insane warrior hero," Bob Semen, Frank the dog walker, Jimmy Mullen, Cherry Vanilla, Allen Ginsberg and all the others, the drunks, coke-heads, junkies, the insaniacs like Santos Antonios who said, "Now Dito remember, in life you gotta be crazy." Photographs by Bruce Weber, Lance Staedler and Allen Ginsberg are featured. A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints is soon to be a major motion picture directed by Robert Downey, Jr. "I like it a lot..."—Allen Ginsberg "The greatest streetwise healing book ever written. In a world full of put-ons and pretty faces he's the real deal."—Susan Carlucci, In Fashion

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Montiel's saints run the gamut from omniscient priests to wacky con artists. In his rambling memoir of growing up in the 1970s and '80s in a tough Queens neighborhood, he escapes to the East Village to emerge as a Calvin Klein underwear model and lead singer of the punk band Gutterboy. Montiel's childhood was rough but thrilling. "[I]n our neighborhood we would take your everyday type of kids' game and throw in an extra little consequence clause that no one else seemed to have." Games escalated from stealing from the church poor box (consequence: 50 Hail Mary's from saint number one, Father Angelo) through peeing through the windows of Mafioso hangouts (consequence: "being chased by crazy Dimitrios with a meat cleaver") to gang fights (consequence: Montiel's pal Antonio [another saint] kills a guy with a baseball bat and spends six years in prison). When the scene shifts to the sex-, drugs- and punk rock-ridden Lower East Side, Montiel's love affair with Manhattan predominates, as he roams the city with girlfriends, junkies and his mother (more saints) and hangs out with Allen Ginsberg (whose photos of Gutterboy appear in the book) and Warhol protegee Cherry Vanilla. Several Kerouac-like road trips feature the thrill and beauty of being "crazy high" in a non-New York world. Montiel tells his entertaining, sad tales with a combination of affection, glee and nostalgia. He's managed to escape the dismal fate of many of his childhood cohorts, while still cherishing and embracing their humanity.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"It's gritty, it's sexy . . . " -- New York Post, June 3, 2003

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Press (May 8, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1560254742
• ISBN-13: 978-1560254744
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (51 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,198,088 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars an old and new fan, April 17, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: A Guide To Recognizing Your Saints (Paperback)

I was a big fan of the writers original work with his band Gutterboy. When I first heard about the book i was very excited to get it. I had criticisms all throughout reading it. All until i came onto one chapter in particular. Since that chapter I've changed my tone and can honestly say i haven't read a more beautifully simple, easy to read book that has inspired me more than this one. It seems you have taken your advice from Allen Ginsberg and taken it well. "Most information-Least Syllables." Thank you for this book Dito. Put out more MUSIC!!!!!

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars my new guide, April 10, 2001

By 

laurene (Dayton) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Guide To Recognizing Your Saints (Paperback)

i just finished A guide To Recognizing your saints. It's early in the morning and I'm starting it all over again. When I finish I'm headed to New York. This book may have changed my life. :)

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Narcissistic, April 8, 2001

By 

ruby sali - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Guide To Recognizing Your Saints (Paperback)

Sure there are some "moments" in this book, but it contradicts itself so often that I was left wondering if Mr. Montiel originally wrote this piece as a fan/love letter to himself. The author spends the majority of his time trying to convice us what a tough but tender guy he is who has suffered through some tough breaks. Why did the record company drop him anyway? And those sad girlfriends he portrays...why did they leave him and why were they sad? He reminded me of the Tom character from Robert Altman's "Nashville"....a sick but poetic fellow who says (or writes) whatever he needs to in order to feed his insatiable ego.