I'll Be Damned If I'll Die in Oakland: A Sort of Travel Memoir [Hardcover]

Al Martinez (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 8, 2003

In I'll Be Damned if I'll Die in Oakland, popular Los Angeles Times columnist and world traveler Al Martinez takes us on a funny, crazy, surprising, and sometimes poignant ride around the globe with his wife, the ebullient Cinelli, and then with his children, his grandchildren and, once, his perplexing dog Barney, scattering love, laughter, and memories all along the way.

We journey with them from Africa to China, Greece to Italy, Spain to Austria and beyond, and across the U.S. on a three-month trip from the Pacific to the Atlantic and back again, with Barney barking all the way. It's a trip through time as well as space, as the family grows and the world changes. It's a ride you'll never want to forget.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Los Angeles Times columnist Martinez declares at the opening of this spunky though disappointing memoir that it isn't a where-to or how-to book, but rather a reflection on travel's soul-enriching benefits. Time spent looking at other places and cultures is time not spent looking at ourselves, he writes. If only he'd taken that dictum to heart. For what unfolds is a chronicle of a life of tourism with Martinez and his wife at the center of nearly every scene. Pithy prose and mildly funny anecdotes notwithstanding, Martinez relates commonplace tourist adventures (e.g., museum hopping across Europe, sailing down China's Yangtze River, road tripping through Mexico) and misadventures (e.g., he claims he was nearly attacked at night by 19 lions while on a safari in Tanzania). Though the locations are promising, readers may have trouble seeing them through often irrelevant dialogue between the author and his traveling companions. As a novelist (The Last City Room), screenwriter and award-winning journalist, Martinez knows how to turn a phrase. His portrayals of his parents and colleagues are touching, and his easygoing nature can endear: "Our travel agent had mentioned before departure that part of the fun of traveling in Africa was the unexpected. I took that to mean that rhinos might skewer a tourist, not that African bartenders wouldn't know a martini from cherries jubilee. I sighed and drank what they gave me." Still, Martinez's technical proficiency doesn't make up for a lack of substance in this "sort of" travel memoir.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Columnist for the "L.A. by God Times " Martinez got a lust for travel from his mother (who inspired this title) when he was young. So he and wife Cinelli, sometimes with children or grandchildren, took journeys that expanded understanding, delighted senses, and created memories, most of them wonderful, some--in retrospect, at least--laugh-out-loud funny. Interspersed with travel (starting with a three-week trip by camper to Mexico with two children and a baby-sitter for $500) is memoir, from Martinez's service in the Korean War to his heart problems 50 years later. Don't look here for travel advice (when the couple takes a driving trip to Europe they make reservations only for their days of arrival and departure), but instead for inspiration--to see and experience the Great Wall of China, the ancient ruins of Greece, the horror of Buchenwald, the elemental geography of Africa and Alaska, the excitement of New York, and the splendor of Paris, the author's favorite city. This is a treat for all travelers, armchair or otherwise. Michele Leber
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books; First Edition edition (December 8, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 031229087X
• ISBN-13: 978-0312290870
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 6.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.3 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #721,174 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Travels With Cinelli, December 30, 2003

By 

gayle b. montgomery (Concord, CA, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: I'll Be Damned If I'll Die in Oakland: A Sort of Travel Memoir (Hardcover)

If you're looking for a "Europe on $10 a Day" book on travel, "I'll Be Damned If I'll Die in Oakland" probably isn't for you.

If you want to read an exquisite bit of writing on a variety of travels through the mind and eyes of Los Angeles Times columnist Al Martinez, pull up a chair and get ready for some wonderful reading. You'll meet his wife, Cinelli, and their children and grandchildren who have made various journeys with him.

Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown probably won't like the title, but he doesn't read anything in English, anyway, and Martinez explains the title early on. After that, will carry you along on vacations from the Arctic Circle to the tropics, and on the way will throw in the marvels of modern China or an RV trip to Mexico. The Mexican trip features a loveable foulmouthed teenaged nanny, whose favorite manner of dress is a bra and red panties.

Martinez' prose can startle you with its bluntness -- "The 1960s exploded out of history" -- and charm you with its beauty -- "If there is a heaven, I'm sure it's a place where herds of elephants lumber down trails flattened by their massive footsteps, and where the amber eyes of lions speckle the night."

But he will never bore you. "I'll Be Damned" is a serious book about travel, and why we need it, wrapped up in a sly smile of introspection.

When you sit down with it, be sure you have a dry martini in a glass nearby. I'm sure Martinez will share its sparkle with you as you enjoy the journey with him.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Life Well-Traveled, December 10, 2003

By 

Flem Snopes (California USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: I'll Be Damned If I'll Die in Oakland: A Sort of Travel Memoir (Hardcover)

I'll Be Damned If I'll Die in Oakland isn't your ordinary travel book. For one thing, author Al Martinez seems incapable of writing anything ordinary, as anyone knows who follows his biweekly column in the Los Angeles Times or has read his many other books and magazine pieces or seen the tv shows and movies he's written.

A good writer can surprise and delight, and Martinez has the gift. One of his specialties is what I think of as The Turn. You're reading about one thing and suddenly it turns to something else, something deeper, an anecdote, say, that starts out funny and ends up touching the soul or illuminating the human condition. The Turn blind-sides you. A good example is the story of Private X and the candy-striped dog from the chapter on Korea.

Actually, travel to Korea appears twice, once in the beginning, when Martinez was a combat Marine there, and again a half century later when he revisits the place with his loving and, by his own account, long-suffering wife Cinelli. With children (and eventually grandchildren) in tow, Martinez and Cinelli travel to Mexico, Europe, Africa, Russia, China. They travel from one end of the United States to the other, eventually even reaching our northernmost city, Barrow, Alaska.

Martinez' accounts of their travels are full of delight and the joy of discovery, tremendous storms, lost luggage, lions roaming African campsites, language barriers, wonderful description and colorful characters. Whether an individual tale is touching, sad, hilarious or a combination, it will definitely take you someplace you've never been before or, if you've been there, show you a side you never saw.

But as the subtitle suggests, this is more than a travel book; it's a memoir whose framework happens to be travel around the globe but whose real purpose is to chronicle a journey through life. As the author says, "Time marches through this book like a determined tourist." It ticks away the years from a boyhood in Oakland with a mean-drunk stepfather and a mother filled with wanderlust and lies, to a young man's terrifying experiences in combat, through the early days of marriage and children and newspapering and the adventures and travels of a life well-lived and well-observed, to a present, finally, of pacemakers and thoughts of retirement, but a present, too, of more trips planned and more grandchildren awaiting an introduction to the wonder of far-off places.

I'll Be Damned If I'll Die in Oakland overflows with the wonders of those far-off places and the wonders of the human heart. If you love good writing, if you like laughing out loud or wiping away the occasional tear, I cannot recommend this book too highly. Tick, tick, tick.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Don't let the title fool you..., May 12, 2005

By 

Suzanne McCusker (Monroeville, PA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: I'll Be Damned If I'll Die in Oakland: A Sort of Travel Memoir (Hardcover)

He establishes early on that he doesn't hate Oakland and it proves a touchstone for him in many ways. Al has a way of writing a sentence with such vivid description that it makes you feel like you are part of the story. As a long-time fan I couldn't wait to get my hands on this book, and I laughed out loud many times, just as I often laugh at his bi-weekly columns in the LA-by god-Times.

Don't expect it to be a formal, Fodor-guide-type travel memoir. It's as much fun for the reader as many of those trips must have been for the Martinez family. Read it for the style and the interesting characters you'll meet along the way. You won't be disappointed.