Customer Reviews

The Last Open Road (The Last Open Road)

5 star:		(36)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I am a complete fan of this book; we kept it in the car and I read it aloud to my husband on long cross-country drives. Cartoonish? I wouldn't say so, unless you feel that the history of early road racing is cartoonish. We found the depictions to be a wonderful time capsule that made us wish we could go back and experience some of that for ourselves.

The Last Open Road, by B.S. Levy is one of the most entertaining and true to life books ever written. If you have ever raced, or just hung out with racers, you'll recognize about every character in the book. If you've ever turned a wrench (or tried to) on a car, you'll find yourself reliving those experiences over and over. You'll also find yourself wanting to travel to the places mentioned in the book. The story is also a glimpse into a time gone by. According to everyone I've talked with at my club (what the S.C.M.A. becomes twenty years later) that's really how it used to be. Do yourself a favor - buy the book, already. I can also recommend Montezuma's Ferrari, recently published.

If you are the kind of person who is even considering the purchase of this book, then you are exactly the kind of person who will get enormous rewards from reading the entire B.S. Levy trilogy about mechanic Buddy Palumbo. I have purchased many copies of this book for my "car buddies" and even their wives have commented to me about how their men could not the put book down once they started. B.S. has finally written the great american "autosport" novel. Buy this book!

Levy's strong treatise on the adventures of Buddy Polumbo and Company speaks volumes on life in the blue collar, Italian-American world of early 1950's North Jersey and its class struggle with the upper crust, and resonates with the efforts on an ambitious young man to break out and better himself. His mechanical talents and work ethic are merely the vehicles through which he strives to improve his lot and that of his loved ones. The central plot need not have been about sports car racing to be effective, but could have applied equally to athletics or any industrial enterprise. Notwithstanding the above, those who love racing and wish to understand its roots in America will find new inpiration for their passion in B.S. Levy's excellent book.

One wonders what an effective screen treatment this would make with Paul Newman in the role of an older Buddy Polumbo, reviewing the growth of Sports Car racing in America through flashback. You can almost hear the clanking of tools and cursing of Old Man Finzio in an open work bay of the Sinclair on a hot July afternoon as we fade to the first scene. A must read!

If you grew up in the 50's or 60's and knew a sports car from Detroit iron, and lusted after the former...than this is your book. This is a tour de force of the origins, excitement and naivete of what the attraction was for those weekend racers. Buddy Palumbo is this loveable amateur mechanic, hang-around carguy who through luck and heft manages to have the rides of his life at one of the first sport car tracks in the US. What you will enjoy is the reality of the details of the cars, the attitudes of those in and around the machines, the helter-skelter ways you drove in those days... and that BS Levy has captured this period in his own time machine for you. If you are a carguy, you cannot put this book down, and you will laugh your head off turning some of the pages as Bert reminds you of how we were. I had just reread Kerouwac's On the Road when I picked up Bert's book at the Monterey Historics at Laguna Seca...because it had a XK120 on the cover which was my first car...and because Bert, himself, was there guaranteeing me I'd love it. He was so right! I'm now onto his next novel, Montzuma'a Ferrari, which takes place on the Carrera Panamericana (translates The Mexican Road Race). Bert is a true race car fan and driver and describes emotions and thrills like you are there with him. I passed the book onto my car club members and its still being read and recirculated. This is a read to savor...enjoy!

I'm only 15 and my dad got the original version of it. He said I should read it and once I started i literaly couldn't put it down. This is probably the biggest book that i've ever read and it only took my about two weeks to finish it. I recommed this book to anyone.

The Kirkus review above strains unsuccessfully to avoid condescension, by complaining gently that BSL is not exactly Thomas Pynchon. But the reviewer is not, obviously, someone moved to spontaneous delight by sports car techno-minutiae. Levy knows that Austin Healy exhaust systems hang impossibly low to actually drive on a real street; that the last 10% of any engine swap takes 90% of the time, that very long drives in a 50's jaguar roadster are ultimately, torture. Good coming-of-age stories centered around car culture are all pretty formulaic, but it doesn't matter: We love the detail, the smell of oil, scraped knuckles, and the sound of an engine you've just finished rebuilding roaring to life for the first time. If you are new to the genre, see The Red Car, Boy gets Car, Hot Rod, and, of course, Stroker Ace.

Burt Levy is (I'm told) an accomplished Vintage racer who writes for a number of motorsport magazines covering that venue.

TLOR is set in 1952 and written in the first person. Protagonist and narrator Buddy Palumbo is just out of high school and working in a New Jersey Sinclair station for Old Man Finzio, much to the irritation of Buddy's father, who wants him to join his union at the local chemical plant. Finzio's Sinclair is a Warner Brothers cartoon come to life, with some mechanics so incompetent they actually drop cars off of lifts, all the way off so they land on the concrete on their sides.

Finzio's has one good mechanic, Buddy's mentor Butch Bohunk, but Butch gets permanently disabled while driving drunk. (Levy likes his characters' names to evoke a certain image--After Butch Bohunk, I started to expect to see Davy Dago, Sal Spic, and Pete Polack appear).

Buddy ends up becoming the head mechanic at the station, whose best customer is Big Ed Baumstein, a Cadillac-driving, cigar-chomping, oft-married, 350-pound scrap dealer prone to saying things like "Get a scratch on this baby and I'll use your head for a bowling ball." When Big Ed comes in one day with a new Jaguar XK120, his reliance on the station jumps to a new level. Buddy is the only one that can keep the XK running right, and when the Jag needs parts, Buddy goes to Westbridge Motors, the Manhattan importer where Big Ed bought the Jag. Here we meet owner Colin St. John and his parts manager Barry Spline. ...

The Last Open Road also reminds us that some things never change. There's always a little more horsepower to be had, a little weight that can come off, a little better airflow for a little more top speed, a little time saved on the next pit stop, another lap to be squeezed from the next fillup, and a little bit better shot at the brass ring, whatever form that brass ring may take.

Burt's writing is magical. Do you want to know more about the marketing of this book?

Here's what I wrote about Burt in my book, Book Marketing DeMystified: Enjoy Discovering the Optimal Way to Sell Your Self-Published Book, Practical advice from the inventor of print-on-demand (POD) publishing --

Burt S. levy, who wrote and self-published the acclaimed auto racing
novel The Last Open Road [isbn 096421072X], is another master at
event selling.

"My experience is that exhibitions are alternatives for book sales,"
says Burt. "Not so much instead of the traditional bookstore market,
but in addition to it. And once again, it comes down to identifying and
focusing in on your core market and figuring out where and how you
can access them. In our case, we did far better with gift shops and souvenir
stands at racetracks and museums, doing book
signings at major races, auctions and car nut events,
and getting featured in specialty catalogues that sold
everything from car polish to brake linings. In most
cases, we were the only book featured. or at least the
only novel. But it sold copies, spread the word, and
most importantly, made money for our retailers as well
as ourselves. That's key, because they're not going to want you around if
you're not ringing the old cash register."

The Last Open Road is now, 13 years after its launch, still finding
new readers worldwide and is heading into its 7th printing with over
40,000 copies sold. It has also evolved into a four novel series (plus a
short story anthology) with total sales in excess of $1 million.

Burt's books continue to sell well at racetracks. As he proclaims on
his [...] website, "Burt will be shamelessly hawking
and signing books at:" and then he lists upcoming racetrack events he'll
be attending. Burt delightfully admits to a passion for `mooching' rides in the fastest race cars. There is no doubt this author is having fun while
being very successful with his writing.

This is a well-written and enjoyable book that elicits images that are very familiar to folks who were teen-agers during the wonderful 1950's. It is almost as though I know the characters and can easily apply familiar names of real people in my past to them. Highly recommended reading, especially for car enthusiasts!