Little New York Bastard: A Memoir [Paperback]

M. Dylan Raskin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 17, 2003

Meet M. Dylan Raskin — "MDR" to friends. At 22, he's the opposite of hip: a working-class college dropout who lives with his mother in Queens — "Flushing-Stinking-Queens," to be precise. It's not that he doesn't like New York, exactly, it's just that lately he's felt more and more at odds with everything — his family, his generation, his hometown, even himself. One day he gets fed up and decides to take his freedom on the road, setting off for Chicago in a quixotic attempt to turn his life around. Little New York Bastard is the story of an outsider for the ages, a mixed-up kid who knows what he wants in life but has no idea how to get it. Raskin's anger is palpable and his wounds are unabashedly raw, and readers will appreciate the immediacy and honesty of his story. Equal parts road story, coming-of-age memoir, and existential manifesto — this debut is in the tradition of cult classics like Youth in Revolt and The Fuck Up.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Angry, confused, malcontented young New Yorker, sick of all the hypocrisy and phoniness around him, decides to run away. Sound familiar? The twist: this Holden Caulfield is a real 22-year-old, a working-class product of Flushing, Queens. "I hate people" is how Raskin opens his book; he spends the rest of it getting into specifics, ranting about dirt bags, Nazis, degenerates, mindless drones, products of incest, Long Islanders, Ebonics speakers, cell phone gabbers and, worst of all, menu readers. Whenever this gets tiresome, Raskin invariably turns on a dime to reveal the hidden wounds that are causing his brain and (all-too-graphically) his bowels to "misfire": the recent deaths of his dog and his father. Raskin decides the cure is to "take his freedom" and go somewhere "inspiring." His choice is, absurdly enough, Chicago. A good portion of the book's entertainment value comes from anticipating how long it will take Raskin to discover, as he finally does, that he is "stuck in a city that seemed almost identical to New York, the place I'd run away from. It was all so sickening." Of course, this quixotic journey would never have been necessary if Raskin had just listened to his long-suffering, guilt-inducing mother, who reminds him "it's the singer, not the song." The same might be said of Raskin's memoir, which is the literary equivalent of karaoke. The song is Salinger's, but Raskin's rendition manages to partially compensate for what it lacks in sophistication and originality with an overabundance of attitude and passion.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From the Inside Flap

"Many books want to be the next CATCHER IN THE RYE. But LITTLE NEW YORK BASTARD actually has a claim. This is a spot-on depiction of what it’s like to be young, kind of smart, and clueless in America." —Neal Pollack, author of NEVER MIND THE POLLACKS

"Seldom in literature has a young man left home with a bigger baggage of Bad Attitude. Mr. Raskin dissects his generation with cool precision." —C. D. Payne, author of YOUTH IN REVOLT

"The Holden Caulfield for the 21st century has arrived....[Raskin's] blisteringly angry take on life in the United States burns up the pages of this angst-driven road story....Think Denis Leary without the profanity but with all the black anger. A strikingly original and unforgettable narrative voice." —Library Journal

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Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Press (October 17, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1568582749
• ISBN-13: 978-1568582740
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.4 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (48 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,267,995 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

43 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Recommended, February 20, 2004

By 

Roberta Marista (Berkshire, England) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Little New York Bastard: A Memoir (Paperback)

After the death of his dog, and then of his father, the 20-something author of this memoir leaves Queens for Chicago, hoping to find authenticity but instead finding just another city. Original.

29 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Pretty F**king Entertaining!, April 21, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Little New York Bastard: A Memoir (Paperback)

LITTLE NEW YORK BASTARD just hit me right. To describe it: it's a sort of book-on-the-road novel, told from the point of view of a raving (but always funny), wacky malcontent. And the author nails the "voice" completely: think of an updated Holden Caulfield/younger Archie Bunker: in a word -- Hilarious. He's also nailed the dreariness of places he writes about with great ease, particularly Flushing Queens, where this reviewer lives. (Will I ever get out of here? I keep praying.) Anyway, I purchased this novel along with THE LOSERS CLUB (part of some Amazon 2-fer package - good deal). Both books are terrific small press novels, displaying differing viewpoints. Both are manic and highly entertaining (once you've opened your mind enough to allow them in): I'm glad I picked them up! Forget about TV re-runs for a while and give these novels a whirl. You'll be in for an entertaining ride -- I guarantee you.

28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Substance Ranting, April 21, 2004

By 

Keith (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Little New York Bastard: A Memoir (Paperback)

I got more than I bargained for with this book. I purchased it because I was told it contained a gazillion references to the movie "Halloween" which is one of my favorites. At first I thought I'd just flip through it to check for the Halloween stuff, but after reading the first page I couldn't bring myself to skip anything; Raskin's narrative voice is more conversational and engaging than any other I've encountered, and his tendency to occasionally deviate from that style when describing his walk through midtown Manhattan or when describing his mother is the only thing that kept me reminded that this was a literary book I was reading.

Raskin's rhetorical devices do not age, or in fact change at all, throughout the 200 and some pages of this odd little book: There's the cascade of adjectives ("low, hideous, disgusting pieces of human excrement who polluted that school,") the parade of nicknames ("little Miss Gold Digger," "some fat-assed Napoleanic midget named Frank," "the android,")and a wealth of undisguised paranoia ("Everyone was looking at me like I was insane, but I didn't care. To hell with them.")Anybody who differs, intentionally or not, from Raskin's hilarious but razor-thin idealogy is immediately declared a Nazi or a Bolshevik: The Days Inn becomes the "Days-Nazi-Inn," Tinley Park becomes "Tinley-Nazi-Park," a young woman who works as a receptionist at an expensive hotel is "the front desk Nazi;" even some poor Chicago bookstore, whose political beliefs we can safely say are not known, becomes "some Bolshevik bookstore." At the same time, "wonderful people like Dr. Wohl," and others involved for any reason in catering to Raskin's hypersensitive needs, get unqualified praise. In review form, this language may lose some of its effect when given Raskin's speedy delivery.

Even if you don't appreciate sarcasm and hypersensitivity for its own sake, Little New York Bastard is worth looking at, not least for its demonstration of the circular nature of extreme narcissism. The book was prominent enough in the back end of 2003 to warrant coverage in The New York Daily News and The Village Voice, and its unusual ideas continue to play to a wide audience of Chicago-based book clubs.