Customer Reviews

The Lost Get-Back Boogie

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3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
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Booze is the prime demon for Iry Paret, dark and heavy hero of the demon-ridden novel, The Lost Get-Back Boogie. When Iry is paroled and three miles away from Angola prison, the foam is boiling over the lip of his first icy Jax; from then on, empty cans and bottle rattle in the cyclonic contests with the lesser demons; the sheriff, environment-stinking pulp mills, Vietnam memories, nightmares of drunken rage and helplessness.

Buddy, Iry's friend from Angola, calls him Zeno. Zeno was the Greek founder of Stoicism, the school of impassivity, indifference to pleasure or pain. Buddy, the mean-drunk tilter at alcohol-induced windmills, enlists his friend the stoic in his battle against his own - and his family's - demons. Even the trucks and cars in their life are beset by the devils of redneck vengeance and drunken driving on mountain roads.

It is painful to accompany Iry and Buddy as they drink, and weather jail, brawls, vicious beatings, cruel attacks on Buddy's father's beloved horses and wild birds. Burke's descriptive powers evoke sympathetic response as our eyes blear and our limbs numb and our nostrils fill with the stink of pervasive whiskey and beer, and we wish to God no one ever hurt like this.

With the same power of words, Burke sets us first in Louisiana and then in Montana. We see the Mississippi River and prisoners clearing cane fields of tree roots; we feel the sun and smell the damp from the bayou. Montana is given to us gloriously; river, mountain, sky, clean crisp air, the dust of unpaved roads, taste of trout just taken from icy streams, snow crystals in a woman's hair. Burke is an extraordinary visual writer - what he shows you, you see. The juxtaposition of this enormous grandeur with the sad and violent men who are imprisoned in murky impulses and urges is somehow not jarring.

Iry's wanderings through various "dirty little corners of the universe" can barely be called a quest. He avoids reflection; else he may have to admit other's evaluation; that "I had a little screw in the back of my head turned a few degrees off center." Alcohol can do that to you, but Iry doesn't realize it. Burke's well-known character Dave Robicheaux is what Iry could become if he stumbled into sobriety. Robicheaux still has his lesser demons, but he's been given a daily reprieve from the clutches of the big one.

We like Iry and Buddy; even their enemies are not without our sympathy. The images Burke draw remain long after the book is closed and are a compelling reason to brave the discomfort of reading through to the end. Burke is in the forefront of the genre of recovering alcoholic detective. The Lost Get-Back Boogie, certainly outside the genre and not a mystery novel at all, will intrigue fans of Dave Robicheaux and perhaps adds depth to our understanding of him.

James Lee Burke's prose and narrative drives this tale of darkly depressing proportions along with steam train power. The characterisation exudes realism and recalls images of John Steinbeck. It's not Dave Robicheux but Lee Burke should be praised for bridging the gap between popular fiction and highest literature. Nominated for a Pulitzer, this book should definitely be read by any fan of Lee Burkes. It reassures that true excellence from an author can arise from the truest of tales.

I have read nearly every thing that James Lee Burke has written. I like and admire his use of descriptive words. This book, however, was not nearly as good as his Dave Robicheaux books. His discriptions were just as poetic, his intensity just as good, but I guess I just didn't like the story as much and couldn't relate to the characters as well as with his other books. But it was an interesting read and if you are a Burke fan, I would recommend this one.

This was the first time that I had ever read a James Burke book, but it was certainly not my last. WOW!! For a book that I didn't think that I would get into, I really enjoyed it. I have since read all of his other books. Hope you enjoy it as well!!

Having found The Lost Get-Back Boogie in paperback recently, I rushed home and settled down, expecting a good Dave Robicheaux read. Only then did I see that this novel was pre-Robicheaux. My disappointment, however, didn't last beyond the first sentence. That's how long it took Burke to assure me that already, in this early novel, he was master of the wonderful atmospheric style that I love, a style that is as close to poetry as prose can get. Can anyone else make poetry out of a description of a Louisiana chain gang? ("The captain was silhouetted on horseback like a piece of burt iron against the sun.") And, can anyone else draw his readers so instantly into empathy with his flawed hero -- whatever name he chooses for that particular hero?

In Iry Paret we have Burke's hallmark character: The strong, silent type, tough as nails and sharp as razor blades, who is yet a thinking, sensitive, deeply caring man; a young Louisiana blues singer, veteran of the Korean war, who wants nothing more than to be left in peace to play his guitar, sing his blues -- and finish the song he has been trying to write for years! Though he came home from the war unable to hunt and kill animals, he has done time in Angola for killing a man in a barroom brawl. It seemed to have been a case of self-defense but Iry, with the sense of guilt he wears like a mantle around his shoulders, is convinced he deserved the sentence.

As Beth Riordan, the woman he comes to love, says to him, "You are a strange mixture of men." Yes. But a totally believable mixture. And totally sympathetic. So when, before the first chapter ends, Iry with his new parole walks away from Angola, we find we are walking with him, in his shoes, inside his skin. By giving us a close-up look at the prison, showing us where Iry's coming from, Burke evokes in us a greater desire to see him stay out of trouble. As he walks up that dusty road, refusing a ride in the prison truck because he "has to air it out," we know tha! t just one misstep -- and Iry will make plenty of them -- could hurl him right back where he came from. And we are afraid from him.

Iry reaches his bayou home to find his father dying of cancer, both his brother and sister more foe than friend, and all his old friends dispersed and lost to him, no longer making music. When his father dies two weeks later, he gets his parole transferred to Montanna where he joins his one last friend Buddy Riordan, whom he befriended in prison.

Montanna looks like paradise to Iry, but there's trouble brewing. Rancher Frank Riordan, Buddy's father who sponsored Iry's parole transfer, is fighting the new factories that are polluting Montana. And the workers in those factories are fighting back. Though he tries to claim neutrality, Iry is pulled inexorably into that trouble until he is fighting not only for his freedom but for his very life.

This heart-wrenching, heart-warming novel is ultimately a love story. For in the end it is love that must overcome all, if all is to be overcome. Iry falls in love with Beth, Buddy's ex-wife, another guilt-evoking situation because Buddy is still trying to win her back. Can Iry have this love without betraying his friend? And will that love give him strength to transcend his own flawed nature? When everything shatters around him, will love enable him to withstand all the forces that are striving to bring him down? And finally to finish writing his song, "The Lost Get-Back Boogie"?

The novel is told entirely from the point of view of its protagonist, who epitomizes the US western hero: good with guns, in love with the outdoor life, a big drinker and bar room dweller, but very decent. While he wouldn't provoke a fight, he won't back down from one, no matter the cost. He happens to be from the South, but moves to Montana, depicted as a land of great beauty, but under the thumb of companies destroying the environment. The novel and character grew on me: while manly, he is also reflective, and a musician to boot. Burke relies on very fine detail, more than metaphor and analogy, to get his descriptions across. Perhaps because the closest I normally get to Western literature is Larry McMurtry, but I felt this book really expanded my horizons with its insight into an important sub-culture

This is a wonderful book-perhaps the best I've read in a number of years. It is powerful and tragic, yet humorous at times. Iry is likeable, in spite of his history and the fact that he has made a cuckold out of Buddy. Buddy is bent on self-destruction, and Iry is concerned with self-preservation. The conflict between Beth and Mr. Riordan is never clear to me, but that is the only weakness I found in the book. This book is haunting and exhausting. The ending is somwhat hopeful, in spite of past tragedies. I strongly recommend this book.

James Lee Burke began his career writing mainstream fiction. The Lost Get-Back Boogie is (with To the Bright and Shining Sun) his mainstream masterpiece. Short-listed for the Pulitzer, it tells the story of Iry Paret, a Korean War vet with a string of (mostly self-induced) bad luck. Paroled from Angola, he travels from Louisiana to Montana to work for the family of an old prison pal, Buddy Riordan. Essentially, he leaves his own dysfunctional family and dysfunctional situation for Buddy's. In the course of the novel he must make choices which bring him to personal independence, adulthood and some measurable degree of happiness. The constituent elements of nearly every Burke novel are here: lush description, violence, the temptations of drink, the need for personal redemption. This is not crime fiction per se, but there is a great deal of crime here. Fans of Dave Robicheaux will see elements of Dave in Iry (and a few elements of Clete in Buddy). The book is strong in its constituent elements, but very subtle in its influences. Iry struggles throughout the book to complete his song ('The Lost Get-Back Boogie'), a personal memoir of the good life in Louisiana. He must bring his imaginative life into synch with his day-to-day emotional life and he cannot complete the song until he completes his own (painful, quietist) redemptive process. This is a beautiful book. Highly recommended.

A great story and it was told when Mr.Burke really wanted to write a good book.Heart felt and like a lot of his better work well leave you just a little sad.It's a book that you can easily come back too.Having said that ,why is this book and others of his so high in price?This book is twenty years old. Better priced books out there that read just as good.Save your money and buy it at the local used book store for .50 cent.Love his work but the price must drop for his older books.

I've never met the author, I am not a relative, I do not owe him money. Having read six previous novels by da man, this just knocked me out. Perhaps it's a personal judgement. If this isn't extraordinary writing based on setting, character developmnet, drawing you in, screwing with your values and enrapturing you with the various facets of humanity, if none of that's happening for you... maybe some therapy for latent autism, brain trauma or stupid would be a good thing for you.