Customer Reviews

Slapboxing with Jesus

5 star:		(24)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I'm an English teacher and have been trying to find something I can give to my higher level english classes that will challenge them, but will somehow speak to them a bit more closely than Heart Of Drakness or Dubliners. I picked up LaValle's book because of a review I'd read in the Los Angeles Times and it paid off. I doubted my kids might be able to relate to the expriences involved, but the author won me over into realizing they couldn't relate to a riverboat captain going through Africa, but they still liked that very much in the end. It's literature I've realized, this book. The language is shockingly great, not because of vulgarity but because it's good to see a young author take the time to insure a poetic voice and lyricism that seems missing so much from those under thirty. I am planning to use the book in our next trimester and will be including it as our only contemporary fiction by a young author in their twenties. I am amazed and heartened to know that literature is still being created.

I had moved to Nebraska to do a Ph.D. in philosophy, and before my first year of school had started, I was in the public library reading through the fiction stacks. I saw Hemingway and Gaines, Carver and Alexie. Then I saw LaValle. I pulled down this book and started to read.

I never stopped. I dropped out of the philosphy program and started writing fiction. That's how powerful these books were, especially LaValle's.

Slapboxing with Jesus is my favorite short story collection by a living writer. These stories are amazing, and LaValle's voice is like no other. I've marked up these stories, studying technique, dialogue, pacing, etc (I didn't get into creative writing programs, so I'm going at it alone). The margins are so marked up that I'll soon purchase a new copy of Slapboxing.

These stories of Queens kids are some of my favorites, especially "Chuckie" and "Class Trip." They have served as models for my own writing, and I never tire of reading them. Also recommended: LaValle's "The Ecstatic."

Also recommended: The Gospel of Arnie

LaValle's prose is poetic--pain that sings, danger that seduces, humiliation that leaves an oddly sweet taste in the mouth of the humiliated. There are no barriers he does not transcend, in form and content. I wish I could say I couldn't put this book down, but I had to, since every story hits with such force. The recovery time was worth it, though; this is the best book I've read in years.

After I finished this book I sat there and hugged it for about 10 minutes. I wanted more. I read many books and most of the time I enjoy what I've read but this time, I am absolutely in love. Sometimes after I finish reading something, I think, "Is that all?" When I finished reading Slapboxing, I felt satisfied. I didn't have to think about anything, I just felt whole after reading this. Each story in this collection is absolutely amazing. Each can stand on it's own, but together these stories are bliss. I haven't read anything this beautiful since I read The Prince of Tides. I especailly love the stories, "Chuckie," "Getting Ugly," and "Trinadad." Please read this book, you will not be sorry. It's wonderful!

I'd heard about this book here and there, reading very great reviews, but then having trouble getting my hands on it. I finally ordered it and couldn't be happier. I am, admittedly, a professor of comparative literature and with that in mind read this book much less for the storylines (which were strong and in the tradition of a few great American authors, oddly Salinger comes to mind), but more for the great skill with which he's crafted the book.

The second half, that most readers and reviewers seem to feel a greater affinity for, is I think the more straightforward and touching, delving into the complexities of human behavior and the depth of one boy's culpability in the awful things that have happened in his life. But the first half, which is more dramatic true, is where LaValle's intellect and artistry shine for me.

The five stories are placed together and at first read seemed done so simply because they were all about older people (in their twenties) and more violent/dramatic, but on further reading I've begun to notice the deeper/subtler patterns LaValle has worked into the fiction. First, and I believe most impressive, is the way that he has turned each of the stories into an essay (almost) on the personalities of each borough of New York. being a New Yorker who has been away for twenty years (maybe more) I was thrilled to find that "Getting Ugly", the story of Manhattan, is at once a truly brilliant (and undervalued) love story, but is also a take on the vanity of Manhattan as compared to the other boroughs (so self-involved and in love with itself).

In that same vein, "Slave" was a touching story, heartbreaking even, but it also read as a commentary on Staten Island (where I'm from) with its issues of being solitary, cut off from the rest of the world (he even brings up and points out the issue that staten island actually considered secession) and that this commentary on Staten Island's turning from/being alienated from the rest of new York still implies a deepered understanding of how the main character, Rob, feels in his own life!

"Ancient History" also attempts a very brave form of storytelling, two seperate first person narrators telling the same tale (simultaneously by the end). The other stories, I believe, fill in the other personalities of the boroughs and there is also the way that characters from one story filter into and inform the lives of people in another.

The book, the quick prose, allows a fast reader to run through this and think the book stands as simply "gritty" or "tough" tales with little too them. I find it brave on LaValle's part that it is so filled with intellect and art, but doesn't advertise this fact. That he has a mind is not bragged about (though at some points he does become a bit too cute with word choice and phrasing I must admit) and I believe there will be some readers who will pass over it as simple tales of "ghetto life" (they're all working class!) when instead I believe that Victor LaValle has stamped himself into American literature and I only look forward with great anticipation to the continuation of this important literary find.

I was pleasantly surprised. I read it all in one sitting. Each story was beautifully conceived and constructed. I'm looking forward to reading more of his work. I have since loaned it out to a friend and recommended it to several others.

What I found most interesting about this book was that his storytelling was slightly aggravating at first because I kept wanting it to tell stories the same old way. Rather than go along with tht same old flow he seemed to throw things together that you almost don't think stick together well, but it's like looking at a paiting too closely. With your eye right up to the canvas you think, This is great, but what is it; but when you step back ten feet, that's when you actually see what he's doing and that every movement, every line is planned to great effect. I want to say this book is great, but it's better than that.

Reading this collection, I found myself drawn between two poles of intense sadness and rib-splitting humor. I feel that the tension between the two made for a more "realistic" experience than the cliched 'stark photograph of the urban drama' that often accompanies such works. The stories had power because even though my life is dramatically different than the one presented, I was still charmed into an undesrtanding of the behaviors and settings; still convinced that I could have met these people, been related to them. A tremendous effort by a new writer whom I only hope will share more of his visions with us.

These are a collection of stories of guys growing up on the street of New York. The stories deal with relationship, missing fathers, prostitution, teasing, and other things teens go through. The stories make you think. I throught some of the stories ended kinda of strange, but they were still good.

SLAPBOXING is a collection of inter-related, but largely independent, short stories centered around life in NYC, spanning the last three decades. The scope of the works presage greater thing to come from Victor Lavalle, particularly once you get by the hype and ignore the comparisons.

I had to reread the stories - it's reasonably quick read - because my response after the first completion was "so what?" I realized I had approached this often dark and somber assortment with expectations of discovering some modern era consolidation of Wright/Ellison/Hughes. Victor Lavalle is none of them, nor should he be. But this collection provides every indication he will carve out a separate and distinct niche.

Overall, the stories are good, in fact, very good. "Ancient History" with its' creative utilization of blended narration was my personal favorite. The themes are not necessarily new or unique, especially if you are cognizant the real fictional aspect is in the assignation of characters rather than the events described which are repeated day after day, decade after decade.

I found the appeal to be in the construction and composition rather than what he had to say. Every writer need not be cathartic and there is little to uplift your spirit in this collection. It is the stark yet incisve style that is most compelling.