Customer Reviews

Things I Like About America: Personal Narratives by Poe Ballantine

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I've been reading Poe Ballantine's work for almost ten years in The Sun magazine, a monthly that prides itself and proves itself on publishing the best writers in the country and abroad. It is a magazine that mimics somewhat Poe's life: both are relatively obscure but necessary. He has been traveling America and Mexico for two decades in a self-fashioned schooling of the road. He eschewed the standard for entering college when young and instead began a series of jobs, mostly cooking at greasy spoons, across the body of the continent. He did so to train himself as a writer, to chuck everything most people take for granted, like regular, sad career-goaled work, steady long term housing, companionship; he chucked it all to squeeze out living words. Poe Ballantine has succeeded. He's as real as a sunburn and the salve to quell the burning. This book of essays is bound to become a classic of road literature and self-examination. It is funny, sad, raw, disturbing, warm and occasionally painful. It is a book I read in one sitting and wept after. This man has taken his life, laid it out for us to read about and in turn held up the sharpest mirror man has viewed to see his true, troubled condition.

Like an old friend known forever, this book is a gift. Out of nowhere (accidentally stumbled across in THE SUN Magazine) I have a new hero. Brave enough to do what we with our boring jobs and routine lives dream of, Poe is todays Kerouac. A rambler who is real and possesses a remarkable and honest delivery across the page, Poe takes us next door to a neighborhood and a lifestyle unknown. How he can open up this much is exceptional. From a regular reader I give all I have to offer back- "Things I Like About America" has landed solidly in my top 5.

Poe Ballentine's work shows sensitivity, humor, compassion, and insight. These personal narratives make the everyday interesting and the exotic familiar. I am a fan of his writing, and this book certainly contains some of the best examples of his unique style. If everything in it is true, Poe Ballentine has taken extraordinary risks while becoming the writer he is today. If he made it all up, he sure tells fascinating stories. I bought an extra copy for a friend who appreciates good books.

Poe is my newest hero. He speaks of things that anyone who has traveled America knows of. He puts it in sometimes hilarious terms, sometimes tear jerking terms. He makes being human ugly, beautiful and boring. What an amazing book. I am a new fan and I am seriously considering driving from Colorado to Nebraska to meet him. If you like this book then you are alive.

Dang it. I don't know how to write reviews.

All I know is I liked Poe Ballantine's writing immediately. He is funny as hell, brilliant, honest...different. Give him a try, you won't be disappointed!

If life were a greyhound bus, you would find Poe Ballantine out on the front bumper, experiencing it sooner and more intensely than the rest of us. This book is a collection of dispatches from the road, and what they have to tell us is edifying, entertaining, terrifying, and reassuring, as well as utterly authentic. Some readers have likened Ballantine to Charles Bukowski, and certain common themes suggest the comparison, but Ballantine's sympathy, wry understanding, and cheerless optimism have more in common with the themes of Tom Waits, Bob Dylan, and Hank Williams.

I've been reading Poe Ballantine's work for almost ten years in The Sun magazine, a monthly that prides itself and proves itself on publishing the best writers in the country and abroad. It is a magazine that mimics somewhat Poe's life: both are relatively obscure but necessary. He has been traveling America and Mexico for two decades in a self-fashioned schooling of the road. He eschewed the standard for entering college when young and instead began a series of jobs, mostly cooking at greasy spoons, across the body of the continent. He did so to train himself as a writer, to chuck everything most people take for granted, like regular, sad career-goaled work, steady long term housing, companionship; he chucked it all to squeeze out living words. Poe Ballantine has succeeded. He's as real as a sunburn and the salve to quell the burning. This book of essays is bound to become a classic of road literature and self-examination. It is funny, sad, raw, disturbing, warm and occasionally painful. It is a book I read in one sitting and wept after. This man has taken his life, laid it out for us to read about and in turn held up the sharpest mirror man has viewed to see his true, troubled condition.

Whether one believes this work of Poe Ballentine's is fact or fiction, what he says is deeply rooted in truth. He tells the stories of the "little people" and gives the peons and the nameless faceless grunts of this country a voice. He paints a gallery of portraits that reflects the real day to day struggle of a vast majority of people in this country, who live minute by minute because that is as much of a future as they dare to expect. Sort of like a modern day Woody Gutherie, rather than ride the rails, he rode Greyhound and brought back the kinds of stories Woody would have sung. When I finished the last page of the book, I imagined that this must have been the way his friends made along the way must have felt when they saw him board that bus and leave them behind. They were hopeful he would find something better, sad that it all had to end.

I became a fan of Poe Ballantine through reading his articles in The Sun magazine. This collection of short stories is just great. They are all autobiographical stories about his stays in different areas of the US and Mexico. The editorial, or maybe confessional, "twist" he puts on each experience is what makes the narrative so interesting.

I was totally enthralled by this book, each chapter was like a delicious piece of chocolate cake, you just had to one more piece until it was over, no more pieces left. It was one of the most satisfying reads I have ever had. Ballantine's prose is wonderfully constructed it just wrapped you up and took you to wherever he was holed up at the time. I don't think I have ever been so jealous of such a simple transient lifestyle. I promptly purchased every book Balantine wrote and even enjoyed his fictional works (and I am by no means a fan of fiction of any kind). I almost feel myself wanting for him for fall on hard times so he can pen some more of his wonderful narratives, but maybe, just maybe he a few more hidden experiences in there he wishes to share? Highly recommended.