Tietam Brown [Hardcover]

Mick Foley (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 8, 2003

A remarkable debut novel—given extraordinary life by its amalgam of energy, raw authentic language, and, at the core, a surprising gentleness.

It is the work of the constantly amazing wrestler-writer Mick Foley, whose two volumes of autobiography, Have a Nice Day! and Foley Is Good, were each number one on the New York Times National Best-seller List.
It tells the story and speaks in the voice—at once innocent and too knowing for his age—of Antietam (Andy) Brown, named for the great-great-great- grandfather who died on that Civil War battlefield. Andy at seventeen is himself the veteran of a violent boyhood, having been locked up in the Northern Virginia Juvenile Detention Center for killing a teenager who attempted to rape him.

Now, after seven years, he is out, free, at a crossroads, trying to make a fresh start, to fit into the life of Conestoga High School in the small upstate New York town to which he has been brought by his father—absent from his life since he was a month old. The man is certainly charismatic. He is also crude, apparently addicted to bodybuilding, beer swilling, and (his own words for his serial womanizing) “bareback riding.” He has no visible job, no known past.

Associated by the town with his father’s coarseness, hectored by the boorish football coach and the coach’s pack of steroid-pumping teens, feeling himself losing ground, Andy is stunned to discover that the most popular girl in town is attracted to him. Terri, the homecoming queen, the school beauty, every boy’s dream girl, a born-again Christian, a really nice girl. Andy can’t believe it. He is immediately head over heels in love—first love—and determined to protect Terri from everything bad on earth. Worried that his father, even he himself, might contaminate her, and determined for her sake to discover what his father is, Andy begins to delve into the locked rooms and dangerous currents of the elder Tietam Brown’s past and present.
What happens is told in a novel that is appealingly direct, moving, and altogether pleasurable in its superb storytelling and celebration of the human spirit.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

If Freud and de Sade were to pen story lines for WWF Smackdown! the result might be this lurid coming-of-age novel by Foley, a former professional wrestler and author of two bestselling memoirs, Foley Is Good and Have a Nice Day! Andy Brown is an archetypal high school underdog, a misshapen, motherless misfit tormented by the football coach and tantalized by the minister's daughter. At home, dad Tietam is an alcoholic bodybuilding enthusiast who does nude calisthenics in the living room in between noisy bedroom sessions with a parade of three-night-stand women; he parents Andy by offering him beer, condoms and crude sexual pointers. As Andy learns about manhood from dubious role models, first-time novelist Foley finds adult fiction a truly unrefereed arena where the wrestling sensibility can break free of PG-13 constraints. The boisterous narrative fluctuates between bawdy picaresque and episodes of berserk violence full of smashed teeth, crushed tracheas, gouged eyes, sudden, tables-turning castration and heterosexual, homosexual, pedophilic and incestuous varieties of rape. The cartoonish characters are Oedipal tag teams battling for Andy's soul; every man is a bully or a pervert, every woman a sentimentalized madonna/whore duality ruined by male predation. Foley is not much of a stylist. He mingles villainous trash-talk dialogue and stilted sexual banter ("I'll admit right now to being somewhat distracted by the pleasant tingling in my penile area") in a Rabelaisian tone as self-conscious and overbearing as a large man in tiny trunks. But readers in the mood for vigorous pulp may enjoy this steroid-fueled brawl.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Telling a story as a memoir can create problems. If the writing is bad, is it the character's fault or the author's? If it's intentionally bad--using cliches like donut sprinkles and editorializing every action--what's the point? One-eared, one-handed Antietam Brown V--Andy--has suffered through a life resembling the unabridged Grimms' fairy tales, filmed by the Fox network. When the father he's never known, Antietam Brown IV--Tietam--whisks him home from juvenile detention on his seventeenth birthday, Andy wants normalcy so much he's almost willing to overlook his father's bizarre behavior (Tietam is a lothario who interrupts his sex sessions to brag, chug beer, and exercise naked in the living room). Andy starts high school, finds a girlfriend, and searches for information about his parents' past. But even this modest peace is dashed by steroid-deformed jocks, a tyrannical teacher, a hypocritical reverend, Tietam, and Andy's own insecurity and simmering anger. Foley, who wrestled as "Mankind," has written a frustrating novel. The oddball protagonist and his outlandish father are undeniably interesting, but supporting characters are two-dimensional or lack understandable motivation (the football coach/teacher is evil incarnate; Andy's girlfriend is gorgeous, virginal, and Christian--yet hell-bent on deflowering the terrified Andy). And the narration includes lines like "he was about to prove his manhood by smacking a small child"--which distance readers by denying them the chance to make their own judgments. There's talent here, but it's hard to tell how much; yet with the large print run and publicity, expect demand. Keir Graff
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; 1 edition (July 8, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375415505
• ISBN-13: 978-0375415500
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (51 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #678,314 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Mick Foley grew up on Long Island, New York. He is the author of the genre-defining #1 New York Times bestsellers: Foley Is Good: And the Real World Is Faker Than Wrestling and Have a Nice Day!: A Tale of Blood and Sweatsocks. Foley has wrestled professionally for over fifteen years and was the three-time World Wrestling Entertainment Champion. He currently wrestles on TNA. Foley lives with his wife and four children on Long Island.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A tale of forgiveness, July 13, 2003

By 

R. A. Ward "speedbmp" (WV) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Tietam Brown (Hardcover)

I have read thousands of books, and I have never read one quite like this one. In fact, "Tietam Brown" is so different I am having a hard time quantifying it for this review. But I do know this: It's good. Very good for a first fictional effort. Part comedy, part tragedy, part horror, part coming of age story, "Tietam" really cannot be summed up with one sentence. Much like real life, the bad blends with the good, "normal" is only a word, no one is totally what they seem, and those whom we love the most can also hurt us the most.

If you have read Foley's autobiographical works, "Have a Nice Day" and "Foley Is Good" or even just watched his wrestling career on TV, then you will see flashes of Mick in "Tietam." Bits of Mick's quirks are entwined in both Tietam and Andy, and occasionally a "Mickism" is used. In the beginning, the writing style pretty closely follows "Have a Nice Day," but soon finds its own rhythm and goes down a much darker and more literary path. Mick's perverse humor is also very apparent, much to my delight. :)

But don't let the author's name and background fool you: This is not a "wrasslin' book" or "Foley's Life Part 3." Instead, "Tietam" is a wonderful study of forgiveness, of right and wrong, of the limits that people put on their love -- both for themselves and others.

Most of all, it's the story of Andy Brown, a high school student who has spent most of his life in foster homes and an orphanage and who survived a terrible car accident at the age of five. His father, an enigmatic, mercurial man, comes into his life after a 17-year absence, and immediately the reader knows Andy will never be the same. However, this reader was shocked to find out just what an emotional, strange journey he will have. Put on your seatbelt and keep it on -- you will need it, because this is one powerful, somewhat surreal story.

The character that steals the show is Antietam "Tietam" Brown, Andy's father. He's smart, vulgar and loves deeply. He exercises naked, has purple fuzzy dice hanging on his rearview and sings along with Barry Manilow. And he can go from "normal" to crazy and criminal in the blink of an eye. He's not altogether sane. Antietam also has deeply conflicting views of the world and the people closest to him that he does not see as a problem.

And that is what makes him so essentially different from Andy. It can be argued that Andy has had a much harder life than his father did up to that age, and yet, Andy has a better understanding of the world around him. It is ironic that a confused, lonely teen has a much clearer moral vision for himself than his world-weary, road-hardened father does, but it is nonetheless true that Andy has the ability to see the shades of meaning, the layers of complexity in people and events that black-and-white thinker Tietam is incapable of.

But most of all, Andy is able to forgive. The further you go into the story, the more you realize how important this is. I won't say anything more about it, because I don't want to give away the story, but the idea of redemption runs very strong in "Tietam."

What sort of person would you be if you were incapable of forgiving anyone, most especially yourself? Do you believe that people can truly change for the better? If those questions intrigue you, then you will enjoy "Tietam Brown" as thoroughly as I did.

14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What is a good person?, February 9, 2004

By 

Aaron J. Palmer (Waukesha, WI) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Tietam Brown (Hardcover)

First off, let me just say that I've done of lot of reading over the years. I have a BA in history and English literature, an MA in history, and nearly a Ph.D. in history. I'm pretty selective in what I read. I originally bought this book, not because I found the story interesting, but becasue I thought I owed it to Mick Foley. Foley gave so much to all of us as fans of wrestling, that I thought I owed it to him to buy his novel and give it a chance. I finally just now got around to reading it, and once I began I didn't put it down until I was finished. It was, without a doubt, one of the best novels I've ever read, and I've read a lot of them.

The story just keeps you glued to the page. It's full of humor, and if you know Foley, it's full of his particular brand of humor. It's also one of the darkest things I've ever read. Knowing that Foley grew up in a loving family and now has one of his own, one wonders where this dark tale comes from. If you've ever seen his old Cactus Jack promos, maybe it comes from that same place. But the horrible things that happen to Andy Brown are not just there to shock. They are central to a story about how a human being can endure so much hell and somehow still emerge in the end as a good person. I think that is the central question Foley is asking: What is a good person? I think his answer is one who comes out undefeated by the terrible things that life can hand to us. Tietam Brown is evil, not because of the things he does, but because of what he has let tradgedy do to him. It's a bit like why Captain Ahab is evil and unredeemable.

Mick Foley has really written something special here. The next time he publishes a novel, I'll buy it because of its own merits, not because of my admiration for the author's past acheivements.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Foley's surprising debut is staunch and powerful, July 10, 2003

By 

ProgMasta (The 'Burgh, PA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Tietam Brown (Hardcover)

Okay, I know what you are thinking... Mankind/Cactus Jack/Dude Love of WWF fame wrote a fictional story?!! I took a triple take too when I saw the yellow cover beckoning me like a light from lighthouse. It screemed: "Read Me," or at least "read the brief description of me and take me home..." So i figured, what the hell, and gave Mick Foley's fictional debut a worthy try agreeing inside my head that if the first thirty pages didn't grab a hold of me in some way, then I would put it down and never try again.

So, I read those first thirty pages and in the next ten hours, with some minor interruptions in between, closed the final page of the epilogue and ultimately the new book with a feeling of satisfaction but not being entirely fulfilled.

It is a good story - - no scratch that - - it is a fantastic read, with memorable characters and plot lines that develop so naturally that I felt at times that Foley HAD TO HAVE a ghost writer. Alas, no ghost writer here and what Foley has created is a raw coming-of-age tale... A tougher "Catcher in the Rye," if you will.

What makes this tale work is main character and his antagonist. (I use this term loosely for Andy's father because for more than half the story there is no hint of antagonism at all in Antietam Brown, and ultimately it is this deception pulled on the reader that will literally anger them but allow them to enjoy it all the same) Andy Brown is a kid who has seen it all, lived through it all, and lived to tell the tale. We earnestly hope that Andy (short for Antietam, his father's name) can live to see better days and for a while, we get to see that dream become a reality. Life, however, has a way of snapping reality into direct focus and we realize that life is only as good as you can make it. Poor, poor Andy Brown. Like I said, we feel for this kid, although rage and violence are his staple emotions, we want to see him win.

As for Antietam Brown Sr., we like him for most of the duration...even if he is a womanizing pig who keeps trophies from his conquests (read the story, you'll see what I mean). But oh how quickly our thoughts about him can change. He clearly is the villain here, and a bloody darn good one at that. He and his son are the reason this works so well and reads so fluidly. The rest of the characters, although they are not the focal point of the story, hold up well on thier own too... however, some of them are disjointed and make way too brief of an appearance. I hope to see Foley develop his characters a bit more deeply in the future - - that's my only complaint.

Overall, a hell of a debut from a guy with a hell of a knack for writing. I had no idea he had it in him, but I'm glad he does.

4 1/2 stars!