Track Conditions: A Memoir [Hardcover]

Michael Klein (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1997

In 1979, Michael Klein, an aspiring singer/songwriter living in New York City, was broke, friendless, and drinking too much. When his lover, Richard, left him to work on a race track, Klein followed, and so began his extraordinary five-year sojourn on tracks in Ohio, New York, Florida, and finally Kentucky. At the 110th running of the Kentucky Derby, where he was groom to the winning horse, Klein was led from the winner's circle into the center of a tragic mystery, and then into a new life. "The race track put me in a kind of awe...It was a world inside a world...a labyrinth of luck, into and out of which the horses I walked every day were leading me." Among dissolute hired hands, in shedrows and tack rooms where men who care for horses also have sex, and in smoky after-hours bars, Klein tries to stop drinking, but can't; he tries to stay with Richard, but can't. He begins to have a recurring dream, strangely prophetic: a horse appearing as Richard disappears. And he revisits his past: his step-father introducing him to gambling and sex; his mother's sudden death. Then the dreamed-of horse arrives.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Pursuing a lover who fled because of his alcoholism, the author wound up as a racetrack groom in Cincinnati. His lyrical, episodic narrative chronicles five years in horse racing (1979-84), with flashbacks to a ghastly childhood. Michael Klein (now sober) is a poet, and it shows in his unerring use of just the right words to describe, precisely yet colorfully, an out-of-control life that climaxed with being fired just before his Kentucky Derby-winning colt ran the Preakness. A moving memoir and a loving depiction of the byzantine track world.

From Booklist

In the late seventies, award-winning poet Michael Klein was a confused and dissolute young man, trying to make it as a songwriter in New York City. With the painful memories of an abusive childhood rattling about in his head, Klein's drinking was out of control, his life unraveling around him. When his lover Richard leaves him to work in the Midwest as a groom, Klein follows, finding a position at the tracks himself. But Klein's redemption isn't swift. Several years of alcoholism follow as the on-again, off-again couple bounce around the country from Kentucky to Florida to New York. Although the destructive details of Klein's existence can make for harrowing reading, the descriptions of the racing subculture, from the hierarchies among the grooms to daily life on the different tracks to the physical care of the horses, are intensely compelling. In the end, Klein is saved, in a fashion, by love. He becomes the groom to Swale, a young racehorse with the potential and lineage to become a star. Swale manages to break through the author's numbness; Klein comes to care deeply for the horse. When suddenly Swale dies, Klein is catapulted into self-realization, forced to finally take control of his existence. A heartbreaking story that is beautifully told. Brian Kenney

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 178 pages
• Publisher: Persea Books; Stated First Edition edition (April 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0892552255
• ISBN-13: 978-0892552252
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.7 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,612,169 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Michael Klein is the author of "Track Conditions," (nominated for a Lambda Book Award), "The End of Being Known," and "1990" (winner of the Lambda Book Award). He also edited "Poets for Life: 76 Poets Respond to AIDS" (winner of the Lambda Book Award), "Things Shaped in Passing," and "In the Company of My Solitude". His new book of poems, "Then, We Were Still Living" will be published in 2010 by GenPop Books. He teaches in the MFA Program at Goddard College in Port Townsend, Washington and is on the faculty of the summer program at The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Different Kind of Horse Story: A Million Big Stars, April 24, 2006

By 

Jennifer Siegel "Jennifer Semple Siegel" (USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Track Conditions: A Memoir (Paperback)

Oprah, for a million little reasons, you chose the wrong memoir for your book club.

In an age where honesty in memoir seems to be a rare commodity, TRACK CONDITIONS is probably one of the most honest, compelling, and underrated books in print.

A fascinating glimpse into author Michael Klein's downward spiral into alcoholism, lost love, dependency, and casual sex, this lyrical memoir is not an easy read-never easy to read about another person's coming-of-age psychic pain. But this memoir is a must-read.

A real-life thoroughbred horse story, from a former groom's point of view, this memoir focuses on the deteriorating relationship between two young men in the midst of their own personal crises.

In 1979, Klein, a confirmed New Yorker, desperately followed his lover Richard Coatney into the homophobic underworld of thoroughbred racing, beginning his career as a horse walker at River Downs in Cincinnati and working his way up to groomer at Belmont, Churchill Downs, and Pimlico.

Among all the empty booze bottles and one-night stands, Klein discovered an aesthetic affinity for horses, in particular one special--and well-known--thoroughbred, precipitating the author's final downfall and then leading toward his eventual salvation--and this memoir.

Klein leads the reader into a world rarely ventured into by the average horse track bettor: vivid descriptions of lame horses being cruelly euthanized and the casual doping of horses for monetary gain. At the beginning of chapter three, the author summarizes, from his perspective, the visible and invisible aspects of "racetrack society":

"There are people you see all the time: the barn help, the trainers, the exercise crew, the men and women who deliver hay and straw and feed. And there are those you see only rarely, if at all: the jockeys, the parimutuel clerks, the owners, the starting-gate crew. Two worlds: the training world and the racing world."

Ironically, from the reader's perspective, the visibility/invisibility paradigm is directly the opposite from the author's.

And Klein offers insights into worlds which are largely invisible to most of us: in addition to the gritty side of thoroughbred racing, he also reveals the limited options available to an impoverished young homosexual, also a poet and rebel, of the late seventies and early eighties.

First published in 1997, the memoir's main narrative covers the author's racetrack life, from its inauspicious beginning to its shocking 1984 denouement, with some interspersed flashbacks to his abusive and incestuous childhood and Manhattan life with Richard.

While revealing vivid and harsh details about his life, the author maintains a psychic distance from the reader through his dispassionate use of the past tense; moreover, he does not editorialize from the perspective of the forty-something memoirist.

He simply unfolds his story, leaving judgments, analyses, and evaluations up to his readers.

The distance works well; the author never whines or asks his audience to feel sorry for him. He simply presents "in-your-face" statements and facts, like them or hate them.

It doesn't matter what the reader thinks; in the end, Klein, with a metaphorical kick from his equine friend, triumphs.

There is beauty and poignancy in Klein's spare prose, yet glimmers of humor add some comic relief, for example, when he describes some of the other grooms and other track people and recounts some his late mother's family stories.

I recommend this book for both gays and straights--anyone who appreciates a well-written life-story, no matter how down and gritty.

I own the 1997 hardcover edition, and it is worth every one of the twenty-two dollars that I paid for it.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful, simply beautiful, August 28, 2004

By 

Kathy B (Oklahoma City OK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Track Conditions (Paperback)

Being a straight nursing student who lives in small town america,I wasn't sure I would relate to this book. But the writing and the openess of the author surpasses any differences between our lives. An amazing book.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars pure blues and bliss, October 8, 2003

By 

"dra71" (Woodstock, VT United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Track Conditions: A Memoir (Hardcover)

Michael defies narrative convention while achieving its goals in his long prose poem/memoir/story. His is a story of triumph: whether found covered in ash and velvet and 100 dollar bills or perhaps in the spotlight of literary praise. Either way this story helped save me. Michael is a writer I respect and emulate.

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