Customer Reviews

Track Conditions: A Memoir

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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.

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.

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.

donaldahearn@hotmail.com

This book is so unique and special -- not at all your typical gay coming out story. There are horses here and the tactile world of the racetrack and Klein's lyrical and spare prose adds just the right kind of music to a poignant and harrowing redemption tale.

Michael Klein is a poet. As the author of 1990 and Day and Paper and the editor of three anthologies of AIDS-related verse, he has made his name - and spoken his identity - through the language of poetry. While Klein's sublime new book, Track Conditions , is subtitled "A Memoir," it, too, is best appreciated as poetry. In rich, brief, sorrowful chapters, Klein sketches five years, from 1979 to 1983, in which he abandoned Manhattan's bohemian life and crawled along the strange underbelly of the horse racing world, as a walker, a groomer and an all around lost soul. Out of the starting gate, Klein has two reasons to run from New York: he's chasing Richard, the lover who's left him for the tracks, and trying to flee his own pitifully destructive alcoholism. Dramatic tension seems to be established. The reader realizes rather quickly, however, that neither the drinking nor the romance will ever come to resolution. Instead, marbled with recollections of the author's troubled childhood, the instability of his life in the stables and his development of a near-mystic relationship with a Derby-winning horse named Swale, they become touchstones for obliquely lyrical meditations. So, while laced with intriguing anecdotes, Track Conditions is ultimately less about storytelling than it is about poetic perception. Rather than trying to see life as a building, linear narrative, Klein views it through a kaleidoscope: the juxtaposition of elements is ever-shifting, each moment is quickly transformed. It may not have the straight-ahead velocity of a horse race (or a commercial bestseller), but in the realm of impassioned, highly personal art, Track Conditions makes a glorious run for the roses.

Track Conditions by Michael Kline is a poetic, thoughtful, honest autobiography. As soon as I find my copy, I'm rereading it for the third time. Highly recommended! ~ Kit Ehrman,[...]

Memoirs tend to tell too much, but Michael Klein's TRACK CONDITIONS manages to convey a lot without giving away everything, and that is what makes this book so special. Klein manages to seduce us with his prose and with little snippets of half-told stories. One might say his memoir is a half-told life, and that would be true, for, as one finishes the book the thought is that a second memoir should be forthcoming. Or maybe Klein has written TRACK CONDITIONS in such a way that the reader yearns to hear more. One of the best qualities of the book is that it doesn't whine, the downfall of the modern-day memoir. It feels incredibly honest and Klein comes across as an accessible kind of guy, someone you might sit down with over coffee. TRACK CONDITIONS seems to have something to appeal to everyone: lovers of horses, aficionados of the track, gays, straights, lovers of people, drinkers, teetotalers, people with lives in crisis, and lovers of words. It is amazing that a small memoir can have such a large reach. But it does. And it works.

This is a throughly original book and hard to put into a category. The main character is gay, an alcoholic and, unbeknownst to him, about to have his life changed unalterably by a champion racehorse. It's all played out on the racetrack in incredibly descriptive and inventive prose and this book really deserves wide attention. I can't wait for the movie!