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49 of 49 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Supercabman, September 6, 2007
He eats Cheerios after getting home at 5:30 a.m. What no Maui Wowie? No London Iced Tea? He dutifully calls his girlfriend. Well, actually they aren't that friendly. (The girlfriend is an untold story.) He doesn't do anything or report on anything or do more than allude to anything but driving a cab. And he's very serious about the money. And the tips, and how to get them and how you can blow them off. He gives us the meter to the penny, and reports on the tip to the dime. But you can tell he really doesn't care. He worries about getting mugged and barfed on. He's patience and tolerant. But he's always smelling things. He looks for a dump in the backseat of his cab after some smelly guy has left. He can't find it. So he drives to a more lighted spot and searches some more. Nothing. Maybe he's losing it. His mind.
It's hard to tell at the beginning whether this is a memoir or a reportage. It reads like a string of closely related vignettes. But there is something holding it together. Hard to tell what it is. Except for the cab and The City and the derelicts and the poseurs and the transvestites and the drunks and the old people and the fat people and the night and the lights and the fear. Fear of guns and knives, or fear of being trapped in the job? He isn't sure. He tells himself he's driving a cab for the experience, to get material for The Novel. It's a sick world out there in the inner city. People are weird. He's taking notes and transcribing them when he gets home, turning it into Fiction.
He has a hero. Supercabman--himself. And he's a good hero, a cabbie psychologist and a wordsmith with a sharp satirical eye. He sizes people up, notes what they're wearing from their black leather pants to the grease spots on their shirts to their nose rings and bad teeth and bad breath and bad dye jobs, and how they are comporting themselves. Especially how they are comporting themselves. He has to. At three a.m. you don't want to make a mistake. Somebody's waving you down. Does he want a ride or your wad of bills? Hard to tell sometimes. Supercabman sees the city and it denizens without pity but then again with a minimum of judgment.
The cab's computer beeps messages. Sometimes he sends one himself. It sets off car alarms of nearby cars (ha, ha). He has his "cab policies." No smoking. That's tough. He pretends he's on the nicotine patch for commiseration. He has nicotine gum on the dash. Also pepper spray. (No plastic Jesus, though.) He knows how to small talk with the clientele and when Not to Ask and when to shut up. He's shrewd and cynical. Larry Sager is also one heck of a writer. Here's a bit from the "Safe Sex" chapter:
"Circling back and forth between a few different South of Market establishments finally turns up some stragglers: three men coming out of a popular gay bar, THE STUD on Harrison Street. One guy, who could easily pass as a bouncer, is wearing a bright bleached white tank-top tee shirt emphasizing his steroid-induced muscular build--6'3" and at least 225 pounds. His two companions climb into the back seat. One guy could be a GQ model; his partner sports the escaped-convict look--head shaved, beard unshaven, dressed in a Goth black shirt and black pants. And someone, pray tell, has taken several sharp metallic objects and run them straight through his face. It looks painful, but doesn't seem to bother him. Of the group, I spotted him first and I wasn't going to stop. But when GQ playfully grabbed the metal-pierced escaped-convict's buttocks, and both seemed to enjoy the routine, realized they were together and figured they were a safe pick-up. If anyone looking like Thug is flagging me from a ragged street corner in the Tenderloin, I do NOT stop." (p. 99)
The real strength of the book is in the sharp observations that Sager's alter ego makes about his passengers and himself. A nice technique is for him say one thing and think another, or to reply directly in his head to something somebody has said, but not aloud, as in this exchange with a really, really BAD painter who has just shown him her canvas which he notes to himself is "hideous awful":
"I still have some touching up to do," she says, as if expecting to hear an objection
from me regarding her own "harsh" criticism.
How about touching it up with kerosene and putting a match to it?
"Oh," I nod instead, pursing my lips tightly. (p. 214)
There are some nice line drawings by Shanon Essex and one by Emil of some of the characters to grace the text. I think Sager might have intended this opus originally as journalism, but found as he wrote the improvised dialogue (both interior and exterior) and the flights of fancy he took with some of the characters, that this story of a time in his life was better told as fiction.
Finally I have to note that this IS a novel however episodically constructed, and a very clever and original one, because suddenly there is an ending that catches us by surprise. Suddenly there is a denouement in the last chapter as he lets a passenger take over his cab. Suddenly the novel is over and we see the point of all that has gone before. There are a few solitary whiskeys, a phone call to the offstage girlfriend, a bit of haziness and then the end to an experience.
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49 of 49 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
ONE OF THE FIVE MOST ENJOYABLE READS I'VE HAD THIS YEAR!, September 3, 2007
What a delightful read! It only takes a few pages to realize that Larry Sager is quite an exceptional writer and story teller. The title of the books sort of tells it all, "The Tales of a San Francisco Cab Driver." This is just what you get and you have it served up, as I said, by a master story teller. The plot of this so called (by the author) "novel" has pretty well been hashed over here, so suffice to say that this is a collection of stories of the adventures of a taxi driver in a very unique city, his interactions with the characters he meets and his reaction to these characters. Actually, great stuff here. I truly feel though, that the strength of this book lies in the author's ability as a writer. This covers several areas.
First, Mr. Sager uses a technique with his dialogue that is absolutely fascinating. While it has been done before, this author has refined it and, to be truthful, has done it better than any other writer I have recently read. Most of these dialogues include at least three people, the author, the customer and thirdly, the author's thoughts. What I mean by this is that the author records what he actually says to the current passenger in his cab, what the passenger says and then includes what, he, the author, is actually thinking. There is a danger here of confusion, but the author pulls it off brilliantly. In fact, he is able to do this even when there are two, three and even more individuals in the conversation. This technique has been mastered in this work. I have never seen it done better.
Secondly, the author's descriptive abilities are great. You can actually see, in your mind, the individuals he is talking to at any given moment, see and feel the surroundings and even smell the smells. Close attention to detail and an excellent command of the language by the writer, enable the reader to join the author and almost feel like an unseen party as he tells his stories.
Thirdly, the author has a keen, somewhat sardonic, and always wiry sense of humor. His ability to assess people, situations, and indeed, himself, is quite remarkable. In short, he, the author, is funny!
Last, but certainly not least, we have with this work, a wonderful slice and view of a great city. We get the feel of the place, the good and the bad. We learn of its people, customs and unique place in our culture.
As a personal note; I have been fortunate enough to have lived, traveled and visited most of our major U.S. cities over the past 50 or so years, and indeed, quite a few outside the country, from Istanbul to Bangkok and points in between. I despise large cities, ergo, I chose to live in the hills here in the Ozarks now, but that being said, I am also fascinated by large cities and their people. Having visited San Francisco, I felt like I was on a revisit and did enjoy it. Each city is different, each city is the same. It is great to have such a good sketch of this one.
If you are looking for a great bit of writing, an enjoyable read and some wonderful story telling, then this one is certainly for you. Recommend this one highly. Hope we see much, much more from Sager in the future.
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35 of 35 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Entertaining, Well-Written & Pleasurable Read..., October 8, 2007
It is no surprise that Larry Sager's new book, "No Guns, No Knives..." won the Benjamin Franklin Award, as it is unique, written with charm, wit and humour, but also shows us a glut of characters (very strange individuals) one meets on a cabby's beat. Whether Sager used "poetic licence" to beef up some of his tales really makes no difference because his style is conversational, with excellent down to earth descriptions and visual characterizations.
To write simplistically with attention to detail and pull it off with such flair is good American writing. This is a great skill, a style of realistic writing that looks easy but when you attempt it, can be extremely difficult. This is a style that American's developed beginning with Poe, Twain, Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Carver - adverbs & adjectives are sparsely used - clean, transparent and most importantly, entertaining.
As a struggling musician, Sager needed to earn cash to enable him to develop his art form. The cab business was as good as any: work at night, do the real work during the day. (Let me just add that there are no "over night successes", only hard work at one's craft over many years and a bit of good luck makes "success", that is to say, making a living from one's art.) Sager seems to have done it hard as a cabby, because it is said, that driving a cab is a more dangerous profession than police work. After reading this collection of short tales about his various encounters, one can understand why.
Similar to comedy overall, (and this book is funny) there is always a hint of tragedy under the surface. For example we can make jokes about certain individuals like presidents, dead presidents, only after a particular amount of time has passed, otherwise, it's simply bad taste and in most cases, never funny.
Not all of Sager's stories are meant to be funny but show the human condition in all its absolute absurdity: "The Pharmacy" is one such example.
If you need an interesting & entertaining, light read, pick this book up -it is well-written and an engaging ride on a cabby's nightly beat.
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