The Last Known Residence of Mickey Acuña

by Dagoberto Gilb

Mickey Acuña is a man suspended between a vague past and a vaguer future. Emerging from the landscape of the Southwest, buffeted by life and licking his wounds, he moves into a YMCA to wait for a check that is coming to save him and that demands an address. As days and then weeks pass without its arrival, he picks up work - first odd jobs and then shifts at the cash register of the Y - and hangs out with his neighbors, playing handball, drinking coffee, shooting pool, getting drunk, falling in love or lust with women he meets, works with, passes on the street. In the vacuum of the Y, Mickey finds himself becoming the unwitting center of a community starved for human contact and for meaning: Sarge, with his fast-food coupons; Omar, with his drunken rages and obsession with the vanished Lucy; Rosemary, whose abundant physical presence both attracts and repels him. Mickey fights to maintain his distance and his freedom, until the narrative converges abruptly around him in a profound and shocking conclusion.

Genres: Fiction

218 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1994

About the author

Dagoberto Gilb was born in the city of Los Angeles, his mother a Mexican who crossed the border illegally, and his father a Spanish-speaking Anglo raised in East Los Angeles. They divorced before he began kindergarten. He attended several junior colleges until he transferred to the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he studied philosophy and religion and graduated with both bachelor'
s and master's degrees. After that, he began his life as a construction worker, migrating back and forth from Los Angeles and El Paso. A father, he eventually joined the union in Los Angeles; a member of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners, he became a class-A journeyman carpenter, and his employment for the next twelve years was on high-rise buildings.

Reviews

[Susan Sutton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mickey appears from nowhere in the beginning, disappears at the end. As other reviewers have noted, not much happens in between. And, when something does happen, it's not always entirely clear what it was or what it means.

That said, it's good to read a book about people entirely different from oneself, to get maybe a fleeting insight into what it's like to live so friendlessly, pointlessly, hopelessly. Sort of Southwestern noir.

Some nice use of language - really captures the cadence of the border, with sentences starting in English, careening through Spanish (mostly cuss words) and coming out English at the other end.

Not a fun read, but worth a shot.

[Yair · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the reviews on the back cover of the book details this story as a "bleak fable" but I'd substitute the first word for nihilistic. Not much happens in this book, all seems to pass in a depressing transience where after arrivals we have only departures (both terms being variously defined) to simultaneously acknowledge and look forward too.

Not much escapes this story. Winning and losing, loving and lusting, friendship and enmity, all is made similarly irrelevant as protagonist Mickey Acuna just, quite simply, exists from day to day fashioning his own narrative from nothing as he eventually, some might say inevitably, leaves the primary setting of the YMCA to venture for the enigmatic 'border'.

This is an odd book as a lot of what's wrong with it is also so right. The ambiguity is annoying but also telling. Most of the characters are apathetic to the point of being the literary equivalent to the nonchalant dorks who mostly pass through our days but because of this are also more real then some 'message' characters or heroes and villains.

Paradoxically, with this book we are given nothing and are left with questions. How to answer nothing with nothing, or how I learned to stop worrying and wander until my troubles seemed so far away.

[Richard · Rating 2 out of 5]

For all his critical acclaim Dagoberto Gilb’s work is hard to like in the conventional sense that may cause one to select a book. Set in El Paso, the characters occupy hard, unenviable lives and their stories unfold in a way reminiscent of Raymond Carver’s short stories. Carver however kept to the short story form, even mastering it whereas in this, his first novel Gilb stretched the desultory bits of these marginal characters lives to their final stop in a YMCA located in El Paso, each waiting for a letter expected to bring them relative wealth, enough to move on and start anew. The flatness of the story reads like it would be better done in the theatre ala Mamet’s “American Buffalo” which involved three dead beats in a pawn shop working on their next score but it just doesn’t work as a novel. By comparison, although his preceding book of short Stories “The Magic Of Blood” is not exactly uplifting the stories of the lives revealed have a flow more suitable to the short form.

[Dana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not as enjoyable as I had hoped, but did open me up to what it might be like for the people hanging out on the sidewalks all day in the Tenderloin.

[Amelia Brandt · Rating 2 out of 5]

My tolerance for books that don’t pass the bechdel test and that use more words to describe women’s physical appearance than anything else about them is spent, so that was my first issue with this book. The second is that I wasn’t very engaged in the story itself. The writing is engaging and I like the mix of Spanish and English that feels very authentic, but I just kept waiting for something to happen and it never did

[Glenn Harden · Rating 3 out of 5]

This novel is about dislocated men, disconnected from community and place, but also hungering for both. Not a lot happens in the story, nor is there much individual growth. Yet, there is something in its portrait of its lost men that isn't entirely without hope.

Note: This book contains frank discussions of sexual activity, and its female characters are one dimensional--foils on which the men place certain hopes and desires.

[Janet · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disappointing read. On the plus side, good character development. They all seemed real. And I finished the book. Surprise ending…but I don’t know or even think I know what happened. I don’t understand what Mickey thinks he knows either.

[Dotty · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh. Honestly I couldn’t finish it. It sounded fascinating. It wasn’t. I wound not recommend it.

[Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Starts out slowly and builds as Gilb uses parallel structures with deft skill. Mickey first finds ways to maintain his place at the YMCA by working odd jobs and using what money he h already has to pay rent. He falls in and out of love. Then he finds a job as front desk clerk at the Y where he is temporarily living. He tells himself the Y is temporary, all the while waiting on money in the mail that may or may not arrive to save him. He makes friends with the Sarge, a neighbor at the Y who plays handball with Mickey and cannot beat Mickey despite wanting to win desperately. There's also Butch, who whispers, and Omar who doesn't believe the stories Mickey tells, and an assortment of other unique characters. As Mickey longs to find meaning and purpose, he waits as long as he can for the mail that will save him. Much like Waiting for Godot, waiting for the mail requires patience, but does Mickey have the stamina to wait it out long enough? Quite a surprising book. Surprising because it ends up meaning so much about friendship and identity.

[Judi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mickey Acuña is hiding out at a YMCA in El Paso Texas while he waits for a much needed check but hints at some trouble that could happen if the money doesn't arrive soon. Mickey inadvertently becomes the center of the Y community as he tells his tale of women, draws analogies to the "wild west" (book he is reading) and is on an unbelievable winning streak. But is what he say true? Or Is Mickey one more quirky eccentric with nowhere else to go?

Gilb's style of writing makes an understatement of the daily life (mail, ping-pong games) for the unemployables and the down-on-the-lucks. This book is humorous, yet a very serious contribution to literature.

[Russell · Rating 2 out of 5]

One of those books where nothing happens for the sake of nothing happening. Sort of like Waiting for Godot in that way, except that it isn't a play that lasts for just a couple hours and achieves a meaningful ending, it's a full length novel that requires you to actively read and stay engaged... despite the fact that nothing happens, and not in a way that is all that satisfying.

[Hillary · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quite enjoyed this book. I think it would transition really well into a stage play. It has that “vibe” about it. Via Mickey, we met various transient characters who are currently making their home at a local YMCA in El Paso. Reflective, very real without being overly tragic or sappy.

[Clint Flatt · Rating 1 out of 5]

Sucked, I did a speed read and found nothing more than the day to day life of a drifter temporarly living in a YMCA in El Paso

[L.A. · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[K M · Rating 2 out of 5]

Down and out at the YMCA with some interesting characters.