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Graffiti Palace
A brilliant, exhilarating debut novel that retells The Odyssey during the 1965 Watts Riots—like nothing you've ever read before
It's August 1965 and Los Angeles is scorching. Americo Monk, a street-haunting aficionado of graffiti, is frantically trying to return home to the makeshift harbor community (assembled from old shipping containers) where he lives with his girlfriend, Karmann. But this is during the Watts Riots, and although his status as a chronicler of all things underground garners him free passage through the territories fiercely controlled by gangs, his trek is nevertheless diverted.
Embarking on an exhilarating, dangerous, and at times paranormal journey, Monk crosses paths with a dizzying array of representatives from Los Angeles subcultures, including Chinese gangsters, graffiti bombers, witches, the Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad, and others. Graffiti Palace is the story of a city transmogrified by the upsurge of its citizens, and Monk is our tour guide, cataloging and preserving the communities that, though surreptitious and unseen, nevertheless formed the backbone of 1960s Los Angeles.
With an astounding generosity of imagery and imagination, Graffiti Palace heralds the birth of a major voice in fiction. A. G. Lombardo sees the writings on our walls, and with Graffiti Palace he has provided an allegorical paean to a city in revolt.
It's August 1965 and Los Angeles is scorching. Americo Monk, a street-haunting aficionado of graffiti, is frantically trying to return home to the makeshift harbor community (assembled from old shipping containers) where he lives with his girlfriend, Karmann. But this is during the Watts Riots, and although his status as a chronicler of all things underground garners him free passage through the territories fiercely controlled by gangs, his trek is nevertheless diverted.
Embarking on an exhilarating, dangerous, and at times paranormal journey, Monk crosses paths with a dizzying array of representatives from Los Angeles subcultures, including Chinese gangsters, graffiti bombers, witches, the Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad, and others. Graffiti Palace is the story of a city transmogrified by the upsurge of its citizens, and Monk is our tour guide, cataloging and preserving the communities that, though surreptitious and unseen, nevertheless formed the backbone of 1960s Los Angeles.
With an astounding generosity of imagery and imagination, Graffiti Palace heralds the birth of a major voice in fiction. A. G. Lombardo sees the writings on our walls, and with Graffiti Palace he has provided an allegorical paean to a city in revolt.
336 pages, Hardcover
First published March 13, 2018
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1998 people want to read
About the author
A.G. Lombardo
4 books27 followersA. G. Lombardo is a native Angeleno who teaches at a Los Angeles public high school. Graffiti Palace is his debut novel.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 40 reviews
May 15, 2018
This is extraordinary fantastical historical fiction, a stunning reinterpretation of The Odyssey, set in August 1985 in Los Angeles where the arrest of black Marquette Fry by white police officers ignites six days of the Watt Riots. Graffiti expert and curator, Americo Monk, is famous for his detailed documentation of the area's writings on the walls, a valued and much sought after knowledge. Usually, he can travel in safety through dangerous gang territories but as he attempts to reach his makeshift home of containers and his pregnant girlfriend, Karmann, all that Monk knows is thrown up in the air as he negotiates back and forth in a transformed and incendiary atmosphere in a sweltering LA. It is an astonishing and perilous journey, his adventures reveal a phenomenal and diverse range of colourful below the radar characters that inhabit LA's underbelly, brimful of a myriad of little known and subversive cultures.
Monk's unforgettable encounters include the real, the supernatural, the mythic and the surreal, such as Mexican and Chinese gangsters, killer bees, witches, and the Nation of Islam leader, Elijah Mohammed and so much more. Lombardo writes in vibrant prose, richly detailed descriptions with powerful imagery on the burning issue of race, as relevant today as in the troubled and traumatising past of the US in the 1960s. This is far from a perfect novel, but it is original, disturbing, unsettling and compelling storytelling set amidst the chaos and anarchy of the Watt Riots as LA goes up in flames. The narrative is staccato and overblown at times, and it took me a little time to get into the story, but once I did, I was completely and utterly hooked. This may not be a book for everyone, but it was a book for me, brilliant, beguiling, entertaining and thought provoking. Just fabulous! Many thanks to Serpent's Tail for an ARC.
Monk's unforgettable encounters include the real, the supernatural, the mythic and the surreal, such as Mexican and Chinese gangsters, killer bees, witches, and the Nation of Islam leader, Elijah Mohammed and so much more. Lombardo writes in vibrant prose, richly detailed descriptions with powerful imagery on the burning issue of race, as relevant today as in the troubled and traumatising past of the US in the 1960s. This is far from a perfect novel, but it is original, disturbing, unsettling and compelling storytelling set amidst the chaos and anarchy of the Watt Riots as LA goes up in flames. The narrative is staccato and overblown at times, and it took me a little time to get into the story, but once I did, I was completely and utterly hooked. This may not be a book for everyone, but it was a book for me, brilliant, beguiling, entertaining and thought provoking. Just fabulous! Many thanks to Serpent's Tail for an ARC.
April 14, 2019
Διαβάζοντας την περίληψη νόμιζα οτι αυτό το βιβλίο θα μου αρέσει πολύ.Μιλάει για τις φυλετικές αντιθέσεις,για ρατσισμό,για μια εξέγερση στο L.A. που δεν είχα ξανακούσει και ήθελα να μάθω γι'αυτήν,λέει οτι είναι ένα περίπου retelling της Οδύσσειας,μιλάει για συμμορίες,για μάγισσσες,και με τράβηξε σαν μαγνήτης.
Τελικά απογοητεύτηκα.Δεν ξέρω τι δεν πήγε καλά αλλά πολύ γρήγορα άρχισα να βαριέμαι.Κάποια κομμάτια,κάποιες ιστοριες ανθρώπων που συναντάει ο Μονκ στην οδύσσειά του έχουν ενδιαφέρον αλλά κάποια άλλα δεν μου άρεσαν καθόλου,ειδικά όταν η πλοκή ακολουθεί την Κάρμαν-Πηνελόπη.Δεν ξέρω τι να πω,το μισό βιβλίο το διάβασα ανόρεχτα ,πηδώντας παραγράφους.
Τελικά απογοητεύτηκα.Δεν ξέρω τι δεν πήγε καλά αλλά πολύ γρήγορα άρχισα να βαριέμαι.Κάποια κομμάτια,κάποιες ιστοριες ανθρώπων που συναντάει ο Μονκ στην οδύσσειά του έχουν ενδιαφέρον αλλά κάποια άλλα δεν μου άρεσαν καθόλου,ειδικά όταν η πλοκή ακολουθεί την Κάρμαν-Πηνελόπη.Δεν ξέρω τι να πω,το μισό βιβλίο το διάβασα ανόρεχτα ,πηδώντας παραγράφους.
July 21, 2019
Ένας μελετητής σαν κ εσένα δεν υπάρχει αμφιβολία ότι ανακαλεί το διαβόητο graffito blasfemo.
Το αρχαίο ρωμαϊκό γκράφιτι του Αλαξαμένου που λατρεύει τον εσταυρωμένο Ιησού, τον Χριστό που απεικονίζεται με το κεφάλι ενός γαϊδάρου...
Αυτή η αντεργκράουντ εικόνα είναι το πρώτο πορτρέτο του Ιησού που έχουμε... βλάσφημο, αλλά ήταν το ιστορημα της πόλης για να αντιμετωπίσει τα επίσημα ευαγγέλια...
Οπότε κ εμείς χρειαζόμαστε τα γκράφιτι, δεν συμφωνείς;
Για να δώσουμε φωνή στους καταραμένους
Η ανθρωπογραφια του αντεργκράουντ L.A, μέσα από τους ιδιαίτερους κώδικες επικοινωνίας, σε μια τρομερά δοσμένη Οδύσσεια, στο εξαημερο αιματοκυλισμα του Γουοτς τον Αύγουστο του '65
Το αρχαίο ρωμαϊκό γκράφιτι του Αλαξαμένου που λατρεύει τον εσταυρωμένο Ιησού, τον Χριστό που απεικονίζεται με το κεφάλι ενός γαϊδάρου...
Αυτή η αντεργκράουντ εικόνα είναι το πρώτο πορτρέτο του Ιησού που έχουμε... βλάσφημο, αλλά ήταν το ιστορημα της πόλης για να αντιμετωπίσει τα επίσημα ευαγγέλια...
Οπότε κ εμείς χρειαζόμαστε τα γκράφιτι, δεν συμφωνείς;
Για να δώσουμε φωνή στους καταραμένους
Η ανθρωπογραφια του αντεργκράουντ L.A, μέσα από τους ιδιαίτερους κώδικες επικοινωνίας, σε μια τρομερά δοσμένη Οδύσσεια, στο εξαημερο αιματοκυλισμα του Γουοτς τον Αύγουστο του '65
September 10, 2018
A wanderer tries to get home to his woman, but has to grapple with numerous delays, detours and obstacles. She waits at their makeshift shelter at the Port of Los Angeles amid a maelstrom of party-goers. They are ostensibly friends of the traveler, but most have designs on her while they drink his liquor and stay and stay. When the Watts Riots break out in the summer of 1965, Americo Monk is stuck in South Central Los Angeles, where he has been, as usual, spending his time studying graffiti. A self-described “amateur urbanologist” and semiotician, he records, documents, and attempts to interpret the meaning of the signs and messages spread throughout the inner city, which he takes to be the underground language of the dispossessed and voiceless as well as a communication method among the various gangs and criminal power structures that rule the ghetto. South Central is Monk’s territory, which he is devoted to understanding, with copies of the graffiti and his thoughts about them committed to a precious notebook he carries with him.
He explores this no-man’s land with, if not immunity, then a kind of fragile grace. These tenement streets, abandoned alleys, shuttered brick-fronts, desiccated apartments, frame houses bunkered with grates and iron bars in every window. The gangs –Slausons, East Side Loco Boyz, Eight Tray, and the rest—suffer him free passage, a fleeting transit through their interstices, battle lines and war zones all but invisible except for the sign-posts sprayed on walls, which you ignore and fail to decipher at your peril.
Scribblings and drawings cover the city and everything is a cipher. “He knows that sometimes signs are like the new physics, that the rules break down; the semiotician struggles in the twilight of uncertainty: Message, sender, receiver, meaning can shift, change in time and space.”
The structure of this book mimics, very loosely, The Odyssey, and uses characters that mirror some of Homer’s, which is fun. The style and substance, however, are pure Pynchon, dealing as it does with mysterious signs, paranoia, intimations of a secret, underground scheme that influences Monk’s fate and the destinies of all around him, alternate communication systems reminiscent of The Crying of Lot 49, not only through graffiti, but other arcane mechanisms such as prison plumbing systems:
Soon the prisoners were communicating through a vast, secret web of interconnected pipes and drains: it was like some fantastic future machine, thousands connect through a kind of inter-net of invisible lines and devices, powered by what Standard understood to be the mysterious, little known properties of water and wave propagation and sound amplification through liquid and metal media.
The narrative incorporates long, rhythmic sentences, outrageous names, strange journeys, mysterious characters and events, and even songs. This book could not be any clearer an homage to Thomas Pynchon. The author seems to be going for an equally mysterious persona. I can find nothing about him online or in any of the book’s marketing materials other than “A. G. Lombardo is a native Angeleno who teaches at a Los Angeles public high school” and that this is his first novel.
Monk knows the history of the gangs and the provenance of their various graffiti styles, the myths that surround certain fabled artists and rumors about supernatural portals. His knowledge and its value help him navigate and negotiate with both gangs and the police who would thwart his progress home as he moves south from Watts toward the Harbor. He still has plenty of obstacles, detours and delays to contend with, and often has to use his wits and a few bold gambits to extricate himself from difficult situations as he passes through riot-torn neighborhoods, much as the famously crafty Odysseus had to do as he bounced around the Mediterranean, trying to get home.
Monk meets along the way
• Purple-fez and bow-tie-wearing members of the Nation of Islam who give him refuge for a time at their temple and try to recruit him
• An L.A. City mosquito-abatement worker who introduces him to vacant lots that aren’t on any map, but which “morph into more and more of a new kind of jungle” where there are “strange insects, weeds, night things that exist nowhere in the world but here”
• Denizens of Chinatown from whom he hears a tale of historic fortune cookie rivalries, complete with dueling haiku masters
• A pair of guerrilla graffiti artists, Jax and Sofia, with whom he travels for a while as they alter existing billboard ad messages to deliver subversive anti-establishment messages
• A voodoo queen who calls herself Mab and tells him “all signs hold power” and about the runic “secret language waged in a battle for the nation itself . . . [in a war] still being fought out in tonight’s burning streets.”
• Karen, keeper of the overflow morgue Monk is chased into, an underworld full of the riot’s dead, reminiscent of Odysseus’ travels through Hades
• A news crew that creates and exploits news about the riots as much as it reports it
• Tyrone, a blind man who speaks to him through telephones scattered throughout the city and tells Monk “you are my eyes” as Monk records and tries to make sense of his world. (Tyrone turns out to have been a genius physicist involved in creating the first communication satellite).
There are passages that are stunningly Pynchoneque in style and in their references to the workings of fate:
He feels hopeless, weary down to his bones; too many sidewalks, streets, everyone –the city itself—running on pain and fear, the harbor and Karmann a universe away. Here he sprints across Main Street, between barricaded blocks, passing a pawnshop and thrift store, smashed and gutted, straggling looters lugging cases of beer, booze bottles, cartons of milk, bundles of clothes, lamps, framed paintings, kitchen chairs. Some of these looters’ names will later be found in commission reports, newspaper articles, morgue inventories, police blotters, victims like so many others of mayhem and violence and misadventures in the nights of fire – but some of these transgressors’ fates are darker, victims of forces not understood, unfathomable chains of cause and effect: the stolen whiskey bottle that provokes a fight that takes the looter’s life; the carton of cigarettes that conceals the waiting Lucky Strike that will engulf that Beauty Queen mattress and incinerate its sleeper; the black thrift-store clothes that reflect no headlights as the car grinds over the jaywalker; the stolen car that sails over the guardrail of the Harbor Freeway; the doll little Shawna dangles from the window as she slips and plunges into the night; purloined guns and knives sold in the streets for cash or drugs that weeks, months, years later return in deadly force in the hands of accosting strangers; bras and panties cursing looters with infidelity and sexual diseases; hair pomades that precipitate death by mistaken identity; scarves and shirts blue or red in the wrong ‘hood that bring showers of bullets from passing cars in the dead of night; fans that short-circuit and incinerate window-barred rooms; vinyl LPs playing loud music that masks evil’s turning doorknob and footfall; GE White Light bulbs that fail as descending Florsheims miss and slip down darkened staircases; wristwatches that propel victims to late or early fates as they tick out final moments too slow or fast in ghetto time.
Or this, that attributes mysterious and mystical energies to the everyday:
The summer night feels good against his soaked clothes. Monk cuts under the concrete pylons and shadows of the Harbor Freeway overhead; the freeway is eerily silent, as if few cars dare to venture north into the Stack: the cloverleaf multiverse where the Harbor, Hollywood, Santa Ana, and Pasadena freeways interchange . . . invisible cars pulsing above and below, along the looping arteries of the transitions layered like engineered mazes that rise into the smog. A strange essence radiates from its concrete gyres, perhaps because the four-level exchange – the world’s first – was built in ’53 on the site of the old downtown gallows . . . its levels corkscrew into the night, promising ascent – cops, reporters, pilots shaking their heads, whispering about some nights when its loops arc up into a fifth level, where cars fade into smoggy banks and disappear . . . . [According to KCET, this factoid about the gallows is true: there were once gallows at the site of the Four-Level (https://www.kcet.org/shows/lost-la/la...) ]
As he wends his way home in a decidedly non-linear fashion, in fits and false starts and circular motions, Monk wants to see “the greater design in his path south, his journey” . . . perhaps glimpse “some reason why he is a witness to all this destruction.”
Monk does finally make it home to the harbor, but only after the solving of a puzzle that creates a map he can use to get there. Finally nearing the harbor on a south-bound bus, he contemplates the web of messages that covers the city.
The great pintura of cities past and future, of graffiti bound by time: its stories, its history and dreams are shaped – and shape—each generation of the city’s people . . and the papyrus, the word, that is bound by space: once written it cannot be unwritten: the word migrates from city to city, civilization to civilization, creating new worlds. .
He explores this no-man’s land with, if not immunity, then a kind of fragile grace. These tenement streets, abandoned alleys, shuttered brick-fronts, desiccated apartments, frame houses bunkered with grates and iron bars in every window. The gangs –Slausons, East Side Loco Boyz, Eight Tray, and the rest—suffer him free passage, a fleeting transit through their interstices, battle lines and war zones all but invisible except for the sign-posts sprayed on walls, which you ignore and fail to decipher at your peril.
Scribblings and drawings cover the city and everything is a cipher. “He knows that sometimes signs are like the new physics, that the rules break down; the semiotician struggles in the twilight of uncertainty: Message, sender, receiver, meaning can shift, change in time and space.”
The structure of this book mimics, very loosely, The Odyssey, and uses characters that mirror some of Homer’s, which is fun. The style and substance, however, are pure Pynchon, dealing as it does with mysterious signs, paranoia, intimations of a secret, underground scheme that influences Monk’s fate and the destinies of all around him, alternate communication systems reminiscent of The Crying of Lot 49, not only through graffiti, but other arcane mechanisms such as prison plumbing systems:
Soon the prisoners were communicating through a vast, secret web of interconnected pipes and drains: it was like some fantastic future machine, thousands connect through a kind of inter-net of invisible lines and devices, powered by what Standard understood to be the mysterious, little known properties of water and wave propagation and sound amplification through liquid and metal media.
The narrative incorporates long, rhythmic sentences, outrageous names, strange journeys, mysterious characters and events, and even songs. This book could not be any clearer an homage to Thomas Pynchon. The author seems to be going for an equally mysterious persona. I can find nothing about him online or in any of the book’s marketing materials other than “A. G. Lombardo is a native Angeleno who teaches at a Los Angeles public high school” and that this is his first novel.
Monk knows the history of the gangs and the provenance of their various graffiti styles, the myths that surround certain fabled artists and rumors about supernatural portals. His knowledge and its value help him navigate and negotiate with both gangs and the police who would thwart his progress home as he moves south from Watts toward the Harbor. He still has plenty of obstacles, detours and delays to contend with, and often has to use his wits and a few bold gambits to extricate himself from difficult situations as he passes through riot-torn neighborhoods, much as the famously crafty Odysseus had to do as he bounced around the Mediterranean, trying to get home.
Monk meets along the way
• Purple-fez and bow-tie-wearing members of the Nation of Islam who give him refuge for a time at their temple and try to recruit him
• An L.A. City mosquito-abatement worker who introduces him to vacant lots that aren’t on any map, but which “morph into more and more of a new kind of jungle” where there are “strange insects, weeds, night things that exist nowhere in the world but here”
• Denizens of Chinatown from whom he hears a tale of historic fortune cookie rivalries, complete with dueling haiku masters
• A pair of guerrilla graffiti artists, Jax and Sofia, with whom he travels for a while as they alter existing billboard ad messages to deliver subversive anti-establishment messages
• A voodoo queen who calls herself Mab and tells him “all signs hold power” and about the runic “secret language waged in a battle for the nation itself . . . [in a war] still being fought out in tonight’s burning streets.”
• Karen, keeper of the overflow morgue Monk is chased into, an underworld full of the riot’s dead, reminiscent of Odysseus’ travels through Hades
• A news crew that creates and exploits news about the riots as much as it reports it
• Tyrone, a blind man who speaks to him through telephones scattered throughout the city and tells Monk “you are my eyes” as Monk records and tries to make sense of his world. (Tyrone turns out to have been a genius physicist involved in creating the first communication satellite).
There are passages that are stunningly Pynchoneque in style and in their references to the workings of fate:
He feels hopeless, weary down to his bones; too many sidewalks, streets, everyone –the city itself—running on pain and fear, the harbor and Karmann a universe away. Here he sprints across Main Street, between barricaded blocks, passing a pawnshop and thrift store, smashed and gutted, straggling looters lugging cases of beer, booze bottles, cartons of milk, bundles of clothes, lamps, framed paintings, kitchen chairs. Some of these looters’ names will later be found in commission reports, newspaper articles, morgue inventories, police blotters, victims like so many others of mayhem and violence and misadventures in the nights of fire – but some of these transgressors’ fates are darker, victims of forces not understood, unfathomable chains of cause and effect: the stolen whiskey bottle that provokes a fight that takes the looter’s life; the carton of cigarettes that conceals the waiting Lucky Strike that will engulf that Beauty Queen mattress and incinerate its sleeper; the black thrift-store clothes that reflect no headlights as the car grinds over the jaywalker; the stolen car that sails over the guardrail of the Harbor Freeway; the doll little Shawna dangles from the window as she slips and plunges into the night; purloined guns and knives sold in the streets for cash or drugs that weeks, months, years later return in deadly force in the hands of accosting strangers; bras and panties cursing looters with infidelity and sexual diseases; hair pomades that precipitate death by mistaken identity; scarves and shirts blue or red in the wrong ‘hood that bring showers of bullets from passing cars in the dead of night; fans that short-circuit and incinerate window-barred rooms; vinyl LPs playing loud music that masks evil’s turning doorknob and footfall; GE White Light bulbs that fail as descending Florsheims miss and slip down darkened staircases; wristwatches that propel victims to late or early fates as they tick out final moments too slow or fast in ghetto time.
Or this, that attributes mysterious and mystical energies to the everyday:
The summer night feels good against his soaked clothes. Monk cuts under the concrete pylons and shadows of the Harbor Freeway overhead; the freeway is eerily silent, as if few cars dare to venture north into the Stack: the cloverleaf multiverse where the Harbor, Hollywood, Santa Ana, and Pasadena freeways interchange . . . invisible cars pulsing above and below, along the looping arteries of the transitions layered like engineered mazes that rise into the smog. A strange essence radiates from its concrete gyres, perhaps because the four-level exchange – the world’s first – was built in ’53 on the site of the old downtown gallows . . . its levels corkscrew into the night, promising ascent – cops, reporters, pilots shaking their heads, whispering about some nights when its loops arc up into a fifth level, where cars fade into smoggy banks and disappear . . . . [According to KCET, this factoid about the gallows is true: there were once gallows at the site of the Four-Level (https://www.kcet.org/shows/lost-la/la...) ]
As he wends his way home in a decidedly non-linear fashion, in fits and false starts and circular motions, Monk wants to see “the greater design in his path south, his journey” . . . perhaps glimpse “some reason why he is a witness to all this destruction.”
Monk does finally make it home to the harbor, but only after the solving of a puzzle that creates a map he can use to get there. Finally nearing the harbor on a south-bound bus, he contemplates the web of messages that covers the city.
The great pintura of cities past and future, of graffiti bound by time: its stories, its history and dreams are shaped – and shape—each generation of the city’s people . . and the papyrus, the word, that is bound by space: once written it cannot be unwritten: the word migrates from city to city, civilization to civilization, creating new worlds. .
March 21, 2018
This was a lovely novel. The prose captured me from the first paragraph and didn’t let up. I loved this cast of incredible characters and Lombardo’s love for the city of LA and empathy for human beings shines through on every page. I hope this is the first of many for a great new voice!
November 10, 2024
Μείγμα και καλά της "Οδύσσειας" με λίγα flakes από τη ταινία "The Warriors" τοποθετημένο στο Λ.Α. της δεκαετίας του '60, βάζει μέσα και λίγα κοινωνιολογικά και αναφορές στην graffiti culture αλλά πολύ επιδερμικά. Βαρετό, ασύνδετο σαν μια σειρά από περιστατικά που συμβαίνουν σε μια πόλη εν μέσω ταραχών, θα μπορούσε να ήταν καλό αλλά δεν είναι, λυπάμαι μίστερ Λομπάρντο και ακόμα περισσότερο λυπάμαι το χρόνο μου.
Υ.Γ. Θα ήθελα να προσθέσω κάτι ακόμα: Θεωρώ ιδιαίτερα γελοία η χρήση της λέξης "σκύλα" ως απευθείας μετάφραση Αμερικάνικής αργκό (φαντάζομαι για το "bitch"), κάνοντας έτσι τους διαλόγους "ξένους" προς τον Έλληνα αναγνώστη καθώς δεν αποδίδεται το νόημα του κειμένου ακριβώς. Ειδικά δε όταν η μετάφραση πραγματοποιείται από μια συγγραφέα, που αν μη τι άλλο φαντάζομαι ότι ξέρει να γράφει διαλόγους, ήλπιζα να διαβάσω κάτι καλύτερο.
Υ.Γ. Θα ήθελα να προσθέσω κάτι ακόμα: Θεωρώ ιδιαίτερα γελοία η χρήση της λέξης "σκύλα" ως απευθείας μετάφραση Αμερικάνικής αργκό (φαντάζομαι για το "bitch"), κάνοντας έτσι τους διαλόγους "ξένους" προς τον Έλληνα αναγνώστη καθώς δεν αποδίδεται το νόημα του κειμένου ακριβώς. Ειδικά δε όταν η μετάφραση πραγματοποιείται από μια συγγραφέα, που αν μη τι άλλο φαντάζομαι ότι ξέρει να γράφει διαλόγους, ήλπιζα να διαβάσω κάτι καλύτερο.
September 2, 2021
Exquisite. Beautiful. Powerful. Expansive. Enlightening. Fantastical.
What a masterful and utterly mind-blowing re-imaging/re-incarnating/re-building of 'The Odyssey'. The concept seemed to be an overreach, taking a White People Classic and tearing it down, using the detritus to uncover a newer version crafted around the Watts riots of 1965. Many have failed, White People don't relinquish their gods easily. This book is a new epic, a intellectual marvel filled with so many details and ideas and imaginings. Lombardo is a artist for sure. I cannot possibly do any justice to this tale besides string together praiseworthy adjectives, which any fool can do these days. This is simply a must-read. Must. Read.
What a masterful and utterly mind-blowing re-imaging/re-incarnating/re-building of 'The Odyssey'. The concept seemed to be an overreach, taking a White People Classic and tearing it down, using the detritus to uncover a newer version crafted around the Watts riots of 1965. Many have failed, White People don't relinquish their gods easily. This book is a new epic, a intellectual marvel filled with so many details and ideas and imaginings. Lombardo is a artist for sure. I cannot possibly do any justice to this tale besides string together praiseworthy adjectives, which any fool can do these days. This is simply a must-read. Must. Read.
June 13, 2018
Un très beau mémoire sur les émeutes d'août 1965 suite à une arrestation intense dans le ghetto noir de Los Angeles.
Ce livre m'a un peu fait penser aux écrits de Kate Tempest (notamment au magnifique '' The bricks that built the houses''). On se laisse très vite porter de fil en aiguilles par la description des personnages faisant vivre les émeutes à Monk, depuis l' intérieur du quartier. Même si parfois au risque de se perdre dans le côté trop descriptif, très détaillé des diverses situations, sans forcément trace d'une forme narrative structurée. Ce qui peut engendrer une certaine lassitude chez le lecteur...
Ce livre m'a un peu fait penser aux écrits de Kate Tempest (notamment au magnifique '' The bricks that built the houses''). On se laisse très vite porter de fil en aiguilles par la description des personnages faisant vivre les émeutes à Monk, depuis l' intérieur du quartier. Même si parfois au risque de se perdre dans le côté trop descriptif, très détaillé des diverses situations, sans forcément trace d'une forme narrative structurée. Ce qui peut engendrer une certaine lassitude chez le lecteur...
April 30, 2018
Graffiti Palace is a claustrophobic novel that feels longer and denser than the page count.
Monk is a black (mixed race) Los Angelean caught up in the 1965 Watts Riots as he tries to come home to his partner Karmann, heavily pregnant in her shipping container home by the docks. Monk is a kind if urban curator, copying down gangland graffiti in his blue notebook, interpreting it and thereby understanding the ley-lines that run through the suburbs. Normally he is allowed free passage by the gangs and the cops, his knowledge is priceless intel for everyone concerned.
But in the riots, the rules have changed. Nobody trusts anybody. Every encounter might end badly, progress through the suburbs is painstakingly made, block by block, doubling back, lying low.
This creates a road trip novel - albeit a very short road trip across the chaotic, anarchic city. Each chapter provides a fresh encounter for Monk. He meets the Fruit of Islam, murderous Chinese laundry owners, psychics, police, graffiti artists, drug dealers, an elderly Japanese yakuza woman, Godzilla, more gangsters and a mortuary technician. There are occasional references forwards and backwards, but there's a real feeling of dungeons and dragons - a series of barely connected discrete incidents. It is jerky and there is little feeling of real progress - or indeed, the passage of time.
The strength of the novel is capturing the diversity of life in the ghetto. It is set at a particular point of time and space, and the range of people going about their lives amidst the riots, as the city burns. It is a narrative device, sure, but the descriptions drip with authenticity. They create depth and meaning into signs and symbols that most of us will never even have noticed. They also create a misleading sense that life in the ghetto is varied and exciting; the reality is that without Monk, these worlds would never meet. The monotony of people's lives is occasionally hinted at but doesn't quite come through. It's all just a bit too exciting.
When the end comes, it feels like a relief. A somewhat sudden relief. Spending time with Monk, never able to see beyond the next junction, is terribly claustrophobic.
Overall, this adds up to something that is quite hypnotic and surprisingly captivating. It shouldn't work but it does.
Monk is a black (mixed race) Los Angelean caught up in the 1965 Watts Riots as he tries to come home to his partner Karmann, heavily pregnant in her shipping container home by the docks. Monk is a kind if urban curator, copying down gangland graffiti in his blue notebook, interpreting it and thereby understanding the ley-lines that run through the suburbs. Normally he is allowed free passage by the gangs and the cops, his knowledge is priceless intel for everyone concerned.
But in the riots, the rules have changed. Nobody trusts anybody. Every encounter might end badly, progress through the suburbs is painstakingly made, block by block, doubling back, lying low.
This creates a road trip novel - albeit a very short road trip across the chaotic, anarchic city. Each chapter provides a fresh encounter for Monk. He meets the Fruit of Islam, murderous Chinese laundry owners, psychics, police, graffiti artists, drug dealers, an elderly Japanese yakuza woman, Godzilla, more gangsters and a mortuary technician. There are occasional references forwards and backwards, but there's a real feeling of dungeons and dragons - a series of barely connected discrete incidents. It is jerky and there is little feeling of real progress - or indeed, the passage of time.
The strength of the novel is capturing the diversity of life in the ghetto. It is set at a particular point of time and space, and the range of people going about their lives amidst the riots, as the city burns. It is a narrative device, sure, but the descriptions drip with authenticity. They create depth and meaning into signs and symbols that most of us will never even have noticed. They also create a misleading sense that life in the ghetto is varied and exciting; the reality is that without Monk, these worlds would never meet. The monotony of people's lives is occasionally hinted at but doesn't quite come through. It's all just a bit too exciting.
When the end comes, it feels like a relief. A somewhat sudden relief. Spending time with Monk, never able to see beyond the next junction, is terribly claustrophobic.
Overall, this adds up to something that is quite hypnotic and surprisingly captivating. It shouldn't work but it does.
July 27, 2018
I can’t claim to be any sort of expert on The Odyssey, but this was a damn good read. A journey all over LA, an amazing cast of rich characters, a history lesson, and a look into a world many of us walk past every day and never truly see. Easily one of the best reads of 2018.
March 10, 2018
Finished reading: March 9th 2018
DNF at 49% (165 pages)
"At the mystic interstice where the mind and the beating heart held the brush or the spray can and the paint touched the inanimate skin of the city, who could really say where one began and the other ended?"
*** A copy of this book was kindly provided to me by Netgalley and MCD in exchange for an honest review. Thank you! ***
P.S. Find more of my reviews here.
February 24, 2018
Graffiti Palace by A. G. Lombardo is Homer’s Odyssey relived through the streets of LA during the 1965 Watt riots. Monk, self-proclaimed “urbanologist” documents the streets by “collecting” graffiti and transferring it into his notebook. He understands the complex underground mazes and workings of the different gangs via the markings they leave on the walls. His journey home to his girlfriend Karmann, through the riots, is part real world, part mythical, laden with intense imagery. He meets members of the Fruit of Islam, killer bees, Mexican gang members, Voodooiennes and many more, while moving slowly back towards his home created with containers where his girlfriend and future child are waiting for him.
All in all I enjoyed the novel. The language doesn’t always flow very well, extremely bloated with imagery at times (especially at the beginning). While actually very beautiful in parts it’s sometimes too much, too overpowering and takes away from the flow of the narrative. I do think this probably was done on purpose, because it meshes well with Monk’s incredible journey through the streets. The attention to detail in the novel is amazing, from the tiny street altars to the intricate details of the pest control man’s food, everything is accounted for and symbolic. So basically what I am trying to say that if you are looking for a lazy Sunday afternoon read then this is not going to work for you. However if you don’t mind delving into a deep pool of words for a while you will be fine. I found myself drifting off sometimes and had to come back later to focus again. Some areas could have done with a little more flow and less heavy imagery.
Another thing that I found slightly jarring at first were the clichés that popped up: the black fathers who are all in prison, the tough Mexican woman cooking for the gang leaders, the textbook Chinese opium smoker straight out of a Tintin book, but I kind of think it was done on purpose, in a pulp fiction type of way. It’s like each character, even the minor ones, are larger than life, symbolic.
In the end I couldn’t put Graffiti Palace down. It took me about a fifth of the book to really get into it, and for the flow to start making sense, but once it did I couldn’t stop. I am actually still running through it in my head, but the images are Marvel comic book images (this is NOT a bad thing, the author had the ability to really create a movie in my mind which is brilliant), and I am Monk Americo, jumping undercover from street to street, discovering all of the secrets that hide beneath strokes of spray paint and bordered up houses, bumping into icons, symbolic messengers, and encountering auspicious signs along the way. And the entire novel focuses on an important part of modern history, a semiotic study of the area in the 60’s, but also of the US as a whole. Uprising, revolution, riot, and a symbolic journey peppered with signs, stories, and people back home.
Graffiti Palace will be released on March 13th, 2018 through Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the advance copy!
All in all I enjoyed the novel. The language doesn’t always flow very well, extremely bloated with imagery at times (especially at the beginning). While actually very beautiful in parts it’s sometimes too much, too overpowering and takes away from the flow of the narrative. I do think this probably was done on purpose, because it meshes well with Monk’s incredible journey through the streets. The attention to detail in the novel is amazing, from the tiny street altars to the intricate details of the pest control man’s food, everything is accounted for and symbolic. So basically what I am trying to say that if you are looking for a lazy Sunday afternoon read then this is not going to work for you. However if you don’t mind delving into a deep pool of words for a while you will be fine. I found myself drifting off sometimes and had to come back later to focus again. Some areas could have done with a little more flow and less heavy imagery.
Another thing that I found slightly jarring at first were the clichés that popped up: the black fathers who are all in prison, the tough Mexican woman cooking for the gang leaders, the textbook Chinese opium smoker straight out of a Tintin book, but I kind of think it was done on purpose, in a pulp fiction type of way. It’s like each character, even the minor ones, are larger than life, symbolic.
In the end I couldn’t put Graffiti Palace down. It took me about a fifth of the book to really get into it, and for the flow to start making sense, but once it did I couldn’t stop. I am actually still running through it in my head, but the images are Marvel comic book images (this is NOT a bad thing, the author had the ability to really create a movie in my mind which is brilliant), and I am Monk Americo, jumping undercover from street to street, discovering all of the secrets that hide beneath strokes of spray paint and bordered up houses, bumping into icons, symbolic messengers, and encountering auspicious signs along the way. And the entire novel focuses on an important part of modern history, a semiotic study of the area in the 60’s, but also of the US as a whole. Uprising, revolution, riot, and a symbolic journey peppered with signs, stories, and people back home.
Graffiti Palace will be released on March 13th, 2018 through Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the advance copy!
September 9, 2025
"[...] è questo il momento, capisce, con la città in fiamme, in cui il semiologia deve trascrivere i segni e i prodigi nel suo taccuino, prima che il fuoco cancelli queste parole d'ombra e che la città sia consegnata al suo castigo, senza più voce."
Los Angeles, 11 agosto 1965: due ragazzi neri vengono fermati dalla polizia per un controllo e vengono arrestati per guida in stato di ebbrezza senza una regolare procedura; la gente che nel frattempo si è fermata a guardare protesta, soprattutto quando, a fronte della palese violazione dei diritti, la polizia comincia a malmenare i ragazzi. Ne nasce una protesta che sfocia poi in una ribellione aperta della comunità nera nei confronti della polizia. Si tratta dei cosiddetti 'Fatti di Watts' (almeno per come sono raccontati nella versione romanzata). Nel mentre, Americo Monk, giovane semiologo interessato a graffiti e tag delle gang della città, si trova giusto a Watts per una delle sue esplorazioni quando viene intrappolato dalla baraonda, non riuscendo più a tornare al porto, dove abita in container con la sua fidanzata Karmann, che peraltro è incinta e impegnata a gestire una festa in casa con personaggi alquanto bizzarri. "Odissea americana" racconta proprio il tentativo, durato giorni, di Monk per tornare a casa.
A.G. Lombardo crea una gustosa trasposizione dell''Odissea' omerica in chiave americana e razziale, facendo viaggiare a zig zag il suo personaggio per le strade di Los Angeles prima di arrivare finalmente a casa; in questo girovagare ovviamente incontra personaggi di qualsiasi risma, che ripropongono ovviamente, in chiave molto edulcorata, le avventure di Ulisse, trovando ostilità e ospitalità, suggerimenti magici e insegnamenti, dormendo dove capita o in letti accuratamente preparati, con un pensiero costante a Karmann.
Il limite di questo romanzo è l'eccessiva insistenza su dettagli poco funzionali alla narrazione, tanto che secondo me 50 pagine in meno avrebbero snellito le vicende e messo in luce il cuore della storia; senza contare l'inesattezza geografica di Los Angeles (che è già intricata di suo) per cui è impossibile seguire con una certa logica le peregrinazioni di Monk. Altra nota, che però riguarda la casa editrice: cosa c'entra la New York della copertina?
Los Angeles, 11 agosto 1965: due ragazzi neri vengono fermati dalla polizia per un controllo e vengono arrestati per guida in stato di ebbrezza senza una regolare procedura; la gente che nel frattempo si è fermata a guardare protesta, soprattutto quando, a fronte della palese violazione dei diritti, la polizia comincia a malmenare i ragazzi. Ne nasce una protesta che sfocia poi in una ribellione aperta della comunità nera nei confronti della polizia. Si tratta dei cosiddetti 'Fatti di Watts' (almeno per come sono raccontati nella versione romanzata). Nel mentre, Americo Monk, giovane semiologo interessato a graffiti e tag delle gang della città, si trova giusto a Watts per una delle sue esplorazioni quando viene intrappolato dalla baraonda, non riuscendo più a tornare al porto, dove abita in container con la sua fidanzata Karmann, che peraltro è incinta e impegnata a gestire una festa in casa con personaggi alquanto bizzarri. "Odissea americana" racconta proprio il tentativo, durato giorni, di Monk per tornare a casa.
A.G. Lombardo crea una gustosa trasposizione dell''Odissea' omerica in chiave americana e razziale, facendo viaggiare a zig zag il suo personaggio per le strade di Los Angeles prima di arrivare finalmente a casa; in questo girovagare ovviamente incontra personaggi di qualsiasi risma, che ripropongono ovviamente, in chiave molto edulcorata, le avventure di Ulisse, trovando ostilità e ospitalità, suggerimenti magici e insegnamenti, dormendo dove capita o in letti accuratamente preparati, con un pensiero costante a Karmann.
Il limite di questo romanzo è l'eccessiva insistenza su dettagli poco funzionali alla narrazione, tanto che secondo me 50 pagine in meno avrebbero snellito le vicende e messo in luce il cuore della storia; senza contare l'inesattezza geografica di Los Angeles (che è già intricata di suo) per cui è impossibile seguire con una certa logica le peregrinazioni di Monk. Altra nota, che però riguarda la casa editrice: cosa c'entra la New York della copertina?
July 1, 2019
++++ This is NOT spoiler free ++++
A modern Odysee mixed with prejudice
The book Graffiti Palast (orig. Graffiti Palace) is a wonderful humorous but sinister story of a journey.
Between the highs of drugs and lows of human morality walks Monk, a black urban explorer, on the thin line of behaving right.
Characters:
Americo Monk is a protagonist who is taking the term of being lost in translation literally. Pursuing his goal of understanding urban symbolism, he gets caught between riots, gang wars, mobsters and their cultural heritage. He fights his own morals, gets on the trails of his own past and all this just because he wants to get home to his beloved girlfirend Karmann.
Karmann is the girlfriend of Monk who could be seen as a Penelope like figure. She is sitting at home, pregnant, and has to participate at a rent party, which gets more and more out of hand. She is realistic and fearful about the reasons of Monks temporary disappearance.
Others
The other Characters are sometimes deep, sometimes neccessary metaphors and sometimes parodistic roles. They are well placed and are influencing the story in a absolutely logic and fantastic way. I absolutely enjoyed this mash up over partly overdrawn figures.
Setting:
Despite the author never experienced or participated on one of those riots, it is very well chosen and is definitely well described. I was really able to imagine the explicit scenery. Despite the author is not a member of the black community he is writing about and his protagonist is part of, he made up a very realistic but not too realistic microkosmos.
Plot:
A bit trippy but absolutely beautiful written story of an odysee.
No more words needed. (I don't want to spoiler details.)
Conclusion:
Beautiful, humorous and very special. Not your everyday novel.
A modern Odysee mixed with prejudice
The book Graffiti Palast (orig. Graffiti Palace) is a wonderful humorous but sinister story of a journey.
Between the highs of drugs and lows of human morality walks Monk, a black urban explorer, on the thin line of behaving right.
Characters:
Americo Monk is a protagonist who is taking the term of being lost in translation literally. Pursuing his goal of understanding urban symbolism, he gets caught between riots, gang wars, mobsters and their cultural heritage. He fights his own morals, gets on the trails of his own past and all this just because he wants to get home to his beloved girlfirend Karmann.
Karmann is the girlfriend of Monk who could be seen as a Penelope like figure. She is sitting at home, pregnant, and has to participate at a rent party, which gets more and more out of hand. She is realistic and fearful about the reasons of Monks temporary disappearance.
Others
The other Characters are sometimes deep, sometimes neccessary metaphors and sometimes parodistic roles. They are well placed and are influencing the story in a absolutely logic and fantastic way. I absolutely enjoyed this mash up over partly overdrawn figures.
Setting:
Despite the author never experienced or participated on one of those riots, it is very well chosen and is definitely well described. I was really able to imagine the explicit scenery. Despite the author is not a member of the black community he is writing about and his protagonist is part of, he made up a very realistic but not too realistic microkosmos.
Plot:
A bit trippy but absolutely beautiful written story of an odysee.
No more words needed. (I don't want to spoiler details.)
Conclusion:
Beautiful, humorous and very special. Not your everyday novel.
February 21, 2019
Hold on, hold on, whoa...this is a DEBUT novel? How is this possible?
Ladies and gentlemen of the reading public, stand up and take notice of A.G. Lombardo - for he has at his disposal a hefty literary mind poised to set the world ablaze; much like the setting of his first novel: Watts
The language + prose flows through this book as smooth as a graffitist’s tag on a piece. I love books that open my eyes to worlds seldom captured by the media. The subject and characters are based on real people, incidents, and yes, gangs, that were very much prevalent in South Central LA in the 60’s. Keep your phone close to you as you read it, you will (underline) want to Google stuff.
At it’s heart this story is about Monk. Monk studies the graffiti art of Watts and records everything in his notebook/journal. In the midst of a foray into the field to record some new throw-ups the Watts Riots break out around him. Monk’s journey home to his girlfriend Karmann meanders through the social unrest and introduces some incredibly surreal characters and stories.
Will Monk make it home? Or will the festering tensions of the city, real and supernatural, drag Monk and his cherished notebook into it’s burning heart?
Ladies and gentlemen of the reading public, stand up and take notice of A.G. Lombardo - for he has at his disposal a hefty literary mind poised to set the world ablaze; much like the setting of his first novel: Watts
The language + prose flows through this book as smooth as a graffitist’s tag on a piece. I love books that open my eyes to worlds seldom captured by the media. The subject and characters are based on real people, incidents, and yes, gangs, that were very much prevalent in South Central LA in the 60’s. Keep your phone close to you as you read it, you will (underline) want to Google stuff.
At it’s heart this story is about Monk. Monk studies the graffiti art of Watts and records everything in his notebook/journal. In the midst of a foray into the field to record some new throw-ups the Watts Riots break out around him. Monk’s journey home to his girlfriend Karmann meanders through the social unrest and introduces some incredibly surreal characters and stories.
Will Monk make it home? Or will the festering tensions of the city, real and supernatural, drag Monk and his cherished notebook into it’s burning heart?
December 17, 2019
This is a great book. Taken foot and setting from the Odyssey. The ending is where the book highlights and wants you to read more, or read the book over again.
Anticipating each chapter is a ride.
Because this book is about a profane pilgrimage. Being set in the riots of Los Angeles, the book focuses on a Character named Monk.
“Felonious’s gold tooth seems to always siphon(I wondered about the analogy of the word) off her eyes and then all her thoughts unweaving.” Graffiti Palace often puts a good taste of jazz in your ears, and mouth, but there is nothing clean about this. You have bums, prostitution, slight drugs, and language. Geographically this amplified the books meaning contemporary in terms, of comparing it to the Odyssey. Because the atmosphere was just, so raw you got a vivid picture of how Monk moved through stages of the city trying to get back to Karmann who is his love.
Karmann is his girlfriend, and sign in his notebook which he carries around that everyone wants especially the NOI. They want to create a new world, as the riots happen and think Monks symbols in his notebook hold the key to city which he planted every where.
Nothing less then 5 ⭐️ or more. A true history novel.
Anticipating each chapter is a ride.
Because this book is about a profane pilgrimage. Being set in the riots of Los Angeles, the book focuses on a Character named Monk.
“Felonious’s gold tooth seems to always siphon(I wondered about the analogy of the word) off her eyes and then all her thoughts unweaving.” Graffiti Palace often puts a good taste of jazz in your ears, and mouth, but there is nothing clean about this. You have bums, prostitution, slight drugs, and language. Geographically this amplified the books meaning contemporary in terms, of comparing it to the Odyssey. Because the atmosphere was just, so raw you got a vivid picture of how Monk moved through stages of the city trying to get back to Karmann who is his love.
Karmann is his girlfriend, and sign in his notebook which he carries around that everyone wants especially the NOI. They want to create a new world, as the riots happen and think Monks symbols in his notebook hold the key to city which he planted every where.
Nothing less then 5 ⭐️ or more. A true history novel.
November 22, 2018
Graffiti Palace was one wild ride! This is one of the most creative works of fiction I've read in a long time. It truly was an Odyssey as Monk struggled to go home and many forces prevented his passage. The obstacles and fantasy elements were over the top good. So much converged to make this journey a worthwhile read. Set during the Watts riots, you will be taken back to the language, fashion, and attitude of those days. Lombardo nailed it.
I highly recommend this book. Keep in mind that with this subject matter, there will be language and sex, without it the book wouldn't be true to the setting.
(I received this book in a goodreads giveaway.)
I highly recommend this book. Keep in mind that with this subject matter, there will be language and sex, without it the book wouldn't be true to the setting.
(I received this book in a goodreads giveaway.)
July 21, 2019
An enjoyable modern retelling of the Odyssey against the watts riots .
Time sees illusory, chapters float by and the book proceeds almost as if a dream where time is neither passing nor static and scenes shift abruptly.
Sometimes it seemed as if the riots were too abstract, too somewhere out there and aside from interrupting bus service they bc were a non event for the narrator.
As the book progresses an almost made for movie plotting begins to unfold and it is compelling and entertaining enough to keep you plodding along with Monk on his anything but direct wanderings home through a city tearing itself apart.
Time sees illusory, chapters float by and the book proceeds almost as if a dream where time is neither passing nor static and scenes shift abruptly.
Sometimes it seemed as if the riots were too abstract, too somewhere out there and aside from interrupting bus service they bc were a non event for the narrator.
As the book progresses an almost made for movie plotting begins to unfold and it is compelling and entertaining enough to keep you plodding along with Monk on his anything but direct wanderings home through a city tearing itself apart.
April 8, 2018
This is a powerful, unsettling book that is a mesmerizing read. It is a surreal journey through the underbelly of LA during the '65 inner city riots. I can't say I really understood it all but it certainly held my interest from the first to last page. I am also somewhat impressed with the intensity of the writing especially from a white LA schoolteacher. A story that will stay with me a long time.
I won a copy of this book in a Goodreads giveaway for this honest review.
I won a copy of this book in a Goodreads giveaway for this honest review.
May 24, 2018
I was a little surprised how much I liked this book. A retelling of the Odyssey set in riot torn Watts in 1965 is a pretty bizarre concept. Lombardo writes in a hyper Pynchon/ Tom Waits kind of way. Is hero Monk encounters a wide variety of weird urban desperados who recite strange tales of fortune cookie wars and hopelessly toxic weed groun in the swears of Los Angeles. The book is messy but fun and I think I will remember it. Long after some more literary works have faded in my mind
February 9, 2019
Could not finish this book. Just... not good? It was supposed to be the Odyssey, which it was in a sense, but it was not good. The writing was unnecessarily flowery yet dense. And the plot made no sense, and as a classics major who's read the Odyssey a dozen times the plot should be obvious to me. Got about halfway before it was due to the library (after renewing it once) so I just gave up. Maybe if I finished it I'd like it?
September 14, 2019
My God, this book. With it’s version of The Odyssey there should be no surprise how the story ends, and still I found myself sobbing; not because the protagonist makes it, but because of what he endures. It has to be said, too, that as a writer this book, written nearly entirely in tags and gang slang, also served as a Watts haiku, stunning as though stabbing and shot through with hallucination and miracles.
December 13, 2018
Wow. I really enjoyed that journey. Starts off with pure poetry like descriptions. You will follow Monk on his odyssey. Great musical references and knowledge of tagging. No wonder I love getting stuck at those forever railroad gates as the freight trains mass in Bend with those beautiful signs in neon.
October 9, 2019
This book is a fictional story about Monk who is trying to get back to his pregnant girlfriend in the midst of the Watt's riots in 1965. Monk goes on an epic walking journey to get back home while recording information about the graffiti on the walls and billboards.
Personally, the book could have been shorter and made the same point.
Personally, the book could have been shorter and made the same point.
July 2, 2020
I tripped over the crunchy language of this book at first but eventually found myself taken in by the story. I still have my reservations about an apparently white author writing ethnic characters, especially in dialect that includes slurs, and it was heavy handed in its allusions to The Odyssey and its symbolism at times, but overall, an enjoyable read.
April 24, 2021
This was my third try finishing this book. There were so many good parts of this. Dense descriptions of smoke and signs in the city. Los Angeles burning during the Watts riots. Monk in his descent into Dante’s inferno. But some, if not most, of the characters Monk meets along the way simply do not translate. And seem a little stereotypical, heavy handed and prejudiced. These interludes were difficult to wade through and read false. Otherwise good!
April 20, 2022
PLOT is so interesting but holy shit this man must have just discovered a thesaurus. so hard to follow which is a pity because again the plot and characters are so rich. some parts are super slow and annoyingly detailed when there is no need but then not detailed enough at crucial points. didn’t know what was going on 30 percent of the time.
February 13, 2019
Good stuff, especially for someone from the big city! Definitely worth a try and easy to read
Good stuff, especially for someone from the big city! Definitely worth a try and easy to read. Keep up the good work!
Good stuff, especially for someone from the big city! Definitely worth a try and easy to read. Keep up the good work!
September 14, 2019
Actually, I never finished it. Another book club book, I understood from reading the book jacket that it's like 1960s LA gangs, ala Homer's The Odyssey. That structure made it feel a bit manufactured. I just never got into it.
May 26, 2020
May have liked it better as a book-book than an audio book. So over-performed that it was impossible to overlook the fact that much of this book also feels overwritten. Fans of Los Angeles and/or The Odyssey will love this, but it felt a little too show-offy for me.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 40 reviews