Through The Windshield

by Mike DeCapite

Michael DeCapite's first novel, Through the Windshield, was written in London and New York, 1985-1990. Excerpts of the book appeared first in three issues of CUZ magazine in the late 1980s, and then in numerous other small literary magazines. The book was first published by Sparkle Street Books, in 1998.

"One of the best American novels published in the last several years," - Harvey Pekar, The Austin Chronicle

"Read it for its humor. Read it for its pain. Or read it for its language, a hard-boiled version of beat expansiveness. One thing’s with all the different and sometimes contradictory things that this book accomplishes, you’ll never read anything else like it." - Frank Green, Cleveland Free Times

"A masterpiece," - Jocko Weyland, Rain Taxi

Genres: Fiction

457 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 31, 1998

About the author

Mike DeCapite is the author of the novel Through the Windshield, the chapbooks Travel Notes, Sitting Pretty, and Creamsicle Blue, and the short-prose collection Radiant Fog. His novel Jacket Weather was published by Soft Skull Press in October 2021.

Reviews

[Chad Malkamaki · Rating 5 out of 5]

A gritty Cleveland story that channels Bukowski, a 23 year old is adrift living in Tremont, paling around with his 50 year old neighbor as they gamble and drink their way over the course of a year. DeCapite really captures life in the blue collar town when you don't have any prospects, a solid job, relationship, and simply go through the paces. A hidden Cleveland gem that doesn't really get talked about when people mention books set in the city.

[Beth A · Rating 5 out of 5]

Find a copy, buy some cheap beer and cigarettes (just for this book), sit on your porch if you can, and laugh your ass off.

This is available through Amazon.com's Kindle program.

[James Bailey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Truly thoughtful and singular voice. The narrative structure is mysterious and telling at the same time. Seedy and dark but ultimately hopeful, I believe. A powerful, creative thrust. Will make you proud, disgusted, introspective and saddened all in one reading.

[Noah Friend · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this because I absolutely loved Jacket Weather. This is not as quite as good as Jacket Weather but still exceptional. While it felt like it dragged on at parts, it highlighted the skill Mike has to make small moments feel remarkable. It reads like a book written 23 years prior to Jacket Weather, practicing the artful nuance of innocuousness Jacket Weather perfects. So in short, not as good but as to be expected from a piece two decades junior. Still highly recommend. Mike’s style of writing is unlike anything I’ve ever seen and I absolutely love it.

[Blayne M · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was living in Tremont, the neighborhood of Cleveland where much of Through The Windshield is set, when I first read this book. Really fun to visualize it taking place around me as I read. I enjoy a story told with a distinctive voice and character, and boy howdy, is this ever. Read this book, people.

[Jesse · Rating 2 out of 5]

Despite my disappointment, I read this all the way through, mainly trying to guess at whether i’d have loved this novel when i was in my early twenties—same age as the author was. Even in my twenties I’d have found the persistent use of ellipses in favour of real punctuation annoying, and would have agreed with myself in middle age that this needed to be cut by about 2/3s, starting with the awful-even-for-bukowski-ripoff poetry sections. While the author does an ok job of capturing the voices of a couple of characters, he fails to build them into interesting people and i spent a lot of this novel wondering why i should be reading it. The author’s looking to wring Tom-Waits-lyrics poetry out of gritty reality, the wrong side of the tracks, whatever set of tired antiheroic clichés come quickly to mind, and it just falls short over and over. The prose is at its worst when it takes itself most seriously, but much of the book is dialogue and there’s a serious problem in how repetitive and tiresome this dialogue quickly becomes. There are plenty of compulsive gamblers, losers, and directionless antiheroes who have been written engagingly, but this read like it was cribbed from the author’s journal entries about years spent wasting time gambling with shitty dudes. Even then, this could have been more interesting, starting with being a lot shorter: the poetry sections were truly very bad and so very persistent.

[Lavinia Ludlow · Rating 3 out of 5]

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