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Save Me, Joe Louis
Making their living by forcing strangers to withdraw money for them from automatic cash machines, Macrae and Charlie hook up with a Black ex-con called Porter, who teaches them the perils of an unexamined life
351 pages, Hardcover
First published May 1, 1993
8 people are currently reading
66 people want to read
About the author
Madison Smartt Bell
57 books174 followersMadison Smartt Bell is a critically acclaimed writer of more than a dozen novels and story collections, as well as numerous essays and reviews for publications such as Harper’s and the New York Times Book Review. His books have been finalists for both the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award, among other honors. Bell has also taught at distinguished creative writing programs including the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, Johns Hopkins, and Goucher College. His work is notable for its sweeping historical and philosophical scope matched with a remarkable sensitivity to the individual voices of characters on the margins of society.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
November 29, 2024
The title of this book comes from a piece of urban legend that, in some form, is apparently true. A young Black man dying in a State gas chamber called upon Joe Louis to save him. ML King even talked about this man in a speech.
Macrae is a good kid from a small town in Tennessee. With few options in his small town, he follows his friends into the army. But he hates the army, so he soon goes AWOL and flees to New York City.
He has no more prospects in New York than he did in Tennessee until he meets a sharp hustler named Charlie. The two begin robbing people in uptown neighborhoods as they visit ATM machines. But Charlie leads Macrae into a series of steadily more violent crimes and the two flea New York, along with a Black man named Porter, who seems a bit more grounded than the other two.
Eventually, the three go to Macrae’s father’s home in Tennessee, which isn’t a lot more than a shack on a farm. Macrae reunites with the woman he had once loved, but their relationship isn’t enough to change him, and violence soon follows him.
I was never exactly sure what Joe Louis had to do with this book. The image that Bell plants with us early in the book (and repeats it several times) is of the ball in a pin ball machine, bouncing randomly down the board. These folks bounce around with no plan or moral compass. They, however, have a direction if not a plan: from the time Macrae goes AWOL, he’s going down. I guess, in the end, Joe Louis is about his only hope.
I was anxious to read a book by Bell. Being from Tennessee and Vanderbilt, I had heard of him forever. But I was a bit disappointed. He wallowed in stereotypes of Tennesseans as ignorant hicks. The book was depressing. It is very well written, and the hopeless characters are each hopeless in their own way.
Although this isn’t my cup of tea, I suppose I must admit that it is pretty good. But even with the classics, not everyone is a personal favorite for anyone.
Macrae is a good kid from a small town in Tennessee. With few options in his small town, he follows his friends into the army. But he hates the army, so he soon goes AWOL and flees to New York City.
He has no more prospects in New York than he did in Tennessee until he meets a sharp hustler named Charlie. The two begin robbing people in uptown neighborhoods as they visit ATM machines. But Charlie leads Macrae into a series of steadily more violent crimes and the two flea New York, along with a Black man named Porter, who seems a bit more grounded than the other two.
Eventually, the three go to Macrae’s father’s home in Tennessee, which isn’t a lot more than a shack on a farm. Macrae reunites with the woman he had once loved, but their relationship isn’t enough to change him, and violence soon follows him.
I was never exactly sure what Joe Louis had to do with this book. The image that Bell plants with us early in the book (and repeats it several times) is of the ball in a pin ball machine, bouncing randomly down the board. These folks bounce around with no plan or moral compass. They, however, have a direction if not a plan: from the time Macrae goes AWOL, he’s going down. I guess, in the end, Joe Louis is about his only hope.
I was anxious to read a book by Bell. Being from Tennessee and Vanderbilt, I had heard of him forever. But I was a bit disappointed. He wallowed in stereotypes of Tennesseans as ignorant hicks. The book was depressing. It is very well written, and the hopeless characters are each hopeless in their own way.
Although this isn’t my cup of tea, I suppose I must admit that it is pretty good. But even with the classics, not everyone is a personal favorite for anyone.
May 14, 2012
I bought this book back in the early '90s, and it sat in my to-read pile for the next 15-plus years til I finally cracked it open. I have wronged Madison Smartt Bell. I shouldn't have waited so long to discover him. In "Save Me, Joe Louis," good-for-nothin peckerwoods Charlie and Macrae hook up in New York City and embark on a career of petty crime, knocking off rich college kids at ATMs. From there, they head over to Baltimore where they join an ex-con named Porter for a spot of urban drama that wouldn't be out of place on "The Wire." And then down to Macrae's father's shack in Tennessee for some Southern-fried. Bell deftly shifts voice to accommodate the unique tones of his varied settings. "Joe Louis" is relatively plotless, as rambling and restless as its characters. These are men who don't know what they want, where they're going or even who they are. They're ciphers, even to themselves. "I'm the fruit of my actions," one says. The ambling pace and vacant characters might make it a difficult novel for some readers to embrace. The editor should have been more careful about all the typos, and Bell should have been more careful about counting shells fired in his action scenes. Still, I regret that I didn't read this before most of Bell's other books went out of print coz he is good, and I'm sure he's gotten better.
May 18, 2013
Low-key tension and slow cooking, with a few flare-ups along the way.
Actually, there is plenty of movement in this novel, but most of it seems to happen while the characters are focused on other things (sensations and impressions of the moment, recollections, anticipating and analysing others' reactions, etc.)so that even big, fat, potentially dramatic scenes just ripple through lightly, subdued and keeping a distance.
We get to ride along with the boys from Hell's kitchen to Baltimore to rural Tennessee to the Carolina coast, and meet up with different varieties of folk, fringe and otherwise. The Baltimore (Charm City) layover was especially intriguing and ambiguous, with the addition of Porter, who for some reason brings an almost imperceptible balance to the new trio.
My only small complaint about this atypical novel would be the preponderance of descriptions of the elements - the ones that create weather - in nearly every scene. Perhaps all the dripping, floating, blowing, etc. was used to bring us into the scene, with the characters, and yes, it works. On top of that, I have a lot of admiration for MSB's writing, which is wonderfully rhythmic. So it's less a complaint than a matter of taste. I have a long-standing aversion to detailed descriptions of weather and landscapes, what can I say?
Actually, there is plenty of movement in this novel, but most of it seems to happen while the characters are focused on other things (sensations and impressions of the moment, recollections, anticipating and analysing others' reactions, etc.)so that even big, fat, potentially dramatic scenes just ripple through lightly, subdued and keeping a distance.
We get to ride along with the boys from Hell's kitchen to Baltimore to rural Tennessee to the Carolina coast, and meet up with different varieties of folk, fringe and otherwise. The Baltimore (Charm City) layover was especially intriguing and ambiguous, with the addition of Porter, who for some reason brings an almost imperceptible balance to the new trio.
My only small complaint about this atypical novel would be the preponderance of descriptions of the elements - the ones that create weather - in nearly every scene. Perhaps all the dripping, floating, blowing, etc. was used to bring us into the scene, with the characters, and yes, it works. On top of that, I have a lot of admiration for MSB's writing, which is wonderfully rhythmic. So it's less a complaint than a matter of taste. I have a long-standing aversion to detailed descriptions of weather and landscapes, what can I say?
March 18, 2010
Recommended by a friend, it's an older book, but he thought of it after i remarked how much i liked 'lush life', also a crime novel in NYC. This one is a bit different, but equally excellent. Starts in NYC, where macrae, the protagonist, is hiding out after deserting from the army (which he'd enlisted in to avoid jail after a bar fight in his home in the south, defending a woman's honor...we'll meet her later). He hooks up with an ex-con and they begin a low level crime spree, mugging new yorkers, but things go downhill and the violence escalates, and soon they're fleeing NYC, hooking up with another ex-con, and settling in back on macrae's farm in the south (somewhere). the book is very cinematic, and i constantly found myself imagining how this scene should be shot (although dont' think it was ever made into a film). a bit like the old bonnie and clyde, complete with climactic shoot out scene near the end. Overall, nice, if a bit noir, read.
November 27, 2023
Back in the day I might have read this in a coffee shop, and taken interest in deviant characters with such tender hearts. But alas, like most fashionable things from the 1990’s it feels unbalanced and cringe worthy. Characters are flat, contrived and brooding. The story expresses angst without pain, violence without consequence, and sadness without loss.
Pimps who let-out their girl on a date night as a ‘thanks’ to a John who breaks up a cat fight. Muggers who make casual conversation with their marks and learn all about where they’re from. Indigents who somehow rent two-bedroom apartments in NYC while courting teen prostitutes in a way which is not supposed to cross the line for us readers.
Well, like I said, cringe.
Pimps who let-out their girl on a date night as a ‘thanks’ to a John who breaks up a cat fight. Muggers who make casual conversation with their marks and learn all about where they’re from. Indigents who somehow rent two-bedroom apartments in NYC while courting teen prostitutes in a way which is not supposed to cross the line for us readers.
Well, like I said, cringe.
December 25, 2012
Meh.Nice at points, otherwise unremarkable. Can't decide whether it is trashy or not, though.
August 22, 2020
Noirish godliness or pretty goddamn close to it at any rate. Loved it.
August 23, 2025
"Save Me, Joe Louis" isn’t gritty Americana, it’s a writer rolling around in the muck and then congratulating himself for the smell. Madison Smartt Bell clearly thought he was penning the Great American Nihilist Novel. What he actually wrote was a self-indulgent sludge pile, a dirge for clichés masquerading as transgression.
Yes, there’s style. Bell can sling a sentence when he wants to. But style without substance is just set dressing on a rubbish dump. The prose sometimes sizzles, but the plot is a slow-motion car crash: predictable, tedious, joyless.
Macrae, our "hero," is a sketchpad-toting lazy crim with a “heart of gold.” Translation: a trope wrapped in a cliché, lacquered in heroin. Charlie, the supposed wild card, is less character than chaos generator. Porter, the obligatory “Black ex-con with wisdom,” exists so Bell can pat himself on the back for inclusivity while scribbling in crayon. They’re all cardboard, brooding like they’re auditioning for a particularly miserable soap opera.
The first act drags like a week-long hangover, climaxing with a baseball bat beatdown that’s meant to be cathartic but instead lands with the grandeur of a bin bag splitting in an alley. Then comes the road trip: Baltimore, crack dens, stolen cars, armed robberies, every Southern stereotype Bell could squeeze in. Tennesseans written as Deliverance extras, cheap backwoods caricatures, as if the entire state is just a prop yard for his faux-gritty fantasy.
Then the really rancid bit: the underage junkie prostitute “love” angle. Not bold, not edgy, not dangerous. Just gross. Even in 1993 it was indefensible. It reads like the kind of thing a writer shoves in to shock the reader when he’s run out of ideas. Moral laziness dressed up as courage.
Elements are actually embarrassing. Pimps offering romantic advice. Muggers chatting like baristas. Homeless characters who somehow have stable housing when the plot requires it. The Joe Louis motif? Introduced with the weight of scripture, then dropped like confetti at a paedophile's wedding. Symbolism without substance, gravitas without gravity.
This isn’t edgy. It’s a thrift-store Bukowski knockoff, a bargain-bin Cormac McCarthy with all the blood but none of the bite. Sadness without stakes. Violence without scars. A redemption arc that never even puts its shoes on.
I wanted to like it. I really did. Bell’s reputation preceded him, and I braced for bruised brilliance. What I got was self-important sludge: a novel that thinks wallowing in filth equals profundity. "Save Me, Joe Louis" is less literature than literary cosplay. One and a half stars, and the half is charity.
Yes, there’s style. Bell can sling a sentence when he wants to. But style without substance is just set dressing on a rubbish dump. The prose sometimes sizzles, but the plot is a slow-motion car crash: predictable, tedious, joyless.
Macrae, our "hero," is a sketchpad-toting lazy crim with a “heart of gold.” Translation: a trope wrapped in a cliché, lacquered in heroin. Charlie, the supposed wild card, is less character than chaos generator. Porter, the obligatory “Black ex-con with wisdom,” exists so Bell can pat himself on the back for inclusivity while scribbling in crayon. They’re all cardboard, brooding like they’re auditioning for a particularly miserable soap opera.
The first act drags like a week-long hangover, climaxing with a baseball bat beatdown that’s meant to be cathartic but instead lands with the grandeur of a bin bag splitting in an alley. Then comes the road trip: Baltimore, crack dens, stolen cars, armed robberies, every Southern stereotype Bell could squeeze in. Tennesseans written as Deliverance extras, cheap backwoods caricatures, as if the entire state is just a prop yard for his faux-gritty fantasy.
Then the really rancid bit: the underage junkie prostitute “love” angle. Not bold, not edgy, not dangerous. Just gross. Even in 1993 it was indefensible. It reads like the kind of thing a writer shoves in to shock the reader when he’s run out of ideas. Moral laziness dressed up as courage.
Elements are actually embarrassing. Pimps offering romantic advice. Muggers chatting like baristas. Homeless characters who somehow have stable housing when the plot requires it. The Joe Louis motif? Introduced with the weight of scripture, then dropped like confetti at a paedophile's wedding. Symbolism without substance, gravitas without gravity.
This isn’t edgy. It’s a thrift-store Bukowski knockoff, a bargain-bin Cormac McCarthy with all the blood but none of the bite. Sadness without stakes. Violence without scars. A redemption arc that never even puts its shoes on.
I wanted to like it. I really did. Bell’s reputation preceded him, and I braced for bruised brilliance. What I got was self-important sludge: a novel that thinks wallowing in filth equals profundity. "Save Me, Joe Louis" is less literature than literary cosplay. One and a half stars, and the half is charity.
August 20, 2008
Seemingly slow and stodgy at first, too noir, envelops you as it progresses into new terrains and the language becomes inhabitable.
August 22, 2008
This is one of my favorite books. I love the energy, the gritiness of it.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews