| View Larger Image | Orangutan: A Memoir | Paperbackby Colin Broderick (Author)
| List Price: | $14.00 | | Price: | $9.45 | | You Save: | $4.55 (32%) | | | Available: | Not yet published |
| | Binding: | Paperback | | Publisher: | Three Rivers Press | | Page Count: | 352 Pages | | Publication Date: | December 29, 2009 | | Sales Rank: | 267,884th |
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EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
Few people who have been slave to an addiction as vicious, as destructive, and as unrelenting as Colin Broderick's have lived to tell their tale. Fewer still have emerged from the darkest depths of alcoholism—from the perpetual fistfights and muggings, car crashes and blackouts—to tell the harrowing truth about the modern Irish immigrant experience.Orangutan is the story of a generation of young men and women in search of identity in a foreign land, both in love with and at odds with the country they've made their home. So much more than just another memoir about battling addiction, Orangutan is an odyssey across the unforgiving terrain of 1980s, '90s, and post-9/11 America.Whether he is languishing in the boozy squalor of the Bronx, coke-fueled and manic in the streets of Manhattan, chasing Hunter S. Thompson's American Dream from San Francisco to the desert, or turning the South into his beer-soaked playground, Broderick plainly and unflinchingly charts what it means to be Irish in America, and how the grips of heritage can destroy a man's soul. But brutal though Orangutan may be, it is ultimately a story of hope and redemption—it is the story of an Irish drunk unlike any you've met before. |
Amazon.com Review
Guest Interview: Colum McCann Talks with Colin Broderick Colum McCann is the internationally bestselling author of the novels Zoli, Dancer, This Side of Brightness, and Songdogs, as well as two critically acclaimed story collections. A contributor to The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, and The Paris Review, he has been named one of Esquire’s "Best and Brightest," and his short film Everything in This Country Must was nominated for an Oscar in 2005. His 2009 novel, Let the Great World Spin, won the 2009 National Book Award for Fiction, and was selected as Amazon.com's Best Book of 2009. Read his interview with Colin Broderick on Orangutan: Colum McCann: The book starts with a warning: "This is not a very pleasant story... and if you don’t like it, I don’t care." There’s a fury in this book that I found really honest. Colin Broderick: You’re right about that, Colum. I was on the last rung of the ladder when I started this book. I knew if I didn’t come out fighting with this one, I was done for. Desperation has been a great motivator for me over the past three years. Colum McCann: The first time I met you was about twelve years ago at the Barnes & Noble in Union Square. You handed me a manuscript and asked me to read it. You had a fire in your eyes that suggested you were never going to give up. I think at the time you told me it was your second novel. How many did you write before you finally managed to see something in print? Colin Broderick: That fire has kept me alive through two unpublished novels, two plays, a screenplay, reams of poetry, and a nice folder of short stories over the years. It’s been a long and arduous apprenticeship. But the option to quit was never viable for me. The noise in my head demands articulation. I obey, or it destroys me. When I sat down to write Orangutan I realized that I had most of it already written subconsciously. Since I stopped drinking I realized I have been walking around with all these stories in my head for years, and they’ve been driving me crazy. I drank to quiet the noise. I write now for the same reason. My goal now is to untangle the stories one word at a time so that they don’t drive me completely mad. Colum McCann: Drink is one of the great levellers of fiction writers. But it’s also one of the great clichés, that it somehow fuels creativity. How did you actually manage to write while you were on the jar? Or did you just pretend? Colin Broderick: That romantic image of the half pint of whiskey next to me on my writing table while I toiled almost killed me over the years. Personally I never wrote a coherent sentence when I was drunk. It took me a long time to accept that writing is basically hard, lonely work. It was easy to feel inspired when I was drinking. Once in a while, usually after about two or three bottles of wine, I was so inspired that I was convinced that I was just going to rattle off the next great American novel. I’d wake up in the morning with a head on me like the tire of a dirt bike and pick up my notebook and I wouldn’t be able to read a single word. There might be twenty pages or so of enthusiastic, unintelligible scrawl to magnify my sense of utter hopelessness. I destroyed a lot of nice notebooks like that over the years. I never woke up with a hangover and a masterpiece in my hand. I think that whole idea of the drunk writer is a very dangerous myth. Most of the drunk writers I’ve researched wrote sober. Then they got drunk to celebrate. Colum McCann: Personally I don’t care about the difference between fiction and nonfiction. A story is a story, full stop. Clifford Geertz says that "the real is as imagined as the imaginary." But there’s a lot of hullabaloo about "lies" and "fabrication" in the memoir genre. What would you say to the skeptics who say that this story is too crazy to believe? Colin Broderick: I’d say, "Put my book down so I can kick your ass." What’s really crazy to me is how much madness I had to leave out of the story in order to keep it within the confines of a readable book. Colum McCann: I think the whole bollicking that James Frey got was ridiculous. So he made a mistake; leave him alone. It wasn’t like he was telling lies and sending kids off to war, like some politicians were doing at the time... Colin Broderick: I totally agree, Colum. I loved A Million Little Pieces. I couldn’t put the damn thing down. In the bars where I drank, there were characters who would tell the same story over and over for years. We would be disappointed if it wasn’t a little more entertaining on every new telling of it. The art of storytelling started around turf fires years ago, way before there were laptops and recording devices to take the magic out of it. If the storyteller didn’t do his job right, no one would be able to remember the story to convey it orally to the next generation. Tell me a boring story you heard when you were ten. Colum McCann: You worked in the Irish construction scene in New York for twenty years while writing. How was that for you, on the job? Did you ever have to go looking for the infamous "striped paint"? Colin Broderick: I didn’t go for the striped paint myself, but I’ve sent a few newcomers looking for it over the years. I would always tell them to bring it back and hang it on a sky hook. The Irish construction scene in New York is not a job you need a hard hat for. What you really need is a full suit of body armor and a spare liver stored in your cooler. Those guys are the best craftsmen there are. I’m just glad I survived the ride. Colum McCann: We get our voice from the voices of others. I can see Pete Hamill here. And Nick Flynn. Some Bukowski, even. So, who would you say gave you your voice? Colin Broderick: I think my own voice came up one morning when I had my arms wrapped around a toilet bowl, praying for survival. I read everything, including Hamill and Flynn. But I’ll name a few of my favorite writers: Hemingway, Bukowski, Philip Roth, Graham Greene, John Irving, and the late great David Foster Wallace. Colum McCann: In the story of drinking with the transvestite in a hole-in-the-wall bar in San Francisco, you relate to her by explaining how you are in fact an orangutan trapped in the body of a man. She claims, of course, that she’s the Queen of England, and maybe she is. That must have been quite a session. Has that feeling of being trapped in another body subsided any since you’ve put down the bottle? Colin Broderick: No. But not drinking has helped me understand that part of myself a little better and I’ve come to terms with the beast, which makes it easier for me to stay on this side of the prison bars. Colum McCann: A drunk, a carpenter, a writer, a womanizer, an emigrant? They’re all open to particular stereotype, especially on the page. So, how do you lift yourself--and the story--away from the old tropes? How do you make it new? Colin Broderick: Every story is new. I just hope mine is authentic and entertaining. Colum McCann: Life is unfinished, isn’t it? I mean, we constantly find out that there are new ways and new directions. You’re a father yourself now. You have a little girl. You’re a published writer. Does happiness scare you? Colin Broderick: I’m not a real happy person in general, but my life is better right now than it’s ever been. I’m on a path now that I’m treading cautiously. I look at my daughter and it’s all the incentive I need in the world to keep putting one foot in front of the other, do the next right thing. Colum McCann: The late great Frank McCourt was a good friend of mine. And I assume you knew him also. He talked about the miserable Irish Catholic childhood and yet he rose above it. If you had to tag your story with a one-liner, what would it be? Colin Broderick: An Irish construction worker in New York digs through the rubble of his life to find an identity. Colum McCann: And yes, he finds it. It’s a great read. And I assume you’re working on your next project. Do you want to give us an idea of what it is? Colin Broderick: I’m still digging in the rubble right now. When I get to the bottom of it all and clear away the mess, I’m going to pour myself a nice, solid, concrete platform to stand on. And I’ll start building again from there. Colum McCann: Good luck to you, Colin. If I find you drinking, I’ll throw all your pens away forever... Colin Broderick: See, now that made me laugh out loud. Thanks, Colum. |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 3.0 based on 2 reviews)
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It's Very Hard To Review A Memoir By a Guy That You'd Have a Beer With by Sussex Pond Pudding (Somewhere in the desert, CA)  2 Stars
November 27, 2009
I was anxious to receive this book as it is quite unlike those in my usual stack of books next to my big, comfy reading chair (I highly recommend that every guy out there get themselves a Lazy Boy recliner...it will change your life). Plus I have a great deal of experience with alcoholism and drug addiction, having known a few very intimately over the years. I am also a huge fan of Charles Bukowski. All in all I was hoping for a gritty, engrossing black comedic memoir (as the cover and description on the back suggest).
It is a very hard thing to critique a memoir of someone with whom you would certainly enjoy having a beer with (in fact, given his description of his time in San Francisco, it is highly probable that I did in fact have a beer with him as we were there at the exact same bars at the exact same time and we both had a lot of Irish IRA-type friends). To say something negative about this book can almost feel like calling the author a nasty name. I don't want to do that, of course. But my reaction to the book was somewhat negative. So with nothing but my own sense of honesty and personal integrity in mind I will tell you that this book is average at best.
He tried for the social realism of Bukowski (in the book, to his credit, he acknowledges him as a favorite writer) but it is even more stripped down. Stripping down Bukowski is more like typing than writing. There is no style. Just a list of events. And, frankly, the events of his life are not very exciting. To someone who has never been around this lifestyle it may be very exciting and enlightening but, of all the drunks and junkies I have known, he had it pretty darn good. The beginning of the book shows promise. It does hook you in. Then the rest of it is simply him telling us what a great this or that he was while drinking. That goes on for about 100 pages and then in the last section he tacks on what is supposed to be a poignant moment: him sick and filled with self pity thinking about killing himself by jumping off a fire-escape while watching a parade. And then that is it. I need more meat than that to satisfy me. I have very little sympathy for people who have all the opportunities he had and failed at them (only because he was a drunk mind you...had he not been drinking he would have been a brilliant discovery on the NYC art scene) and then romanticize the failure and create the aura of doomed genius about them. It is boring. The people I do have sympathy for are the ones who drink and get KO-ed by life and die and no one cares. Or the ones like Bukowski who never rise above the streets in their writing or in their opinion of themselves. Bukowski was who he was and to hell with it. Broderick wants everyone to know what a tragedy his life was. I can't get into that.
Sorry, Colin. Cheers, mate.
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Charles Bukowski, move over by Phelps Gates (Chapel Hill, NC USA)  4 Stars
November 27, 2009
Colin Broderick is one tough Irishman! After everything he's put himself through, it's a miracle out of scripture that he's still alive -- at least I hope he is (he does have a recent NY Times byline). There are times when the narrative flags and I was tempted to start skimming, especially when he's dealing with his relationships with women, but the last hundred pages or so, as he starts trying to put his life back together again, were riveting. He perfectly captures the power of denial: he's spent almost 20 years in and out of AA (with seven years of not drinking) and made numerous attempts to quit (with and without a solemn oath), but two pages from the end of the book he's still trying to figure out a strategy for drinking successfully! His knack for vivid writing (and it's the most vivid writing I've read in quite a while) may be his salvation and his chance of getting past the age at which many of his relatives succumbed to the sauce. I wish him success.
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