Shadows, Angels and Joe Dimona

Rating:
Summary: Post-modern classic about a modern classic!
Review: I Love this book. It is written in a subversive style, unlike almost anything I've read! The author throws convention away and has freed his imagination to ruminate about all the disparate threads in the life of an author most American's don't know. I'm originally from South Africa and Joe DiMona is regarded as one of the giants there, especially in old Durban and at University.
When I came to the states he was little thought of and hardly remembered. That has changed with this fabulous story about DiMona and America and all their points of intersection! I get it I get it, and love the way the author highlights each chapter with rock idioms and crazy swings from high art to a kind of street sensibility. It is rare I think that a funny book is written abour a funny man, rarer still that a brilliant book is done about a brilliant man; but the author is right on in both cases...Though I take exception to some of the political rhetoric I fully grasp the expose' of political charlatans, a problem incidentally not indigenous to America (or democrats).
This is a book as populist as the "Soprano's" and as wonderfully ornate in its' ambition. It's as if all America opened up to the author through Joe DiMona.

Joe DiMona finally has a recognition and appreciation worthy of his unique talent.

This is a sensational read

Rating:
Summary: A Wild Biography of a Wild American Artist.
Review: Praise be!!! Someone has finally written something substantive about a very important though under-appreciated author, Joe DiMona. This is a very funny book and an extremely insightful one about the nature of art, politics and commerce. DiMona sold as many books as just about any American writer in the 1970's-1980's, yet no one seems to know anthing about him. I thought I was his only remaining fan til I saw this book. Martin Nirschel writes a really high powered bio that manages to encompass the last 10 or so years of DiMona's life and the strange after life, where all of the themes of his books would be played out in the Florida recount mess. Having read all of DiMona's books it is uncanny how closely the "recount" matched up with what DiMona wrote many years ago. Nirschel gets about as close to his subject as possible. There is not much objectivity, but the admiration for the work and appreciation of his subject jumps off the page. I wish the book were longer, it kept me wanting to read more and to get out some of Joe DiMona's dusty books from the 70's. Part of the story is like "Tuesdays with Morrie' and another part is a serious examination of the life of a writer and all of the pitfalls of success, while still others remind you of "Mystery Train" (a point the author makes at some juncture) where all of the loose ends of America tie together.
For Nirschel, Joe DiMona was great unifying figure, a social critic of the first order, a humorist and a wild spirit, forever young and free. With this book Martin Nirschel joins the same ranks as DiMona.

It is a tremendous read, fun, engaging, original but to darn short. I want more!!

Rating:
Summary: A chronicle of the 20th century par excellence!
Review: The author, whose works we have admired previously, captures the essence of 20th century media and the strangeness therein throughout his elegaic Shadows, Angels and Joe Dimona.

The contributions of Dimona and his kind might be understated or underappreciated but many but they are central to the latter half of the 20th - a truly American century.

I had the privilege of meeting the late Tom Lahey, whose obituary in the NY Times did not do justice to his contributions so young Mr. Nirschel's work must suffice.

Rating:
Summary: VIVA Joe DiMona!!!!
Review: This is a different kind of biography. It is at once an analysis of an interesting literary career, a witty remembrance indeed, but also a politcal tome', a kind of paen to the lost world the author Joe DiMona knew. In the best parts of the story the writer, Martin Nirschel, laments the passing of DiMona and everything he embodied, while celebrating all that is enduring in the life of the artist, "His sphere expands even as the world he knows contracts". I enjoyed the story best on that level, Nirschel has a wonderful, elegaic style. He makes you feel a world long ago and his grasp of it is exquisite! Also, the book was written before the death of Tom Leahy, the president of CBS. The writing about Leahy, on the conflicting strains of power and success and his rather plain awe in being in Leahy's company stands as some of the most revealtory writing I have seen in a long while. This is a rare book about rather extraordinary people. A chronicle I think of the last days of the 20th century, even as the author wrote it I don't know that he envisioned how quickly and profoundly the world would change. The vantage point on DiMona, Leahy and the "end of the century" is breathtaking and informative.