Track Conditions: A Memoir

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful, simply beautiful
Review: Being a straight nursing student who lives in small town america,I wasn't sure I would relate to this book. But the writing and the openess of the author surpasses any differences between our lives. An amazing book.

Rating:
Summary: Unique and Seductive
Review: Memoirs tend to tell too much, but Michael Klein's TRACK CONDITIONS manages to convey a lot without giving away everything, and that is what makes this book so special. Klein manages to seduce us with his prose and with little snippets of half-told stories. One might say his memoir is a half-told life, and that would be true, for, as one finishes the book the thought is that a second memoir should be forthcoming. Or maybe Klein has written TRACK CONDITIONS in such a way that the reader yearns to hear more. One of the best qualities of the book is that it doesn't whine, the downfall of the modern-day memoir. It feels incredibly honest and Klein comes across as an accessible kind of guy, someone you might sit down with over coffee. TRACK CONDITIONS seems to have something to appeal to everyone: lovers of horses, aficionados of the track, gays, straights, lovers of people, drinkers, teetotalers, people with lives in crisis, and lovers of words. It is amazing that a small memoir can have such a large reach. But it does. And it works.

Rating:
Summary: pure blues and bliss
Review: Michael defies narrative convention while achieving its goals in his long prose poem/memoir/story. His is a story of triumph: whether found covered in ash and velvet and 100 dollar bills or perhaps in the spotlight of literary praise. Either way this story helped save me. Michael is a writer I respect and emulate.

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Rating:
Summary: pure blues and bliss
Review: Michael defies narrative convention while achieving its goals in his long prose poem/memoir/story. His is a story of triumph: whether found covered in ash and velvet and 100 dollar bills or perhaps in the spotlight of literary praise. Either way this story helped save me. Michael is a writer I respect and emulate.

[e-mail]

Rating:
Summary: The best gay memoir ever
Review: Michael Klein is a poet. As the author of 1990 and Day and Paper and the editor of three anthologies of AIDS-related verse, he has made his name - and spoken his identity - through the language of poetry. While Klein's sublime new book, Track Conditions , is subtitled "A Memoir," it, too, is best appreciated as poetry. In rich, brief, sorrowful chapters, Klein sketches five years, from 1979 to 1983, in which he abandoned Manhattan's bohemian life and crawled along the strange underbelly of the horse racing world, as a walker, a groomer and an all around lost soul. Out of the starting gate, Klein has two reasons to run from New York: he's chasing Richard, the lover who's left him for the tracks, and trying to flee his own pitifully destructive alcoholism. Dramatic tension seems to be established. The reader realizes rather quickly, however, that neither the drinking nor the romance will ever come to resolution. Instead, marbled with recollections of the author's troubled childhood, the instability of his life in the stables and his development of a near-mystic relationship with a Derby-winning horse named Swale, they become touchstones for obliquely lyrical meditations. So, while laced with intriguing anecdotes, Track Conditions is ultimately less about storytelling than it is about poetic perception. Rather than trying to see life as a building, linear narrative, Klein views it through a kaleidoscope: the juxtaposition of elements is ever-shifting, each moment is quickly transformed. It may not have the straight-ahead velocity of a horse race (or a commercial bestseller), but in the realm of impassioned, highly personal art, Track Conditions makes a glorious run for the roses.

Rating:
Summary: SINGULAR IN ITS CREATIVE VISION
Review: Michael Klein is a poet. As the author of 1990 and Day and Paper and the editor of three anthologies of AIDS-related verse, he has made his name - and spoken his identity - through the language of poetry. While Klein's sublime new book, Track Conditions , is subtitled "A Memoir," it, too, is best appreciated as poetry. In rich, brief, sorrowful chapters, Klein sketches five years, from 1979 to 1983, in which he abandoned Manhattan's bohemian life and crawled along the strange underbelly of the horse racing world, as a walker, a groomer and an all around lost soul. Out of the starting gate, Klein has two reasons to run from New York: he's chasing Richard, the lover who's left him for the tracks, and trying to flee his own pitifully destructive alcoholism. Dramatic tension seems to be established. The reader realizes rather quickly, however, that neither the drinking nor the romance will ever come to resolution. Instead, marbled with recollections of the author's troubled childhood, the instability of his life in the stables and his development of a near-mystic relationship with a Derby-winning horse named Swale, they become touchstones for obliquely lyrical meditations. So, while laced with intriguing anecdotes, Track Conditions is ultimately less about storytelling than it is about poetic perception. Rather than trying to see life as a building, linear narrative, Klein views it through a kaleidoscope: the juxtaposition of elements is ever-shifting, each moment is quickly transformed. It may not have the straight-ahead velocity of a horse race (or a commercial bestseller), but in the realm of impassioned, highly personal art, Track Conditions makes a glorious run for the roses.

Rating:
Summary: The best gay memoir ever
Review: This book is so unique and special -- not at all your typical gay coming out story. There are horses here and the tactile world of the racetrack and Klein's lyrical and spare prose adds just the right kind of music to a poignant and harrowing redemption tale.