In the City of Shy Hunters

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful book
Review: I love Tom Spanbauer's narrative voice. I read Man Who Fell in Love With the Moon, and was frustrated as heck trying to get through the first half. After a while, he grew on me. Before I knew it I was in love with his style.

I won't comment much on the story line, but reading of this author is a great great experience. Give it time, be patient, read it to the end, and fall in love with his language.

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful book
Review: I love Tom Spanbauer's narrative voice. I read Man Who Fell in Love With the Moon, and was frustrated as heck trying to get through the first half. After a while, he grew on me. Before I knew it I was in love with his style.

I won't comment much on the story line, but reading of this author is a great great experience. Give it time, be patient, read it to the end, and fall in love with his language.

Rating:
Summary: Epic Romp in Humanity
Review: It was, in some ways, what I expected. Manhattan, the 1980's, the cocaine, the AIDS apocalypse. Brutal, indeed. Spanbauer's characters--some naive, some dark, most ambivalent--ricochet through the city and its demon-lined streets, colliding with sub-human debasements and self-destructive dalliances. Within the sufferers and what Spanbauer creates as "fools" or "harlequins", there is complexity: people do good things, people do bad things. However, the enemy ("pharisees"), is given less depth; the enemy is blanketly: Reagan, the Catholic church, cops, the elite--in other words, the obvious enemies, summed up and embodied by one mounted police sergeant who has no revealed motive other than doing bad things to people. That's too bad, because the moral grayness of the good faction is rather appealing, and more like something feasible.

The novel is rhythmically framed with myriad, repeated catch phrases: "Green Date."; "The lucid compulsion to act polemically.";"Stranded beings searching for God." These from the cliquish central cast of the story, at whose lives you peek from time to time, catching glimpses of pathos and perversion, family strife and gloom--though not quite often enough to gain appreciation for the intense bonds the protagonist, William "of Heaven", avows. The characters, indeed, seem to be a collection of extreme postures and deeds: less an endearing, downtrodden bunch than an exclusive, curious lot. Thus the repeated catch phrases often ring with the empty profundity of inside jokes.

What's nice is the depth of history some of the main characters are given. The most compelling part of the
whole affair to me was when we left Manhattan and visited the past, as narrated by various characters, especially the protagonist. William's damaged upbringing on an Indian Reservation in Idaho kept me riveted (and was the book's closest bond to its predecessor "The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon").

All in all, it succeeds in bringing an Apocalyptic edge to the story of the New York AIDS crisis in the 1980's. It's a romp with often-outrageous turns that may stretch credibility, but as such is an absorbing page-turner. Its graphic depictions of acts, both sexual and violent, are not for the dainty, but the overall impression isn't one of despair and gore, but of redemption and survival.

Rating:
Summary: Love it or hate it
Review: Something like a mixture of Dancer from the Dance, Huckleberry Finn, and Gravity's Rainbow, this book is not going to be for everyone. But if you like storytelling, philosophy and style, you may just love it. I do.

The author has a unique voice, and I can understand people who have trouble with it (skip the prologue if you do). The book tells a good if classic story, but it's also an exploration of perception, memory and reality. It understands that since events exist by perception, their geography is in memory, not in time. As in life, the absurd and the tragic and the sanctimonious and the sentimental all crowd in on one another; but the characters are fascinating, and I found it easy to get caught up in their lives.

The comic scenes are masterful; my favorite is one in a crowded laundromat, where the narrator tries to guard a finally-available washing machine from other aggressive new yorkers while his laundry remains out of reach.

I liked this book because it told a good story and made me think.

Rating:
Summary: Captivating but excessive New York AIDS novel
Review: Spanbauer's first effort in a decade follows the incomparable and lyrical "Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon"--a novel that deserves its cult status. The best elements of his preceding work are here--Native American mysticism, elegant prose, bawdy humor--along with a seething anger reminiscent of David B. Feinberg and the neurotic cosmopolitanism of Spalding Gray.

The basic story combines two narratives that have been told many times before: rural boy comes to New York and confronts the fact that he is gay; a group of friends live through the early years of the AIDS epidemic. There are some wonderful moments when the Idaho-bred naivety of the lead character, William Parker, meets New York's in-your-face honesty. In particular, the chapter describing his first day on the job in a restaurant is relentlessly hilarious. (A personal note: I moved to New York from the Northwest the same month and year as Parker did. Manhattan was certainly a different place then, and Spanbauer captures perfectly the city's grittiness.)

Living in New York during the 1980s was at times certainly like living in a war zone, especially for those of us who lost (and are still losing) so many friends to AIDS. While Spanbauer's portrait of New York City is brutally on-target, his plot and characters never seem quite right. Like David Feinberg, Spanbauer can't contain his anger; his book boils in its hostility toward the Reagans, the Church, gentrification, and other all-too-easy targets, and he overstates his tirades to the point of absurdity. (A vengeful crime directed at "Cardinal O'Henry" on the steps of St. Patrick's Cathedral is exceptionally silly.) And, like Spalding Gray, Spanbauer seems more interested in breaking taboos than in exploring their impact on his characters or tying them into his plot. For example, an uncomfortably explicit account of incest does not in any way contribute to the development of the novel's character or story; it reads like an appended scene hoping to equal the shock value of his previous novel. He is often so busy brewing these episodes that he ultimately fails to make his characters and their actions coherent or convincing; without exception, everybody in the novel either goes crazy or dies. Five hundred pages later, the number of loose ends and pointless incidents defy counting.

Spanbauer is undoubtedly one of the best stylists writing "gay fiction" today. But, even taking into account its mystical themes and tragic events, this novel as a whole strains authenticity.

Rating:
Summary: "The moment that after you're different"
Review: The "shy hunters" of the title in Tom Spanbauer's most recent novel are apparently those reluctant heroes among us who, once pushed to the fore, are capable of great feats of, if not heroism, then at least of affirmation. One such "hero," is Will Parker, who comes to New York from Idaho in 1983 in search of his friend, lover, and blood-brother, Charlie 2 Moons, whom he once betrayed in a moment of cowardice that has haunted him for two decades. He is destined to spend six years in New York, at a time of crisis that demands sacrifice, not just from Will, but from his assortment of colorful friends, including perhaps the most tragic, Roosevelt Washington King, a one-time English professor cum drag queen/performance artist (and close friend of Elizabeth Taylor), who, having contracted AIDS, plans to exit this world in a "lucid compulsion to act polemically." The action comes to a head for Will in a violent confrontation with an equestrian cop in Tompkins Square Park. By this time, Will has "found" Charlie 2 Moons, lost one lover to suicide and another to madness, and seen his world nearly emptied of friends by AIDS. This work represents a remarkable tight-rope walk for its author, as he veers between tragic realism and quotidian farce. But, whereas he accomplished this feat quite nimbly in "The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon," here he often wavers. Perhaps he identifies too closely with "Will of Heaven," who is described as either a "handsome Einstein or intelligent Tom Selleck." A glance at Spanbauer's picture on the back cover of my book reveals this as a spot-on description of the author himself, perhaps with a little Gene Shalit thrown in. Spanbauer contracted AIDS while writing this book, which is a labor of love, dedicated to those who "have passed through the Door of the Dead." If good intentions were enough, this would be a masterpiece. As it is, "The City of Shy Hunters" is less of a novel than a collection of brilliant set-pieces, many of which will haunt the reader forever. For all its talk of suicide and death, its ultimate message is a positive one ("a kind of ... joy"), which gives us hope that the "extra lovely" Mr. Spanbauer has a lifetime of writing left to do.

Rating:
Summary: Been waiting for this a long time
Review: This is the long-awaited new novel by Tom Spanbauer, author of The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon, a novel which got me into semi-deep trouble when I selected it for a book discussion group once. Spanbauer is just NOT an easy author. Not for suburban matrons, no, no, no... Definitely a stylistic challenge (there are no quotation marks anywhere, so you have to parse it out in your head as you read) and the material and setting have certainly been used before (the joys and agonies of New York City at the beginning of the Age of AIDS), but there's a definite attraction meshed in with all its difficulties. The flashbacks to the narrator's strange, abusive childhood in Idaho are lovely and touching, and the characters are nothing if not memorable---performance artists, homeless people, wannabees and waiters. There are multitudinous references to Native American and Western American culture---Stranger in a Strange Land goes 80's, told in a late 90's style---which inform and propel the narrative and the characters' motivations.

It's not like anything all that stellar actually happens---Will is looking for a childhood friend who got a scholarship and moved to NYC years before---and his quest is filled with blind alleys and, of course, with self-discovery. There's a good deal of violence and queasy-making descriptions of edgy sexual encounters and acres and acres of humankind's-inhumanity-to-humankind, but there's also a warped beauty to the whole thing and moments of sincere love. Imagine Tales of the City directed by Sam Peckinpah in a benevolent mood...

Rating:
Summary: Just Amazing
Review: This novel hovered at the outer edges of my view for a long time, but I finally got a copy and read it. I am amazed at the lack of publicity In the City has received. Unique characters that you come to care for as flesh and blood beings and wonderous language make for one of the deepest and most tender novels I've ever read. The author claims in an interview that writing this book almost killed him but also saved his life, and I can see why. A work in which to immerse yourself, completely.

Rating:
Summary: Just Perfect
Review: To paraphrase William Parker, the narrator of this amazing new novel, You're going this way, something happens, then you're going that way.

About 7 years ago, I went to a sweat lodge in upstate NY and participated in a 2-Spirit sweat led by a Shoshone Indian teacher named Clyde Hall. If you don't know what 2-spirit means, neither did I. I thought of myself as "gay" and, like most people, I saw the world as sexually divisible between gay and straight, categories that, no doubt, are useful as far as they go. But, even though the concepts are related, in the Plains Indian "berdache" tradition, being 2-spirit is not the same thing as being gay. Whatever I was, I knew I wasn't a classic white guy. Clyde Hall told me I should read a novel called *The Man Who Fell in Love With the Moon* by Tom Spanbauer. I usually keep my ears up for good things to read, so it surprised me that I'd never heard of the book. I read that book in one sitting and the experience changed my life. Tom Spanbauer is a visionary in the great tradition of visionaries that boasts more poets than novelists. And the great thing for American readers is that his vision is rooted in the land, life and history of this continent and all its peoples.

Anyway, if you haven't read *The Man Who Fell in Love With the Moon*, then you're in for an extra treat because you can now read two of the most wonderful novels you'll ever read right in a row. Reading *In the City of Shy Hunters* over the last week has been a beautiful, joyous, heartbreaking experience. Unless you are a really tiny-hearted person, I guarantee you that you will fall in love with this book, just as the book's narrator, Will Parker, "William of Heaven", tells you right off the bat that he has fallen in love with you. (He means it.) The vision that informs this book (as well as TS'searlier books, but here on a near epic scale ) is unlike any other in American fiction. It is huge, mystical, generous, "sexually haunted," erotic, and deeply spiritual.

If you, like me, believe in the power of books and poems and music and art in general, to reflect and renew what Wallace Stevens called "the voice that is great within us," then you will be glad that Tom Spanbauer is in the world, and grateful for his generosity and hard work as a writer and as a human being. Please read this book. *Mitakuye iyasin!*

Rating:
Summary: A vibrant story - full of life and death
Review: We are introduced to Will Parker, boy from Idaho, as he journeys to the Wolf Swamp (Manhattan) in search of a lost love.

During the course of the novel, he learns that it is his task, metaphorically speaking, to "Slay the monster, and rescue the maiden." I like the uncertainty at the end of the book whether he has been able to accomplish either of those goals, because it makes the point that reality isn't as neat as the stories we tell about it. We can create the stories, but the reality itself is more chaotic and never fully explainable.

On another level, the book is easy to understand. Boy moves to city, boy finds self and falls in love, boy's friends get AIDS and die. Although this plot line is somewhat of a cliche, and truly heartbreaking, the vivid characterizations and passions of the characters in their life make it a book about living rather than about dying.

This is one you'll ponder for a long time.