The Siege of Gresham

Rating:
Summary: Better than a cup of atomic coffie
Review: Forget the numbers; they're for figure-skating. The Siege of Gresham is a helluva read. In a firestorm of language, Murphy follows a butcher's dozen of samurai outcasts bent on an obscure but passionate need to settle untold scores. As the apocalyptic plot hurtles onward in search of violent catharsis--no slouching toward Bethlehem here--it's sometimes hard to distinguish identities among the many-headed communal protagonist but that's not important since essentially they're an epic army taking on the entire straight world. At the same time the progress toward the mythicized Gresham. becomes for the narrator a pilgrimage, interior as well as external, to the sites of smaller scale battles lost. This book is not for the faint of heart but under the mayhem and maiming is an impulse to purify dreamed by monks as well as ayatollahs. It's the Elizabethan energy of the language that propels this dream and admirers of Faulkner, Kerouac and Cormac McCarthy will cheer on this writer who plays dangerous games with words and succeeds more often than he has a right to.

Rating:
Summary: "Rivers Edge" meets "The Wild One"
Review: If you enjoyed Exley's "A Fans Notes", but wanted a bit more manic interpretive quality.....say Ulysses meets the Gingerman in a tunnel of tortured suburban vacancy, then titrate your Fluoxitine Hydrochloride, and hang on for the ride. This is one of the best two hour reads at Amazon (and probably/sadly not at your public library).

Rating:
Summary: Finished Reluctantly
Review: Kerouac is gone (ostensibly) but Ray Murphy is ver much alive and roving the tawdry streets of Portland. Nothing, since perhaps Celine's "Journey to the End of Night" - or stretching further Bukowski's "Ham on Rye" - tears the limp cerebral life out of a reader in quite the way Murphy does. This diatonic hammer of brilliance deserves - and I believe will find - an amazingly large readership - thankfully we have Amazon to introduce it to us cyberspuds!

Rating:
Summary: Jack Kerouac with an undiagnosed case of ADHD
Review: Kerouac is gone (ostensibly) but Ray Murphy is ver much alive and roving the tawdry streets of Portland. Nothing, since perhaps Celine's "Journey to the End of Night" - or stretching further Bukowski's "Ham on Rye" - tears the limp cerebral life out of a reader in quite the way Murphy does. This diatonic hammer of brilliance deserves - and I believe will find - an amazingly large readership - thankfully we have Amazon to introduce it to us cyberspuds!

Rating:
Summary: Finished Reluctantly
Review: There are books that you finish reluctantly, wanting to spend more time with the author. "The Siege of Gresham" is no such book. The violence (particularly rape) obsessed mind of [the book's protagonist, Henry Claymore] is a frightening thing to contemplate. Yet from the first breathless pagelong sentence, you realize that the mind you are encountering, though possibly diseased, is also brilliant, and capable of the most beautiful descriptions ever put to paper. In between the gore fests, there is humor and actual ideas. Not the least of which is the premise that this band of 14 alcoholics, muddled from booze and the effects of global warming, could possibly save us all, could reclaim the country, one suburb at a time. Read this damn book.