Books read in 2011: afterthought.
Not sure how I overlooked this one, unless it was because (a) I read it fairly early in 2011; (b) I didn't write a review of it, either here or in LibraryThing; or (c) I read it when I was home sick with the flu.
Anyhow, just wanted to update my "books read" highlights of 2011 with a mention of a pretty decent book that I read last March: Darryl Ponicsan's Tom Mix Died For Your Sins: A Novel Based on His Life (NY: Delacorte Press; 1975 [second printing]; ISBN: 0-440-05969-0; 300 pps.).
Darryl Ponicsan is better known as the author of two popular novels that were turned into two popular movies in 1973: The Last Detail and Cinderella Liberty. I can remember my parents hiring a babysitter so that they could see The Last Detail (Jack Nicholson, Randy Quaid; directed by Hal Ashby, who also lensed Harold & Maude [one of my favorite movies]; screenplay adaptation by Robert Towne, who would win the Oscar for Best Screenplay for Chinatown [ditto] the following year); I can also remember the mass market, movie tie-in paperback edition of Cinderella Liberty lying around the house, and my mother telling me that it wasn't suitable reading material for rug rats of my tender years.
The subtitle of Tom Mix Died For Your Sins pretty much tells you what the novel's about; to cite the synopsis on the inside jacket flap, "Here is a brilliantly colorful evocation of the life and times of Tom Mix, as based on fact but told in fiction." I'd add that the story unfolds via the first person POV auspices of a fictional character, a rodeo cowboy with the handle of Kid Bandera. TMDFYS is earthy, informative, amusing (and sometimes chortle-softly, if not laugh-out-loud, funny), trenchant, poignant, pokey in brief spots, and, finally, sad. The climax for me came just shy of page 200, if memory serves; the subsequent hundred-odd pages, while worth reading, are pretty much time markers. Will Rogers has a brief cameo in the opening chapters.
Anyone interested in stories about the early days of Hollywood, early westerns, the literary equivalent of a docudramedy (with a generous helping of stills of Tom Mix and the important people and horses in his life), the last gasps of the Old West as it was embalmed by the nascent American movie industry (a task that Hollywood took over from dime novels and Wild West shows), a social satire-cum-tragedy of the first four decades of the 20th century, or in reading a hot-shit, alpha male author/screenwriter (Ponicsan adapted Cinderella Liberty for the movie starring James Caan and Marsha Mason; oddly enough, his three most recent books are mysteries written under the pen name of Anne Argula) from the 1970s who isn't Norman Mailer, John Irving, Harry Crews or Charles Bukowski should read Tom Mix Died For Your Sins.
The last third of the book could've been better, though.
Anyhow, just wanted to update my "books read" highlights of 2011 with a mention of a pretty decent book that I read last March: Darryl Ponicsan's Tom Mix Died For Your Sins: A Novel Based on His Life (NY: Delacorte Press; 1975 [second printing]; ISBN: 0-440-05969-0; 300 pps.).
Darryl Ponicsan is better known as the author of two popular novels that were turned into two popular movies in 1973: The Last Detail and Cinderella Liberty. I can remember my parents hiring a babysitter so that they could see The Last Detail (Jack Nicholson, Randy Quaid; directed by Hal Ashby, who also lensed Harold & Maude [one of my favorite movies]; screenplay adaptation by Robert Towne, who would win the Oscar for Best Screenplay for Chinatown [ditto] the following year); I can also remember the mass market, movie tie-in paperback edition of Cinderella Liberty lying around the house, and my mother telling me that it wasn't suitable reading material for rug rats of my tender years.
The subtitle of Tom Mix Died For Your Sins pretty much tells you what the novel's about; to cite the synopsis on the inside jacket flap, "Here is a brilliantly colorful evocation of the life and times of Tom Mix, as based on fact but told in fiction." I'd add that the story unfolds via the first person POV auspices of a fictional character, a rodeo cowboy with the handle of Kid Bandera. TMDFYS is earthy, informative, amusing (and sometimes chortle-softly, if not laugh-out-loud, funny), trenchant, poignant, pokey in brief spots, and, finally, sad. The climax for me came just shy of page 200, if memory serves; the subsequent hundred-odd pages, while worth reading, are pretty much time markers. Will Rogers has a brief cameo in the opening chapters.
Anyone interested in stories about the early days of Hollywood, early westerns, the literary equivalent of a docudramedy (with a generous helping of stills of Tom Mix and the important people and horses in his life), the last gasps of the Old West as it was embalmed by the nascent American movie industry (a task that Hollywood took over from dime novels and Wild West shows), a social satire-cum-tragedy of the first four decades of the 20th century, or in reading a hot-shit, alpha male author/screenwriter (Ponicsan adapted Cinderella Liberty for the movie starring James Caan and Marsha Mason; oddly enough, his three most recent books are mysteries written under the pen name of Anne Argula) from the 1970s who isn't Norman Mailer, John Irving, Harry Crews or Charles Bukowski should read Tom Mix Died For Your Sins.
The last third of the book could've been better, though.