Crazy Streak, By John Gilmore, 2005, Scapegoat Press
Review by Kent Manthie
Growing up in a small town must be pretty stultifying; anyone with the smallest amount of ambition would do all they can to get the hell out as soon as they’re able. Well, Bobby McGee is no exception. To escape, Bobby had gone into the army a couple years ago; that was his ticket out of this sleepy hick town, where dangerous vices are the favored way to pass time for the young and dumb.
Unfortunately, Bobby returns whence he came after getting honorably discharged. He makes his way back home and instantly fixes on a whole carload of trouble. His biggest mistake is going to be his failure to follow others’ advice and re-enlist, his only hope for keeping him out of trouble and for putting structure and meaning in his life.
“Crazy Streak” reads partly like soft core porn, partly like seedy pulp fiction. It’s a nihilistic, angry and repressed rage of a screed. One gets the feeling that Gilmore has had bad experiences with women, as the ones in this book are either brainless, helpless, human sex dolls or else they’re vicious, bitter bitches. I also found the women in here unbelievable, it’s as if they’re not really women, but men playing women, which, in effect they are, since they are created entirely in the mind of a man.
I think that if Gilmore had put as much effort into the rest of the novel as he did into describing all the sex scenes in here that it would’ve made it more interesting. Every time Bobby gets Jo alone, Gilmore goes off on these tangents, where he really uses a visceral tone that evokes vivid imagery. Of course, one can’t fill a whole book this way, but a lot of the rest of it seems flat.
The other thing that dragged it down was the fact that none of the characters were at all sympathetic; I wanted to like the protagonist, at least and gave him a chance, but I just didn’t like the guy; in fact, I didn’t like any of them. It’s hard to care about the characters and have any sense of relating to any of them when they are such bad people. These people are mean, small-minded, petty and conscienceless. The only person I wanted to succeed was the poor schmuck who gets framed for being the one at fault in a fatal car accident and he is never really in the book in any central way. When you don’t like any of the characters you can’t really care about how their life turns out and you certainly don’t want them to succeed; you’re not going to cheer them on at all.
The one lesson I can see someone taking away from “Crazy Streak” is how NOT to live. If you live in a town like this, get out-FAST and don’t come back. These kinds of places are like swamps that need to be drained of everything so all the bad stuff living off of it will die off. I will say this, though: places like the town in “Crazy Streak” do exist; I’ve been through places like that town and I am always amazed, shocked even, that there really are people who are outwardly and openly vicious, mean, dumb and where alcohol is the fuel that makes all the venal, sick, twisted and violent malevolence come true. (www.scapegoatpublishing.com) – KM.
