BOOK: Got by D
Got (Seven Weapon Arsenal) by D
The Armory (imprint of Akashic Books), New York, 2006
Got is the debut novel from The Armory, the new “urban noir” imprint of independent publisher Akashic Books (Akashic’s tag is “dedicated to the reverse gentrification of the literary world”). The specific genre label seems deliberate, a nod to controversies that swirl around the genre’s other names, “street lit” and “gangsta lit,” questions about the genre’s literary values and social impact.
Which I only mention because it would be disingenuous not to, just as it would be disingenuous to shrug off my white privilege coloring my perspective of a predominantly African-American literary form.
And which I won’t dwell on because it seems patronizing, seems to take a different tone than any teeth-gnashing over the nihilism and questionably literariness of Nick McDonnell or Bret Easton Ellis and its effect on 15- to 25-year-old white kids.
This novel rises above such concerns, or perhaps more accurately blasts past them. It is high-energy, swiftly-paced noir, gritty and violent without being gratuitous, grim but not nihilistic, a narrative pull that understands desperation is another kind of hope.
Got is written in second-person, which works so perfectly for noir that I’m surprised I haven’t come across it before. Second-person is risky, can devolve into gimmick if not handled with a deft touch, and this is the most consistent and effective application I’ve read since Italo Calvino’s If On a Winter’s Night a Traveller.
The immediacy created by the second-person voice drives the story. You’re a college student and part-time bagman for the city’s toughest boss, and, as the story opens, you’re in the middle of a VIP session with your favorite stripper, backpack of your bosses cash at your side. The moment she concludes your special customer treatment, you notice the bag is gone. A foot chase, shotgun blast to the chest, and violent meeting with your boss later, you’re on the street with the rest of the night to retrieve the cash.
The story is a runaway train from there, barreling through forged and broken alliances, old grudges, and wholesale gang warfare. And yet you, the narrator, remain central, never overcome by events. The narrator is a warrior, has fought for a lifetime against inevitability, unwilling to be defined merely by his abusive home life with his parents, the brutal murder of his loving adoptive parents, the realities of getting by on the streets. He is fighting for his conception of himself as a person of worth, a college student, not just another punk. He fights for his right to self-determination.
There is a spirit that pervades this book that violence isn’t inevitable, but the product of choice, even when the choices life lays out are dire. It is a short novel that crackles with energy, yanks the reader out of his seat and into a headlong plunge, but leaves in its wake a deeper resonance, meaning that seethes up out of the muscle memories of the sprint.
reviewed by Jim Jewell, 484 words
The Armory (imprint of Akashic Books), New York, 2006
Got is the debut novel from The Armory, the new “urban noir” imprint of independent publisher Akashic Books (Akashic’s tag is “dedicated to the reverse gentrification of the literary world”). The specific genre label seems deliberate, a nod to controversies that swirl around the genre’s other names, “street lit” and “gangsta lit,” questions about the genre’s literary values and social impact.
Which I only mention because it would be disingenuous not to, just as it would be disingenuous to shrug off my white privilege coloring my perspective of a predominantly African-American literary form.
And which I won’t dwell on because it seems patronizing, seems to take a different tone than any teeth-gnashing over the nihilism and questionably literariness of Nick McDonnell or Bret Easton Ellis and its effect on 15- to 25-year-old white kids.
This novel rises above such concerns, or perhaps more accurately blasts past them. It is high-energy, swiftly-paced noir, gritty and violent without being gratuitous, grim but not nihilistic, a narrative pull that understands desperation is another kind of hope.
Got is written in second-person, which works so perfectly for noir that I’m surprised I haven’t come across it before. Second-person is risky, can devolve into gimmick if not handled with a deft touch, and this is the most consistent and effective application I’ve read since Italo Calvino’s If On a Winter’s Night a Traveller.
The immediacy created by the second-person voice drives the story. You’re a college student and part-time bagman for the city’s toughest boss, and, as the story opens, you’re in the middle of a VIP session with your favorite stripper, backpack of your bosses cash at your side. The moment she concludes your special customer treatment, you notice the bag is gone. A foot chase, shotgun blast to the chest, and violent meeting with your boss later, you’re on the street with the rest of the night to retrieve the cash.
The story is a runaway train from there, barreling through forged and broken alliances, old grudges, and wholesale gang warfare. And yet you, the narrator, remain central, never overcome by events. The narrator is a warrior, has fought for a lifetime against inevitability, unwilling to be defined merely by his abusive home life with his parents, the brutal murder of his loving adoptive parents, the realities of getting by on the streets. He is fighting for his conception of himself as a person of worth, a college student, not just another punk. He fights for his right to self-determination.
There is a spirit that pervades this book that violence isn’t inevitable, but the product of choice, even when the choices life lays out are dire. It is a short novel that crackles with energy, yanks the reader out of his seat and into a headlong plunge, but leaves in its wake a deeper resonance, meaning that seethes up out of the muscle memories of the sprint.
reviewed by Jim Jewell, 484 words
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