Fiction. THE BUS is a novel in the tradition of Miller, Kerouac and Whitman, a personal history set in Los Angeles, a lyrical journey down Sunset and Santa Monica Boulevards as the narrator travels through as many worlds as streets, from Echo Park to the ocean, to pick up his car from the auto mechanic. "Abee is the love-powered bullhorn blasting down from the altitudes"Beck "A literary seer who speaks the language of billboards and boulevards, Steve Abee elevates the experience of our neighborhoods to soliloquies laced with the celebratory bitter tongue of city life. On our streets we hear the sound of words dying, but in the house of Abee they land in a heart rich with the blood of langauge."Luis Alfaro "Steve Abee is the Walt Whitman of up-from-the-gutter contempo poetry, the Kerouac of every corner you've ever slimed by without listening to the music of word-drunk skeeks and beautiful mutants with matted hair. THE BUS is a naked celebration of love for the damaged, and damaged lovethe gritty yin and savage yang of the real Los Angeles."Jerry Stahl "Relentless prose that demands the reader to devour passage after passage, only to be left soul seared and simultaneously re-invigorated."Lydia Lunch "In pursuit of prophetic agency, Steve Abee grabs at each thought as it is presented to him, and squeezes it until it glows like a cultured pearl."Lewis MacAdams "Abee brings light to the unlit donut stores of consciousness. His complex imagery conveys the many windows of the everyday."Danny Weizmann
I haven't read the book, just the first chapter. But it should be really good. Trust me, I should know. Mr. Abee is my English teacher.
The Bus is a testament to what's really real about LA
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 22 years ago
It shreds the misconception of a shallow, fashion-obsessed La-La Land, where bastions of ultra-cool hipsters capture, tame and manufacture each new style. Where nothing is real and everybody wants to be in the movies, get a record contract, create scandal or just be cool. While that may be the image that is perpetuated by those who worship at the altar of Hollywood, for natives of LA, the story is quite different. At times poignantly prophetic, comical and depraved, The Bus is an autobiographical novel in the tradition of Miller, Kerouac or Whitman, a lyrical journey down Sunset and Santa Monica Boulevards as the author travels on the Number 4 city bus from the historic Echo Park neighborhood in Los Angeles to Santa Monica in order to retrieve his car from the auto mechanic. As the bus passes through the major intersections and past the diverse urban scapes, the author travels backwards through his life, relating his experiences growing up and living in Los Angeles. From the reality of his current family life in the sights and sounds of Echo Park and Silverlake where he lives with his wife and two children. His memories from the recent past come to the surface along the rest of the way: at Sanborn Avenue, where an old drug buddy committed suicide, Vermont Avenue, where his mother used to live when she was a teenager, Highland Avenue and the porno shacks, 20th street, working in the St John's Hospital morgue and Lincoln Boulevard, where a boyhood fight took place at the Jack in the Box. In this process, The Bus recreates vividly for the reader a city that is a home, a homeland, where children are born, families are raised, people grow old, struggle, go to school, work, give birth, get born, die... where Hollywood is a freeway and Beverly Hills is that place the Clampets moved to from Tennessee. And just like any other city in America, a place that can foster a personal history as deep as the one depicted in The Bus.
A mad beautiful journey of language and mind
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 22 years ago
This book tells the story of taking the bus from the deep heavy heart of Los Angeles in Silver Lake to the glitzy made up,... face-lift westside Santa Monica. This book is a poetic novel that moves through the neighborhoods block by block, explores the life of the author, the language of his mind in big inspired bursts of love and music, moves you through the people, the struggle, and the love of the city. When the ride is over Abee sweetly deposits you at your destination. The Bus is an amazing and great work.
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