KIRKUS REVIEW
This darkly nostalgic story is a study of an
American family through good times and bad, engagingly set against major events
from the 1950s to the ’70s, as issues of race simmer in the background. After
pitching a perfect game, Dancer dreams of playing in the major leagues, but he
never gets his chance due to a perpetually sore arm and the financial needs of
his expanding family. He moves from his off-season job as a parts inspector at
a Caterpillar plant to the company’s better-paying foundry, run by the
Thackers, a father and son who are also members of the Ku Klux Klan. Joy
vividly describes the workplace as a Dantean hell: “Once the furnace was fired
up and the men started building molds, the air would be filled with carbon ash
and fine black molding sand. The junk hung in the air and made everything look
blurry, like a bad dream.”
Stripped of his own dream, Dancer starts drinking
and getting into fights; eventually, he gets arrested and becomes increasingly
alienated from his wife and sons. Dancer’s older son Clayton, who once idolized
him, grows to hate him, despite the fact that he’s just like Dancer in many
ways. Meanwhile, Dede, Dancer’s wife, goes to work and has affairs but still
helps her husband whenever he’s in trouble. Eventually, Dancer is taken in by a
black milkman who’s a recovering alcoholic, a situation that eventually leads
to a violent denouement and Dancer’s ultimate redemption. Overall, this novel
is a natural for history buffs, filled with period details such as sting-ray
bikes, Green Stamps, and the names of famous baseball players, including Spahn,
Larsen, Mantle and Musial. However, it’s also an expertly written examination
of the importance of dreams to the human psyche.
A well-crafted novel that will particularly
appeal to sports and history aficionados.
Pub Date: April
19th, 2014
ISBN: 978-0991665907
Page count: 410pp
Publisher: Hark!
New Era Publishing
Program: Kirkus
Indie
Review Posted
Online: May 22nd, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15th, 2014
**********
Praise for Len Joy’s
American Past Time
“Len Joy has an eye for
the humble, utterly convincing details of family life: the look, feel, taste,
and smell of work and school, meals and sport. This is mid-twentieth-century
America seen neither through the gauze of nostalgia nor with easy cynicism but rather
with a clear-eyed tenderness. Readers will care deeply, as I did, about the
Stonemasons’s inextricable triumphs and failures."
Pamela Erens – The Virgins
“Here is a
"baseball novel" that transcends sport and offers an in-depth
portrait of a family and an era.
The novel begins in
Dancer Stonemason's perspective but later moves to his wife's and son's
perspectives and the effect allows their perceptions and understandings to bump
against each other, complicating ideas of truth and love. The scenes are
well-drawn and well-edited, filled with dialogue that reads like spoken word (a
feat!) and characters who are as complex as real people, with the same complex
desires, anger, sadness, and hope as real people as well. Themes of race,
family, father-son relationships are present… But for me the most poignant
moment happens near the end when a scene related to the end of the Vietnam War
echoes against our present moment. Len Joy does write about a Past Time in
America's history, but everything he details feels prescient now.”
Kristiana Kahakauwila – This is Paradise
“…Len Joy’s bracing
debut novel that cuts deeply into the American social fabric and lays bare many
of its myths.
Like his protagonist,
Mr. Joy throws a few curves for the reader, although not many and none that
can’t be forgiven in this true and honest and unflinching portrait of America
that should not be ignored.”
Gary D. Wilson - Sing, Ronnie Blue
“…in Len Joy's nostalgic
and moving first novel American Past Time, we follow the Stonemason family
through the better part of three decades, exploring the unpredictable
influences that family, society, and responsibility exert on one's life
choices. In this impressive debut, Joy deftly and emotionally explores the many
ways in which our relationships, hopes, and dreams can alter the course of our
lives.”
Mary Akers – Bones of an Inland Sea
“American Past Time is
not only a baseball lovers' novel but one that history buffs will enjoy as
well. Through a narrative voice reminiscent of times gone by, it covers the
changing social structure in 20th Century America including racial tensions,
Vietnam, and parenthood. Men of all ages will love this book.”
Eileen Cronin – Mermaid: A Memoir of Resilence
“An all-American story
that goes beyond the scope of the domestic and into the realm of history. A
very engaging read.”
Chinelo Okparanta – Happiness,
Like Water
“I finished this book
some weeks ago and wanted to wait to review it, to see if the story stayed with
me. So many books I initially love I don't remember much about weeks or even
days later.
This book held up. I've
been thinking about why. It's not a hurtling read, nor is the writing so
innovative your mind shatters. It's got baseball in it, and I hate baseball.
However, the story is so
clearly and simply told--the book doesn't get in the way of itself at all, and
what you're left with is a clean-lined beauty. There's nothing extraneous,
nothing sentimental, even though there are emotional moments. This book follows
a family through the 50s and into near-contemporary times. One review I saw
said that it was a good book for "history buffs," but I disagree.
Okay, it might be fine for history buffs, but really it's a clear and poignant
portrait of a time not only in American life, but in the life of a certain
class of people. Working class people, lower middle class people. Many people
of my parents' generation, who grew up with relatively simple aspirations.
Dancer Stonemason, the father in this family, is the most ambitious of anyone
we see closely, in that he has long-shot career goals... to pitch in the major
leagues. Otherwise, it's a matter of raising a family, paying a mortgage on a
modest house, getting your kids through high school and maybe college. These
are humble but dignified people living through a period of enormous social and
economic change, including the Civil Rights movement. Even though my parents
aren't midwesterners or southerners, I felt I gained a window into their pre-me
lives and expectations of their futures. None of which went the way people of
that generation expected. This is about regular people, living in a small town
yet nonetheless immersed in a larger social context that causes challenges for
their daily lives. They work through it, over the course of decades, and so the
book has a nice resolution without the reader having to feel hit over the head
with THIS IS A RESOLUTION.”
Claudia Putnam – Wild Thing in Our Known World
“Len Joy's American Past
Time is a wonderful debut. Its protagonist, Dancer Stonemason, is a lifelong
Midwesterner trying to live out his dreams as a pitcher in the St. Louis
Cardinals organization. But with a growing family and an arm that no longer
cooperates, plans change.
Told against the backdrop of the "idyllic" 50's and "turbulent" 60's, Joy's compelling prose and exceptional characters take the reader through an intriguing period in American history.”
Told against the backdrop of the "idyllic" 50's and "turbulent" 60's, Joy's compelling prose and exceptional characters take the reader through an intriguing period in American history.”
Roland Goity – editor of WIPs: Works in
Progress
“American Past Time is a
good story well told. In one of his interviews, the author, Len Joy, speaks
admiringly of the spare style of Ray Carver and Ernest Hemingway. One can see
it in his writing too. The novel is set against a backdrop of the 1950s, 60s,
and early 70s and many memorable events of that period figure into the plot,
tangentially if not head-on. The story moves crisply forward and pulls the
reader along with it, especially for someone who lived in those times. It’s a
very good read.”
Jim Tilley – Cruising at Sixty to Seventy: Poems and Essay
“American Past Time
tells a riveting story, one that draws readers “of a certain age” into sharp
and ambivalent memories of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. For those of us who
passed through these decades in America, the book rings true to our memories.
The past is neither romanticized nor reduced to a “simpler time” of relative
innocence. The characters face the challenges of the day with courage and, at
times, with the sardonic humor that lives on in my own memories – “Candy” throws
a “Draft Lottery Party,” while my own friends, in 1968, threw for our
graduating senior men a party we called “Viet Nam À Go-Go.” This is a
compelling book, faithful to its subject and evocative of its time. For those
who did not know the mid-twentieth century first-hand, this book provides
insight not only on the struggles of their parents’ generation, but also on the
evolution of the world in which Americans live today.”
Constance
Groh
“Life is a series of
choices, a series of dreams, each impacting the dynamics of relationships in
complex ways.
Set in the 1950s--1970s,
this historical novel about a complicated family impacted by the father’s
decisions and dreams is fast paced, clearly written and quite relevant. Bits of
history are ambient reminders of what era the reader has been submerged into.
The civil rights movement, memorable baseball names and moments, pop culture of
the 1960s, Vietnam war. Len gets under the skin of his characters and succeeds
in placing the reader right there-- in the small town world of high school
games and minor league baseball, the heated drudgery of the foundry, the smokey
filled bars, the blue collar culture. I felt that I was right there in the
middle of it all.
Don’t miss this book.
Easy to buy, easy to read. You’ll finish it fast because you won’t want to
leave these characters.”
Debbie Ann Eis – Lament for the Coons
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