Suggested Reading: A Long Slow Screw by Eugene Robinson
by Matt DeBenedictis ~ December 16th, 2009. Filed under: Books.
You could argue that the novel A Long Slow Screw by Eugene Robinson – the erupting and clenching front man of the now 20 year old art punk band Oxbow— has a sort of connection, an almost bosom buddy to the closing title track on Billy Joel’s 1978 album 52nd Street. I know it seems odd to compare the muscled and articulate Robinson, a man given a sort of fame for subduing loud fans through sleeper holds while gliding and stomping in sexually vibrate ways on the stage, to the piano man; who let’s face it is very family safe and has never wrapped straining arms around the neck of someone on stage. (This has not been fact checked.)
The Billy Joel song sings of a feeling, an image of what late ‘70s New York was like hazed over in cigarette smoke and desperation while giving an open curtain to some of the illicit acts that breathed behind that smoke. Of course the story begins in the name of love, as all stories do. Love is often a thing of survival so crime should be lurking near it at some point. A Long Slow Screw is Robinson’s New York tale, and it covers the same period –or close to it— and the grit gets drunk on darkness with no ivory keys in sight. We are thankful for that.
A lot of musicians take a stab at writing prose with little practice behind their ideas and keystrokes; so predictably they fail and get that footnote on their Wikipedia page damning them to get it brought up in interviews forever. But this is Robinson’s territory, well this is his first work of prose, but he’s done the spoken word thing before, and been a journalist putting real tales of spit, fist, and life in Vice, EQ, Hustler, and LA Weekly for years in a notable Gonzo style of putting himself in the action. The former bouncer also has a best selling book out: Fight! Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Ass-Kicking but Were Afraid You’d Get Your Ass Kicked for Asking.
So immediately a question comes into existence. Can Robinson paint the same curling blood and low light humor in a way covering up any truth of where the stories and scenes come from? Short answer, yes. But it all depends on how you read A Long Slow Screw. Don’t sit at a coffee shop that has stars and smiles posted on their framed health code and simply lay the book on a clean table. Read this novel as Robinson would: hunch over it, prying the book open like some legs, some good looking legs that probably have some brushings on them. You are not about to consume a super model, and this book is not on Oprah’s list. Read the novel like you are about to tell someone this exact story so it might save their life, or end it. Whatever floats your boat right now.
This is a chaotic New York, a pre-9-11 city were punk rock is still rather pure, and disco has gorged and eaten its young. It’s more than a book about a diamond heist, and like that Joel song it starts out with some survival love driving the crime. The book isn’t about the death deals that complicate the movement of some diamonds either. The book is about this specific New York and In between the dialog and unnerving fight scenes a furious poetry surges about that city, a document to a New York that will never happen again.