Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Streets of Tacoma Customer Review~~Amazon.com



Review Street of Tacoma

November 12, 2001

By A Customer
So based on where you can see I'm from, the reasons for my picking up this book are probably obvious. Especially when you add in the fact that I am an amateur jazz musician/enthusiast. But moreover I am a lover of good literature and that is where I was impressed by this book. I really dug the changing first person perspective from chapter to chapter, it was very cool to get inside the heads of so many different characters.

The interwoven tale really pulled me in and made this book hard to put down. The biggest drawback I found was that the editing seemed a little bit shabby and I found many obvious typos--occasionally things needed a bit of deciphering. It was tempting to mark my copy up with red ink and send it back to the publisher.

Perhaps if there is a 2nd edition of this book some of these will be fixed. Anyway, don't let the typos scare you away, this is truly a pleasure to read both from the perspective of a "local" and from the perspective of an avid reader.







Thrice All American Review of Streets of Tacoma

The time has finally come for the first edition of ThriceAllAmerican.com’s Tacoma Book Club. As announced earlier, our first selection is The Streets of Tacoma by Billy.

This title is unfortunately out-of-print, but used copies can easily be found using Amazon using the convenient link below. (However, I highly encourage you to check at Kings Books, the Tacoma Book Center, or another local bookseller before buying non-locally.)

So onto the real stuff. My hope for Tacoma Book Club is to raise awareness of literature with local ties, and hopefully encourage some discussion of said titles. So please, if you’ve read the book, jump in and provide your insights in the comment area. And if you haven’t read it yet, grab a copy and come back when you’ve finished it!

The Streets of Tacoma, in just a few words, is an account of Kid and Moon, two young men coming of age in Post-War Tacoma. It provides vivid details of their lives, their relationships, and of the atmosphere of the city at the time: music, boxing, organized crime, and just a general sense of liveliness.

I feel more than a little bit of the influence of Ken Kesey’s Sometimes a Great Notion in this book. Much as Kesey starts his book with a description of the (fictional) Wakonda Auga River, which becomes something of a character in the book, the prologue to The Streets of Tacoma follows the wind down through the passages of Puget Sound and eventually along the roadways of the city. Also perhaps borrowing from Kesey, the author chooses to tell the story with a changing point of view: always first person but from the perspectives of different characters involved. (However, these changes of perspectives are divided into chapters, unlike the drug-fueled randomness of Kesey’s tale.) If Sometimes a Great Notion aspires to be the Great American Novel (or at least the Great Western Novel), The Streets of Tacoma might be said to aspire to be the Great Tacoman Novel, and I think it really works.

I found the story to be engrossing, following Kid and Moon through their various ventures: musical, athletic, nautical, commercial, and romantic. But perhaps more fascinating were the descriptions of downtown Tacoma back in the pre-mall days when it was thriving. Hearing about the stores, clubs, restaurants, and such really provided an exciting perspective on our town. That sort of downtown may be something we will never have again, but still is an ideal we can strive for.

I’d highly recommend this book to anyone with a love for good literature and an interest in Tacoma. You may have to pick through a few typos (and I don’t think there was ever a second edition in which they might have been fixed), but it’s worth the effort for a good read.

So what say you, readers? Any comments?

Friday, March 27, 2009

TWO NOVELS BY WILLIAM M. HANSON

STREETS OF TACOMA is a tale of two young men (Kid & Moon) growing up in the jazz scene of World War II. They are called cats. Kid is priest to the cats. His all powering will provides the form and structure on which the STREETS are streched. His friend, Moon, is the lyrical saxophonist. His music provides the whimsy and light on which we view TACOMA, the city on the sound.

Moon in "Song of the Streets" explains, "I'd watch the streets throw up a group of characters like note on a sheet of music, with its flats and sharps, with its majors and minors: then float a rhythm through it with its conpounding patterns of emphsis and duration. Last it would be hammered with a riff that says, "I'll kill you if you don't watch out." The riff would be repeated again and again 'til you ignored it; and then it would have you."

Thursday, March 26, 2009

Abby's Song: Riffing It for Our Girl


I took Abby to dinner at Mama Nasty’s on Highway 99, well into King County. It was a kick. I had warned Abby to be ready for anything, because Mama didn’t get her name by accident; but I didn’t tell her Mama and I had worked duel pianos together before she got her own place. Mama was sitting there at her signature white Baldwin, all three hundred pounds of her. We had no more than bopped through the door, “Say, Boy,” she called out to me, “what you doin’ with that little slip of a thing, when you knows,” she hit some keys, “when you knows your mama waits for you. Whoa, Dear Nathaniel; don’t you try to skip on by; you get your little white cheeks up here and give me one of those long and liquidy kisses like you used to.” More silly keys, and then a bit of Beethoven’s Fifth--ah, shit I had to go.

I turned pulling Abby with me and approached the stage, but Mama was off that stool, and before I could step on stage she had my head pressed between the two of the world’s biggest tits. The audience was cheering wildly. I couldn’t see what Abby was doing, but I felt her drop my hand. I had a vision of her running out the door. But, Mama took things in hand and grabbed Abby’s arm pulling her to the stage. “And now my cats and kittens, I want you to meet the greatest piano player I ever laid down with, no, not laid down with, sat down with, that’s wha’ I’m saying, sat down with that’s all I’m saying--he beats Powell, beats Petersen, beats Monk--hey, wait, nobody beats Monk. Well, anyway this hip hunk of a love-monkey is the greatest. And just look what he’s with, isn’t she delicious. Hell, yes, I could take her home for an hors d’oeuvre.” The audience went crazy.

And so begins.... Abby's Song


Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Want to buy both books?

HOW TO PURCHASE: Billy Hanson's new novel, Abby's Song: Riffing It For Our Girl, and Streets of Tacoma, its prequel are available from the author as a set for $30.00 US, shipping included. ( For International send $40.oo US) Simply send a check to Billy Hanson, PO Box 6088, San Diego, CA, USA.