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?