I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive

I enjoyed the heck out of this book. I had no idea what to expect going in. I'm a fan of Earle's music, so I figured the writing would be at least okay.

Instead, I got a wonderful story that straddles the line between bleak and hopeful. And the audiobook version has a great bonus, but also serves as the only major downfall--Steve Earle reads his own book, which, for about 90% of the story, is great, with his accent and pronunciations serving only to pull the reader deeper into the world.

Where it falls down is when the story moves to the better spoken folk toward the end. Earle's writing is still great, and the words they speak are perfect, but Earle seems to stumble at times. I'm not saying he can't speak clearly, but the words simply show more don't seem to fit his mouth as well, and the story doesn't go with the same flow.

However, for the most part, this is only a couple of chapters, and the rest of the book is heartbreaking and funny and stupid and poignant.

Read it. show less

Holy shit I loved this book. If Gabriel Garcia Marquez wrote about a heroin addicted abortionist, this would be it. Oh, and Hank Williams’ ghost is there too.

There was always something spooky about Hank Williams. Maybe not in some of his jollier hits - "Hey Good Looking", "Jambalaya", "Lovesick Blues", that lot - but in songs like "Lost Highway", "Alone And Forsaken", "I Heard That Lonesome Whistle Blow", "Six Miles To The Graveyard", "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry", "Pictures From Life's Other Side", and of course the last song he ever recorded, "I'll Never Get Out Of This World Alive". It's as if there were two Hank Williams: the sharply dressed family entertainer, and the haunted storyteller who reported from the same half-ghostly world that would later pop up in Bob Dylan's lyrics, in David Lynch's films, in Cormac McCarthy's books. Maybe it's really there, maybe it's just something we show more think we hear since we know that one of the most influential popular musicians of the 20th century died 29 years old, broke, thin as a skeleton and packed to the gills with bourbon and morphine in the back of a car stuck in a snowstorm, only months before the rise of rock'n'roll. Everyone loves a good story, and it just fits entirely too well.

Lonely's a temporary condition, a cloud that blocks out the sun for a spell and then makes the sunshine seem even brighter after it travels along. Like when you're far away from home and you miss the people you love and it seems like you're never going to see them again. But you will, and you do, and then you're not lonely anymore.
Lonesome's a whole other thing. Incurable. Terminal. A hole in your heart you could drive a semi truck through. So big and so deep that no amount of money or whiskey or pussy or dope in the whole goddamn world can fill it up because you dug it yourself and you're digging it still, one lie, one disappointment, one broken promise at a time.

So anyway, it's 10 years later now, and Doc is living in the poorest part of San Antonio, among whores, junkies and thieves. Doc was once Dr Ebersole, MD, the man who - among other things - gave Hank Williams his last shot of morphine and sat in the front seat as Hank quietly expired in the back. Now he's lost his license to practice medicine along with his name and he's just Doc, a heroin addict who lives for his daily fixes and pays for them by providing medical services to people who for some reason can't go to the hospital; illegal aliens, criminals with gunshot wounds, prostitutes with venereal diseases, and of course highly illegal abortions. And every time he shoots up, the ghost of Hank Williams comes to visit him and drive him just a little more insane. Because he is insane, right? Surely there's no such thing as ghosts?

But it's 1963, it's Texas, and another American myth is about to be created by Lee Harvey Oswald. And right about the time Jack and Jackie Kennedy step off the plane for the last time to wave at the masses come to greet the first Catholic president, Graciela arrives (Doc asks if he can call her "Grace" and she refuses). She's Mexican, she's 18, she's "in trouble", and after Doc helps her with that, she sticks around to help Doc treat the most wretched members of society... and something happens. Something nobody can quite explain. Surely there's no such thing as miracles anymore? So how come it only takes one touch from Graciela for people to, well, change the way they're living and stop doing all the things that they oughtn't do? And why does that upset Hank's ghost so much?

As a songwriter, Steve Earle has always been at his best when he writes about outsiders, and as a recovering drug addict himself, he knows all too well what he's writing about in his debut novel. And man, does he pull out all of the stops. His prose is feverish, prickly, musical, filled with harsh detail that never romanticizes but also never condemns. This is a cast of people who for the most part, by accident of birth or by their own poor choices, ended up at the ass-end of life,

The way Doc saw things, it was a crapshoot. Where you were born, who your people were—that's all that mattered. Law and morality had nothing to do with it, let alone anything like justice.

addicted, trapped, vilified, supposedly ruined, but still just human beings trying to get from one day to the next. And possibly, maybe, able to make a change - on their own, or by what they tell themselves are miracles.

But underneath all that, to the music of Hank Williams, runs a deeper story. America is a young country, it's why they've always been good at piecing together myths of their own. I'll Never Get Out Of This World Alive takes place both in a harshly realistic world and in that half-dreamed world just under it, a hodgepodge of folk heroes from Davey Crockett to Jack Kennedy, ancient Aztec legends and catholic dogma, song lyrics and Burroughs novels, all the stories people piece together out of the memories that haunt them and those around them to figure out who they are and how they can hope for something better. The end result isn't quite a perfect novel, Earle still has a few kinks to work out as a novelist, but it's one of the most inspired ones I've read in a while, and for all its grit and despair, a joy to read. show less

It's 1963 and Doc lives in a boarding house in the worst neighborhood of San Antonio. There was a time when he was a real doctor, even traveling with legendary Hank Williams to give him shots of painkiller whenever asked. Doc turned out to be Hank's last doctor, with the singer dying on Doc's watch. That was ten years ago, and now not only does Doc have a tremendous heroin habit, he pays for his drugs by performing abortions on the local prostitutes and sewing up stabbing victims. He's also being haunted by Hank, who blames Doc and drops in often to remind Doc how of how bad both their existences are. Then young Graciela is brought to Doc and abandoned. Her own body heals at a remarkably slow pace, yet within a few months, Doc and many show more others notice that it only takes a little time in Graciela's presence for the illness and wounds of the afflicted to disappear.

I had a little more trouble summarizing this plot than usual. It's complex, almost noir at first, then sorta surreal, and going between Anglo and Mexican cultures, drug culture and using Hank Williams as a character who is still simmering mad about his death. You may recognize the author's name as he's a well-known singer/songwriter. show less

Steve Earle as narrator makes this audiobook a performance, including singing snatches of diegetic music. We can hear the voice of Hank Williams in the title and it indeed he appears as a ghost haunting (and advising) Doc Ebersole. Ebersole had given Hank morphine and having lost his license to practice medicine, he performs abortions and patches up the odd knife or gunshot wound in the demimonde. Graciela, a young Mexican immigrant, appears in the neighborhood in search of his services. She adds to the supernatural dimension of the story through stigmata and miraculous healings. It is no surprise to me this engaging, wry ghost story is rumored to be adapted into a movie.

Who is Doc Ebersole? He’s a fictionalization of people like Toby show more Marshall, a quack who traveled with Hank Williams and purported to cure alcoholism with chloral hydrate.

Part of me is surprised Earle of the country music scene takes on producing a fictionalization of the legend's afterlife... Hubris? I'd probably think so if the story weren't so good... show less

3.5***

Steve Earle is primarily known as a singer / songwriter, most prominent in the country-rock genre. He is also an actor, poet and record producer. This is his first (and only) novel.

In 1963 Doc Ebersole is a heroin-addicted doctor who’s lost his license to practice, but who offers medical care to those who are outside the system from a rundown boarding house on the south side of San Antonio, Texas. Doc is the guy who treats gunshot or knife wounds, STDs and (in an era before Roe v Wade) provides abortions to poor women without other resources. He’s also got a constant “companion” in the ghost of Hank Williams, possibly because, rumor has it, Doc gave Hank the final morphine dose that killed him.

Doc’s eking out a life, show more of sorts. Everyone in the neighborhood knows him, his regular dealer, Manny, makes sure he gets “good stuff,” a friendly bartender occasionally pours him a free one and his landlady lets him use a spare room now and again for a special case. One such case is Graciela, a young Mexican woman, brought to Doc by her boyfriend. She’s terrified and speaks only Spanish, but Doc takes good care of her. The boyfriend, never comes back, and Graciela stays on, and then miraculous things begin to happen.

This is an odd fever dream sort of book, with vivid descriptions, and wonderfully eccentric characters, including an aging priest descending into dementia, his young associate priest (who is a zealot), a transvestite whore, a determined (but willing-to-look-the-other-way-for-a-fee) cop, and a dope dealer who is somewhat of a pillar of the community. The scenes are in turns funny, sad, moving, anxiety-producing and sweet.

Here’s a tidbit of one scene that made me chuckle.
Some of the girls on the corner weren’t girls at all, and it was a tall, angular black transvestite sporting a tight-fitting gold lame dress and a five o-clock shadow who muscled his way up to the late-model Ford station wagon first, but for once, it wasn’t the customer who was in for a surprise.
“O my Lord!” the creature gasped, straightening up to his full six feet and backpedaling when the priest’s collar flashed, white against black, as he reached across the roll the window down. “One of y’all gonna have to get this one, ladies. Miss Tiffany’s going’ to hell but not today, honey, uh-uh!” He smoothed his skirt as he teetered away, traveling quickly if not quietly on heels that would have crippled half the real girls on the strip.

But, of course, the priest is not looking for a girl in THAT sense. He’s seeking a rumored miracle-worker. And now the plot gets very complicated.

I loved Graciela, Doc and Manny. And I loved the ending. Still, while I enjoyed the book, I’m not sure I’d read anything else by Earle. show less

Doc is a screw up, a heroine addict haunted by the crooning, grumbling ghost of Hank Williams. He's resigned to his existence as a peddler of cut-rate health care and illegal abortions in the back room of an old boarding house. Until he meets Graciela, a young Mexican woman, abandoned by her lover in Doc's hospital room. After incurring a cut on her wrist that won't stop bleeding, miracles begin to happen. Doc begins to find peace in his life and Ol' Hank ain't happy it.

A gritty tale set in 1963 underworld of San Antonio, Texas, I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive is lyrical in its descriptions of dope hustlers and prostitutes living down on their luck, just trying to get by. People are people in this book, and allowed to be both show more good and evil all in the same day. Doc is a straightforward, no nonsense kind of guy, who believes he's going to hell and has decided to not be too much worried by it. He's a man swallowed up by the lonesome of living in the world, which is in part why Hank haunts him, as they share that in common.

I think I'm rather in love with this book, and even more so for listing to Steve Earle read his own story. He has that kind of gravely, down home, singing lonesome voice that makes your heart ache, which is no surprise, as Earle is also a Grammy award-winning folk singer. show less