A long poem in love with its own noirity that substitutes modern sensibility and language for that of the post WWII decade and expects us to accept that. I didn't. A lost soul condemning itself to a slow decline in the dark side of LA's self-remake of the 1950s, it makes its points but however much the Scott gets LA it's the tinsel town LA he's got. ( )

Faulkner meeting Steinbeck, meeting Döblin…
Nope, not my cup of tea. I recognized the story of the unsettling return of a World War II veteran, incapable of finding his way back to normal life, traumatized by what he saw back in Normandy in 1944. And I recognized the evocation of America at the end of the 40’s and the beginning of the ’50s, with its scores of homeless people, and its tremendous violence between criminal gangs.
But then there’s the connection between the horrible war scenes, the brutal scenes of demolition of neighbourhoods in Los Angeles, and the description of mutilated victims of gang violence. In contrast there are the very intense and intimate nature descriptions. Is Robertson suggesting the violence in all these actions are on the same level? And is he hinting towards a meta-level of criticism on the violence of modernity? It’s positive he doesn’t suggest clear answers, but – as a reader – I’m a bit at a loss.
Robertson poetic prose reminded me of the feverish style of Alfred Döblin in Berlin Alexanderplatz, the modernist disruptive style of William Faulkner and the social focus of John Steinbeck. But – to me – this combination didn’t really work, at least in this first read. Perhaps I ought to try a reread. ( )

In a poetry-fiction hybrid form Robertson takes us through the lost wandering of a vet traumatized by his experiences during D-Day. The narrative is scumy and violent and bleak. It is about a hopeless country deteriorating in parallel with the protagonist's interior. It is about a country made up of outsiders and the lost cause of any war. The subtitle is A Way to Lose More Slowly and that feels right. Perhaps the femme fatale was the righteous cause of the war.

I appreciate the beauty here but I don't welcome the pessimism. I had to really concentrate to get through to the last page. Maybe that's just me burnt out on America lately. ( )

In a poetry-fiction hybrid form Robertson takes us through the lost wandering of a vet traumatized by his experiences during D-Day. The narrative is scumy and violent and bleak. It is about a hopeless country deteriorating in parallel with the protagonist's interior. It is about a country made up of outsiders and the lost cause of any war. The subtitle is A Way to Lose More Slowly and that feels right. Perhaps the femme fatale was the righteous cause of the war.

I appreciate the beauty here but I don't welcome the pessimism. I had to really concentrate to get through to the last page. Maybe that's just me burnt out on America lately. ( )

“This is our fear of 'the other'
-Indians, blacks, Mexicans, Communists, Muslims, whatever-
America has to have its monsters,
so we can zone them, segregate them,
if possible, shoot them.”

“The papers say
'Keep dogs and cats inside on the Fourth of July'
but nothing about ex-serviceman.”

“In his room, he worked out where he's been
from the match-books in his pocket,
the drinks, by the gap in his dollars,
the hole is his life by his eyes in the broken mirror. “

In this endlessly quotable, sequence of hard-boiled, poems, we follow Walker, a young Canadian soldier, returning from WWII and trying to make a life in America. The war continues to haunt him, at every turn, especially after seeing many other veterans, broken on the streets. An incredibly, beautiful book. I docked it a half star, for falling off a bit, in the last third. A minor quibble. ( )