I picked up Herbert Asbury's 1927 novel "The Gangs of New York: An Informal History of the Underworld" through interlibrary loan. I have until Nov. 30 to finish reading this book and return it, as there are no renewals on ILL.
I'm dying. This book is killing me, not like the Bowery B'hoys would have, but, slowly, from boredom and tediousness.
The novel is written in that affected post-Victorian way of bad travellogues. And, really, that's what it is, a travellogue through the underworld of New York.
Books of this period were meant to be read slowly, in the evening, by gas light (if one was lucky, right?), after one's day of terrible toiling. I sympathize with those hoistoric readers, because I am certianly toiling terribly over this novel. I can stomach about ten pages before I become so numb that I have to put it down again to go read fashion slams on Go Fug Yourself.
After having the book for two or three weeks, I've read 68 pages of 373. How am I ever going to get through this thing on time? I'm going to have to buy it online or something, because this is one tome calculated to kill--with tediousness!
Supposedly, Asbury based the book on facts, but claims it is a novel meant for entertainment, and fails to cite any of his source material. He claims it is real crime in one breath, and claims it is fictional in the next. Either way, he's killing me dead.
The novel drags, moving non-linearly from character to character, out of time sequence totally, randomly mentioning at odd times tidbits about the histories of the Fifth and Fourth Wards and Five Points gangs. This could be a good book. Loitering in the musty underground passageway of this book is an actually interesting, entertaining, and informative piece of work. I guess that's what Martin Scorcese tried to do with Asbury's jumble, but I haven't actually seen the movie to know for sure.
No matter the hidden gem in this novel, I don't foresee finishing the book in time for the ILL deadline. See? I'm even blogging rather than read this damn book. Time to go back, back to the Daybreak Boys at Slaughterhouse Point, I guess.
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2 comments:
As an interlibrary loan librarian, I say return it. Life is too short to read bad books.
That was exactly the conclusion I reached last night! I hit the 100 page mark and said, "This is ridiculous. Life is too short for bad writing." See? I even said the same thing as you!
Yeah, it's toast. I went and picked our one David Sedaris book off the shelves and laughed my ass off for the rest of my shift. Much better.
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