Ted HellerBesprekingen

Not as great as Lab Rats, but I love Ted Heller's books

Harsh words for many mainstream authors. Wonder if there is any fallout from that. it was an intriguing story and kept me reading. Definitely an original story. It was not as funny as I hope.

Very funny book. Like his father, his protagonists are flawed.

Don't think I'll read anything by this author again. Clever but too clever for his own good. This could be cut down by a third and might have more bounce. The twist was entertaining but by the time we got there I was pretty tired of each and every one of these characters.

Harsh words for many mainstream authors. Wonder if there is any fallout from that. it was an intriguing story and kept me reading. Definitely an original story. It was not as funny as I hope.

Harsh words for many mainstream authors. Wonder if there is any fallout from that. it was an intriguing story and kept me reading. Definitely an original story. It was not as funny as I hope.

Harsh words for many mainstream authors. Wonder if there is any fallout from that. it was an intriguing story and kept me reading. Definitely an original story. It was not as funny as I hope.

Very funny book. Like his father, his protagonists are flawed.

Very funny book. Like his father, his protagonists are flawed.

Very funny book. Like his father, his protagonists are flawed.

Not a bad book. Really, it's not! It's just that I wanted to shake the narrator violently pretty much the entire time I was reading it. He is an extremely unlikable douchebag. Although the writing is solid and the story has an easy flow, it is also incredibly predictable. Thanks goes out to Goodreads First Reads for the opportunity to try out this new-to-me author.

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says/b>: The Furious Overfalls came together in the sleepy, mundane suburbs of Long Island in the seventies and, with their gritty, bubbling gumbo of rock, blues and country music, sold millions of albums and toured the world to packed, adoring houses. But then, almost as quickly as it began, it all stopped: Music changed, the world changed, everybody got older, the cigarette lighters went out, and the records stopped selling. Still, all four band members—now in their mid to late fifties, their hair thinning and gray, their bodies slowly breaking down—stay together and play.

Each player in the Overfalls band has his own demons: Danny Ault, the group's founder and lead singer, has his corrosive anger and his two teenage daughters; Jules Rose, the lead guitarist, is a notorious womanizer who's losing the power and urge to womanize and who is haunted by the one woman he ever actually loved; Howie Grey, the bassist, worries he might be going insane by worrying too much; and Joey Mazz, the band's drummer and certainly not the sharpest tool in the shed, has now fallen seriously ill.

Danny cannot take the road anymore and has decided to break the group up for good. The Overfalls will go out for a final goodbye tour, though, a grueling journey across the country playing shabby, boisterous, booze-soaked, often dangerous clubs. Will this last tour bring them together or pull them further apart? Can Joey, his health failing daily, make it? His wife has urged Danny to bring Joey back home alive, but each show the band plays takes its toll. But this is what Joey wants to do, and this is what the band HAS to do. Because without the music and without each other, they just don't know how else to live.

My Review: I read a tweet from Salon magazine about a writer who was self-publishing his fourth novel, after three with regular old publishers that got nice reviews, reasonable sales...so why go it alone, I wondered, and read the piece. It made me smile, so I tweeted the author and offered to review his magnum opus for him.

Within moments, he had a PDF (ugh) of the book in my inbox. With an apology for not getting it there sooner. (Like before I said I wanted to read it? What?) This, laddies and gentlewomen, is the sign of someone who wants your attention.

Four hundred PDF (ugh) pages later, I'm glad I gave Ted Heller my attention, because what I got in return was a damn good read.

I'm over 50. I live on Long Island, a much-maligned place of suburban peace and quiet. I spent a chunk of years (twelve) living in Manhattan, and loving it...though a little less each day by the end of that time. If the Frumious Bandersnatches or whatever the faux band's name is (I never could tell, it read differently for me every time) had played in Manhattan, I probably would've been in the audience. I am, in short, the audience that Heller was writing for.

Which is why he's self-publishing this novel. I am labeled Not Wanted by the publishing industry by virtue of my X chromosome, the duration of my possession of the said chromosome, and general culpable lack of young-womanness. Heller's book won't appeal to someone graduating from Twilight to more meaty fare, it will appeal to those of us, male and female, who remember The Twilight Zone on prime-time three-network TV.

Why, I ask in annoyed frustration, does that make this book undesirable? When did we, entering our recliner-and-book-is-fun years, stop being a coveted market segment? Most of us have Kindles, tablets, smartphones, and the like, or we'd never see or hear from our kids, or be able to redeem our Father's Day iTunes gift cards. We're still able to read through the trifocals. Social Security isn't bankrupt yet, and a book isn't so expensive that we can't manage one or two.

But the cult of the teenaged girl runs rampant in the halls of publishing companies, and if it can't be marketed as YA (ugh), it is at best marginal. Which means, by extension, I and the several million other male babies born the year I was are now marginal.

So here's a bulletin from the margins: The adventures of Danny, Jules, Joey, and crazy-ass OCD loon Howie are just the ticket for cutting through the acne cream and enjoying an adult pleasure. One of the characters (I could find out who in a tree book) muses, "When did I stop drinking Old Grand-dad and become one?", which so exactly encapsulates my own and many others' experience of aging that I chuckled while weeping. (Main reason I hate PDFs and Kindlebooks for reviews: Can't find highlights. Yes, I know I put one on; howinahell do I get back to it?! UGH!)

Living on Long Island, I appreciate the local color; being of an age with the bad, I appreciate the humor; and liking books that make me smile, chuckle, wince, and blanch at the antics of the good guys doing their best and making their peace with their lives, I liked this read. I'd like to meet up with the men I spent 100,000 words with, drink some Old Grand-dad, play some John Mayall and a side of Spirit.

If none of that meant diddly-squat to you, this book will be like hieroglyphics. But if it resonates even a little bit, go and get acquainted with the boys in the band. Ted Heller's relaxed, easy storytelling makes this a single-malt quality read that deserves your attention.

Terrible, terrible waste of time. Bad writer gets hooked on online poker. Can’t believe this got a good review and that people on Amazon liked it. God, I need a good YA novel to get the bad taste of this one out of my mouth. 5/13/12

Slab Rat started out as a laugh out loud farce of life in the “magazine world”. I’ve read reviews that dub this a satire, but I found it a little too superficial to provide any of the real meat required of a satire….then the author’s editor woke up and realized the book wasn’t really going anywhere, and an absolutely ludicrous subplot kicks in, and the characters you once found humorous and a bit empathetic evidently stopped taking their meds and plow through the second half of the novel in a series of forced plot points, incredulous activities and dysfunctional morals.

Although I will admit, while enjoying the first part of the book, it really wasn’t going anywhere. A typical “day in the life” of a low level magazine editor in a middling rag. He invents a fictional history to stand toe-to-toe with his colleagues and spends the bulk of his career not specifically content, but accepting of his position and lack of path. Then, the Teddy Roosevelt clone joins the staff, and competition brings out the best/worst of all parties. Without providing any spoilers, it’s the means and the spirit of the staff’s attempts to deal with this challenge where the book goes off path. Too much of the book was spent portraying the bumbling good ol’ boy and his quirky traits to rewrite his belief system, code of ethics and moral aptitude in only 100 pages.

In hindsight, I feel the author (who happens to be the son of “Catch-22”’s Heller) could have reached the same conclusion without veering down this harrying and frenetic path. I felt this action resulted in a middle of the road novel falling below the bar.½

This one was pretty funny – made me laugh out loud in spots. The amount of detail that is stuffed into every scene fools you into thinking that more time is passing during the story than really is. Some authors would kill the plot with this, but not this guy. The details were what were so hilarious. One thing that bugged me though was the narrator’s voice. High pitched and kind of nasal. I got used to it but it was really disconcerting at first.

Zach’s character was pretty subtle in the vicious department, but that was the only place. He was an over-the-top womanizer, sneak, and slacker. For whatever reason, he has not risen in rank in his 3 years with IT. He despises anyone who has. But he desperately wants to be one of the risen. So instead of making it with aggression and talent, he encourages his fellow slacker in his hatred and paranoia of Mark Larkin. It culminates in the murder of Mark Larkin by the fellow slacker. Zach goes to the police with what he knows and then calls the guy to warn him that the cops are coming for him. Slacker # 2 shoots himself in his bathtub. Zach ascends to he position that Mark Larkin has vacated.

I’d love to see what happens after that – how many new slackers are below him and angling for his job by any means they can. Could Zach ward off such hostility and deviousness better than Mark Larkin?

One of my all-time favorite novels. Satire on the world of New York magazine publishing. Author Ted Heller is the son of Joseph Heller (Catch-22).

Slabrat by Ted Heller is wicked satire of office politics is based on his experience of work at magazines such as Vanity Fair. The title is a slang term for high rise office workers, Think 9-5 with Dolly Parton or the Devil wears Pravda if you want to place its genre. The novel plots all the insane office status power politics and then some you have ever experienced

It follows the life of Zach an associate editor who is stalled at the stage in his career of either rising or falling. His best friend is falling and his work colleague has just lifted off. The problem is that he is lazy and wont do the brown nosing needed to get ahead apart from sleeping with what ever boss (female) he can. He is also a complete fake- not a Harvard rich kid but someone from the sticks. In the superficial world of IT this is a death warrant should it come out.

A new associate editor arrives who soon starts working the system and raises so causing panic. They start fight back with all the underhand tricks you can imagine. At the same time his love life is torn between lust, love and ambition and three different women.

Its fall of comic moments and a character list of truly appalling people that you feel must be based on real characters and you hope they read the book. Don’t expect the ending you may think but it’s the one Zach would have wanted.

Strongly recommended as a wonderful dark and oh so true depiction of office politics at its worse and describes what you would like to do…come on admit it you would.