Gary Reilly
Auteur van The Asphalt Warrior
Over de Auteur
Reeksen
Werken van Gary Reilly
The Paradise That Lurks in Female Smiles 1 exemplaar
Tagged
Algemene kennis
Er zijn nog geen Algemene Kennis-gegevens over deze auteur. Je kunt helpen.
Leden
Besprekingen
The Circumstantial Man door Gary Reilly
Pete Larkey is an educated blue-collar man of unusual introspection. His philosophical musings mingle with terror as an unfortunate and preventable train of incidents lead him to the brink of imprisonment. Or worse. Reilly has a facility with words that startles and delights. I would call this a literary novel based on the quality of the writing, but it also shares an edge-of-your-seat intensity with the best thrillers. Add to that laugh out loud humor, and you have a perfect reading experience.
Gary Reilly was a taxi driver in Denver for many years, until his death in 2011. He was also a writer. He published only one short story during his lifetime, but left behind a cache of more than two dozen unpublished novels. Two close friends, Mark Stevens and Mike Keefe, have been busy editing and publishing Gary's books now for the past few years. They determined that the earliest product of Gary's prodigious output was the fictional Private Palmer trilogy based on his years in the US Army during Vietnam. I have read and enjoyed the first two books, THE ENLISTED MEN'S CLUB and THE DETACHMENT. The first book covered Palmer's military police training and a stateside tour at the Presidio of San Fransciso; and the second, his tour in Vietnam as an MP clerk/typist, where he struggles with alcoholism and dabbles in drugs.
THE DISCHARGE looks at Palmer's peripatetic life after leaving the Army. Despite a college degree (English) financed by the GI Bill, Palmer is unable to find his place in society, living for a time in a dingy Denver basement apartment with his brother, then a stint in LA, trying to get his foot in the Hollywood door as a script writer. There is another interlude in San Francisco, equally disappointing. But these wanderings offer a look at Reilly's way with words, as well as his wry, skewed sense of humor, and how he looks at life and history. Here's a sample, in Palmer's musings as he drives through the San Fernando Valley near LA -
"... the Valley itself like a John Steinbeck alfalfa ranch, long and flat with perspectives colliding, you could see the curve of the earth in its span. I envisioned orange groves, lettuce fields, and irrigation ditches aplenty until 'the movies' come and swallered up the good land, and all the noble farmers were replaced by irritable folks who stand in cranky 7-Eleven lines buying Rolaids."
There is something almost Proust-ian in the way Reilly documents the everyday boring-ness of Palmer's life, which seems to consist of varied periods of waiting - to be drafted, to finish his enlistment, to get through college, so he could "get on with his life." And I remember feeling that same kind of impatience following my own discharge from the army, trying to hurry through college, get married, have kids, and to get on with "real" life. But Palmer was different, he soon realized -
"... there was nothing that he wanted to do for a living, did not want to get up every day and go to work for the same company for forty years as his father had done ... and even at fifteen he had wondered if there wasn't more to life than just that. Grow up, get married, have kids, die."
And so, twenty years out of the army, after a series of sh** jobs, crappy apartments and failed relationships, at age 42, Palmer found himself back in Denver, a cabbie. It is a job he considers his last chance, and, after a time, he finds much to his surprise that it suits him. No bosses, hours of his own choosing, time to indulge his interests, watching old TV sitcoms, reading, and maybe even "he would take up writing again."
There is one scene I found especially intriguing in which Palmer stands on the fringes of a conversation between a couple of younger cabbies who are talking about writing, when the talk turned to -
"... speculation about agents, how one goes about finding one, what agents were looking for, and whether a novel ought to be completed before contacting one. He was amused by the phrase 'contacting an agent,' as if you simply dialed one up and informed him that your manuscript was ready to be shipped to Scribner's."
Because this is a passage laced with bitter irony, and is perhaps illustrative of Reilly's own failures at attempting to gain a foothold in the literary world. One can only wonder.
The fact is, Gary Reilly was an immensely talented writer who toiled quietly at his craft for decades, driving a hack through the streets of Denver to pay the bills. And, not surprisingly, several of Reilly's best-received novels thus far are from THE ASPHALT WARRIOR series, which all feature protagonist Brendan "Murph" Murphy - a cabbie. THE DISCHARGE, with Palmer finally finding his niche as a cab driver, offers a natural bridge to the character of Murph in the WARRIOR books, which have become a popular staple for discerning readers in the greater Denver area. Indeed, one could easily say that Palmer 'morphed' into Murph.
So now I've read the whole Palmer trilogy, as well as a couple Murph books. I found great characters, a quiet, quirky humor interspersed with occasional looks at the darker side of human nature. Reilly rocks. Highly recommended.
- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER… (meer)
THE DISCHARGE looks at Palmer's peripatetic life after leaving the Army. Despite a college degree (English) financed by the GI Bill, Palmer is unable to find his place in society, living for a time in a dingy Denver basement apartment with his brother, then a stint in LA, trying to get his foot in the Hollywood door as a script writer. There is another interlude in San Francisco, equally disappointing. But these wanderings offer a look at Reilly's way with words, as well as his wry, skewed sense of humor, and how he looks at life and history. Here's a sample, in Palmer's musings as he drives through the San Fernando Valley near LA -
"... the Valley itself like a John Steinbeck alfalfa ranch, long and flat with perspectives colliding, you could see the curve of the earth in its span. I envisioned orange groves, lettuce fields, and irrigation ditches aplenty until 'the movies' come and swallered up the good land, and all the noble farmers were replaced by irritable folks who stand in cranky 7-Eleven lines buying Rolaids."
There is something almost Proust-ian in the way Reilly documents the everyday boring-ness of Palmer's life, which seems to consist of varied periods of waiting - to be drafted, to finish his enlistment, to get through college, so he could "get on with his life." And I remember feeling that same kind of impatience following my own discharge from the army, trying to hurry through college, get married, have kids, and to get on with "real" life. But Palmer was different, he soon realized -
"... there was nothing that he wanted to do for a living, did not want to get up every day and go to work for the same company for forty years as his father had done ... and even at fifteen he had wondered if there wasn't more to life than just that. Grow up, get married, have kids, die."
And so, twenty years out of the army, after a series of sh** jobs, crappy apartments and failed relationships, at age 42, Palmer found himself back in Denver, a cabbie. It is a job he considers his last chance, and, after a time, he finds much to his surprise that it suits him. No bosses, hours of his own choosing, time to indulge his interests, watching old TV sitcoms, reading, and maybe even "he would take up writing again."
There is one scene I found especially intriguing in which Palmer stands on the fringes of a conversation between a couple of younger cabbies who are talking about writing, when the talk turned to -
"... speculation about agents, how one goes about finding one, what agents were looking for, and whether a novel ought to be completed before contacting one. He was amused by the phrase 'contacting an agent,' as if you simply dialed one up and informed him that your manuscript was ready to be shipped to Scribner's."
Because this is a passage laced with bitter irony, and is perhaps illustrative of Reilly's own failures at attempting to gain a foothold in the literary world. One can only wonder.
The fact is, Gary Reilly was an immensely talented writer who toiled quietly at his craft for decades, driving a hack through the streets of Denver to pay the bills. And, not surprisingly, several of Reilly's best-received novels thus far are from THE ASPHALT WARRIOR series, which all feature protagonist Brendan "Murph" Murphy - a cabbie. THE DISCHARGE, with Palmer finally finding his niche as a cab driver, offers a natural bridge to the character of Murph in the WARRIOR books, which have become a popular staple for discerning readers in the greater Denver area. Indeed, one could easily say that Palmer 'morphed' into Murph.
So now I've read the whole Palmer trilogy, as well as a couple Murph books. I found great characters, a quiet, quirky humor interspersed with occasional looks at the darker side of human nature. Reilly rocks. Highly recommended.
- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER… (meer)
Gary Reilly’s THE DETACHMENT is just possibly a one-of-a-kind, when it comes to novels of the Vietnam war. Because it is not the typical “horrors of combat, baptism of fire” sort of story. Private Palmer, the book’s anti-hero protagonist, is a garrison-based military policeman, working out of Qui Nhon in the closing days of the war, a time marked by racial tension in the ranks, ‘fragging,’ and rampant drug abuse. During the World Wars and Korea, Palmer might have been called a ‘pogue’ by the infantry. In Vietnam, the grunt-speak pejorative for non-combat support troops was ‘REMF.’ In today’s wars, Palmer would be a ‘Fobbit.’ But whatever you call him, even Palmer knew that “everyone hates the MPs,” a sentiment voiced repeatedly throughout the narrative. Young Private (later PFC, then Spec 4) Palmer isn’t even a real MP. Instead of doing road patrol, he is assigned to a desk, writing up traffic accident reports. And he doesn’t really even do much of that; he has a Vietnamese secretary working for him. As his company’s TA clerk, what he does, essentially, is whatever he wants, as long as he ‘looks busy.’ He ‘skates.’ And he drinks – copiously and continuously, both on the job (secretly) and off. Often bored, he also does a little pot, even experiments briefly with heroin. A solitary, disaffected loner, suspicious and resentful of all authority figures, Palmer, a draftee, had vowed to himself to do as he was told, do his time, and get out.
Nearing the end of his tour, he reflects on it all -
"What was all this about anyway? Sidetracked for two years, wearing a green costume and following orders barked by strangers. He recalls taking it all so seriously at some point back at the beginning. Maybe only the infantry can take it seriously. “
MP training was not Palmer’s choice. And when he was sent to Vietnam anyway, he assumed he would probably die there. But the closest he comes to combat is a single occasion when his compound is rocked by a direct hit from a mortar attack which sends Palmer diving for cover under his bunk. The initial terror is followed by quite another feeling –
“… his fears not only vanished, but replaced by a familiar sense of exhilaration. The loudness of the bomb, he’d never heard anything so loud in his life, and the carnage, Jesus, the barracks is a mess. It makes him smile as he picks his way across the rubble, it fills him with a heady and irrational sensation of glee that he lets wash over him because this is the most exciting thing he’s ever experienced in his life.”
This brief, strange interlude of danger-close ‘glee’ is not, however, the most frightening point in Palmer’s story. That comes halfway through his tour, during a period he later calls simply ‘the terrible weekend.’ In the course of just a few days, he is present at the hit-and-run killing of a child by a soldier he knows, a heroin addict. Later there is a gruesome suicide in his barracks. In an attempt to block it all out, Palmer goes on a binge which very nearly kills him. After this, he makes another silent vow: no more drinking. And he keeps it. And things get incrementally better for Palmer from this point on. He spends time in the post library, trying to learn more about Vietnam. He gets promoted. And although he never completely loses his cynicism and dislike of authority, he begins to see a few good things in certain ‘lifer’ NCOs and officers. That cold, determined ‘detachment’ he had clung to so fiercely to throughout his enlistment begins, finally, to thaw, if ever so slowly.
The final section then is classic denouement, as Palmer’s final days in-country wind slowly down and his DEROS approaches. The end of his tour roughly coincides with the drawing down of U.S. forces in Vietnam. Units withdraw, Palmer’s own company merges and consolidates with another, moving to another compound. He watches as the buildings at Camp Quincey, where he had lived and eaten and worked, are dismantled and hauled away by the ARVN forces taking over. He counts down the days. His replacement arrives, he out-processes, he makes his good-byes. And, finally, when he leaves his barracks for the last time –
“… [he] turns and looks back down the aisle. But he has no feeling for this ancient rotting damp-floored building. He had left all that back at Camp Quincey which is gone forever.”
THE DETACHMENT has no heroics. There are no fierce jungle firefights, no grisly battle scenes of death and dying. But it is probably closer to the real stories of most men who served in Vietnam, given that support troops often outnumber combat troops by more than ten to one. Honest and artfully told, it has a well-defined beginning, a middle with pivotal scenes, and an ending that rings true. Not surprisingly, its author, Garry Reilly, was an MP in Vietnam in the 1970s. How much of the novel is autobiographical we will never know. Reilly died in 2011, leaving behind this unpublished manuscript (and a couple dozen more), the second book in a Private Palmer trilogy. The first was THE ENLISTED MEN’S CLUB. The third book has yet to be published. Gary Reilly drove a cab in downtown Denver for most of his life. He never published a book during his lifetime. But he was a writer, and a damn good one. Highly recommended, especially for military veterans.
- Tim Bazzett, author of the Cold War memoir, SOLDIER BOY: AT PLAY IN THE ASA… (meer)
Nearing the end of his tour, he reflects on it all -
"What was all this about anyway? Sidetracked for two years, wearing a green costume and following orders barked by strangers. He recalls taking it all so seriously at some point back at the beginning. Maybe only the infantry can take it seriously. “
MP training was not Palmer’s choice. And when he was sent to Vietnam anyway, he assumed he would probably die there. But the closest he comes to combat is a single occasion when his compound is rocked by a direct hit from a mortar attack which sends Palmer diving for cover under his bunk. The initial terror is followed by quite another feeling –
“… his fears not only vanished, but replaced by a familiar sense of exhilaration. The loudness of the bomb, he’d never heard anything so loud in his life, and the carnage, Jesus, the barracks is a mess. It makes him smile as he picks his way across the rubble, it fills him with a heady and irrational sensation of glee that he lets wash over him because this is the most exciting thing he’s ever experienced in his life.”
This brief, strange interlude of danger-close ‘glee’ is not, however, the most frightening point in Palmer’s story. That comes halfway through his tour, during a period he later calls simply ‘the terrible weekend.’ In the course of just a few days, he is present at the hit-and-run killing of a child by a soldier he knows, a heroin addict. Later there is a gruesome suicide in his barracks. In an attempt to block it all out, Palmer goes on a binge which very nearly kills him. After this, he makes another silent vow: no more drinking. And he keeps it. And things get incrementally better for Palmer from this point on. He spends time in the post library, trying to learn more about Vietnam. He gets promoted. And although he never completely loses his cynicism and dislike of authority, he begins to see a few good things in certain ‘lifer’ NCOs and officers. That cold, determined ‘detachment’ he had clung to so fiercely to throughout his enlistment begins, finally, to thaw, if ever so slowly.
The final section then is classic denouement, as Palmer’s final days in-country wind slowly down and his DEROS approaches. The end of his tour roughly coincides with the drawing down of U.S. forces in Vietnam. Units withdraw, Palmer’s own company merges and consolidates with another, moving to another compound. He watches as the buildings at Camp Quincey, where he had lived and eaten and worked, are dismantled and hauled away by the ARVN forces taking over. He counts down the days. His replacement arrives, he out-processes, he makes his good-byes. And, finally, when he leaves his barracks for the last time –
“… [he] turns and looks back down the aisle. But he has no feeling for this ancient rotting damp-floored building. He had left all that back at Camp Quincey which is gone forever.”
THE DETACHMENT has no heroics. There are no fierce jungle firefights, no grisly battle scenes of death and dying. But it is probably closer to the real stories of most men who served in Vietnam, given that support troops often outnumber combat troops by more than ten to one. Honest and artfully told, it has a well-defined beginning, a middle with pivotal scenes, and an ending that rings true. Not surprisingly, its author, Garry Reilly, was an MP in Vietnam in the 1970s. How much of the novel is autobiographical we will never know. Reilly died in 2011, leaving behind this unpublished manuscript (and a couple dozen more), the second book in a Private Palmer trilogy. The first was THE ENLISTED MEN’S CLUB. The third book has yet to be published. Gary Reilly drove a cab in downtown Denver for most of his life. He never published a book during his lifetime. But he was a writer, and a damn good one. Highly recommended, especially for military veterans.
- Tim Bazzett, author of the Cold War memoir, SOLDIER BOY: AT PLAY IN THE ASA… (meer)
THE ASPHALT WARRIOR, by Gary Reilly.
Gary Reilly's fictional alter ego, Brendan "Murph" Murphy, is an immediately engaging and likeable character. Like his creator, Murph is a Denver cabbie of Irish stock (he often quotes his dear, irreverent "Maw"), an ex-GI, and an unpublished novelist. I think what makes you like him is the way he continuously pokes fun at himself and his various failures, beginning with his college years.
"... I have a BA in English from the University of Colorado at Denver. I killed time in my youth reading classic literature before deciding to stick with cab driving instead of cranking out English majors like sausages, which is the only thing a BA in English is good for: making little BAs. Some of my friends went on to get their Ph.D.'s so they could teach English and they haven't been heard from since."
As a former English major myself, I had to wince, but I was laughing. Murph characterizes his time in the army as good training - in avoiding mops and work details, or work in general. He disparages his lack of ambition, his personal hygiene, his growing gut, and ... well, you get the idea. He's a guy. He lives alone. He avoids personal entanglements and anything that might involve hard work. In other words, he's the kind of guy most guys would like to be pals with. Only real 'guys' would understand this. And hey, as an added bonus, he loves Gilligan and Andy Griffith - most silly TV sitcoms, in fact. And one of his favorite Elvis movies was King Creole, based on Harold Robbins' novel A STONE FOR DANNY FISHER (mine too, Murph/Gary), although, as he notes, "I once checked into it and Elvis does not appear anywhere in the book. I suspect that there were massive rewrites in the screenplay ..." (There were, MASSIVE.)
THE ASPHALT WARRIOR is kind of a mystery, but not really very seriously. It's mostly just about Murph and his everyday life, and it's funny (chuckles AND belly laughs) and just engaging as all hell. It's also supposedly the first of TEN Asphalt Warrior books. I think there are five out so far. How do I know there are ten? Well, sadly, Gary Reilly died in 2011. I already told you he was an unpublished author, but only during his lifetime. He left behind a treasure of over two dozen unpublished manuscripts, entrusting them to two close friends, Mark Stevens and Mike Keefe. They are getting Gary posthumously published, one book at a time, on their own Running Meter Press. It's a big job, but, well, they obviously loved the guy, so now they're seeing that his writing finally gets an audience. And, so far, Reilly's stuff has been bestseller material around Denver. But it deserves to go beyond regional status. I live in Michigan, and that's a long way from Denver. And I enjoyed the hell out of THE ASPHALT WARRIOR. If you like subtle, low-key Vonnegut-type humor, you'll like Reilly's writing. Highly recommended.… (meer)
Gary Reilly's fictional alter ego, Brendan "Murph" Murphy, is an immediately engaging and likeable character. Like his creator, Murph is a Denver cabbie of Irish stock (he often quotes his dear, irreverent "Maw"), an ex-GI, and an unpublished novelist. I think what makes you like him is the way he continuously pokes fun at himself and his various failures, beginning with his college years.
"... I have a BA in English from the University of Colorado at Denver. I killed time in my youth reading classic literature before deciding to stick with cab driving instead of cranking out English majors like sausages, which is the only thing a BA in English is good for: making little BAs. Some of my friends went on to get their Ph.D.'s so they could teach English and they haven't been heard from since."
As a former English major myself, I had to wince, but I was laughing. Murph characterizes his time in the army as good training - in avoiding mops and work details, or work in general. He disparages his lack of ambition, his personal hygiene, his growing gut, and ... well, you get the idea. He's a guy. He lives alone. He avoids personal entanglements and anything that might involve hard work. In other words, he's the kind of guy most guys would like to be pals with. Only real 'guys' would understand this. And hey, as an added bonus, he loves Gilligan and Andy Griffith - most silly TV sitcoms, in fact. And one of his favorite Elvis movies was King Creole, based on Harold Robbins' novel A STONE FOR DANNY FISHER (mine too, Murph/Gary), although, as he notes, "I once checked into it and Elvis does not appear anywhere in the book. I suspect that there were massive rewrites in the screenplay ..." (There were, MASSIVE.)
THE ASPHALT WARRIOR is kind of a mystery, but not really very seriously. It's mostly just about Murph and his everyday life, and it's funny (chuckles AND belly laughs) and just engaging as all hell. It's also supposedly the first of TEN Asphalt Warrior books. I think there are five out so far. How do I know there are ten? Well, sadly, Gary Reilly died in 2011. I already told you he was an unpublished author, but only during his lifetime. He left behind a treasure of over two dozen unpublished manuscripts, entrusting them to two close friends, Mark Stevens and Mike Keefe. They are getting Gary posthumously published, one book at a time, on their own Running Meter Press. It's a big job, but, well, they obviously loved the guy, so now they're seeing that his writing finally gets an audience. And, so far, Reilly's stuff has been bestseller material around Denver. But it deserves to go beyond regional status. I live in Michigan, and that's a long way from Denver. And I enjoyed the hell out of THE ASPHALT WARRIOR. If you like subtle, low-key Vonnegut-type humor, you'll like Reilly's writing. Highly recommended.… (meer)
Prijzen
Statistieken
- Werken
- 12
- Leden
- 72
- Populariteit
- #243,043
- Waardering
- 4.4
- Besprekingen
- 12
- ISBNs
- 13