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Title: Tietam Brown by Mick Foley ISBN: 0-375-41550-5 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 08 July, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $23.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.41 (34 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: What is a good person?
Comment: First off, let me just say that I've done of lot of reading over the years. I have a BA in history and English literature, an MA in history, and nearly a Ph.D. in history. I'm pretty selective in what I read. I originally bought this book, not because I found the story interesting, but becasue I thought I owed it to Mick Foley. Foley gave so much to all of us as fans of wrestling, that I thought I owed it to him to buy his novel and give it a chance. I finally just now got around to reading it, and once I began I didn't put it down until I was finished. It was, without a doubt, one of the best novels I've ever read, and I've read a lot of them.
The story just keeps you glued to the page. It's full of humor, and if you know Foley, it's full of his particular brand of humor. It's also one of the darkest things I've ever read. Knowing that Foley grew up in a loving family and now has one of his own, one wonders where this dark tale comes from. If you've ever seen his old Cactus Jack promos, maybe it comes from that same place. But the horrible things that happen to Andy Brown are not just there to shock. They are central to a story about how a human being can endure so much hell and somehow still emerge in the end as a good person. I think that is the central question Foley is asking: What is a good person? I think his answer is one who comes out undefeated by the terrible things that life can hand to us. Tietam Brown is evil, not because of the things he does, but because of what he has let tradgedy do to him. It's a bit like why Captain Ahab is evil and unredeemable.
Mick Foley has really written something special here. The next time he publishes a novel, I'll buy it because of its own merits, not because of my admiration for the author's past acheivements.
Rating: 5
Summary: Mick Foley a literary genius
Comment: I'm not here to praise Mick Foley for his work because I am a diehard fan of him as a wrestler. I have never seen a match he was in, and am not familiar in the least with him as a wrestler.
I am here to praise his novel, Tietam Brown.
This is a brilliant piece of art. Not from the point of view of a snobby, idiotic literary critic who can't see it's beauty, but from someone, me, who can appreciate true art.
This novel is beautiful like a parking lot is beautiful - not at first glance, but if you look deeper, past it's rough edges, you can see that it is pure brilliance. The dialogue is brilliant, spontaneous, and completely genuine, sometimes even laugh-out-loud funny. The plot is a blur of senseless violence and sexual escapades, but that only adds to the books larger than life charm. And the characters are mysterious and stylized, and wonderfully so.
This is not your grandma's bedtime novel. This is pure exaggerated reality. It succeeds wonderfully at being, witty, charming, heartfelt, gritty, horrifying, sickening, joyful, rousing, funny and addictively entertaining.
No, reviewers won't like it, but if you like books that are actually fun to read, and unique as well, snatch up Mick Foley's brilliant novel, Teitam Brown.
Rating: 3
Summary: A decent debut...let's hope next time he has a tough editor.
Comment: I'm a huge fan of Mick Foley's work as a wrestler, and have thought for years that he is a natural for crossing over into the mainstream media, with his curious combination of family-man eloquence and psychotic ultra-showmanship. I was pleasantly surprised when I heard that he was working on a novel, and really excited to pick it up at a signing the day it came out.
Foley does indeed put together a decent story and a few interesting characters in TIETAM BROWN, but is a bit too dependent on black-or-white characterization -- the women are, by and large, celestial beings full of good intentions, and the men are scumbags who look out for themselves above all else. Even the narrator, who is a character with real promise, ends up seeming less developed than he should be by the end of the book (this is a complaint which can also be levelled against Dickens, of course). There are a few scenes of violence which are genuinely off-putting, and that's a good thing, as it's certainly Foley's intent (no glorification of violence to be found in here, folks).
Part of the problem is that Foley is such a strong and established personality that it is impossible to read this without seeing the similarities in writing style to his previous memoirs; when he describes someone as "wearing a crimson mask" of blood after a fight, it's a direct usage of a pro-wrestling commentary cliche, and for a narrator who has no interest in wrestling to use that term seems a bit farfetched, a bit like Foley is trying to pass it off as poetic description. There are also a few really obvious in-jokes, such as a jab at Foley's friend Dee Snider of Twisted Sister and a section where he places himself (college-aged Foley, right before he became a wrestler) into the background of a scene, then has his main characters talk about him, down to describing his height and weight. *SPOILER* Tietam Brown (the father and, in many ways, the focus of the novel) is an ex-wrestler, but that only shows up in the last quarter of the book, and seems to be mainly an opportunity for Foley to explain the politics of regional pro-wrestling in the days before the WWF's national broadcasting. Learning that he's an ex-fighter doesn't really add anything to the character, or explain why he is how he is, which is strange to me in that I really expected Tietam to be an analysis of the angry-loner persona Foley created with his Cactus Jack character, as whom he wrestled on and off for over a decade. At times, the novel seems 'neither fish nor fowl,' a bit too focused on Foley's history and circle of friends and peers, at times a bit too unwilling to directly relate the characters to Foley's past and present.
That said, it's a good, dark story, and an engaging enough read that I'd recommend it to people who like, say, Chuck Palahniuk's novels. First novels are often pretty clumsy, and some of my favorite authors' first books are nowhere near as good as what came later (Richard Price started out as an author of about the same level as this). My hope is that Foley will work with an editor who is a bit more aggressive about saying "no" at times, and that he himself will be willing to have his next book be "by the author of TIETAM BROWN" rather than "by the WWF champion and author of HAVE A NICE DAY!" I think that that will really help him develop as a writer, and I look forward to seeing that development.
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Title: The Stone Cold Truth by Steve Austin, Dennis Brent ISBN: 0743477200 Publisher: WWE Pub. Date: 28 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $26.00 |
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Title: The Legends of Wrestling: "Classy" Freddie Blassie by Keith Elliot Greenberg, Classy Freddie Blassie ISBN: 0743463161 Publisher: WWE Pub. Date: 01 May, 2003 List Price(USD): $26.00 |
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Title: Lita : A Less Traveled R.O.A.D.--The Reality of Amy Dumas by Michael Krugman, Amy Dumas ISBN: 0743473981 Publisher: Pocket Star Pub. Date: 16 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $26.00 |
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Title:WWE - The Ultimate Ric Flair Collection ASIN: B0000DIJOW Publisher: Sony Music (Video) Pub. Date: 18 November, 2003 List Price(USD): $34.95 Comparison N/A, buy it from Amazon for $26.21 |
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Title:WWE - Mick Foley's Greatest Hits & Misses: A Life in Wrestling ASIN: B00016XNRU Publisher: Sony Music (Video) Pub. Date: 20 January, 2004 List Price(USD): $29.95 Comparison N/A, buy it from Amazon for $22.46 |
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