Tony's Reviews > Ham on Rye

My life did not resemble Henry Chinaski's. No abusive father here. No ritualized beatings. No helpless mother. No culture of fighting. One lost fight was enough to teach me the purposelessness of all that. I liked school. Not that I go to the reunions. Sure there was the pimply phase, but nothing like the scourge of boils that rendered Henry a monster.

And yet...and yet...

Something rang so true reading this book. The sense of alienation. The understanding of the absurdity of it all. The rejection of class and mores. The resort to isolation. Somehow I got to the same godless, cynical place, where I can look back with a sense of inevitability.

You know how you pick a book up, flip a few pages, read the first sentence, perhaps, or a few strands of dialogue to get a sense of whether it will be worth the effort? I did that here and thought this would be trite, unsatisfying and nihilistic. But I bought it anyhow, couldn't put it down and feel that I've learned something about myself from reading about someone who isn't like me at all.