Books Man Gone Down: A Novel
Books and Publications Average Rating:

Rating: - Painful but Worth It
I read this book very slowly, because sometimes it was just too painful. Michael Thomas takes you under the brown skin of a young man separated from his white wife and three children while trying to earn enough money for rent on an apartment and the private school tuition his wife expects. Its stream of conscious narration is very ambitious. Sometimes, he seems to channel Ellison's Invisible Man or Claude Brown's Manchild in the Promised Land, but you know it's present-day by the cultural references. I particularly like a few scenes where he interacts with people who rank below him (he buys a beer for a woman strung out on drugs) and above him (there's a great golf outing to a Long Island club.) Each scene and his ruminations on jazz and being bused to a white suburban school build create a complex portrait of the character's interior life.

While his wife, a New England brahmin, knows of his past--his disturbed alcoholic mother is dead, his less-disturbed but passive alcoholic father still lives--she has a kind of blind faith in him that doesn't take much note of the complexities of race and class. The person who comes closest to sharing his experiences and point of view is his one black friend from high school, who is in and out of detox.

But the part of the story that brought me to tears were his memories of the births of his children and the telephone conversations he has with them while he struggles. There were times he almost convinced me that he would leave them, and I think if Thomas had written this book in the sixties, the character would. But he finds another way through his dilemma that has more to do with his growing maturity than with external circumstances, and I closed the book wondering how all the characters survived the winter.

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Rating: - Down For The Count
DOWN FOR THE COUNT

I don't walk out on plays/performances even when those around me are fleeing as though they are being pursued by three-eyed slimy monsters from outer space.

I will generally slog through the most the most dismal of books because I respect and admire the talent, time and effort it takes to write a book.

I am a good audience.

However I am down for the count when it comes to Michael Thomas's "Man Gone Down."

What Dorothy Parker said of Los Angeles, "there isn't any there there" pretty well sums up my feelings for "Man Gone Down."

"There isn't any book there."

Story?

Not more than a few fleeting fragments.

I gave up the fight mid-book.

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Rating: - Yes it is one of the top ten books of 2007!!
This was an amazing book!! I found it difficult to read at times. This has the lyrical flow of James Baldwin tied into the time shifts you would find in a Toni Morrison novel. Don't let the free association fool you. It is a great story for understanding the mental and social struggles an African American goes through. Especially one tied into an inter-racial relationship.

The core question I found rising to the top of my thoughts was; "Should I stay or should I go?" Men of all backgrounds will understand the fear and doubt associated with the idea of failing to provide for your family. We often ask: What do we do when things just don't work out for the best? What do we do when we just don't have the answer? The author eloquently puts these thoughts and doubts onto paper. The author also reminds us that regardless of how much we try not to acknowledge race our simple day to day thoughts are sprinkled with race based associations. Just look at the very public Obama campaign in 2008. As an African American male you find its always there but the key is to learn how to navigate the waters without excessive anger or unfounded fear.

I look forward to Michael Thomas' next book I'm sure he'll strip away another social layer just lurking below the surface of America.

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Rating: - Truth in Labeling
Do you remember Clicquot Club Soda? Remember that iconic label? It was hard to get passed that smiling Eskimo boy in a white fur parka carrying a bottle of Clicquot Club Soda with a label showing that same Eskimo boy carrying a bottle of Clicquot Club with a label showing the same Eskimo boy carrying a bottle, carrying a bottle, on and on, smaller and smaller. Well, Man Gone Down is a lot like Clicquot Club.
The narrator is a guy who can't seem to go beyond his label. He is African- American. It's a label that he carries with him everywhere he goes. African- American. Ask him about his world and he'll tell you that he's a social experiment: an African-American living in a white world. Go deeper---he tells you everything about himself---his prose is beautiful---his story is not. He is a well-educated, talented, attractive 35 year old African-American. Go deeper still, and you'll learn that he is also a recovering alcoholic, jobless, angry, African-American. Deeper still, he is an African-American married to a wealthy white woman and father of 3 young children. The people around him expect a lot from this multi-talented, multi-racial, you could say, multi-privileged, African-American. His dysfunctional African-American parents at least made sure he had a good education. Got him into Harvard. He had to leave after the first year because of a drunken brawl. After all, he is an African-American. Couldn't finish his dissertation because, well you see, writing about dead white guys is not an African-American thing. Follow him into the deepest recesses of his mind. Plumb the depths of his psyche, analyze his dreams; return him to the womb, go to previous generations. The answers to all his questions are right there on the label, label, label.