Last Days of Summer
by Steve Kluger
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Book Summary Information
Author: Steve KlugerEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1999-04-06
ISBN: 0380797631
Number of pages: 368
Publisher: Harper Paperbacks
Book Reviews of Last Days of Summer
Book Review: Five Stars? Are you freakin' kidding me? Excessively maudlin, offensive to history...
Summary: 1 Stars
Someone has to give a review of this book a reality check. So I will.
I just finished this last night, after about, oh, 150 eye rolls. Even if a book is maudlin crap, like this one, I'll finish it anyways, just so I can accurately detail why it's so bad. Kluger's pseudo-epistolary novel is a beach read for guys who need something to flip through while their kids are running around the park or playing little league. And the structure of the book, sort of a scrapbook, offers a lot of graphical variation with big fat type and occasional fun flourishes (e.g., incorporating signed matchbooks by famous people, kind of a vogue thing for celebs to do in the 1940s), so if you're looking for a book that makes you feel like you're flipping through a lot of pages in a short timespan, while not thinking too hard, this is a good candidate. And the subject matter - finding surrogate father figures in the unlikeliest of places - is comfortable ground for guys, I could see dads and sons reading this book together (an impression no doubt influenced by the cuddly photo on the paperback's back panel).
While I understand that this is a child's perspective of baseball and the events leading up to WWII, Kluger wants it both ways, retaining the wide-eyed innocence of witnessing history one doesn't quite understand, yet somehow having the sense/maturity to navigate through such a cultural period despite such innocence (several of Joey Margolis' complicated pranks strain credibility, to say the least). And even if this is largely a child's-eye perspective of WWII, Kluger's glossing over of the Japanese internment camps in the second half of the book is frankly offensive to that unfortunate period of American history (the protagonists visit there with an apparent carta blanca security clearance...gosh, Manzanar's remarkably like summer camp!!!).
Kluger's biggest mistake however, are his occasional references to Dickens, particularly David Copperfield, which this book tries very hard to emulate. All those references did was make me want to re-read David Copperfield or Oliver Twist, or even Great Expectations (all have orphans or quasi-orphans as their protagonist) again. These allusions do not disguise the fact that at least Joey has a strong Jewish mother in his corner, so it's not as if he's completely tetherless, although the text wants you to believe he is. Any kid who can fool the Army while hitching a ride across a pre-Interstate America (!)...you know, that kid's going to be all right.
By the predictably sappy, they-all-went-on-to-productive-lives coda, I'd compiled in my head a pretty decent catalogue of alternatives that this bus read tries to one-up. Guys looking other more fun reads about the myths of baseball might want to consider W.P. Kinsella (Shoeless Joe, or the lesser-known Iowa Baseball Confederacy), which has the common sense to embrace the possibility of baseball's fallable mythic status from the get-go. If you have a yen for the downbeat you might want to consider Malamud's the Natural (that is, unless you don't want your impression of the upbeat film adaptation tarnished). Also, a quick reading of James Jones' The Thin Red Line will get readers to quickly establish Kluger's innaccuracies with describing Guadalcanal (also offensive - there were no firefights on the beach!). And one can never go wrong with Dickens - Charile Banks was right, David Copperfield is still a good solid read.
Cut the syrup in half for your next book, and take off your damn Cosby sweater while writing it, okay, Mr. Kluger?
Summary of Last Days of Summer
May 15, 1940
Charlie Banks
New York Giants
Polo Grounds, New York
Dear Mr. Banks:
I am a 12?year?old boy and I am dying from malaria. Please hit a home run for me because I don't think I will be around much longer.
Your friend,
Joey Margolis
Dear Kid:
Last week it was the plague. Now it's malaria. What do I look ? stupid to you? You're lucky I don't send somebody over there to tap you on the conk. I am enclosing 1 last picture. Do not write to me again.
Chase. Banks
3d Base
Dear Charlie:
Nobody asked for your damn picture. I never even heard of you before. And you can forget about the home run too. The only reason I needed one was because the bullies who keep beating me up somehow thought you were my best friend and the homer was supposed to keep them from slugging me anymore. Thanks for nothing.
Can I go on a road trip with you?
Your arch enemy,
Joey Nargolis
Dear Joey:
"Somehow" they thought I was your best friend? Where did they hear that from? A Nazi spy? J. Herbert Hoover? Franklin Delano Biscuithead? And didn't I tell you not to write to me anymore? Go bug DiMaggio.
Charlie
P.S. And just because there's a spot open for a bat boy this summer doesn't mean your going to get it. Even if we ARE chips off the same block. May 15, 1940
In and of itself, the epistolary novel is nothing new; indeed, Ring Lardner wrote You Know Me Al, his classic diamond saga, as a series of letters home from fictional White Sox hurler Jack Keefe more than 80 years ago. With Last Days of Summer, Kluger has virtually reinvented the genre in his picaresque coming-of-age fable of future sportswriter Joey Margolis and his improbable relationship with Giants rookie sensation, Charlie Banks.
The place is Brooklyn, the time is the early '40s, and young baseball fanatic Joey needs a hero badly in his life. How that hero becomes Charlie--and ultimately Joey himself--forms the dimensions of the novel's field, but it's the way the game is played that's so remarkable. The story's told not through conventional narrative but by way of Joey's abstract scrapbook: letters, postcards, news clippings, box scores, report cards, matchbook covers, dispatches from FDR, telegrams, even an invitation to Joey's own Bar Mitzvah and the gift list from the affair.
Delightful throughout, Summer develops a deeper traction when Charlie goes off to war, then turns poignant in its seemingly preordained aftermath. It is a triumph of style, to be sure, but a triumph of style without loss of substance. --Jeff Silverman
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