I cannot be a friend to you, future fellow. You scare the shit out of me. -- Ronald Throop
Ronald Throop is an obscure choice that I have a personal bias towards. I came across his book On Rainy Days the Monk Ryokan Feels Sorry For Himself in a book store in Oswego, NY. I think that it was a self-published book, or anyway was published by Freeflow Books; which returns zero results on Google for publishers, and one for a xerox print application. Regardless, the book is a vicious, angry "scream-out-loud account of the struggle for piece of mind amidst the 21st century, American cultural inertia," at least according to his wife anyway. The book is set in Oswego which was neat, because it is always fun to read a book that takes place somewhere familiar, and the author lived on W. Seventh Street, down by the lake. I know this because while I was reading the book I looked him up in the phone book and walked down from Tallman Street to see what his house looked like. I never knocked, mostly because I was nervous, and I wish I had because who knows, maybe we would have become friends. Or maybe he would have slammed the door in my face, but I guess I'll never know.
I mentioned that it took place in Oswego which was really cool. There were the familiar town sights; the river, the lake, the nuclear power plant, the park with the bell that we used to go climb and ring in the middle of the night (whatever its name was), and of course the college. The book was also cool because it talked about the familiar town celebrities, who were only celebrities insomuch that they were prominent people of dubious character. There was the slum lord scumbag who held a seat on the city council and also held illicit affairs with the young college girls who he rented too. There was the old drugged-out hippie bar owner (which we will only refer to as "Old Grain Elevator") who also had affairs with young college girls who worked at his bar. This was a personal matter for me because while I was living in the upstairs of the Women's Club (a whole other story) he was dating my roommate. She lived in the back of the building and I had the only room in the front. I recall waking up to the sound of a car horn and hearing him yell her name. When I looked out the window, he was parked in the driveway yelling through the sunroof of his Landrover. In another scene in the book, the narrator was working in a restaurant in Minetto that was across the street from a house where I used to stay. Everything seemed to tie together and the author had a voice that really spoke to me.
The one review on Amazon is negative, but it is written by another old Oswego crank. Take it for what you will. I liked the book, even with its inherit negativity.
The book on Amazon