Review: Tears Into Wine By Joe West

By John C. Krieg

 

This book is rock ‘em sock ‘em masculinity meets reality in a dark alley and kicks its fucking ass. And Joe West is just getting started. I don’t know where he’s been all these years, but by his own admission, he was just trying to eke out a living working hungover at an endless series of meaningless menial jobs that only served to hone his sardonic view of life. And I don’t know how he ever found the time to write anything, but thank God he did, because in similar fashion to Strange Flesh (2023), this is a wildly entertaining book. How best to describe Tears into Wine? The ghost of Charles Bukowski walks into a bar and sits down next to Joe West and says, “You know, they call me, ‘the poet laureate of the low life.’” Joe West looks up from his stiff pour of cheap whiskey, squints his eyes, and says, “Fuck you!”

 

The author’s alter ego is the narrative character Curtis T. Reed, a writer that has survived for this long on erotica written under a pseudonym because even he is embarrassed by it. He wants to be accepted by the mainstream, much like a porn actress wants to cross over into legitimate Hollywood movies. He writes a book he knows in his bones is terrific, and his literary agent, Daniel Madrid, knows it too. Like most literary agents, Madrid would have stuck a dagger in Christ’s ribs while he was throwing the moneychangers out of the temple. His only religion is money; money, money, money. Entrenched in an industry that only worships the bitch goddess celebrity, he instinctively knows that he’s got no shot at promoting Reed’s book because the author is old, fat, dumpy, and no slave to fashion. No publisher would ever relinquish funds to send him out on a book promotion tour. The author has to concur, admitting to himself that he’s no heartthrob, that’s for sure. The agent feels the book could command at least a five-figure deal if not for the physical limitations of its author, and Curtis leaves his office empty-handed, save for retrieving his weathered manuscript. But later that evening, his pride kicks in:

 

There are days when being old and irrelevant gets to me and makes me wish I was dead. But then I sit down at my kitchen table with a cup of coffee, the laptop open, and I write something good, sometimes fucking great, and I’m renewed. During these last nine months, in between writing Truckstop Cocks and Cow Girls in Heat – Volume Two, I wrote a fucking masterpiece, the goddamned proverbial great American novel, and it is worthless (p. 9)

 

Things only flow from the gutter to the sewer. An Uber driver, upon learning that Curtis is moderately successful financially as a ghost writer of paperback drivel, then wants him to meet and possibly embolden the spirits of an author who he deeply admires, who is giving a reading that evening in, of all places, a bowling alley. Here, Curtis is exposed to an author who reads a five-line poem to an adoring audience of Gen Z admirers. Every word of every line sucks, but Curtis is mesmerized by this dude’s apparent magnetism, which is like an aura of invincibility in this crowd, but in reality is nothing more than the positive vibe given off by any garden-variety conman.

 

A staggeringly poor author who thinks he’s God’s gift to the written word, pretend poet JD Monahan, falls on the insensitive side. He wishes that he could be the type of guy who would stub his cigar out in your forehead and say, “No offense,” but he doesn’t have the guts. He is a cross between the Fonz and James Dean. He’s got the leather jacket and sunglasses routine down, but something is missing – class. But he has all of his dipshit followers, who know even less about poetry than he does, fooled. He’s a charmer if the crowd is stupid enough to buy his discount store charisma, and this crowd is. Curtis is in awe at how easily he can pull it off. This is the guy he needs to be the face of the operation while he will be the guy behind the scenes pulling the strings a la’ Elvis and the Colonel. Since this scheme will make him some easy money, JD’s all in. His sense of generational entitlement surfaces at the literary agent’s office when all three parties get together to sign a binding contract, and it looks like a match made in hell because they all feel that any code of ethics should be printed on toilet paper with which to wipe their asses. Full of himself, now JD states:

 

If you want this to work, people have to think you are my employee, not the other way around. I’m the face. People want to meet me. They want to talk to me. Have me sign my book. You are the manager, a collector of fees and organizer of events. Nobody gets to me except through you. So no more of that Jimmy or kid bullshit. Fucking do that to me again in front of anyone, and I’ll blow your spot up faster than a homemade pipe bomb (p. 12)

 

Deep down inside, Curtis knows that, like Frankenstein, he has created a monster, but greed drives him ever onward, making him agree with his agent that the punk is right. The sewer has now backed up to become a festering cesspool. Now the heartbeat of the story kicks in as Curtis and JD are sent on a Midwestern promotional book tour. Why the Midwest, you may ask? People in the heartland are polite and trusting, which are the hallmarks of gullibility. No one on either coast would believe this ruse for a New York minute.

 

They embark on their book tour to promote Tears Into Wine in their hometown of Saint Louis, with JD’s bowling alley crowd in attendance and others invited by the bookstore. JD reads the first chapter of Curtis’s book about a young girl brutalized by a degenerate neighbor who cuts out her tongue in his basement and eats it before then botching his own suicide attempt. The words are revolting but captivating, like a train wreck spilling toxic gasses or someone experiencing spontaneous human combustion. Curtis is envious of JD’s command of the room and laments that life is so much easier for the good-looking, acknowledging that for those that are, it even trumps intelligence and hard work.

 

…Goddamnned if everything doesn’t come easy to JD, I envy him in a way that is hard to explain except to say that I only want him to succeed to see him fall on his ass. Jesus Disco dancing Christ, what the actual fuck is wrong with me? (p. 64)

 

They hop from one city to another, which is to say that JD creates one drama after another that Curtis is required to clean up, sometimes literally having to mop JD’s shit out of toilet stalls. The narrative begins to reveal the subtilties in both their characters. Despite his forays into erotica, in actuality, Curtis is a writer’s writer who laments the demise of the good ole’ family bookstore in favor of the too well-lit cavernous corporate warehouses, replete with coffee bars and swelling at the seams with board games, greeting cards, calendars, and kids toys, almost anything other than actual books, while music blares in the background, making it virtually impossible to sit and read any of them anyway. JD is becoming more insufferably self-absorbed and drinking incrementally heavier at each successive bookstore appearance. He is abusing being the celebrity that he really isn’t with impunity while sleeping with every bookish bookstore manager that will have him. It’s a little like watching a cover band botching the songs of rock groups they admire but could never be remotely like, while not-so-good-looking wannabe groupies fawn all over them.

 

The book itself is selling well at readings in so many copies that it’s paying for the tour. Elsewhere, glowing reviews from the respected literary world are driving hot sales. Everything that Curtis T. Reed has dreamed about is finally happening, and all the credit is going to a guy who couldn’t write his way out of a wet paper bag. Curtis grins and bears it, knowing that nobody ever said that life is fair, but his life is devolving into becoming a glorified babysitter for a narcissist that he is growing to hate. Doesn’t matter; for the first time in both of their lives, business is booming.

 

The bookstore had to move the event to a winery that could seat a thousand. Although Caroline’s Books has a hundred-seater room, all the press JD Monahan seems to garner wherever we go, along with the great reviews that have started rolling in for the book, and the rumors I’ve been hearing about it being optioned for a movie that Daniel will not confirm or deny, it is more than enough to attract a crowd (p. 150)

 

At this biggest event so far, JD strips naked and behaves incoherently as the police are summoned to roughly subdue him, and the crowd flees as many leave the book they have just purchased in their seats. In the melee, Curtis suffers a hip injury. He and the bookstore owner are both carted off on gurneys to the hospital. Incredibly, after the dust settles, the public is intrigued, and just as people go to NASCAR events just to watch the crashes, the public simply wants more. While JD wallows in psychotherapy and his agent basically ghosts him, Curtis spends more time in hotel rooms with his new romantic interest Darla, a woman who is nearly as jaded and pessimistic as he is but counterweighs life’s endless succession of disappointments with sex acts ranging from kinky to the perverse. For his part, Curtis just goes with it, thankful for the attention.

 

In a session with his therapist, a woman he has sexual fantasies about, she asks him what he really wants out of life, and his response could well be the universal chant of any unrecognized author anywhere in America:

 

I want to be famous. That’s it. Win, lose, or draw, I don’t give a fuck how it comes, but one hundred years from now, I want people to know I wrote books that changed the whole goddamned world. I want what Harper Lee and Truman Capote had. That’s what I think could happen to a writer if they are honest about telling stories. I’d even settle for whatever slice of the pie they were serving when Susan Hilton published The Outsiders. Honor and cherish is reserved for guys like E.B. White, Roald Dahl, and C.S. Lewis. I’m just hoping to enjoy a sunny day in hell no different than Chandler, Carver, or even, God help me, John fucking Steinbeck. They were all just ordinary people who had the guts to write stories they wanted to read and the unabashed courage to get them published. How am I any different? (p. 164)

 

The narrative forges ever onward, a roller coaster ride of dysfunction and hijinks. While lunching at a sports bar with Darla, one of the endless televisions on the wall shows JD being interviewed from the sanitarium he’s cloistered away at for winning a prestigious literary award for Tears Into Wine. In his world, where no bad deed goes unrewarded, Curtis is less than shocked, but is, however, pissed at his agent, and for good reason, as Daniel and JD fully intend to bilk him out of his royalties and long-awaited shot at author immortality.

 

Now, at page 204, 70% of the way through the 290-page novel, the viewpoint character switches to JD. This book is full of more surprises than what rich prick was stupid enough to allow themselves to be caught on camera on Epstein Island. For those not paying attention (like me) to the chapter headings, which discreetly include the narrator’s name in a smaller font, at Chapter 19 this comes as a shock that is as deliciously enjoyable as the electric chair. In two words, it’s fucking hilarious. Curtis retakes the wheel in Chapter 22, and then Daniel and Darla and someone named Lilly get their time in the spotlight. Lilly? Who the fuck is Lilly? I’ll just have to read on.

 

In the story’s last chapter, it is revealed who Lilly is – JD Monahan’s fiancé, plucked from an endless pool of bookstore managers that he had bedded before his grisly demise. Darla visits Curtis, who is now writing his best work from inside a prison cell. Daniel is bitter that he can no longer suck from the trough of ill-gotten gain that backfired in all three participants’ faces. Poetic justice, however, for swindling Curtis and having everything go to JD’s estate while fully expecting he would never die ahead of him, so why not ride on the gravy train for the rest of his life? How do you make God laugh? Make a plan, and God made sure that Daniel got his. Lilly becomes the beneficiary of JD’s estate and is now raising his child, Junior, as a single mother. Her attorneys advise that she uses the royalty money wisely, as it’s highly likely that paternity claims will arise from other bookish bookstore managers who the he-whore had relations with.

The last two lines of the story reveal its ultimate purpose for being written in the first place:

Life is short. Stories are forever (p. 290)

 

Kudos to editor Cody Sexton of Anxiety Press for having the guts to let this book see the light of day. Unlike most publishers, who only read the first paragraph before becoming a spewing fountain of such gibberish as “narrative focus,” or “consistency in style and voice,” or “prose not polished enough,” he knows a great book when he actually reads one.

 

Not since Thompson blew himself to that great book festival in the sky has there been a writer with such irreverence and humor and delicious snark. Very few books can cause me to squeal out loud like this one does. Joe West was knocking on the door with Strange Flesh, and with Tears Into Wine, he is kicking the motherfucker in. Five stars? My ass. Give him six.