The Bus: Cosmic Ejaculations of The Daily Mind in Transit

Rating:
Summary: The Bus is a testament to what's really real about LA
Review: It shreds the misconception of a shallow, fashion-obsessed La-La Land, where bastions of ultra-cool hipsters capture, tame and manufacture each new style. Where nothing is real and everybody wants to be in the movies, get a record contract, create scandal or just be cool. While that may be the image that is perpetuated by those who worship at the altar of Hollywood, for natives of LA, the story is quite different.

At times poignantly prophetic, comical and depraved, The Bus is an autobiographical novel in the tradition of Miller, Kerouac or Whitman, a lyrical journey down Sunset and Santa Monica Boulevards as the author travels on the Number 4 city bus from the historic Echo Park neighborhood in Los Angeles to Santa Monica in order to retrieve his car from the auto mechanic.

As the bus passes through the major intersections and past the diverse urban scapes, the author travels backwards through his life, relating his experiences growing up and living in Los Angeles. From the reality of his current family life in the sights and sounds of Echo Park and Silverlake where he lives with his wife and two children. His memories from the recent past come to the surface along the rest of the way: at Sanborn Avenue, where an old drug buddy committed suicide, Vermont Avenue, where his mother used to live when she was a teenager, Highland Avenue and the porno shacks, 20th street, working in the St John's Hospital morgue and Lincoln Boulevard, where a boyhood fight took place at the Jack in the Box.

In this process, The Bus recreates vividly for the reader a city that is a home, a homeland, where children are born, families are raised, people grow old, struggle, go to school, work, give birth, get born, die... where Hollywood is a freeway and Beverly Hills is that place the Clampets moved to from Tennessee. And just like any other city in America, a place that can foster a personal history as deep as the one depicted in The Bus.

Rating:
Summary: A mad beautiful journey of language and mind
Review: This book tells the story of taking the bus from the deep heavy heart of Los Angeles in Silver Lake to the glitzy made up,... face-lift westside Santa Monica. This book is a poetic novel that moves through the neighborhoods block by block, explores the life of the author, the language of his mind in big inspired bursts of love and music, moves you through the people, the struggle, and the love of the city. When the ride is over Abee sweetly deposits you at your destination. The Bus is an amazing and great work.