Spooner by Pete Dexter

Pete Dexter’s new novel, Spooner, takes me back to the glory days of newspapers in the Philadelphia of my youth. The morning Inquirer and The Evening Bulletin, which my father brought with him every night as he came off the 5th street trolley from downtown, were sandwiched around the afternoon Daily News for the blue collar/sports-minded crowd. Pete Dexter wrote a column for this paper before leaving journalism to write fiction. This is his seventh novel along with a book of his newspaper columns.

Although originally from Michigan, Dexter has the voice of a Philadelphian when telling stories set in The City of Brotherly Love -- which is mostly true, except for when the Eagles, Flyers, Sixers, and Phillies host out-of-town teams. I remember one incident when sports fans booed Santa Claus and pelted him with snowballs during the final Eagle’s game of the 1968 season. Dexter’s characters have that quirky, interesting, volatile, and highly recognizable aura of Philadelphia about them.

Spooner kept me turning pages. As in all his works, Dexter sprinkles funny situations and comic utterances by his characters throughout, and let’s not forget his sometimes dark humor -- especially Chapter 85. The novel also has its poignant moments, however.

Dexter tells the story of Spooner, a misfit child whose father dies when he is quite young. Spooner’s mother remarries, and the novel largely revolves around the relationship between Spooner and his step-dad.

Near the end, Dexter writes,

“Spooner, a man by now of some reputation for going his own way, who had over the years taken pretty dramatic steps to be seen that way, craved the good opinion of his stepfather more than he could ever admit, and felt the chance to find out where he stood with him slipping away.” (442)

Dexter always takes me on a tour of familiar places in Philly -- Center City, the fictional, but all too recognizable “God’s Pocket district, and even Dirty Frank’s, a legendary bar near the Inquirer/Daily News building that was a favorite hangout of reporters. The narrator sounds like a cynical, observant reporter on the trail of an interesting story.

Although he denied being autobiographical during an interview when the book came out a few of months ago, numerous incidents in Spooner’s life match Dexter’s biography -- even down to the title of one of Spooner’s novels, Deadwood. The HBO series of a couple of years ago was based on Dexter’s Deadwood.

If you have never read Dexter, start with his National Book Award winner, Paris Trout. If you love newspapers and reporting as I do, you will want to read all of his works. Five Stars

--Chiron, 5/3/10

Deadwood by Pete Dexter

This concludes my reading of the novels of Dexter, a former columnist for The Philadelphia Daily News. I can't believe this is the source of the HBO Series of the same name. If you loved the HBO series, you may not like this novel; if you hated the HBO series for its darkness and constant streams of foul language, you may love this novel. Deadwood took me much longer to read that it should have – I was ambushed by ETS grading (1200 essays in 6-1/2 days) and some minor surgery.

Many of the characters are there – Wild Bill Hickok, Charlie Utter, Calamity Jane Cannary, Seth Bullock, Solomon Star, Al Swearingen – but some of these were so distorted in the series as to be almost unrecognizable. For instance, Swearingen is not nearly the mean, nasty, violent character as that played by Ian McShane, neither was Seth Bullock the upstanding, principled man played by Timothy Olyphant. The preacher was there for Dexter, but in a much reduced role. Charlie, Jane, the theater actors were the same, but I wanted to see more of E.B. Farnum, Joanie, Trixie, and something of Alma Garret and George Hearst who were completely absent from the book.

The bottom line is the book and series were a draw. I think both can be enjoyed, but I wish I had read the book first. The series would have expanded my mental picture of Deadwood in 1876. One character never mentioned in the series (as far as I can remember) was “the bottle fiend.” He was interesting, and added some contrast to the rest of the story.

If you are unfamiliar with Pete Dexter, don’t start with Deadwood. Rather begin with Paris Trout, The Paperboy, God’s Pocket, or his latest, The Train. All his work is well written, loaded with interesting characters, and are all fine reads. Dexter takes me back to my high school days when I read his columns in The Daily News.

--Chiron, 6/22/08