Darryl Ponicsan

Tom Mix Died for Your Sins is one of those odd hybrids – a fictionalized biography which leaves the reader vaguely dissatisfied and wondering just which, if any, of the events in the book actually happened. There are only two cures for this – one either jumps out of the story every dozen pages to verify the truth, or mentally says “to hell with it” and takes it all for fiction, in which case one must wonder why the author bothered with a biographical underpinning at all.

Mix was a superstar of the silent movie era – riding, roping, and shooting up the scenery in as many as a dozen pictures a year in his heyday. Famous for doing his own stunts in an art form that was still inventing itself, Mix appears to have invented much of his own history as well. He then spent the next 30 or so years living up to his own hype in a riot of too much booze, too many women, and more money than he knew what to do with.

Ponicsan invents a sidekick/narrator for this tale, with its predictable arc of rise and fall as Mix is clotheslined by the coming of the talkies combined with his own physical decline and apparent inability to shift gears from the pantomime of the silents to more subtle, dialogue-driven acting.

There are some funny moments here, particularly as Mix and his sidekick, Kid Bandera, indulge themselves in various youthful misadventures. There’s also a fair amount of melodrama as Mix’s inability to remain monogamous keeps his personal life in turmoil. Unfortunately, the pacing drags toward the end, as Ponicsan frontloads the book with Mix’s death, which won’t actually happen for another 200 or so pages. Telling a life story in retrospect isn’t a new technique, and it can work very well, but the structure is normally established in the opening pages, not dropped in as a 25-year-long flash-forward/flashback on page 102. This becomes less foreshadowing and more "For cryin' out loud, let's get this over with."

Ultimately, the book never rises above the level of mildly interesting. Readers who want to know more about the birth of the motion picture industry will need to keep looking. Those who want to read about a flawed hero who reaches too high and falls too far can find that story in any number of novels. And just as a final note, don’t look for any great hidden meaning in the title, because there doesn’t seem to be one.… (more)

GOLDENGROVE (1971) is the story of Ernie Buddusky, younger brother of Billy "Badass" Buddusky, the cocky, brash hero of THE LAST DETAIL (1970), author Darryl Ponicsan's successful first novel (the film adaptation is now considered A classic). But Ernie is nothing like Billy. A mousy, meek, sad sack, Ernest Scott Buddusky (named for Hemingway and Fitzgerald, writers much admired by his father, a high school teacher in Andoshen, Pennsylvania) has followed in his dad's footsteps and become an English teacher. He's at his second teaching job when we meet him, at a modern new high school near Los Angeles. His wife, the "Amazon" or Big Betty, was his student at his first teaching job in Upstate NY, and is several years younger. They have a baby boy, and she is pregnant again. There is an unreliable used car. His salary is meager and barely covers the bills. Ernie hates his job, teaching spoiled children of the wealthy, and isn't entirely happy with his marriage either. There is a complementary cast of eccentric characters, most of them teachers or administrators. Ernie edges into a sad, unsatisfactory affair with the virginal, convent-raised math teacher. There are complications.

THE LAST DETAIL was based on Ponicsan's experiences in the Navy. GOLDENGROVE is obviously drawn from his several years of teaching in public schools, and he's got the types down pat. I found myself alternately chuckling and wincing, remembering my own teaching days. In fact I was still teaching when I first read this book, more than fifty years ago. In the interval, long out of print, it's lost none of its charm as a tragicomic tale of a sensitive, unhappy guy trapped in a job and a marriage, with no relief in sight. And the ending is still a shock, although, as our hapless hero himself comments, "That's about right."

One of Ponicsan's strengths as a writer is dialogue (indeed he spent nearly thirty years as a screenwriter in Hollywood) and it shines here, making GOLDENGROVE a perhaps less cerebral, snappy cousin of John Updike's THE CENTAUR (also about a put-upon high school teacher). GOLDENGROVE is a quick read, and a good one. I loved it all over again. Fifty years on, Ponicsan remains one of my favorite writers. Very highly recommended.

- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER… (more)

Yeah, okay, I know - that title. But it IS an attention-getter, and it got mine, because this is definitely a guy book, and I'm a guy, and, like the author, Darryl Ponicsan, I'm old, and sometimes I feel bad about mine too. So, that outa the way, I'm just gonna call this one Darryl's DICK book, okay? 'Cause here's the thing, I've been reading Darryl Ponicsan since his first book, THE LAST DETAIL (1970), probably still his best-known work, which was adapted into a classic film. So that's what? Omigod, that's FIFTY YEARS I've been reading Ponicsan! And he's written a baker's dozen other novels since then, and I've read them all but one, THE RINGMASTER, and I hope to get around to that one before too long.

I FEEL BAD ABOUT MY DICK (and that's the last time I'll spell it out) is Ponicsan's first non-fiction book, and it's kinda the one I've been wanting to read for all of those fifty years. I think I mighta written to him once and said he oughta write a memoir. Or maybe that was some other writer. Anyway, this odd collection of essays and lists is actually kinda like a memoir, because we learn something about his childhood in a Pennsylvania coal town ("I lived in a congenial but risky neighborhood. The feel of caked blood in my hair was familiar to me."), his parents ("I never had more than a few serious conversations with either one of them, few and far between, and brief"), his college years ("My father's idea. I thought it would be a waste of money"). We hear but briefly of his hitch in the US Navy (so read THE LAST DETAIL and CINDERELLA LIBERTY), but do learn about his trip west afterwards in a junker TR-3 to seek his fortune. His turn as a high school teacher also gets short shrift (so read GOLDENGROVE), but we do hear about his year or so as a social worker in LA during the Watts riots, and his education as a blonde white guy in black neighborhoods. And then he tells of his sudden success as a writer with that first Navy novel, and his subsequent adventures in Hollywood (Ponicsan was script writer/doctor for over 25 years) where he meets Robert Redford ("I went all aflutter … I thought no man should be so handsome"). And meeting Hef at the Playboy mansion, where he talked with Bill Cosby ("long enough to discover that he was, sadly, an a**hole") and displayed his "pinball wizard" skills to Linda Lovelace. There is almost nothing about a failed first marriage and divorce (so read AN UNMARRIED MAN). We learn of his color-blindness (check out the author photo and the pink suit) and his kinky opinions on beards and muffs. Oh yeah, and murses. And, threaded throughout all of these essays, most of them hilarious, he also gives us tantalizing tidbits of a forty-year love affair with his Mexican-American wife, whom he calls E.W., for "Exotic Woman." He first met her on a Malibu beach. She was in a bikini. He was in love.

Yes, hilarious. I found myself chuckling, chortling and breaking into guffaws, belly laughs and tears of laughter as I made my way through this little book. (I tried to read slowly, 'cause I wanted it to last.) But, as he tells us in the intro, where he explains that his DICK book is meant to be a guy kinda answer to Nora Ephron's I FEEL BAD ABOUT MY NECK book -

"As Nora's book at times veers into some serious territory, there is a risk that this one will too, but it will all come out okay in the end."

And Ponicsan does indeed veer into some darker stuff in the final chapter, about the inevitability of death, the aches, pains, failings and indignities of old age (the author passed 80 a year or two back). And the "twelve surgeries over fourteen years, the same place for the same reason" he has endured, along with the "dress rehearsal for death and the void of general anesthesia." But there's also that "okay in the end" part, where he tells us, in a postscript, that things have taken a "dramatic turn for the better," and I am so glad to know that.

Bottom line: this is definitely a guy book. I laughed and laughed, and sometimes winced in recognition too. But when I tried to read some of the funniest parts to my wife, she didn't laugh. Her reactions were more of the wrinkled nose, "ee-ew" variety. But Darryl's DICK book is - most of the time - just plain laugh-out-loud hilarious. I loved it. Thanks for sharing, DP. This should be part of every old guy's library. My very highest recommendation.

- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER… (more)