The Life and Adventures of Lyle Clemens

by John Rechy

Book Overview

Modeled on the classic 18th-century picaresques like Fielding's The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling and Defoe's Moll Flanders, The Life and Adventures of Lyle Clemens is the modern-day bildungsroman... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0802117465
• ISBN13: 9780802117465
• Release Date: October 2003
• Publisher: Grove/Atlantic
• Length: 324 Pages
• Weight: 1.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.3" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Hands Down, One of the Year's Very Best

A beautifully written story that will go down as one of the author's best. The tale of the lovable Lyle Clemens is not only funny but incredibly touching. The ending is sublime. Fans of Rechy and those who have never read a word of his work are in for a real treat.

LYLE IS VERY ENTERTAINING --- A Must Read

After all the hullabaloos in the NY Times over authors writing their own reviews, because of the comments of Rechy, I picked up this book over the weekend and couldn't put it down. Curiosity got the best of me. The book is hilarious. I enjoyed every minute. I recall reading Rechy's excellent but dark CITY OF NIGHT. This is such a contrast. It is humorous yet touching, proving Rechy's strong virtuosity as a topflight novelist. It is story telling at its best - a bewitching wickedly entertaining tome in which an irrepressible young hero is set loose in the "born again" world of Texas, the clubs of Las Vegas, and then on to the seductive allure of crazed filled Los Angeles. Finely written, a very good read, highly recommended and I'm pleased to rediscover this excellent writer.

Physical Bravado

I think what people are missing with Rechy's latest -- and what's so expertly done it's nearly invisible -- is the sheer physical bravado of the writing. What other modern novels move with such lithe speed, evoking the physical world of both the picaresque and the screwball comedy with such wicked glee? None that I can think of. Like most great comedy, its seeming slightness is being used against it. Rechy doesn't linger over anything; he makes his points then moves on. If he turned lugubrious or ponderous, the praising would never cease!! But his footing is sure, his cutting wit swift, and his amassed technique does what all technique should do: it recedes to the (in this case) sheer visual power of the storytelling....

Hilarious and deeply moving novel

Until I read this novel, I don't think I would believe that a novel that is often laugh-aloud funny would also be so deeply moving--at times, I felt tears. It's a loose take-off on TOM JONES, but it's set in present times, and its hero is handsome Lyle Clemens, born in Texas, to a beautiful woman whose hopes of becoming Miss America are crushed by her fundamentalist mother in a scene that will have you laughing and crying at the same time. Lyle is something of an innocent, not even aware of his good looks and sexiness that attracts an array of lively characters, Maria, the Mexican beauty, Rose, the "loose" woman who initiates him into sex (and whose advice he follows when he's called upon to perform "the preacher strut" at a fundamentalist revivial, another scene that will have you howling with laughter). There's also Clarita, the somewhat daffy woman who helps to raise Lyle; Sister Matilda, a gospel singer who befriends him; aging starlet Tarah Worth, who wants, desperately, to get the lead in a remake of Valley of the Dolls, a screenplay that changes throughout the book until it becomes something entirely otherwise; she seduces Lyle into a mad scheme during the Academy Awards, another pricelss scene. Among the most hilarious and deadly characters are Brother Bud and Sister Sis, crooked evangelists, and a couple of uppity pornograhpers, a man whose wife is constantly toning down his language even on the set of their porn movies. In Los Angeles, Lyle falls in love with a poster-woman named Babette, that leads him into a trap to become the next porn sensation on the internet, a nasty plot devised by the porn king and queen. There's also Raul, the gay kid who falls in love with Lyle and falls into the clutches of the evangelists who want to rid him of "the devil," another scene that makes you laugh and cry at the same time. Lyle moves from Texas to Las Vegas (he's sure a magician is really sawing up his assistant), and on to Hollywood. He alternately becomes the Lord's Cowboy, when the evangelists take him on tour to excite their congreation; Mr. Cowboy, when he accompanies a superstitious Las Vegas gambler; the Mystery Cowboy, after, at Hugh's mansion he "saves" Miss Universal from a peacock that has run rampant over the mansion grounds; and, finally, a surprising development on Hollywood Boulevard, one of the most touching endings I have ever read. This book is great--and on top of it all, it has terrific illustrations, one for each chapter. I won't ever forget this book nor Lyle and the wide cast of characters.