Night Time Losing: Going to the Mat Against Political Pawns and Media Jackals

Bohemia is alive & kicking in Ventura's,'Nighttime Losing Time'. The writing seems to come from direct sexual & musical experience, and has the power of revelation. I'd never heard of Ventura, but noticed on the jacket that post-Jungian sage, James Hillman had endorsed it. A long time fan of Hillman's brilliant insights, I jumped into Ventura's world & came up gasping for air. It is sprawling & rabbits on in some regional Texan patois. But precious & pretentious it is not. When I'd resurfaced I sent it directly to the few friends I knew would rejoice in the sincerity of Ventura's quest for the sources of his creative gifts, the 'places where they ain't got scales.' It took a decade to revisit this book as I was anxious that the initial read may have been a chimera, a projection of my own crises. But no. Friends confirmed its originary clout. And no; it rutted in my creases yet again. It may help if you dig Butch Hancock, Terry Allen, Joe Ely, or Willie Nelson as their music is the soundtrack for Ventura's honkytonk heavies. Narrator, Jesse Wales's apocalyptic vision (p 375) swims in the blood meridian so epically summoned in Cormac McCarthy's magnum opus of that name. Unlike McCarthy's remorseless dudes destined to endlessly repeat their bedevilled lives, Wales finds regeneration and possibly redemption through understanding the meaning of the pain and loss he and his coterie share. Move over Balzac & Baudelaire, Ventura has muscled entry to the dark domains, in the breathless pursuit of ecstasy.

This is a scorching first novel from a first-rate American writer about the back road, the juke joints, and the inner lives around them --- without a trace of bombast or sensationalism that so often come with this territory. I've done my share of Lit.101 and Great Books, yet this is the only book that came along and successfully conjured in flesh and blood the secret selves that people around me carry in concealment. Never spent time in that corner of America myself, yet the book had made me see the world in a whole new light. Strong stuff -- but medicine for all you seekers out there.... (Read his column too in Austin Chronicle if you like this.)