Sold Out!

"All writers are selling somebody out, determined Joan Didion. This time it’s me, Peter Bruno. However, given the auto-review facility of this writing site, I can strike back at the literary empire. The author created a heinous crime, writing about my family. Our upbringing was tragic, but much more so for our mother. The profound experiences come in the beginning, said my favorite teacher. Life experience, accounting for a third of our knowledge, the squid of childhood trauma spills its indelible ink over our music’s blank page, creating a difficult and repetitive rhythm we then must face forever. To wax poetic over a misfortunate parentage may be a disgraceful prodigality—spitting into luck's face. But how else to fix it? Some build glass castles, throwing ferocious stones of sentiment. The writer here chose a stucco track house in the San Fernando Valley, with kittens popping out like greased donut holes, the least well-formed quickly gobbled up by a Darwinian momma cat. Of course, that little morsel failed to make a later edit, along with my radio parody, ‘Oh, Roto-Uterus man!’ And it’s precisely these omissions that prove my point about this Punkin’s Rough Patch story: a sellout waiting to be sold out. Go ahead, read it and see for yourself! The writer is not now, then, or ever will be, an authority on Peter Bruno, though the work is obviously me cleaved. Yes, yes, the style and storytelling is all there, the lack of quotation marks allowing the reader a deeper, more authentic penetration. But who’s really getting screwed here? Read for yourself—and then judge its obvious cover."

Punkin's Rough Patch

"This story should get to a wider audience. It's an insight of how a child tries to make sense of the world. The fact that it's an insane world makes it even more interesting."

The Families

"I thoroughly enjoyed following Punkin as he navigated his way between the Scylla and Charybdis of « two families », each dysfunctional in their own way (aren’t they all?)….one of them being “grounded” in the true sense of the word due to the father’s job and locale, the other tending to more of a dream state in that dream state sometimes known as L.A…. When I first starting reading the story and saw that it was taking place in the 60s, the alarms went off—ANOTHER 60s story??!! But the author dealt with this very skillfully, avoiding the 60s clichés that have swamped literature and culture over the past few decades, while at the same time setting the background both north and south---Allen Ginsberg and Philip Whalen show up to circumambulate Mt Tamalpais, while down L.A. way the shade of Oedipas Maas seems to drift in and out of the background I truly appreciated the style of the writing, which carries the story seamlessly along….the writing is tight, and the text is well-ventilated. Each paragraph is clearly a building block for what follows, and the fact that the author does not use quotation marks for dialogue drew me more deeply into the story."

Insightful & entertaining read.

"Any child of a schizophrenic might well be interested in reading this novel. As well anyone interested in the life and times of woman trying to make it alone before the woman’s movement and equal opportunity employment. Also, the author writes of a time before the effective use of modern psychiatric drugs, and the men in the white coats could still come and get you.
The writing style is economical, descriptive when need be, and flows well. The characters fit well into the time and place, are largely sympathetic, and their dialogue punchy. Nothing seems to go on too long. Some times I wish it did. More descriptive passages about the natural setting. But that’s just my thing, perhaps. A note on the grammar, the writer eschews quotations to a good effect and it pointed out how those marks can be replaced by virtue of well spoken, necessary, and correctly formatted dialogue.
Another reason to read Patch: it really has something to say about the nature of families, especially the modeling affect parents have on their offspring, and siblings have on each other. Finally, while one realizes that Punkin, a mommy’s boy to a mentally ill mother, is a bona fide tragedy, it’s not without it’s redeeming spiritual light."

"null"

Vintage Authentic Americana

"I really enjoyed reading this book. It wasn't long before I was rooting for Sylvia, the Mother in this story. She is a single mother raising three children which is hard enough in the late 50's early 60's but to make things almost impossible she has mental illness. I root for the Mother because I am routing for Pumpkin, a little boy who loves his mother and is caught in the whirlpool of the divorce of his parents. Pumpkin struggles to keep up with his older brother and sister at times but maintains a strong sense of himself. Joe is the father of the family. He has the ability to take care of the kids in his hometown where he ives and works for his well off father. But when he takes them away to live there, their mother sets off to get them back. I wound up attached to the characters and was propelled towards the end of the book to see what becomes of them. The story is an adventure. The writer has a clear vision of the time the story is set in and is able to bring that era to the reader with fine description, recollection and history snippets. . Will Sylvia be able to keep what's left of her family together, or will she be taken away to live in a mental institution. If all it took was love, Pumpkin would have saved her..."