The following review is by Randall Glumm, writer and the former proprietor of Way Station Books in downtown Lansing. The closure of Way Station Books was a great loss to downtown Lansing. Scott Sparling author of Wire to Wire will be at EVERYbody Reads Bookstore in Lansing Michigan today 1:30 p.m., Tuesday, July 26. And who better to write a review on a train ride than Randall Glumm who as a young boy was run over by a train and lived.
This book, Wire to Wire, by Scott Sparling, comes out of Tin House Books and yes, it is the same wonderful company that publishes Tin House the periodical that includes big time writers like Stuart Dybek to name one of my favorites. I am adding Sparling to my list.
I’m a low-brow and Sparling deserves better . However, I found this book to be an exciting chase through the mind and through Michigan and a few states west; across Lake Michigan hopping several trains; and yikes, I even found myself getting excited when a bad guy got stabbed and was left for dead in the desert.
The antagonist/main character, hero-anti-hero, picaresque kinda guy, (he could even qualify as a foil from time to time) – this guy, Michael Slater, takes a near fatal jolt of high amp electricity to the head while hopping freight trains in Detroit and somehow survives but the voltage has interrupted the direction in his “train of thought” and what he sees. The vehicle for moving the plot, in my opinion, is the train, and it clicks along at a good clip, carries the movement so you don’t want to hop off or even go to the club car for a fast drink. You want to stay on board, hold the bladder, skip the visit to the bathroom and see what happens next.
It struck me that Slater was a contemporary Huck Finn who has traded his raft for the freight train and a mouthful of drugs. The high amount of voltage to the brain hasn’t helped either— or has it? The effect of the high power voltage causes him to see things in frames of film, loops, and a peripheral view that would make a spider envious and we are not sure he is in a flash-back or experiencing the “current” time (no pun intended)…we just have to hold on. We have to sit in his head and view things his way almost like Pynchon’s work, like a loopty loop, at times a nightmare at times like Ground Hog Day. At times (I was probably ditched, easily, at a siding) I was not sure if it was a flash-back, a future back, or Slater’s hallucination. Check Sparling’s terrific new-generation website out here.
There is a brief time in the desert with a sleazy chic and sleazy neighbors, a death, and I think another death and an escape from death, a ride to Lake Michigan, cross the lake to another murder, some back woods fringe characters and drug charmed losers, more drugs, a love interest hooked on glue huffing who was once connected to Slater’s best friend….and maybe another death. I might’ve gotten left at another siding. I’ll have to re-read this book – for certain. There is burn-through, paste-over, splicing, cutting, film-break, and simultaneous reels to keep you piqued. Slater is on the move.
This is a great read. The narrator keeps you moving. Pick up a copy and get on board with Scott Sparling’s Wire to Wire. Get your ticket punched. Watch a video trailer with Sparling here. Read a review of Wire to Wire in Portland Book Review. You may also know Sparling from his successful Bob Seger website The Seger File.
