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(More customer reviews)Still Life With Brass Pole is a book I wouldn't have selected. A tale of strippers and some guy's sexual exploits all across the country? Not my taste. But, in the interest of full disclosure, I knew the author, barely, but enough to know he's a professional writer, enough to trade editing services with him. Turns out, this is an AMAZING book. I've read it twice now, once to proofread and again when I intended to re-read one poignant part and four hours later . . .
The narrative is a wild ride, a trip through a life populated with intriguing people and relentlessly sad, often surreal, situations. Machen's prose is smooth, straightforward; yet, the book is filled with lyrical lines that lay out profound truths without calling attention to themselves. In the seediest of settings, Machen makes the most sublime observations.
Machen often portrays himself as a petty criminal screw-up, but I was on his side from page one. His home life (or lack of one when he's on his own at sixteen) was so far on the side of crazy that it was impossible for my maternal instincts not to kick in. But Machen withholds blame. This isn't a book villainizing his dysfunctional family.
Nor is it a book that judges or glorifies the strip club industry and the people who work in it. It's ultimately about who we are as humans: shaded versus all dark or all light. Machen depicts layered, raw, real people, and even the monsters in this memoir are wrought with compassion.
It's ironic that Machen, a strip-club bouncer, perceives himself as a sort of protector even when he's off the clock, even when the dancers he dates slice into his overly romantic heart with sad indifference. But on some level, Machen, aware of his attraction to saving these "birds with broken wings," knows he's injured, too.
With perfect storytelling, Machen lets us in on his struggle to grow up, to make good choices, to keep his topless bar gig and wild lifestyle a pit-stop versus a finish line. Of the mostly under twenty-one nightclub employees, Machen articulates the hope, "We, on the other hand, are young. We could still rocket out of here and never look back because we are just visiting. We could still be happy, and married, and rich, and famous, and make peace with our families, and be parents, and own comfortable homes with big green lawns and silly dogs." And that's part of what kept me reading. I desperately wanted Machen and his pole-dancing love interests to see their dreams of a different future come true.
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