Can't You Get Along With Anyone?: A Writer's Memoir and a Tale of a Lost Surfer's Paradise
by Allan Weisbecker
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Book Summary Information
Author: Allan WeisbeckerEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2007-09-24
ISBN: 0979711703
Number of pages: 504
Publisher: Bandito Books
Book Reviews of Can't You Get Along With Anyone?: A Writer's Memoir and a Tale of a Lost Surfer's Paradise
Book Review: An exploration of aspects of truth
Summary: 5 Stars
I've read Weisbecker's work for some time, having been introduced to him through surfing subculture and his legendary exploits... I originally read In Search of Captain Zero (instead of cosmic banditos, which is often people's first introduction) and found that it opened a window for me... like watching the terrible aftermath of a decadent party you missed. This led me to read Wiesbecker's email dispatches and clued me into the release of Can't You Get Along With Anyone? early... My girlfriend ordered it at first opportunity, which allowed it to fall in my lap completely unexpected.
Anyway, I immediately knew what it was and slowly stole a couple of pages, just to kind of catch the tone.
By 10:30 curiosity got the best of me and I decided to read a few chapters, which really... just moved into a dead sprint. I think everyone enjoys seeing fools shown for what they are, and since everyone can be painted foolishly in some light to varying magnitudes, there's a sigh of "Thankfully that wasn't me up there". The first arc was calm, loose... even dismissive of the ultimate sources of peril... In retrospect, I think he kind of set me up for a 'Captain Zero' ride... albeit with a more frenetic style. The strength of this is that he relies on most authors genre conventions to turn the tables on you later in the book.
Then suddenly, all the discord builds, and I'm left as much a victim as the protagonist, wondering how on earth... it got so prolific I began to doubt it's legitimacy just based on my doubt a lie *could* get so big without exploding. Of course I thought that, the very back of my mind was telling me danger was imminent. Then there's the idea that there are two plot lines happening in parallel, not that this is *said*... he left that up to me. Weisbecker let me be the blind fool who wouldn't see it. I can't stress what an effective device this was as I read.
While the story is personal, the novel is, at it's core, a parable about truth (or at least that's what I took away from it). Everyone has experience playing the various parts in this microcosm of human existance, and when you start to draw lines between the events therein, the conclusions you come to can be uncomfortable. Add that to some somewhat eerie crossovers from my life to the book and another connection through vonnegut, it made the book seem as if it were written expressly for me.
So I read... constantly... until the end. by the last pages I was rereading everything 3 times and trying to ignore the geometric patterns emerging on the blank white background as the interpolation hardware in my brain shut down, demanding sleep. 13 hours, in a hazy re-reading fury, I plowed through this book, until I aimed myself towards the bed at 11:30 the following morning.
It exceeded every measure of what I expected, and the broad social implications are astounding.
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Summary of Can't You Get Along With Anyone?: A Writer's Memoir and a Tale of a Lost Surfer's Paradise
At the finale of his critically acclaimed first memoir, In Search of Captain Zero, Allan Weisbecker has found his paradise at the end of the road in outback Central America (Pavones, Costa Rica), and is working of the screen adaptation of the book, commissioned by Sean Penn and a major Hollywood studio. Can t You Get Along With Anyone? is the story of Weisbecker s paradise, its underbelly, his fall from grace with the powers that be in Hollywood and the publishing business, plus the near loss of his life due to the writing of the book; he exposes a double murderer and, more dangerously, the love of his life as a sociopath. Interwoven through the various catastrophes that test him on every level, are Weisbecker s reflections on the process of writing the book itself and the nature of nonfiction. Weathering his after-writing throes, writer s queasy gut, and hemorrhaging forehead (from staring at the blank page), Weisbecker maintains his sanity and perspective through his wry, sometimes wildly funny take on his own fears and flaws, and through retreat into the purity of the simple act of riding a wave.Authors Books
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