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Sara L. Griffith Review

2/24/2015

 
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To Whom It May Concern:

It is with pleasure I write to you of Mr. Robbins’ original compelling book. “These Precious Days”. It has been my honor to be witness to its development and conclusion.

First and foremost, his distinctive expository style grabs one’s attention from the outset. Terse, bare-bones and powerful, his voice rings with the authenticity of native experience combined with seasoned compassion. This is his world sung in the clipped jargon so distinctive to the region, an intimate and outrageous journal of a man stitched to his heritage but standing observer to the wholly unavoidable cycles of his lifetime. The author has stripped his soul to its basic components, allowing the reader to slip insides his skin, peering out through his heart’s eyes.

The No Sweat quotes and comments that lead into each entry are simply marvelous. I laughed. I cried. I shook my head in amazement. His use of family dynamics as background is superlative, richly confided with no apology. Mr. Robbins’ philosophy of life and its mysterious interweaving are encapsulated with such lavish cynicism and wry wit that I savored them like a fine appetizer to the main course. Pithy and acerbic they sway to the genre of poetic essay and social commentary in the infamous style of Mark Twain, yet expose a warm nature and generous spirit unmarred by aberrant events.

His characterizations are superb, particularly the hilarious nicknames that summate these unique personalities with a decisive zing. These are people struggling on the bottom strata of the local social order, belly-crawling at times, but with a ferocious dignity. It is the story of survival at its basest levels, not just a meager getting-by, but outwitting the system using its own indignities and absurdities to mock it, provoke it and occasionally defeat it while living on the wicked edges of morality and legality. His actors are not elaborate analyses; rather they blithely hint at folks whose coping skills are jungle-acquired, whose adaptations are made to bizarre, unforeseeable twists of fate. Each player possess several faceted attributes of the composite complexity of the author, and when taken as a totality produces an intriguing, fully-developed profile of the Eastern Kentucky good-ole-boy persona; a marijuana grower/pigeon breeder/deep-sea diver, law-defying and touchingly poignant, a devoted family man and loyal friend marrow-deep.

Perhaps the standout feature of this novel is its extraordinary dialogue. Mr. Robbins is a master of this deceivingly difficult aspect, with his dialect hot-n-spicy and stropped razor sharp. His ability to convey the symbolic meta-meaning with brutal (often monosyllabic) brevity is beyond remarkable. To say it is evocative is an understatement. With practiced expertise he sets each scene with the somewhat anticlimactic off-handedness of just-another-day-down-home, only to render the reader surprised, and often shocked, at the outcome. The verbal punch is delivered with a visceral banter that says as much between the lines as outright. His ‘Black Hole’ is heart-wrenchingly relevant in scope and one of the finest psychological sketches I have seen in popular print. Their repartee brims with mutual admiration and a terrible, doomed camaraderie.

Mr. Robbins has painted a portrait of a man caught in the web of his times, a victim turned survivor, a player in the eponymous reality show of hand-to-mouth grubbing and a victor who has circumvented conventionality and apparent destiny to become a psychical congregate of paradoxical array. More than just being entertained, I learned from this book and felt immersed in it singular culture, as though I had spent years exploring his world. It has the distinguishing earmarks of a masterpiece – vibrant plot, memorable characters, bucolic setting, with the personal touch of the sensitive diarist. He is an intuitive and imaginative author par excellence.

I give this new work by Mr. Robbins my highest recommendation, both as a licensed therapist and voracious reader. I look forward to seeing future offerings by this exciting new author. Thank you for the opportunity to discuss its merits.

Sincerely, 







Sara L. Griffith, LMFT
Eagle River, Alaska
May 1, 2007


Wendy Goldman Rohm

2/21/2015

 
Hi again. I just read the first few pages and I wanted to tell you your writing is wonderful. I will go through the entire manuscript in the next few days. I'm pleasantly surprised as unsolicited submissions, as you might imagine, are mostly dross.

More soon...


Best,
Wendy
 
Wendy Goldman Rohm
Literary Agent

Edward W. Woolery, Ph.D. Review

2/20/2015

 
Unlike his first novel, NEFARIOUS, or the more recent collected short stories, BLACK BLUEGRASS, Earl Lowell “Robbie” Robbins Jr. pens THESE PRECIOUS DAYS (TPD) as the noirish two-year diary of an eastern Kentucky writer’s (NO SWEAT) existential observations during a period of his waning youth. Like most significant writers of the American South, bleakness is pervasive throughout the work, even down to the pseudonyms given to those that haunt the primary social strata of his realm (e.g., Black Hole, mentor, Dark Star, best friend, Black Widow, beautiful temptress, etc.). The more luminous names given to his beloved (e.g., Sensi, Bright Eyes, True, etc.) are themselves shadowed by their juxtaposition to the troubled and often tragic family dynamic.

Set in the hills of eastern Kentucky, the town of Aoephh is spatially, temporally, and culturally isolated; however, the author selects events from his adventurous experiences to demonstrate that it perfectly represents the human condition in all places and in all time. In many respects Aoephh’s isolation allows Robbins to probe deeper into reality and truth than those typical self-aggrandizing reflections made from the safety of the cosmopolitan salons and cafes. During this 2-year period of time, 1981 to 1983, No Sweat (NS) begins to confront his past, present, and future through the struggles of his mentor, Black Hole (BH).  BH is a West Point graduate who changed services to become a Cold War B-52 pilot, and finally Air Force Academy professor and intellectual who lived in what Eliot called the “shadow” that separates the idea and reality. Ultimately, human pain and darkness feed BH’s demons to demise. NS’s struggle, although never explicitly admitted, appears to be with the same demon attractions. Like BH, NS leaves Aoephh at every chance and had the physical and mental resources to stay away, but always returned. No one escapes Aoephh or life, but for death. 

Although Robbins’ has undoubtedly been influenced by many of the great writers, he has crafted a writing style that is unique. He keeps the dialog short and focused, but manages to accurately capture the local dialect without distraction. His wordsmith distills and concentrates the essence of the characters and their circumstance. The senses are completely captured in a grand impressionistic manner, and the reader is led through the entire bandwidth of emotion, whether it is the outrageous comedy of a moonshine purchase in the mountains or the haunting sorrow of his mother’s illness. Whatever the emotion, TPD is an implicit and explicit reminder of the pain-of-living each of us endure, but to our detriment bury within the chaos and insanity of daily affairs. Robbins’ challenges the reader to examine the fragile restraints on their inner demons, and provides a short respite through this well-crafted diary to breathe the pheromones and boldly walk in their tender shadow.


Edward W. Woolery, Ph.D.
Engineering Seismology and Geophysics
University of Kentucky
Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences
101 Slone Research Building
Lexington, KY  40506-0053

Reviews...

2/19/2015

 
Hi Gene 
Save the best to the last; the Jan 1 edition article [Peg Leg by No Sweat] is amazing, personal, sensational and entertaining. This is why I am in the sport and also reading your Mag. Thanks!
Calvin
Markham, Ontario, Canada

Gene Yoes, Editor & Publisher    Racing Pigeon Digest

Gene,
There are pigeon stories, and then there are pigeon stories.  "Heaven Roosted There" by No Sweat in your last issue is one of the finest I have ever read, and I have been reading the best literature, in and out of the pigeon game, for years.  

No Sweat captures the rush and the passion of looking at pigeons as a child, but he does so much more. He evokes both the love of pigeons and the soul of growing up.  His bridge of pigeons is another kid's old overall factory, or silo, or meat packing house, or condemned apartment house (at the top of which someone like Chas. Heitzman had the pigeons of a god).

Kudos to him for his writing.   And thanks so much for running it.

Old Fret 

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