The Digital Hood and Other Stories - Softcover

Rondinone, P. J.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 031218686X ISBN 13: 9780312186869

Publisher: Picador, 1998

Synopsis

A vibrant and provocative collection of stories chronicling the lives of inner-city youth, from the South Bronx to L.A., from black to white to hispanic.

About this title

About the Author

P. J. Rondinone grew up in the South Bronx, and has published stories in numerous journals. He is an English professor and director of journalism at a CUNY community college and lives in New York.

Reviews

"We wear contemporary modes of clothing and mimic contemporary modes of speech," boasts one of the narrators in Rondinone's splashy debut, which combines a sentimental, muckraking realism with touches of (Donald) Barthelmean whimsy. Rondinone does indeed mimic contemporary (read, MTV-urban) modes of speechAand mimics them well. The language careens from standard English to gangsta dialect to poetic lyricism, and the structure varies from straightforward monologue to postmodern questioning of a story's premise. At its best, Rondinone's depictions of life in the ghetto remind one of Junot Diaz or Hubert Selby Jr., especially in flashes of dark, satirical humor: one gang robs another for money to print invitations to a suicide party; an overgrown 11-year-old child-prodigy fantasizes about his college teacher ("I want to bump the uglies with Miss Mandi, but she steps off because I'm not officially an adult"); a gangster invents an electrical device to make women compliant in bed. But one-liners notwithstanding, these 15 stories feed off the same macho gangsta fantasies that they pretend to satirize. Their indignation feels scripted, their veneer of pomo trickiness tacked on. In "Glasses," a little girl views her world as enchanted until corrective lenses reveal it as a slum, but at a moment when representations of ghetto life saturate the popular media, this story of corrected vision rings false. Part nightly news, part action flick, these stories may have street credibility, but their flights of fancy never quite get them off the ground. Agent: Elizabeth Backman; author tour. (July) FYI: The author was a gang member in the South Bronx.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A first collection by an English/journalism professor (CUNY), himself an ex-gang member raised in the South Bronx, looks at teenagers in the present-day hood. In 15 stories about life in and out of the Lower Depths--b-boys, gangsta rappers, junkies, ex-cons, graffiti artists, and gang- bangersRondinone gets off to a most unpromising start with ``Something for Sucio,'' an excruciatingly unfunny tale of Bronx gang members planning a party for the victim of a hit, and ``The Nobody,'' the story of a female ``tagger'' (graffiti artist) in South Central L.A. But when the author shifts out of the first-person and escapes the jargon-laden tone of these two efforts, things (briefly) pick up: ``Cleopatra'' and ``Faux Pas'' take a deeper, more mature attitude toward the violence they contemplate, achieving moments of real feeling. A series of interlocking stories about the rise and fall of Chilly P., a rap star, show a mordant wit and a greater command of dramatic monologue than the book's opening would have suggested. But it's downhill again from there, as Rondinone descends into the self-intoxicated slang-slinging of the title piece. Too many of the tales here seem to be just opportunities taken (and indulged in) by Rondinone to show that he's listening to his students' argot, dripping with postmodern irony of the cheapest sort. Still, ``Cleopatra,'' with its low-key portrait of a former gang member returning from prison to his old block, and ``Faux Pas,'' a similarly-themed effort told from the point of view of a younger friend of an ex-con, are genuinely moving and suggest that Rondinone can do better. Depending on which voice is going to emerge in later work, either a harbinger of good things to come or a portent of less. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: Picador
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 031218686X
• ISBN 13: 9780312186869
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 226