The Last Street Before Cleveland: An Accidental Pilgrimage (Class in America) - Hardcover

Mackall, Joe

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0803232551 ISBN 13: 9780803232556

Publisher: University of Nebraska Press, 2006

Synopsis

The old neighborhood was the place Joe Mackall left. It was a place where everyone’s parents worked at the factory at the dead end of the street, where the Catholic church and school operated like a religious city hall, and where a boy like Joe grew up vowing to get out as soon as he could and to shed his blue-collar beginnings and failed, flawed religion. When the mysterious death of a childhood friend draws him back to the last street before Cleveland, however, he discovers that there is more to “old haunts” than mere words—and more to severing one’s roots than just getting away.

 

The Last Street Before Cleveland chronicles Mackall’s descent into his past: the story of how, looking for answers about his lost friend, he stumbles on larger questions about himself. With clear-eyed candor, Mackall describes the resurfacing of dormant demons, the opening of the old chasms of depression and addiction, and the discovery, at rock bottom, of a flickering faith that casts a surprising light over everything that has come before. Mackall’s is, finally, a story about life—lived and lost, given and earned.

About this title

About the Author

Joe Mackall is a professor of English at Ashland University, as well as a cofounder and editor of the nonfiction journal River Teeth: A Journal of Nonfiction Narrative. His work has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, and on NPR’s “Morning Edition,” and he is the author of Plain Secrets: An Outsider among the Amish.

Reviews

Mackall returns to his childhood blue-collar stomping grounds when a friend dies, for reasons he doesn't fully explain in this focused but gloomy memoir. Mackall, an English and journalism professor at Ohio's Ashland University, recounts the working-class culture of the 1970s Midwest and tells of how his Italian immigrant grandfather, fleeing the mob, made his way to suburban Cleveland. Mackall's elegy for the workers' world employs delightful language (after all, he's a "card-carrying nostalgist" with a knack for one-liners). However, he struggles in writing about his present despair, about what he lacks and what he hopes to find by returning to Cleveland. As Mackall begins to doubt the efficacy of his search, spiraling into isolation and a renewed drug addiction, his prose dries up, as does the narrative's concentration on his illuminating memories. "Aching to drag the past" into his lungs, he begins to contemplate a "self-administered overdose"—that is, until a sudden rekindling of faith in God hits. The epiphany, coming after the repetitious middle section, is a relief—but the restoration of working-class stability via faith is not as convincing, or nearly as beautiful, as the earlier nostalgic recreation of a lost world. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0803232551
• ISBN 13: 9780803232556
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 152