Synopsis
You'll disappear if you're not careful...All’s Well Tavern is basically a basement bar to one that doesn’t know any better. It is where one can have a drink, listen to music, play some pool, or entertain a conversation. For he or she in the know though, it is a refuge and an escape from the reality that exists beyond its doors, and the moist sand of which a new reality can be molded. It is too a place where one can lose oneself, if not careful. Several patrons, each escaping a world and molding another, have made All’s Well their galaxy, and within its vacuum, some worlds coexist, some collide, and some collapse... all while having drinks, listening to music, playing pool, and entertaining conversations.Secondhands is formatted as a stage play, but it reads as simply as a novella. Though a quick read, the conversations between these flawed yet perfect patrons, have quite the psychological bite, and they are also full of humor. It is a trip to your local bar, an escape, and only the names have changed. Sometimes though, in an attempt to lose ourselves, we find ourselves.
About the Author
As an author Devin Wright is not "typically" urban. He does not write narratives to satisfy the gaze of those on the outside, with characters making an appeal in their exodus of the sensationalized violence and desperation of the inner city - these characters are always different, better than what their environment has to offer, special, cut from a different cloth, more human even, to tap into the sensibilities of the audience; they are the "good ones" in the pit of hell, of all of Sodom and Gomorra, they are Lot and his kin. Devin refuses to retell this story, as so many novels, movies, and songs have, because to humanize one or two characters in this manner, means the dehumanizing of many, and he's never saw the inner city environment that has nurtured him, deserving of such treatment. He is indeed urban though, but not the urban his audience expects when they listen to him or read his works, but just as important to the fabric of the city as the others highlighting the thug, the hoe, the drug dealer, the gangster, the hustler, and the baller, if not more important, because their stories are only partial representations of urban life, and in his opinion, irresponsible and incomplete. Many times these urban standards have only made the case that his type does not exist, outside of a protagonist trying escape the evils of the hood - which is not really his type at all, because one doesn't escape what one embraces. Devin Wright has taken his urban experience to be a redeemer of sorts, inviting the rest of the characters, telling the rest of the story, and completing the mural of inner city life for the voiceless many who do not fit within the offered mold.
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