“Despite the stopwatch efficiency that cast a pall of mechanical inevitability over the game, there was one moment of transformative emotion to be had, and everybody had it,” writes Andrew Bonazelli, managing editor of music mag Decibel, editor-in-chief of multiple in-store music magazines, including Monitor This in Gallery of Sound locations, and now, debut author of his first book, “Mechaniks.”
While the 162-page novella is based on a news story Bonazelli read a few years ago about Morgan Ensberg, then a third baseman for the Astros, and Bonazelli admits being a baseball (Mets) fan since he was 9, the reader can expect to strike out if they think that “Mechaniks” is only another typical baseball story. Rather than baseball being the focus, it is more the venue through which the real story begins. Bonazelli refers back to Ensberg’s story as inspiration: “Apparently, when he was in the minors, he and four of his roommates were held up at a hotel room. One of them disarmed the mugger. So, [Ensberg] had a pretty serious crippling life experience. I just remember reading about that and thinking, this is a good diving off point for something a bit more sinister between the players.”
Only the reader and teammates, Flynn Marlowe and Heath Hunter, share the truth of what happened as Bonazelli writes, “The fuzz very kindly bit the line Flynn Marlowe had cast — that two bums looking for cash and jewelry broke into the room during a poker game, and shot Mick and Ramon when they resisted. It was feasible enough.”
With terse and episodic influence of Flannery O’Connor’s Southern style and Dennis Cooper’s progressive storytelling, Bonazelli shows his reader pieces of photographs “in chapter form.” He writes, “Just before the boys took the field, Heath Hunter was visited in the bullpen by a man in obsidian sunglasses and a starch-hardened dress shirt. They shook hands, held a hard shoulder-to-fist embrace for 15 seconds and shared whispers. The whole while, Heath Hunter stared over the man’s back into the outfield like a pilgrim at the frontier. Nobody applauded or carried on at the sight of these two; the world simply sat on its hands and let two lost souls find one another. ‘Your signing bonus. Then you get the gun.’”
From this moment, Bonazelli allows the unfolding events to carry his reader ravenously to the next innings in his characters’ lives. Readers will struggle to put the book down and instead they’ll entertain just one more chapter, delving deeper into the “twisted and parasitic brotherhood” of Heath and Flynn. Bonazelli writes, “These were mechanics issues, small procedural irregularities that conspired to ruin everything. They could be fixed.” By the bottom of the ninth, Bonazelli has set the batting order down, loaded the bases with plot and sent his readers a grand slam story.
Check out: http://www.thedeciblog.com/?p=831 and http://digg.com/baseball/Review_of_Mechaniks_by_Andrew_Bonazelli/ who for comments about the book and a mention about my article!
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