I'll Be Damned If I'll Die in Oakland
A Sort of Travel Memoir
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
In I'll Be Damned if I'll Die in Oakland, popular Los Angeles Times columnist and world traveler Al Martinez takes us on a funny, crazy, surprising, and sometimes poignant ride around the globe with his wife, the ebullient Cinelli, and then with his children, his grandchildren and, once, his perplexing dog Barney, scattering love, laughter, and memories all along the way.
We journey with them from Africa to China, Greece to Italy, Spain to Austria and beyond, and across the U.S. on a three-month trip from the Pacific to the Atlantic and back again, with Barney barking all the way. It's a trip through time as well as space, as the family grows and the world changes. It's a ride you'll never want to forget.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Los Angeles Times columnist Martinez declares at the opening of this spunky though disappointing memoir that it isn't a where-to or how-to book, but rather a reflection on travel's soul-enriching benefits. Time spent looking at other places and cultures is time not spent looking at ourselves, he writes. If only he'd taken that dictum to heart. For what unfolds is a chronicle of a life of tourism with Martinez and his wife at the center of nearly every scene. Pithy prose and mildly funny anecdotes notwithstanding, Martinez relates commonplace tourist adventures (e.g., museum hopping across Europe, sailing down China's Yangtze River, road tripping through Mexico) and misadventures (e.g., he claims he was nearly attacked at night by 19 lions while on a safari in Tanzania). Though the locations are promising, readers may have trouble seeing them through often irrelevant dialogue between the author and his traveling companions. As a novelist (The Last City Room), screenwriter and award-winning journalist, Martinez knows how to turn a phrase. His portrayals of his parents and colleagues are touching, and his easygoing nature can endear: "Our travel agent had mentioned before departure that part of the fun of traveling in Africa was the unexpected. I took that to mean that rhinos might skewer a tourist, not that African bartenders wouldn't know a martini from cherries jubilee. I sighed and drank what they gave me." Still, Martinez's technical proficiency doesn't make up for a lack of substance in this "sort of" travel memoir.
