| Title | : | Rocket Man |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0615213073 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780615213071 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback/Kindle |
| Number of Pages | : | 375 |
| Publication | : | First published December 1, 2008 |
Dale Hammer is trying to find his part of the American Dream. But he just can't keep up. In a story of hilarious consequences, we find Dale in one week accused of cutting down the sign to his subivision, plagued with a father who has come to live over his garage, and on the hook for being the Rocket Man of his son's Scout Troop. While the price of the American Dream has become nothing short of being rich and famous, Dale heads for the the catastrophe of Rocket Day with one mission--to give his son a sense of independence, and in the process, find himself. ...LAUNCH!
Rocket Man Reviews
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I really wanted to like this book. I won it here on Goodreads through the first-reads giveaway, and I was hoping to be able to sing its praises.
Unfortunately, I have two pet peeves in this life. The first is stupid people who repeatedly make bad decisions. The second is unnecessary cursing. This book was loaded with both.
Dale, the main character, is a worthless troll. It was impossible to find ANYTHING to respect about this man, and therefore I truly didn't care what happened to him... or his awful father, brother, and sister-in-law. As for his wife, well... no well-educated professional woman I know would stand for his antics and lack of support (financially, emotionally, and parent-wise).
That all ended 'well' for this idiot was totally unbelievable. -
Rocket Man by William Hazelgrove is not a good novel: it is unequivocally a great one. Many writers attempt to portray contemporary society, mixing social comment and empathetic life stories with expressions and interpretations of culture, but few succeed. Often the result is an admixture of what the writer wants to say carried on a vehicle of plot too flimsy to carry it, or a merely impressionistic view of events devoid of significance. In the case of Rocket Man, William Hazelgrove’s portrayal of contemporary society is so convincing, so perfectly apposite that the reader almost becomes a participant. The author mixes tragedy and humour, wit and literary invention, observation and opinion, reality and farce into a completely seamless portrayal of competitive suburbia, where battles can be fought across driveways, as ongoing wars are pursued in the lounge. Domestic reality becomes fiction, but presents a picture that is almost more real than fact. Rocket Man is thus an almost complete literary achievement.
Dale Hammer is himself a novelist. His books, once critically acclaimed, he tells us, have fallen from fashion and are now also largely out of print. Their existence can be traced to thumbed copies on Dale’s shelves and via increasingly oblique references on the internet, where they lie in lists, second hand and largely unwanted. Dale devotes himself full time to writing, but nothing new has emerged from his disaster area of a study for some time and even those who were once enthusiastic about his work have now either forgotten it or grown old enough now to worry only about themselves.
Dale is forty-six and is married to Wendy. Like all Americans, he has his dream, as Wendy has hers. They have two children and do not always see eye-to-eye. Dale Junior is ten, and Angela, five. Dale Junior likes his sports and his Boy Scouts, but seems to do less well at school than he or his parents would like. Angela usually has her own way, but reality often interrupts the dream, it seems. Wendy sometimes seems rather oblivious to crises and seems to defer to her husband whenever possible, especially when she is looking for someone to blame. Dale, however, usually lacks competence, despite his apparently limitless faith in his own abilities, abilities that others often find hard to recognise. Though he tries hard, he is often ever so slightly misdirected by himself and thus accomplishes things he did not quite intend, usually to his detriment.
The title refers to Dale’s adopted responsibility to act the role of chief launcher of the traditional rockets at an upcoming Boy Scout jamboree. It’s a major social event in Charleston’s suburbia, as it nestles newly-developed and mock-rurally near Chicago. And Rocket Man is a role that commands respect, and thus demands competence. Thus there are doubts, not least within Dale himself, as to whether this year’s choice of operative is quite up to the task.
Dale and Wendy are really city types, used to Oak Park, an area that has its share of problems, safety-issues, drug use, poor schools and the like. As an inner city, it’s as stereotypical as Charleston might pretend to the suburban, the latter boasting exaggerated safety, smart cars and overtly expressed community that is really a skin around a scrum of individual competition. Wendy in particular wanted the move, preferring something more substantial now that the kids were growing up, something more respectable, perhaps, now that she and Dale had achieved middle age, a term they themselves probably shunned until its sheer inevitability finally demanded acceptance. Overall, the suburbs offered a salubrious safety, a state that Wendy came to desire, a state that years ago she had rejected when she married Dale, believing that life with him would never be dull. So off to Charleston they went, to a big house with a big mortgage, an aging SUV and neighbours who at least appear to claim greater stability than the Hammers. Dale was to write full time, while Wendy pursued her own work. To make ends meet, or at least to bring them a little closer, Dale took up brokering on commission. This meant dealing with the public.
Dale’s father turns up. He has been thrown out again. He has also lost his job. Dale Senior seems almost to have walked straight out of John Updike, and rabbits around the single lady across the road, as his Jaguar is repossessed. The other son, Elliott and his African American wife appear, sincerely concerned about dad now having to live over a garage. They, as academics, have more space and comfort. Dale’s in-laws also visit, and open war breaks out as attitudes and assumptions clash, but only as a result of the best of intentions, which really are just euphemisms for self-interest.
So what is so special about Rocket Man that merits such high praise? The answer to that is nothing. Like all great achievements, Rocket Man raises the mundane to the special by encouraging us to participate. These characters could pontificate about the state of the economy, about contemporary values, about the nature of society, but they don’t have to because they are alive, and we, for a while, live alongside them, sharing their concerns, concerning ourselves with them. We thus become participants in their lives and the experience is so real that we, ourselves, experience the issues that affect them. The result is a riveting and enlightening read. It owes much to Updike, with the raw sex replaced by liberal helpings of wit, humour and irony. Rocket Man is without a shadow of doubt a masterpiece of modern literature and deserves to fly very high indeed. -
What does it mean to be a white, middle-aged, free-thinking liberal living the post-recession American Dream? In William Hazelgrove’s darkly satiric ROCKET MAN, it means being lost in the wasteland of suburbia, where the “Dreamers” wear blinders to obscure the wreckage of the world in which they live. Dale Hammer is in his forties, with a stay-at-home wife (a former lawyer) and their two precocious kids. Unfortunately, Dale is pretty much a useless loser – he was once a successful novelist, but that was a decade ago. Now, he makes a paltry living by renting apartments to seedy tenants and selling expensive mortgages to people with bad credit. In other words, he’s a slumlord living in an overblown suburban mansion he can’t afford.
There is nothing likable about Dale Hammer. When we first meet him he’s driving a bunch of Boy Scouts in his SUV while drinking a Bloody Mary – “It’s just a splash of vodka,” he tells his long-suffering wife, Wendy. The novel’s title refers to Dale’s appointment as Boy Scout “Rocket Man,” tasked with helping a troop of Scouts shoot off rockets on the much-anticipated Rocket Day. Dale doesn’t want to be Rocket Man, but he doesn’t quite know how to get out of it – and part of him (a very small part, actually) wants to do something special for his son, Dale, Jr. You see, the only memorable moment Dale ever had with his own father (a Willy Loman-style traveling salesman who was almost never home) was the one Christmas when the two of them shot off Dale’s own model rocket – for that one moment in time, Dale had his father’s attention. “[I]t was the only time we were really together,” Dale says, “watching that rocket disappear into the coal sky.”
ROCKET MAN is sharply satiric and very well written. But I have to admit I didn’t like any of these characters. Dale is one of those whiny losers who constantly does things that undermine his chance of happiness. Wife Wendy is unbelievably supportive of her wayward husband – and I had a lot of trouble believing she would have put up with him for so long, leaving their finances in the hands of a man with absolutely no sense of responsibility. Their neighbors are both pretentious and arrogant, castigating Dale while labeling all the tools in their immaculately kept garages. Dale’s father, a womanizing workaholic who was never there when Dale was growing up, is loud and crude in a way that’s more sad than funny. Dale’s brother, Wendy’s parents, the Scout leaders – none of them are likeable. These are not people I’d want to hang out with.
Ultimately, ROCKET MAN is about the tenuous relationship between fathers and sons, and on that level it comes close to working. Dale wants to be a better father to his son than Dale Sr. was to him – but he constantly fails to live up to his own goals. In the end, Hazelgrove gives him a happy ending, but it’s not one he particularly deserves. I expected the ending from the first chapters, and it plays out pretty much as I thought it would. Dale and his son have their moment together, just as Dale and his father did decades before. And Hazelgrove suggests that in Dale’s case, that moment makes all the difference. But the fact that Dale’s father can’t even remember the Christmas when he and Dale shot off their rocket together suggests otherwise. One character, former Scout Rocket Man Dean Heinrich (who is passing the torch to Dale), beautifully sums up what this novel is all about. Dean is trying to get Dale to take Rocket Day seriously, and he opens up to him about the shallowness of his own suburban life. The rockets, he says, are his only way of “lifting off from the earth” and feeling free. “I don’t expect you to feel the same way I do,” Dean tells Dale. “But I want you to promise me, that as Rocket Man, you will give the rockets a good launch, do a countdown for the boys, let them press the button, let them blast off their rocket, because I’m here to tell you it gets harder and harder to leave this earth and for a lot of them, it might be their only chance.” Dale gets it in the end. But it takes him a frustratingly long time to get there.
I did enjoy parts of ROCKET MAN, and I do see a lot of truth in the lives these characters are living – or trying to live. Ours is a sad world filled with one-time dreamers with upside-down mortgages, marriages that are more adversarial than loving, and men who want a 1950’s lifestyle in a world where the bubble has already burst. Hazelgrove is giving us a healthy dose of suburban angst, but it often feels more whiny than real. Fans of Updike’s Rabbit books will undoubtedly like this. I just never cared enough about Dale (or his suburban struggle to be a rebel in a cracker-box palace) to really feel for him, much less identify with him. It’s a well-written novel that almost works.
[Please note: I was provided a copy of this novel for review; the opinions expressed here are my own.] -
ROCKETMAN by William Hazelgrove
Book Description (from Amazon)
Publication Date: May 1, 2013
The Catcher in the Rye for the Great Recession, Rocket Man defines a new upside down American Dream. Dale Hammer is the every man who is trying to find himself.
Rocket Man is a very funny and poignant comment on our times, when an upside down middle class is barely hanging onto the American dream. Taking cues from the calamity of The Great Recession, we meet Dale Hammer, a man who is determined to find meaning in a landscape of suburban homogeneity, looking for the moment he had with his own father when they blasted off a rocket on a wintery evening. He feels his son slipping away as he tries to get around "the silent shame of fathers and sons." He becomes the Rocket Man for his sons scout troop and immediately his life implodes. Accused of cutting down the subdivision sign to his neighborhood, he becomes the lone rebel, going down in a flaming arc. When Rocket Day comes, Dale is determined to give his son more than his father gave him.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
William Elliott Hazelgrove is the best-selling author of three novels, Ripples, Tobacco Sticks and Mica Highways. His books have received starred reviews in Publisher Weekly, Book of the Month Selections, ALA Editors Choice Awards and optioned for the movies. He was the Ernest Hemingway Writer in Residence where he wrote in the attic of Ernest Hemingway's birthplace. He has written articles and reviews for USA Today and other publications. His latest novel Rocket Man was chosen Book of the Year by Books and Authors.net. He has been the subject of interviews in NPR's All Things Considered along with features in The New York Times, LA Times, Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun Times, Richmond Times Dispatch, USA Today, People, Channel 11, NBC, WBEZ, WGN. He runs a political cultural blog,
REVIEW:
William Elliott Hazelgrove's ROCKET MAN is a wonderful piece of writing, The author takes you through the contemporary part of life. He does this so meticulously that he catches a part of us all. The author has a definite gift with words.He pulls everything together to show the entire view of a single man and the changes his life goes through.Hammer is a successful writer. He has struggled to rebuild his literary place in the world. The story goes through some of the little things that happen in Hammer's life, such as dealing with irate neighbors., his father, who thinks he's women's gift, moves in, broke. On top of all that the community dumps on him the role of ROCKETMAN (organizer of the Scout troop annual show)
If you want an entertaining, funny read that is written wonderfully from one end of the book to the other. How can we find it funny when we look back on the grim picture of where we are and where we have come from in our world today. This book may make you look at others and yourself differently. It is difficult to like some people. It's difficult to like ourselves at time. Maybe we will be in that other person's shoes some day and it may not be so funny.
I received a complimentary copy of ROCKETMAN from the author William Hazelgrove for this unbiased review.
I give this book 5 STARS.
HIGH FIVE!
http://www.williamhazelgrove.com
www.amazon.com
http://www.shelfari.com/books/3260384...
http://bemiown.blogspot.com
http://www.goodreads.com
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Dale Hammer's got problems. He's got a big house in the 'burbs that he can't afford and a marriage that's cooling faster than polar bear droppings. The police are after him for vandalizing a sign and the school crossing guard is after him for speeding. His father, who has just lost his job and his marriage, has moved into his office. But worst of all, Dale realizes that he is becoming his own father, a remote figure who continually lets down his son -- and he can't seem to break out of his funk.
Rocket Man is a novel about the American dream gone sour. You can't buy happiness in a bigger house, or in any other form. Dale is finding this out the hard way. He blames his problems on his sterile suburban surroundings, but his wife points out that he was just as unhappy in the old house. Moving again isn't going to help.
A comparison to Richard Ford is inevitable: Dale's a transplant from Mississippi, a failed writer who now works as a mortgage broker; he owns a rental property. But the similarity is superficial. Ford's characters inhabit the quiet aftermath of events, beset by a quiet melancholy; Dale, on the other hand, ricochets from one crisis to the next, refusing to go gently into the afternoon. A more apt comparison would be Thomas McGuane: the unaccountable transgressive behaviour, a penchant for taking things too far, the struggles of fathers and sons. But Hazelwood lacks McGuane's flair for language, the electrifying precision of his diction. His humour is not deadpan, but manic.
The novel opens with a bang: Dale, driving a group of Cub Scouts to Dairy Queen, has missed his turn. The solution that occurs to him, as he sips a Bloody Mary to ease his hangover, is to go cross-country, taking a shortcut across a construction site. The kids, which category includes Dale, think it's a riot. His wife and the scout leader, who has just realized that he's not drinking tomato juice, are less amused. The scene is laugh-out-loud funny; we're in for a heck of a ride.
Unfortunately, that ride stalls; the novel suffers from a sagging middle. Matters cease to develop as we pass from one scene to the next in a suburban picaresque. Here the faults of the novel are on full display: a tendency to overdraw minor characters, weak dialogue without subtext, the insistence on explaining all through passages of exposition that interrupt the flow of the scene. In much of the middle third of the novel, it lacks a real emotional connection to its characters.
When the novel picks up again, however, all this fades into the background. The last 100-or-so pages pick up the pace and the story here undeniably fulfills the promise of its opening scene. Here, also, a real emotional connection is restored. The faults of the sagging middle are redeemed.
Rocket Man is in many ways an enjoyable novel; it's unfortunate that it isn't about 100 pages shorter. -
I received and Early Reviewer's copy of Rocket Man by William Elliott Hazelgrove through LibraryThing's Early Reviewers program. In general I am predisposed to like these books because I had some initial interest in reading it based on the description and that was certainly the case with this book. I was quite pleased that I was chosed to receive this book. Unfortunately this book did not live up to my expectations at all.
Rocket Man is a story of middle-aged, middle class white men's angst. It is the story of Dale Hammer living and struggling in suburban America and battling both with and for the "Amercian Dream." Dale is, in my opinion, the worst kind of snob -- the kind who despises people for finding success and/or happiness in situations where he cannot and therefore looks down on those people as being less intelligent. Worse than being a snob, he is also a hypocrite. We are supposed to feel sorry for him because his father wasn't there for him growing up and yet he cannot stop himself from disappointing his own son at every turn. His own father mis-treated his mother and yet he mis-treats his wife albeit not in the same way it is still mis-treatment. There is no redeeming moment, no better qualities that shine through Dale. The female characters are paper doll thin stereotypes. The plot itself only loosely hangs together. And although the last couple of pages try to redeem him and give him a happy ending, it is hard to believe Dale won't sabotage this happiness as he has sabotaged all other happiness in his life.
After visiting the author's website, I see that this book is supposed to be satire and I think I missed that. I'm not sure if that's me or the book. -
I’ve got „Rocket Man” as ARC through LibraryThing as well. And as some other people before me – I’m still not sure if I like it or not.
As you may read in many posts – it’s a story of 46 years old Dale, who moved his family out from the city, to the “land of happiness”, where the family would bloom. And it happened the opposite – everything is wrong – wife want to divorce, son hates him, his father is kicked by his wife and is moving to live with Dale, Dale has problems with everyone around him – school, neighbors, police… He is all the time repeating how much he cares about his relatives and their life, but actually is not able to do anything to change his and his family life for better and to solve the problems.
I liked the plot in the meaning of dealing with “American dream” and nowadays life. But I didn’t like half of the characters (mostly the main one) – they were irritating me most of the time ;) I know it could be planned by the author like that, but for me it makes it more difficult to enjoy the book if I’m irritated most of the time ;) The other thing is the ending – for me this situation is a bit too unrealistic, to see this one moment as a crucial change of the life of the family.
The other thing is the cover – it would not invite me for buying this book. I know it’s clearly related with the leading theme of the book, but there is plenty of nicer photos to use. But I’m quite sure the publishers already got the point from other notes about the book and re-considered the cover :)
In general – I liked the book, but without fireworks ;) It’s ok read for a winter evenings :) -
I enjoy all of Mr. Hazelgrove's novels. This one took a bit of tenacity to get to the just rewards; but I am glad I did. Many reviewers, who have loved it, have expressed it much better than I can. It is a touching, sad, humorous, witty, and ultimately optimistic tale of life in contemporary households. Perhaps, Hazelgrove meant nothing more than to share his experience of moving up(or down as the case may be) to the promised lands of suburbia. But I found it to be primarily a story of the struggles of a man trying to cope with the purported American Dream vs. his individual needs to cling to his passion as a writer/story-teller in the midst of the struggles to simply stay afloat in a society where the middle class is overwhelmed with pressures. Here is a man(Dale Hammer) who sincerely tries to be a better father to his son Jr. than his father was to him. But obstacles, perhaps more than a few created by Dale himself, keep upsetting his master plan. Can he be lazy at times? Sure, but he is still a man trying to cope with the demands of being a husband and father of two children, and trying to give them what he thinks they need even if he has to take a job that he hates to stay above water. It's also in large measure a story of the expectations of a father to his son and vice versa. It is a quest to recapture a life altering moment between father and son and the courage to face his fear of failure in the face of community conformity that ultimately leads Dale to find the link to his son and family. Dale is no Man in a Gray Flannel suit. Hazelgrove, you are the best!
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I see Dale Hammer as an angrier, more ironically aware Rabbit Angstrom. I think a modern update of the suburban ennui that Updike laid out for the '60s, '70s, '80's and '90s is necessary. The problem is, this book is not that modern update.
While at points, Hazelgrove's writing was spot on, pinpointing just the perfect detail or situation of suburban life that makes it so deadening for many people. The emotional turmoil of the character was well detailed and the subtle growth in Dale Hammer's upset was very well done.
At other points the writing was spotty, jumpy. I felt as is there were sections missing from the text which would have explained what I was reading. At several points I flipped to prior pages, chapters to attempt to determine who, why and how, but found nothing.
Overall, this book was an almost. I liked it, but have significant reservations about recommending it given it's issues. -
Grating. I was sort of looking forward to this one. I got the impression it was going to be somewhat funny. Well, apparently not to me. I read 100+ pages and decided to just let it go...My take on it for these first pages: one of the most negative pieces of fiction I've read in a LONG time. And I suppose the negativity is part of the point of the novel but I found the main character very whiney, unresponsible, and unaccountable to the life he arranged/chose for himself. Maybe it will get better, and maybe if I were a man in the same situation I might enjoy it, and maybe...well, there could be a lot of "maybes" for someone to enjoy this story but I'm not willing to find one. And although I am certainly no stranger to the F-bomb, Hazelgrove flings it around more freely than I can tolerate.
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I received an Advance Reading Copy of Rocket Man through Librarything.com. Because of it being an ARC I pushed my way through the entire book. I did not like the bad language; it was too much for me. I think the story would have been just as effective without it – which isn’t saying much because I did not think the story was believable. I found it hard to believe that anyone as self-involved as the protagonist would have stayed in a relationship that long. While parts of the book were amusing, the plot seemed shallow. The ending seemed to redeem the book a bit; however, it was too little too late.
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I hate to say this (I mean, here they send me a free book), but I really didn't like this book. I got the point he was trying to make (I'm not really stupid and felt like it was being shoved down my throat), and I don't necessarily disagree with it, but I want to be entertained or at least interested in what I'm reading. I was bored, I did not like Dale the main character, it was depressing, and I couldn't wait for it to be over. The very very end was good, but what you have to go through to get to that point just isn't worth the time.
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Bill Hazelgrove's Rocket Man took 10 years to launch.
By Mark Eleveld
Published: December 9, 2008
A poet once told us that if we wanted to know good writing, we had to read Chicago authors Stuart Dybek and James McManus. Surprisingly, at the time both were out of print: two full decades of writing only attainable via eBay. Since then, of course, they’ve gone on to become icons in Chicago literature, proof that despite the fleeting nature of trends, good writing survives. For this reason, Bill Hazelgrove has more than survived.
In 1992, Hazelgrove published his first novel, Ripples, to critical acclaim and followed it up with two more novels, Tobacco Sticks and Mica Highways. But then he hit a speed bump, unable to finish another book, and Ripples fell out of print. “You have to write badly for a long time before you write well,” says Hazelgrove, 48. “I went on a ten-year streak of writing badly. It really sucked.”
But finally, after cranking out three novels that never saw the light of day, Hazelgrove has hit pay dirt with his new novel, Rocket Man (Pantonne Press, $19.95). Tracing a week in the life of writer and sometime mortgage broker Dale Hammer, Rocket Man highlights changes in suburbia, as the characters wind through the crazy times of economic woe. Hammer endures a writer’s slump while confronting the societal norms of a neighborhood that offers “large lawns but empty minds.” He stands accused of cutting down the subdivision sign, avoids the divorce papers from his wife sitting quietly in the oversized kitchen next to the property-tax bills, and winces under the omnipresence of his Southern father. But Hammer keeps reaching for the heart of the ancient command: Know thyself.
“One day, maybe three years ago, I started out with this guy,” Hazelgrove says. “He was an asshole, sarcastic, witty, but he had something to say about the American Dream. Little did I know [the economy] would implode and Rocket Man would be this novel where the story becomes our reality.”
Hazelgrove has a unique perch from which to cast his gimlet eye on the middle class. As the writer-in-residence at Ernest Hemingway’s Birthplace Home in Oak Park, he occupies the great American novelist’s attic. A former Oak Park resident, Hazelgrove was walking the neighborhood one day in the 1990s when he “just strolled in” and asked if he could start writing.
“It is strange to be up in Hem’s attic,” he says. “It seemed like the place called for it, having a writer pounding away on keys. It gets cold and it gets way too hot, but the net of it is a great place to hide and try and pump out some prose.”
Though settled into a writer’s dream locale, after the 1998 publication of Mica Highways, Hazelgrove found himself the victim of midlist author syndrome. Publishers pegged him as a Southern novelist with moderate sales, and he felt confined. The fact that he’d bought a new home in St. Charles just added to the pressure. It turned out to be both a blessing and curse.
“I did what a lot of people did during the real-estate boom, a big house in the far ’burbs,” he says. “I had no idea what I was getting into or where I was getting into it. You think you’re just changing a house, but I was changing a way of life. That’s when Dale came to me.”
Rocket Man’s story unfolds naturally, and Hazeglrove skillfully gives voice to the numbness and fear inherent in a man trying to save his house and family. That said, it’s the funniest serious novel we’ve read since Richard Russo’s Straight Man. And now Hazelgrove finds himself back in print. Once again, good writing prevails.
“I went through a lot trying to write this novel,” he says. “I hadn’t become the person I needed to be to write it.” -
Dale Hammer is a struggling writer who has moved his family to the suburbs in search of the American Dream. Rather than finding suburban bliss, Dale is unable to hold his life together as he faces financial problems, marriage problems, and his failures as a father.
While many reviews of Rocket Man have referred to the book as humorous, I failed to see the humor in Dale Hammer's tremendous failures as a husband and father. (Although to be fair I didn't *get* the humor in The Nanny Diaries or The Devil Wears Prada either.) Dale is not a very likable or sympathetic character because it is clear that many of his problems stem from his own actions and attitude. At the same time, Dale is examining his life and sees his failures yet is unable to change his course - like a train wreck that one sees coming but is unable to prevent.
My favorite character in the book was actually Dale Hammer, Sr. because he is essentially my father in law with a southern accent. Dale Sr. is also a tremendous failure but the difference is that he has a spark of life that the main character is lacking. Despite Dale Sr.'s problems he continues to move forward with a vigorous new plan. He is loud, crude, and demands attention - a true salesman in all areas of his life.
Rocket Man is an engaging look at the illusion that is the American Dream. The book is also incredibly timely with the collapse of the housing market and current economic conditions that have many people struggling to maintain their customary lifestyle in the face of financial difficulties. The events of the book are occasionally interrupted by Dale's contemplations of his current situation. While these scenes allow readers to understand Dale's thoughts and motivations, the inner monologues come across as a bit pretentious - would such an epic failure as Dale really be that aware of his own life?
As a novel in the literary/general fiction category, which is outside of my usual scope of reading, I enjoyed Rocket Man more than I expected I would. One caveat - the book does contain quite a bit of foul language which could turn some people off to the story.
Thank you to William Elliott Hazelgrove and Pantonne Press for sending me an Advance Review Copy of Rocket Man.
Find this review and more at
http://librarygirlreads.blogspot.com -
William Elliott Hazelgrove’s Rocket Man is a first rate voice-driven black comedy. It is very funny and very engaging, one of those books I was happy to plough through in a couple of sittings, but Rocket Man has a lot more going on than its excellent entertainment value. It’s protagonist, Dale Hammer is a failing (or possibly failed) novelist who has abandoned his beloved Chicago neighborhood for a generic suburb in order to live out the most banal iteration of the American dream – the big house and the big car. That there is a link between Dale’s inability to write and his environment is more implied than stated, but I think that at the heart of this novel is the assertion that the real American dream – that of being self-made and maintaining individuality under the pressure of conformity – is what gets crushed by the pursuit of the empty and material products we are programmed to desire.
Dale is unambiguously his own worst enemy, placing himself in situations that are self-destructively calculated to unbalance his already precarious situation. He cannot afford his house, he antagonizes his neighbors, he doesn’t maintain a run-down rental property, and he refuses to fulfill the most basic responsibilities he has taken on in heading up his son’s Cub Scout rocket day. As things do in this sort of novel, one mistake piles upon another. On top of that, Dale is surrounded by a number of outrageous characters. In a Curb Your Enthusiasm sort of way, Dale may behave badly, but everyone else behaves worse. The secondary characters – Dale’s father, his wife, his neighbors, his son’s teachers, his clients as a mortgage broker – often threaten to veer off into the absurd, but when the novel takes a detour from verisimilitude, it more than compensates in humor and entertainment. Anyhow, verisimilitude, in my opinion, is overrated. Anyone can say, “people don’t really talk that way,” but hardly anyone can write a book this good. I’ll definitely be checking out Hazelgrove’s back list. -
Rocket Man by William Elliott Hazelgrove is an independence story. Dale and Wendy Hammer decide to live the American Dream and move from the city to the suburbs. They move into a neighborhood of million door homes that is beyond their means. They find themselves lonely and alone. It seems that everyone and everything in the suburbs is the same, and they have trouble conforming. Things start to fall apart for Dale. He has three published novels, but can’t seem to write anymore. He’s a mortgage broker who can’t close a loan. His father has lost his job and been kicked out by his wife, so he’s come to live with Dale. The police are after Dale for sawing down the subdivision’s sign. Dale can’t even drive his son to school without speeding or getting into an altercation with someone at the school. The relationship between father and son has become strained, so Dale has volunteered to be the “Rocket Man” for Dale Jr’s Scout troop and he struggles with meeting the deadlines for that. Dale and Wendy find out that Dale, Jr is having major problems at school and Wendy files for divorce. Dale hopes that Rocket Day will salvage his relationship with his son and give him a sense of independence.
This book is about being true to yourself and not conforming with what society expects of you. It’s a great story about finding yourself. I found myself wondering if families really do interact the way the Hammers do, because ours certainly doesn’t. I thought the ending was perfect. My only complaint with the book is that I thought there was a lot more foul language than was necessary for the type of story that was told.
This is William Elliott Hazelgrove’s fourth novel. It will be released by Pantonne Press on December 1. He teaches at Columbia College and is the Hemingway writer in residence for the Ernest Hemingway Foundation of Oak Park. In other words, he does his writing in Ernest Hemingway’s attic! -
Dale Hammer is a forty six year old man who is married to Wendy, a lawyer but now a stay at home mom for their two children Dale, Jr. and Angela.
When Dale was growing up one of his fondest memories is launching a rocket with his dad, so now we know where the title comes from.
Wendy and Dale decided to move from Oak Park to Hazelgrove to a big house with a large mortgage, plus additional expenses. Dale had been a successful author five years ago and he is expecting to continue to do the same to support his family only his creativity seems to have vanished.
Making ends meet is extremely difficult even with some help from Wendy’s parents so Dale is now working as a broker on commission and his last two months have been awful, he has not sold anything and his latest deal is not looking that good. His boss calls to inform him, if this deal does not go thru he will loose his job.
It is a very realistic story of a family struggling to survive and how Dale wants to give Dale, Jr the experience that he had with his dad, Dale, Sr. when he launched a rocket. Dale is now in charge of the Rocket Launch that will be taking place with the boy scouts and although Rocket Day is not that far away he is not at all prepared until he is called upon to step up to the plate and do what he promised he would.
Dale now has his dad living with him as his second wife has thrown him out and he has lost his job so needs a place to day.
It is a look back at the past; living in the present but also worrying about what lies ahead as suddenly his marriage is not on solid ground.
This book is easy to relate to as we all want to give our children more then we had growing up but at what price will it cost?
This is a book that might have you questioning your own choices. -
Wow. This book was a disappointment. I wanted to like it, after all I’m an angst ridden writer, living in a far off gated community, with serious back-to-the-city envy. I am Dale, and I hated him.
He was whiney and angry for no particular reason. His complaints grated on me and were ridiculously repetitive. Plus, the idea that they allowed him to be “rocket man” felt contrived at best. The book opens with him drunk driving through a field. If nothing else, we suburbanites are ridiculously over protective and so I found anything that they might allow him to do after that completely suspect. I’m sure anyone else would have stepped up to rocket man.
I found nothing redeeming in his character. I wanted nothing but bad things for him. In the end, I get an inkling of something more than his own stereotype of a nonconformist in the midst of a midlife crisis, but by then it was too late. His wife, a character I never believed, stood by him? It feels like the ultimate male fantasy to have a wife who prefers, "not being bored" to a man who takes responsibility for his actions, especially where children are involved. Didn’t anyone in that family grow up?
If nonconformity means acting like a schmuck to your children, ignoring your obligations and setting off too many rockets, then I guess I’m all for conformity. But maybe that’s just me. -
Rocket Man was a very enjoyable story. It centers around Dale, husband and father of two. Dale is stuck in the burbs, hating every minute of it. His idea was to get out of the city and live the idyllic country life. This is not what he ended up with. instead, his house is close to foreclosure, bills are piling up, and his daughter cries at the drop of a pin.
Dale is an author in a slump. His first few novels are published but he has had nothing new in four years. He fights with his wife, his boy seems to hate him, and the cops keep stopping blaming him for a sign that was cut down illegally in their neighborhood. When Dale’s father enters the book, everything gets far more interesting than expected.
I will let you make up your own mind when you read the first chapter as Dale off-roads an SUV full of boy scouts through an field while drinking a bloody mary behind the wheel (hair of the dog), purely because he did not want to go the long way home.
The last 3 pages of this book made my heart very happy. But don’t skip to the end, it will not make much sense with out the 372 pages before it. It’s worth the few hours you put into it, I swear it.
This book make you proud to be a dad, even if your aren’t one.
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xpost RawBlurb.com -
I wasn't sure if I was going to like this or not. It started slow but as I continued reading it I enjoyed it. It's about a man who doesn't know himself and is trying to find his place in his home and community. He is rebellious and doesn't want to conform. He is constantly pushing the envelope. He doesn't like the sign to his subdivision. It's cut down. He denies doing it. Did he or didn't he? He drives through a vacant lot with a vanload of boy scouts to get to the Dairy Queen they passed. He's the Rocket Man for the big boy scout gathering but he doesn't return phone calls or make plans for the rocket launching. He speeds through the school zone when taking his son to school. One of the funniest scenes is when the school crossing guard chases him on foot while dropping his son off at school. I can just picture it. His dad moves in above his garage, his wife files for divorce. How much can a man take in a week? He is constantly making the wrong choices. Does he get his act together by the end of the week before Rocket Day? Does he ever and wowie, what happens when he does? Check it out and see how he finally triumphs for us all!
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A good book, that accurately describes much of the middle class sentiments in our most current society. A writer who feels literary guilt, the guilt of knowing he should read the classics but never does, who hasn't had a hit in years, and can't make the money to support the house hold in the suburbs that he purchased three years ago. His life slowly falls apart in front of his face due to serious family, neighborhood, and financial problems, all coming to a head with his promise to be Rocket Man at his son's Boy Scout event.
I enjoyed reading it, although sometimes it gets a little confusing, thinking for the first half of the book that the Oakland he is referring to is in California (which it isn't)and left me slightly unsure to the color of his skin. (not that it would make a difference, but some of the descriptions leave the reader wondering.) Hazelgrove uses an excessive amount of metaphors which can get slightly tiring. The plot, and conflict, as well as 95% of the writing style make this a good book, for anyone who is having trouble with the current state of affairs in the Middle Class of the United States -
The author is the writer-in-residence at the Hemingway house and there are a number of Oak Park links in this book. (I think that references to the town of "Oakland" in the book is Oak Park.)
The story is about a man, his wife, and two kids who move from their nice little house in "Oakland" to a big sprawling house with 2 acres in "Charleston" (maybe St. Charles?). He's a writer; she's a stay-at-home mom (ex-lawyer). Both, along with their 9 year old son, must cope with the lifestyle changes as well as their raging debt. Setting is very current...housing bubble and overspending on the big house. In addition they've got to cope with his profane father, his liberal, academic brother and sister-in-law, and her successful, but manipulating parents. Throw in a home owners association, a manic school traffic guard, and a para-military Cub Scout pack and you've got the makings of a modern comedy.
Though he doesn't get everything right about the Cub Scout stuff, he captures the nature of the true-believers perfectly. The relationship between father and son seems spot on, and the agonizing over discipline also hit home.
Not a perfect book, but enjoyable...and a fast read. -
Rocket Man was almost too painful to read. Given the current state of the economy and reasons for that state, it was totally believable. Ten years ago it might have served as a cautionary tale but today it could be a story on 20/20.
A few years ago Dale and his wife and kids left Chicago for the suburbs - land of big houses on big lots, no crime, and like-minded folks (well, maybe not). What they realize a little too late is that it's like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. All the trappings of his American Dream begin to weigh heavily on Dale as he tries to keep up appearances but becomes more and more angry. Spending a week in Dale's life was rather annoying but Hazelgrove's pace kept me reading.
Overall, I'd say if want to read a novel about what's happening in our society these days, this could be the book for you. -
Okay, so I admit I fell for judging the book by the bad title/cover art, and just like I was very wrong on Snow Flower and the Secret Fan (another great book with an awful title and book cover), I was wrong on this.
I found myself at the beginning of the book thinking that I would never be able to relate or feel for the main "slacker" character or his father, but as the story started to progress, I found myself more much into the book. I think the turning point was the scene in Dr. Petty's home, which also happened to be what I thought was the funniest chapter. However, I never liked the main character and found myself frequently annoyed with him and willing to give him a huge kick if he really needed one that badly.
However, I really liked the authors style of writing, and I would definitely give another one of his books a shot. -
Hmmm. Apparently my original review of this didn't save, so I'm working from memory here. This book was, for the most part, a good, light read for me. It felt, to me, like a cautionary tale, and somewhat autobiographical at that. What happens when you get everything you think you want from life (or at least think you're supposed to want), and discover that what you really want is what you already had. Being at a similar crossroad in my life as the main character made it easy to identify with his stress, but the choices he made were, for the most part, too outlandish for me to not dislike him as a character. That said, a character doesn't have to be likeable or identifiable to be readable. I didn't feel like the book wasn't worth reading, but I don't think it's one I'll go back and re-read.
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William Hazelgrove's novel, "Rocket Man", is reminiscent of Richard Russo's writing. Both portray the plight of the average man with irony and wit. Implicit in this shared motif, are the vagaries found within the American Dream. Broken men with disintegrating marriages, questionable parenting skills and diminishing incomes flavor their novels. How they depict this is unique to their individual and refined styles. Hazelgrove handles the subject eloquently. His adages are not a burden nor redundant. He depicts a "happy" ending without becoming trite or sugary. Where there is a deeper context that flows through Russo's writing, Hazelgrove's comes in a close second. Rocket Man is a thoughtful and entertaining read.
-An Early Reviewer's Book
from LibraryThing.com.
-Rating is, more accurately
at 3 1/2 stars, which Goodreads
does not have. -
Dale seems like an average guy. He could be any middle-age, middle-class white man in America. He bought a house with a mortgage he can't afford, moving his family from the city to the suburbs, and now he's regretting it. He's pretending to write, though he hasn't written anything new in years. He is lousy at the job he has. He has become self-absorbed and is just starting to realize what is going on. His relationships with his wife and kids are suffering, and he fears he is turning into his father. Now he has to try and fix things. There are some very real and believable issues here, while being entertaining at the same time. The topics are treated seriously, but also with humor. While not the type of novel I would typically pick up, this was an enjoyable read and I found the writing style easy to get into.
