Book Review: Barroom Transcripts

Book Review: Barroom Transcripts
Tells of Harsh Reality
by Maria Rotondo

Jumping into the first few pages of Barroom Transcripts is like diving into an unheated pool — you can’t stand it at first but you don’t get out. Eventually, you adjust.

The book begins, “Hi, this is Tony Straub … let me tell you a little story. When I was 12 years old … the Catholics and the Protestants hated each other in Tremont, Pennsylvania.”

But Barroom Transcripts is no typical biography, but also social, political, and very personal commentary. Straub (a Vietnam vet) has spent time in jail, in the hospital, and on the street.

Lancaster resident Rich Stewart, compiler of Straub’s stories and publisher of the book, met Straub eight years ago, and since then has let him camp out in his backyard a few times when he didn’t have anywhere else to go. And sometimes the reader finds him or herself on a similar journey — ending up somewhere he or she never would have chosen.

Each bite-size chapter has an engaging title: “Religion and the Cigarette Patch,” or “Some Crap About Tree Stumps.” And Straub has plenty to say. He’s quite a character — and shockingly real. His stories are spun with quickness and paranoia. The reader’s mind has to race to follow his sudden and yet rich digressions.

Straub has been the innocent bystander at more than his share of crime scenes, and he gives his view of what’s happened. First, Stewart provides the official report of the crime; then, you read Straub’s take on the incident. The contrast is striking.

Straub introduces other ‘real characters’ along the way. Stewart himself speaks in response to Straub’s accounts. Then there’s Mike, a 38-year-old friend dying of cancer which Straub claims he got from eating out of garbage cans. There’s also “The English Girl,” who peppers the dialogue with Britishisms like “mum,” and the “Youngest Terrorist in the World,” a boy who, among an assortment of hateful deeds, spikes Straub’s drinks with lighter fluid. To top it off, anonymous women float in and out of the chapters probably much in the same way they did in Straub’s life.

This book has no beginning, middle, or end. It feels plotless; there’s no climax and certainly no closure. The narrative switches from first to third person, sometimes illogically. Anything goes.

Stewart warns readers in his introduction that this is not a book for the timid. But it makes for some provocative — sometimes even shocking — reading. And the most shocking part of all is that it isn’t fiction.

As Stewart says, “This is reality for some people.”

Stewart has also just released his second book, The World’s Largest Collection of Barroom Quotes and Drunken Ramblings.

To order either book send $11.95 ($9.95 for the book, $2.00 for shipping) to: Craphouse Press, PO Box 2691, Lancaster, PA 17608.