Losers and drunks struggling to stay alive and keep some humanity in
towns of corrupt, venal politicians and police are fertile territory.
Nelson Algren probably mined it better than anyone else in the 20th
century. But where Algren lingered, almost lovingly, on small moments
of guilt and compassion between his characters, Serrano breezes past
people and events so quickly that it's hard to feel like you're reading
anything more than exceptionally good reportage.
Whenever the
book cuts back to Serrano searching for records, which happens much too
often, it loses momentum. I understand that researching this was
incredibly difficult, and Serrano is a tenacious, smart writer for
being able to carry it as far as he did, but when it comes down to it,
a guy looking for records without any tangible stakes to finding them
other than his own personal satisfaction ... sorry man, it's just not
interesting.
I suspect Serrano's tendency to run through things
at such a pedal-to-the-floor velocity is symptomatic of many writers
who learned as newspaper reporters. Too often they write as if they only have 5,000 words to tell their story rather
than ten times the limit for the longest special feature. Which is a
shame in My Grandfather's Prison, which teases so many different angles on such a little-discussed time in Kansas City.
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