Sign in with Facebook
Geoff Hyatt's Reviews > Sleepers
Sleepers
by
by
If you believe this is a true story, then I have a bridge I'd like to sell you.
None of this has ever been substantiated for a reason--it didn't happen. If one good thing came out of the A Million Little Pieces fiasco, it's that we don't have to choke down whoppers like Sleepers anymore. What begins as a passable memoir of a hard-scrabble childhood in Hell's Kitchen in the 1960s quickly strains credulity with twists ranging from the convenient to the absurd. Sadly, the greater truths of abuses within the corrections system are undermined by what's clearly nothing more than a bad novel.
So much that happens in Sleepers is so patently, obviously false that it makes it hard to read even even at a basic story level. I promise you that two Irish cocaine kingpins of Hell's Kitchen in the 80s did not keep severed hands in a meat locker across town, hands that they later used to plant fingerprint evidence. (Seriously, what editor cleared this?) There was no public, impulsive shooting of a former boys home guard in a local pub, and the shooters did not walk thanks to the help of their kindly neighborhood priest and his somehow irrefutable ticket-stub evidence. It's easy to see why this became a successful Hollywood movie--because it's just a fantasy. And not a particularly well-done one, either.
None of this has ever been substantiated for a reason--it didn't happen. If one good thing came out of the A Million Little Pieces fiasco, it's that we don't have to choke down whoppers like Sleepers anymore. What begins as a passable memoir of a hard-scrabble childhood in Hell's Kitchen in the 1960s quickly strains credulity with twists ranging from the convenient to the absurd. Sadly, the greater truths of abuses within the corrections system are undermined by what's clearly nothing more than a bad novel.
So much that happens in Sleepers is so patently, obviously false that it makes it hard to read even even at a basic story level. I promise you that two Irish cocaine kingpins of Hell's Kitchen in the 80s did not keep severed hands in a meat locker across town, hands that they later used to plant fingerprint evidence. (Seriously, what editor cleared this?) There was no public, impulsive shooting of a former boys home guard in a local pub, and the shooters did not walk thanks to the help of their kindly neighborhood priest and his somehow irrefutable ticket-stub evidence. It's easy to see why this became a successful Hollywood movie--because it's just a fantasy. And not a particularly well-done one, either.
Sign into Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ to see if any of your friends have read
Sleepers.
Sign In »
Reading Progress
Started Reading
July 4, 2016
– Shelved
July 4, 2016
–
Finished Reading
Comments Showing 1-3 of 3 (3 new)
date
newest »
newest »
message 1:
by
Annie
(new)
Feb 11, 2019 01:17AM
OMG...thou doth protesteth too much me thinks!! I thoroughly enjoyed the book for the vivid way it described 4chikdhood friends. Growing up in NY in the 60's and the stark reality of what is likely to have happened to them in a juvenile DC......why do you have to bang on about its credibility as a true story. It isn't really the issue here!!!
reply
|
flag
I'm glad you enjoyed it. I understand why people find this to be a good story. But the issue here, to me, is honesty. We all have subjective experiences, and sometimes memory and storytelling "shape" events, but cashing in on the "true story" aspect of something that is so clearly false is unethical. There are so many totally unsubstantiated, legally infeasible, or just plain impossible aspects of this book that it has no credibility. That's not to say that the sort of abuses Sleepers talks about aren't real. This book, however, is not.
A made-up story that we admit is made-up can still "feel true" and speak a "truth" when we know it is fiction. A made-up story that an author says isn't made up is just a lie. And lies rob people of the ability to clearly understand our world. And I think that's a big problem these days. It might not be a issue for everyone when they read books like these, but it is for me.
Geoff, your points are well valid.
