by Anna Angeli
Daily Lobo
The thought of sharing more than 200 pages with a belching, beer-swigging, football-watching lummox is alarming in the least.
The thought of watching the same lummox come to terms with his lummox-hood, find a purpose in life and come to grips with the reality he lives in is surprisingly heart-warming and, more important, wildly entertaining.
"Lummox: The Evolution of a Man," is Mike Magnuson's memoir to lummox-hood. That is to say, it is his own memoir, sharply written in third person point of view.
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Magnuson, a creative writing teacher at Southern Illinois University and author of "The Right Man for the Job" and "The Fire Gospels," has turned the tradition of memoir writing upside down and has successfully created a before-unknown creature: the unsentimental, entertaining memoir.
Little Mike starts his trouble-ridden life in Menomonee Falls, Wisc., as son of the superintendent and established troublemaker of any class he's in.
He cuts the loudest farts during naptime, belches like a 40-year old and is the terror of the playground.
But don't be too fast to judge Mike. He has the extraordinary luck to spend his toddler years being raised by an eccentric mother, and consequently carries with him a deep appreciation of classical composers and artists, a quality he hides well from fellow lummoxes.
He also tends to get the highest scores on any standardized test he takes, but this hidden talent is also left a secret by his actions. Mike is a sensitive, intelligent dude at heart. Really.
His college years are whirlwind and often interrupted by more pressing concerns, such as drinking beer at the local bar with his buddies and crawling home drunk every night.
Magnuson's smart street talk relates his many woes and delinquent adventures in a unique fashion reminiscent of Holden Caulfield. "Night, that dark bastard . The stars twinkle their bullshit. The moon's doing something moonlike," he observes on a particularly eventful drunk crawl home.
He survives a summer rooming with lesbian hippies, overcomes five years of a bad relationship and sleeps off "eight years of being an asshole."
The word lummox is thrown around freely in the novel, especially the first few chapters, in which the author does his best to shock us into repulsion.
But Magnuson is just toying with us; the book is a tribute to the maturation and growth with which he surpasses the lummox stage.
As offensive as it is hilarious, "Lummox" combines funny anecdotes and deeper, more heartfelt themes to provide the perfect hybrid.
It is fast and easy to read, but does not leave readers with an empty feeling of having wasted hours of their lives on a self-absorbed, oafish book.
Lessons have been learned, hard times had and a lummox is cured of his self-destructive lifestyle without losing his charm.
