| A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints: A Memoir |
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| List Price | $13.95 |
| Publisher: | Da Capo Press |
| Author(s) | Dito Montiel |
| Used & new from $3.21 |
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| Additional reviews |
| "As far back as i can remember ... i can remember manhattan." Orlandito "Dito" Montiel, son of Orlando, a Nicaraguan immigrant, and an Irish mother, grew wild in the streets of Astoria, Queens, pulling pranks for Greek and Italian gangsters and confessing at the church of the Immaculate Conception, gobbling hits of purple mescaline and Old English, sneaking into Times Square whore houses—"Kids from nowhere going nowhere." At 14 Dito watched as his best friend and surrogate older brother, Antonio, beat another kid to death with a baseball bat during a gang fight. A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints is the quintessentially American story of a young man’s hunger for experience, his dawning awareness of the bigger world across the bridge, and of the loyalties that bind him to a violent past and to the flawed and desperate Saints that have guided him—a streetwise Meetings With Remarkable Men with echoes of Whitman and Kerouac , Saturday Night Fever and Dion and the Belmonts. Dito tasted short-lived notoriety as a model for Versace and Calvin Klein, and as the leader of "the most successful unsuccessful band in history," Gutterboy, a 15-minute darling signed to Geffen for a then unprecedented million-dollar advance. But this book is about the Saints: Dito’s father, Antonio "our insane warrior hero," Bob Semen, Frank the dog walker, Jimmy Mullen, Cherry Vanilla, Allen Ginsberg and all the others, the drunks, coke-heads, junkies, the insaniacs like Santos Antonios who said, "Now Dito remember, in life you gotta be crazy." Photographs by Bruce Weber, Lance Staedler and Allen Ginsberg are featured. A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints is soon to be a major motion picture directed by Robert Downey, Jr. |
| Customer reviews |
| I saw the movie before I purchased the book. I really enjoyed the movie and I had to buy the book to make the comparison. While I found them to be quite different I really enjoyed both in their places. The book was scattered at times but always honest. You really get a sense that you are hearing about Dito's life with out a filter, the flaws as well as the triumphs. I would recommend this book to anyone between 16 and 60 (especially if you've ever lived in New York). |
There are stretches of this book that sound like the writer is
channeling Jack Kerouac. In fact, sometimes the channeling is so
faithful that you could even mistake it for plagiarism. But this really
isn't anything like The Dharma Bums (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition). Instead it's more a narcissistic, disjointed story
of a borderline sociopath (who may or may not be the author).
The key is in the beginning pages when the author describes his hero's
adventures in Astoria. It's a record of meanness and violence that has
its echoes through the rest of the book.
The movie, I'm told, has some promise, but you could do better to skip this little piece of drivel and try On The Road by Jack Kerouac Poster by Len Deighton, 24" x 34" instead. |
| I really liked the movie version of "Saints" for its gutsy portrayal of Dito's experience coming of age in Astoria. Unfortunately, the screenplay is far superior to the book. The book starts with Dito's early years but merely skims the surface and proceeds to a disjointed, sprawling narrative about Dito's adventures (mostly drunken or drug addled) as a punk rocker. He drops a lot of names but the story never goes anywhere. It sounds like he dictated this into a tape recorder and had someone transcribe his musings. And I'm not convinced he didn't make a few things up along the way. And, by the way, Yogaville is not close to either Farmville or Richmond and Raleigh, North Carolina is not a small town (if you read the book you'll understand the references). There's really no point to this book and after a while his stories are pretty tedious. |
I just finished watching the movie.I got goosebumps.
I grew up in the neighborhood and moved out to Long Island about 6yrs ago.
I went to Immaculate Conception Grammar school and graduated in 86'
Dito captured Astoria down to the very minute detail
Too bad they didnt show Father Angelo in the movie. He was the best !
I hope the movie gets some awards, it was eerie watching your childhood caputured in such astounding detail by such a fine writer. |
| Really enjoyed the book...........not to mention Dito was a neighbor of mine in Astoria..... |
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