I’ve always been drawn to stories about the losers, misfits, and grifters who reside in Los Angeles’ ‘Historic ’20s’ apartment buildings. Maybe that’s from having lived so many years in such rundown palaces myself. Unfortunately, there is a dearth of such literature as the authors who best captured the milieu—Charles Bukowsky, Nathanael West, and John Fante are all three long deceased. So I was delighted to come across a recent novel in the genre called Dryden Arms, written by Johnny Allina, whose hapless hero, Rupert—unless I’m mistaken—is based largely on himself.
The story starts off literally with a bang. Shots have been fired, and the newly installed manager of the aging Glendale apartment building, Rupert, is forced to contend with its unnerved kooky inhabitants whose routines have been derailed by a cranky old guy with a gun—an assault on one of their own, by one of their own. And Rupert, who wants only to write his novel—and possibly get laid—can find not a moment’s relief from the deranged tenants with their incessant demands. It seems he is never allowed to get beyond the dedicatory page of his novel until, finally, when you’ve finished reading it, you realize that Dryden Arms is that novel.
The story abounds with bizarre images that cracked me up; such as…’the heavy set Armenian woman, with breasts so large one of her bra cups would easily fit over my head.’ Much of the dialog sounds like transcriptions of inmates in an institution, all talking past each other, each wandering in his own solipsistic universe, interspersed with Rupert’s sage—if paranoid— commentary. The absurd antics come at you like an extended jazz riff, leavened with paragraphs of lyrical surrealism. A very enjoyable read.