As I get older, I try to take myself, and my reading tastes, less seriously. There was a time where I fancied myself a Very Important Book Reviewer that would choke the life out of anything I read in order to critique it with skill. It’s silly, at least from my perspective. I love reading and I love writing reviews but they’re just that: reviews. Chronicling the things I read, if I liked them or not, and if I would recommend them. No more, no less.
The Mad Ones is a book I would have ripped in to at a different point in my life. It’s messy, meandering, condescending, and way too proud of itself. The style is meant to be off kilter but it felt too cool for its own good. I should not have enjoyed this book.
And yet, I did. Because Joey Gallo’s life was ridiculous. And it probably deserved to be told in a ridiculous fashion.
I knew next-to-nothing about Gallo saved for what I’d read in I Heard You Paint Houses. His death is portrayed in Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman as a big time mob hit. But Joey Gallo was a small-time guy whose crew was apparently a big pain the rear for the Profaci Family. And it seemed like Gallo himself had other interests besides the mob life, as he’s seen as an artist, a philosopher, a civil rights advocate, and many other identities.
Tom Folsom is smart enough not to try and make sense of Gallo’s many contradictions. Instead, he lets the story do the talking as it vacillates from whatever Joey is doing to whatever is going on behind the scenes in the perpetually ongoing mob struggle. The result is the book, which jerks the reader from moment-to-moment, never letting them forget how ridiculous all of this is.
It’s not a good book but it’s a fun one and it’s one I may actually revisit some day because the story itself is so wild.