I'll Be Damned If I'll Die in Oakland: A Sort of Travel Memoir

by Al Martinez

Overview

In I'll Be Damned if I'll Die in Oakland, popular Los Angeles Times columnist and world traveler Al Martinez takes us on a funny, crazy, surprising, and sometimes poignant ride around the globe with his wife, the ebullient Cinelli, and then with his children, his grandchildren and, once, his perplexing dog Barney, scattering love, laughter, and memories all along the way.

We journey with them from Africa to China, Greece to Italy, Spain to Austria and beyond, and across the U.S. on a three-month trip from the Pacific to the Atlantic and back again, with Barney barking all the way. It's a trip through time as well as space, as the family grows and the world changes. It's a ride you'll never want to forget.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781466872370
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	05/27/2014
Sold by:	Macmillan
Format:	eBook
Pages:	240
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Al Martinez (1929-2015) was a Latino American columnist for the Los Angeles Times, as well as a screenwriter and an author of books and national magazine articles. He contributed to three Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting teams and won two National Headliner Awards and a National Ernie Pyle Award. His work has been compared at various times both to that of Pyle and Mark Twain. Martinez’s books include the novel The Last City Room and the “travel memoir” I'll Be Damned If I'll Die in Oakland. His nonfiction book, City of Angles, was on the Los Angeles Times best-seller list for several weeks.

Al Martinez is a columnist for the Los Angeles Times, as well as a screenwriter and an author of books and national magazine articles. He shared a gold-medal Pulitzer Prize in Journalism in 1984 and was member of a staff that won Pulitzers in 1993 and 1995. He was honored two years ago by the Society of Professional Journalists as Journalist of the Year. He has also won two National Headliner Awards and a National Ernie Pyle Award. His work has been compared at various times both to that of Pyle and Mark Twain. The Last City Room is his first novel, he is currently at work on a second. His last book, City of Angles, was on the Los Angeles Times best-seller list for several weeks. Martinez lives with his wife, Joanne Cinelli, two dogs, two cats and several fish in the Santa Monica Mountains community of Topanga Canyon. He has three grown children and four grandchildren, all of whom he adores.

Table of Contents

	Prologue	1
1.	Mama's Boy	3
2.	Monkey Boy Grows Up	7
3.	Follow the Nuns	15
4.	Don't Feed the Bikers	33
5.	Heaven, Hell, and L.A.	46
6.	Relatively Speaking	65
7.	Land of the Sweet Martini	81
8.	Long Memories	102
9.	Where Hell Froze Over	122
10.	Anywhere but Bombay	136
11.	The China Syndrome	165
12.	Golden Greece	190
13.	Full Circle	209
	Epilogue	222

Editorial Reviews

Los Angeles Times columnist Martinez declares at the opening of this spunky though disappointing memoir that it isn't a where-to or how-to book, but rather a reflection on travel's soul-enriching benefits. Time spent looking at other places and cultures is time not spent looking at ourselves, he writes. If only he'd taken that dictum to heart. For what unfolds is a chronicle of a life of tourism with Martinez and his wife at the center of nearly every scene. Pithy prose and mildly funny anecdotes notwithstanding, Martinez relates commonplace tourist adventures (e.g., museum hopping across Europe, sailing down China's Yangtze River, road tripping through Mexico) and misadventures (e.g., he claims he was nearly attacked at night by 19 lions while on a safari in Tanzania). Though the locations are promising, readers may have trouble seeing them through often irrelevant dialogue between the author and his traveling companions. As a novelist (The Last City Room), screenwriter and award-winning journalist, Martinez knows how to turn a phrase. His portrayals of his parents and colleagues are touching, and his easygoing nature can endear: "Our travel agent had mentioned before departure that part of the fun of traveling in Africa was the unexpected. I took that to mean that rhinos might skewer a tourist, not that African bartenders wouldn't know a martini from cherries jubilee. I sighed and drank what they gave me." Still, Martinez's technical proficiency doesn't make up for a lack of substance in this "sort of" travel memoir. Agents, Janet Manus and Jonathan Westover. (Dec. 8) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Los Angeles Times columnist Martinez (City of Angels) has written a witty and heartfelt memoir that describes a lifetime of travel alone and with his wife, children, and grandchildren. From his tour of duty in the Korean War to shopping with his granddaughters in New York City, Martinez tells of his adventures with wry self-awareness. This is a travel book by a real person who admits to tourist fatigue, enjoys an occasional drunken evening with a chance-met new friend, and is moved to tears by the memories of war. The book is divided into 13 chapters, each recounting a separate travel experience. Several chapters are introduced by biographical interludes that add some continuity and context to the author's life. One, for example, describes Martinez's heart troubles, which lead to a vacation in Greece. Enjoyable, lyrical, and often humorous, this book about real travel adventures makes for a solid read and will find an audience in all public libraries.-Alison Hopkins, Brantford P.L., Ont. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Longtime Los Angeles Times columnist and humorist Martinez (City of Angles, 1995, etc.) uses a wide range of travel experiences, mostly with family, as a format for disbursing rants, vents, intimate observations, and credit where credit’s due. Martinez aims to be helpful. If, for instance, you’re headed to Lourdes, he suggests, "There’s not much to do unless you’re a leper." His solution? Hit the gift shops and load up on religious kitsch. So much for travel tips. Blown reservations, surly waiters, lost luggage: all the familiar annoyances are grist for the author’s free associations, often mildly profane or scatological, that somehow wander back to elements of the same codified confession: his wife is a jewel; martinis are good but not good for you; his stepfather was an unmitigated bastard; his mother was steadfast and driven, but strangely distant. It was she, he recounts, who, when he was caught stealing as a kid, noted that he was destined to turn bad and "die in Oakland" (hence the title). Bad experiences, like a freezing sojourn in Barrow, Alaska, or being stuck in odoriferous fleabag hotels in Europe, are inevitably compared to the eternal yardstick of Korea, where the author spent more than a year as a combat Marine. On the other hand, his description of his home in Topanga Canyon, outside of LA, is so effusive it makes one want to check in as a guest. It is usually his wife, Martinez admits, who jolts him from his inertia to go out and face the world. He supplies the biases and paranoia; when, for instance, three strangers approach out of the dark while they are stranded on the road in Mexico, the author knows rape and pillage when he sees it. Instead, the men fix his car,refuse any payment, and go on their way. Amusing irreverence gives way to a sentimental journey.

Kirkus Reviews

A "sort-of" memoir of the soul-satisfying benefits of a lifetime of traveling the globe.

The Los Angeles Times

"A "sort-of" memoir of the soul-satisfying benefits of a lifetime of traveling the globe."
- The Los Angeles Times

From the Publisher