02/17/12 New York Times — Two-Part Harmony
The contributions of his co-author, Benjamin Whitmer, are pretty much invisible, which makes them difficult to praise, and all the more praiseworthy.
02/10/12 TV Weekly – The Grammys Need To Recognize Four Great Artists as Lifetime Achievement Honorees
Here’s a trio I suggest be included in next year’s group for this prestigious honor: Emmylou Harris, Gram Parsons and the Louvin Brothers.
I thought of this group this week as I devoured a new book: “Satan is Real,” by Charlie Louvin with Benjamin Whitmer. Its subtitle is “The Ballad of the Louvin Brothers.”
02/09/12 Louisville Courier-Journal – Looking at Charlie Louvin in a sobering light
Charlie is the third most important character in his own book, trailing Ira and their father, Colonel, a man who thought nothing of working his seven children to bloodied exhaustion in the cotton field. But those hard times and brutal lessons informed the Louvins’ music — it is their music in many ways — and Charlie’s book is their final, tear-drenched ballad.
02/05/12 Buffalo News – ‘Satan Is Real’ tells life story of hell-raising country heroes
The publisher touts “Satan Is Real: The Ballad of the Louvin Brothers” as “a real-life Cain and Abel story from the American heartland,” and that’s a pretty good description. It’s a quick, enjoyable, thought-provoking read that I found hard to put down.
02/02/12 The Portland Mercury – Tragic Songs of Life
Growing up on a cotton farm in Alabama during the Great Depression, Ira and Charlie Loudermilk were taught old English folk songs by their mother. Their iron-fisted father forced them to sing in front of company—at first, the bashful brothers would only do so from underneath the bed. But they had a gift, and they had the desire, and Ira and Charlie spent several years after World War II struggling to garner an audience for their peculiar blend of lighthearted country and severe, fire-and-brimstone gospel. Satan Is Real, which Charlie co-wrote with novelist Benjamin Whitmer, is an effortlessly conversational read—and a wholly transparent look at the brothers’ early career. Charlie doesn’t try to sand out any rough edges in order to make himself look good, and he certainly doesn’t do so for his older brother.
02/02/12 Nashville Scene — Charlie Louvin’s posthumous bio, Satan Is Real, speaks volumes on the conflict for the human soul
Charlie, along with co-author Benjamin Whitmer, deliver a book filled with struggle and violence — both physical and emotional — that pulls few punches and spends little time dancing around the uglier moments of the story.
February/March Garden & Gun — Classic Country: the Louvin Brothers
Satan Is Real brings us a lively and never-lagging story. Even though Charlie passed away in January of 2011, the American South is lucky to still have traditional country musicians performing among us, some young ones even. They and their ancestors will find us if we listen with open heads and hearts.
02/01/12 Baltimore City Paper — Satan Is Real: The Ballad of the Louvin Brothers
And while it is his recollection, the just-folks prose (written with Benjamin Whitmer) and the basic facts make it easy to take Charlie (who died in 2011, two months after the book was finished) at his word. He stayed married to the same woman for 61 years, and his conversational account of his career is humble about his accomplishments and clear-eyed about hard touring, tough breaks, and frustrations with the business and his brother.
02/01/12 Columbia Free Times — The Drunkard’s Doom
The story can get a little slippery with dates and places, but that adds to the effect: It has the feel of a memory that remains real even though the particulars have faded. It brings to life one of the great stories of country music, and deepens the impact of listening to one of its masterpieces.
01/31/12 View From The Porch — Infranoir
Words like “bleak” and “gritty” don’t really do it justice. At the same time, it is beautifully written and deftly paced. There are times when he paints a picture with words right on you, so real that you want to go and shower it off, but you have to stay and turn the page, as stuck in the story as the characters are in their lives, drawn on by the faint hope that maybe there’ll be a happy ending to this mess after all.
01/28/12 Dayton Daily News – Country musician recalls wild life with brother
Whitmer did a fabulous job sculpting Charlie’s recollections into a lively tale that soars with all the beauty of those heavenly harmonies the Louvin Brothers created together. Their influence remains strong. Emmylou Harris said “there was something scary and washed in the blood about the sound of the Louvin Brothers.” You can take that as gospel.
01/25/12 The Night Editor – Satan Is Real: The Ballad Of The Louvin Brothers
Despite the pervasive darkness of their vision, the music of the Louvin Brothers is a source of almost unbridled joy. Ira’s high tenor folded so perfectly into Charlie’s warm melody tenor that the two men seemed to form–at times–one voice. Mix this with the breakneck pace of many of their songs–driven by Ira’s mandolin but kept on the rails by Charlie’s steady rhythm guitar–and you get music that manages the almost impossible task of being happy and sad at the same time. This weird quality, as evidenced by Charlie Louvin’s vivid memoir, was the result of the mysterious dynamic of the men themselves, two brothers born into hardship and poverty, separated by sin but bound by blood and music.
01/18/12 The Onion – Satan Is Real: The Ballad Of The Louvin Brothers
Appropriately, Satan Is Real’s most potent moment comes in musical form. After ending his narrative with a grinning, chilling callback to the 1965 accident that ended one life and crippled another, the book’s last page bears the lyrics of Charlie’s mournful ode to his brother, titled simply “Ira”: “You were the king of Sand Mountain, at least I thought so / You had a knack for high tenor, and I sang the low / Alabama to the Opry was the second-hardest road / The worst was me losing you and singing all alone.” That same grit, gravity, and heart-piercing poignancy makes Satan Is Real the soulful equal of any Louvin Brothers song.
01/13/12 The Daily Beast — This Week’s Hot Reads
Who knew this superb musician also had a great book in him? But pull it off he did (with the help of coauthor Benjamin Whitmer). This smart, salty, often very funny, and occasionally heartbreaking story has no dull pages.
01/12/12 Hartford Courant – Book Review: ‘Satan Is Real’ by Charlie Louvin
It’s hard to imagine a life lived more fully than Charlie Louvin lived his, who acknowledges in the epilogue having had everything he needed or wanted. “Well, except maybe a Harley,” he writes.
01/12/12 Associated Press (via the San Francisco Chronicle) – Review: Louvin’s ‘Satan Is Real’ is dazzling tale
“Satan Is Real: The Ballad of The Louvin Brothers” is a delight. Charlie Louvin’s memoir of his time with his brother, Ira, and the tragic end to one of the most influential duos in the history of American music is like a Louvin Brothers song: simple and plain-spoken, yet powerful and resonant.
01/07/12 The Wall Street Journal – In and Out of Harmony
Louvin shows little interest in dates or discographies but draws short, sharp sketches of his contemporaries—and is not shy about making judgments: Colonel Tom Parker, Elvis Presley’s manager, was a “pot-bellied pig,” and the novelty singer Little Jimmy Dickens was a dirty fighter who could “slip up between your legs and de-ball you before you knew what happened.” Novelist Benjamin Whitmer’s contribution to “Satan Is Real” is unobtrusive and masterful. Without sacrificing Charlie’s rambunctious, sometimes brutal style, he has shaped a collection of anecdotes into a graceful, coherent narrative.
01/06/12 Knoxville.com – Wayne Bledsoe: Charlie Louvin’s ‘Satan’ the real thing
Like their music, The Louvin Brothers’ story is classic stuff.
01/05/12 The Tennessean – Peter Cooper On Music: Still loving Charlie Louvin
Charlie Louvin still has much to teach about perseverance and professionalism, about keeping troublesome habits at bay, about maintaining humor in hard times, and about never, ever trifling with a dangerous fighting man like Little Jimmy Dickens.
01/04/12 The Drowning Machine – “…something scary and washed in the blood…”
Co-writer Benjamin Whitmer (of Pike fame) has done a superlative job of eliciting and organizing the stories of Charlie’s life, clarifying and illustrating his words without ever once getting in the way of Charlie’s natural voice. Thus, not only the music and the brothers are revealed here, but also there is a glimpse into mid-century rural Appalachian culture, a time when small family farms were worked by hand, a time when communities came together around a single radio. And also a time when a man could with impugnity beat his children senseless; when a sixth-grade education was all most children of Appalachia could aspire to; when racial slurs were accepted conversation; a time and place of grinding poverty that could yet yield the finest of vocal harmonies.
01/04/12 Los Angeles Times – The Louvins’ brotherly (dis)harmony
Charlie Louvin’s new autobiography wastes no time dispelling notions that he put together a reverential reminiscence filtered through the rosy mists of time.
01/01/12 New York Post — Required Reading
When country singer Charlie Louvin died last January at 83, we lost a genuine part of Americana. In his memoir, Charlie introduces us to his hell-raising, self-destructive brother Ira, telling readers how he beat him up after Ira directed an epithet at their mother, the woman who first taught them to sing.
12/01/11 Kirkus Reviews — Satan Is Real
Louvin maps the pair’s arduous journey through small-town radio gigs and endless regional touring, with flavorful, often profanely sketched observations about the hardships of making it on the road as a rising country act.
11/21/11 Publishers Weekly — Nonfiction Review: Satan is Real: The Ballad of the Louvin Brothers
Kris Kristofferston, who was employed as a janitor when he met Charlie Louvin, writes in his foreword, “The legendary Louvin Brothers’ hauntingly beautiful Appalachian blood-brothers harmony is truly one of the treasures of American music.” Now Charlie Louvin, who died January 26, 2011, at age 83, has written an engaging and entertaining look back at his gospel and country music career with his brother, Ira. The two grew up picking cotton and coon hunting in Alabama, and music became their escape route from rural chores to radio fame. They were in their teens when they began singing on Chattanooga radio, a showcase that led to paying gigs. They moved on to making music in Memphis, and by 1955, when they finally got to the Grand Ole Opry, their record sales soared. Ira’s heavy drinking and temper tantrums prompted Charlie to go solo; tragedy struck when Ira was killed in a 1965 auto accident. Packed with plenty of pictures, backstage gossip, and colorful anecdotes about the Louvins’ encounters with the great and near great, this memoir has a raw honesty, genuine grit, common sense and smokin’ down-home flavor that Louvin fans will relish. The fire-and-brimstone cover art and the book’s title are both taken from the duo’s 1959 gospel album, Satan Is Real.
11/11/11 TOR.COM — The Revolution Will Be Fictionalized: Send My Love and a Molotov Cocktail!, Stefan Raets
“Cincinnati Lou” by Benjamin Whitmer was, for me, the big discovery in this anthology. The story’s protagonist, Derrick Kreiger, is a fascinating scumbag you will want to read more about — and luckily, it looks like Whitmer’s debut novel Pike features the same main character. Based on “Cincinnati Lou” I’m definitely going to keep an eye out for more works by this author.
08/24/11 the munchkin wrangler – brief book review: “pike,” Marko Kloos
Benjamin Whitmer’s “Pike” is published by PM Press’ “Switchblade” imprint, but it’s not a switchblade. “Pike” is a homemade knife, made from an old file, sharpened with an angle grinder in some shack in the Ozarks, with duct tape wrapped around the grip. Calling this novel “noir”, while technically correct, doesn’t come close to accurately classifying it. It’s like calling Alaska “pretty cold in winter.”
08/17/11 agora2 — PIKE: Outstanding noir novel
This is one powerful novel of soaring descriptive language, poetical vibrant driving action; a novel to shudder at, to wince over and to remember, long after its surprising and satisfying conclusion. It is well-plotted, finely paced and filled with descriptions of wonderful and awful things.
08/14/11 The Crime of it All — Benjamin Whitmer’s ‘Pike’ reviewed by Evan Dempsey
So begins a picaresque journey through the different levels of Cincinnatti society, as Pike and Rory invade crack houses, shanty towns, rehab centres and middle-class living rooms in pursuit of Derrick. The plot lurches from confrontation to confrontation, and every one is expertly rendered. The most effective are those that pit our heroes against ordinary decent people. I found myself thrown outside the ethical world of the plot, thinking what it would be like to be confronted with a pair of hulking brutes like Pike and his sidekick. It was disconcerting to find myself coming down on the side of these bloodthirsty bottom-feeders and their maniacal mission. Like them, I was infected with contempt for the soft-fleshed wrapped-in-cotton-wool white-collar world.
05/19/11 Literary Kicks — Criminal Independents, Garrett Kenyon
A stand-out for the sheer urgency of its narrative drive, Pike is a stark examination of the boundary beyond which redemption becomes impossible. The title character is a former bad man living in comfortable anonymity in small-town Northern Ohio. His quiet life is endangered when a daughter he wasn’t aware he had tracks him down in the aftermath of her mother’s murder. Soon a crooked Cincinnati cop comes nosing around, and Pike’s suspicions lead him back to the bottom-barrel slums he once haunted to investigate. While Pike takes a few questionable detours, it manages to find its way back – moving forward with the inevitability of a runaway freight train. Rarely do debut novels pack such a punch.
04/08/11 Spinetingler Magazine — Pike by Benjamin Whitmer, Nik Korpon
They say that great work begets great work, and this is a book I read not only with pen in hand to scribble in the margins, but also with my notebook beside me. Pike so inspired me that I must’ve written half a dozen pages of notes, just hoping to keep up with the lean, mean, nasty-ass poetry of Whitmer’s prose.
02/25/11 Book Reviews by Elizabeth A. White — Pike by Benjamin Whitmer, Elizabeth A. White
I’d argue the characters and conditions in Pike are closer to the real world than the fairy tale version of it we’re force-fed by Hollywood in movies and television shows where no one ever seems to worry about keeping a roof over their heads or feeding their kids. The beauty of Pike is its grimness, the refusal of author Benjamin Whitmer to offer up false hope for life-changing redemption for people living in a world where every day is considered a success if you manage to stay alive, get fed, and find a place to sleep with a roof over your head. No, redemption in Pike’s world lies in accepting who you are and being true to it: “You are what you are. The best way to fuck up your life good is to try to be something else.”
02/23/11 Seattle Examiner — A road well worth the toll, Ray Murphy
All you need to do before you read Pike, Benjamin Whitmer’s first novel, is prepare yourself to avoid people for a few weeks after you finish. It’ll leave you surly. And strangely elated, maybe even exalted. As if you’d been made privy to some root human dream that, once witnessed – in a cavernous old theatre with smokers in the balcony and bottles rolling in the aisles – renders post-millennial life impossible. “A dream,” muses one of Whitmer’s characters, “is a sausage mill you feed your life into.” So too this novel. Nor will you be able to explain your mood to your friends, let alone the staying power of this relentlessly visceral book, another title in the outstanding Switchblade imprint from PM Press. The surliness will pass. That is, until you miss Douglas Pike’s gruff company — and Whitmer’s — enough to read the thing again.
02/18/11 I Saw Lightning Fall — Pike is a Beautiful, Bitter Draught, Loren Eaton
I think the way a person takes his coffee reveals interesting things about him. I know a high-powered derivatives trader who can only stomach Frappuccinos and a retiring artist who daily downs multiple cups black as midnight. Forget the pedigree of the beans or the brewing method: You can gauge an individual’s bitterness tolerance by how fast he reaches for sugar and cream. Dark novels seem to function the same way. Place a title that’s concerned with grimmer stuff than sunshine and puppies in a reader’s hands, and see how far along that person’s bookmark moves. Benjamin Whitmer’s literary noir Pike is just such a novel.
02/17/11 I Meant to Read That — Pike by Benjamin Whitmer, Fiona Johnson
When you read this novel, and I implore you to do so, you will be able to add many more questions of your own to this list. Answers? Well they are much harder to come by. Maybe we each have to find our own answers as Pike tries so hard to do throughout the story.
01/18/11 Booklist, David Pitt
Imagine Doug Pike’s surprise when, out of the blue, he becomes the sole custodian of his rather smart-mouthed 12-year-old granddaughter, Wendy. He hasn’t seen the girl for half her life, but, after her mother’s unexpected death, Pike is the only relative she has. Curious, Pike digs into his estranged daughter’s death and uncovers a nasty little story involving, among other things, a relentless–and frequently ruthless–cop who seems unusually concerned about little Wendy. Pike finds that he’s going to need to reconnect with his own seedy, violent past if he’s going to protect the girl (not to mention himself). This is a contemporary thriller that should satisfy any reader’s requirements for violence, tough characters, and sharp-edged dialogue. –David Pitt
01/08/11 Illusory Flowers In An Empty Sky — Book Review: Pike By Benjamin Whitmer, Barry Graham
This seems like a cold book. The cover shows the young girl standing in a bleak snowscape, and the settings – Cincinnati and rural Kentucky – are as frozen as the characters. There is no redemption for anyone, and the violence, both physical and emotional, never eases. But it never becomes numbing, because of the strange warmth of Whitmer’s storytelling; his characters, who range from amoral to insane, are so real that it’s impossible not to relate to them as human beings doing the best they can. While this book holds out no hope, it is a work of honesty and compassion. I think the word “love” appears only once, but that’s really what this is about.
01/07/11 Ron Earl Phillips — PIKE by Benjamin Whitmer, Ron Earl Phillips
While Pike is the center note of the book, it becomes clear that this book isn’t about good versus bad, protagonist versus antagonist. PIKE is about the characters’ points of view and the paths those points of view take. Ultimately colliding the book’s cast violently together.
12/30/10 Bill Crider’s Pop Culture Blog — Pike – Benjamin Whitmer, Bill Crider
This isn’t a pretty book, and there are no pretty scenes. It’s violent and brutal, just like the people in it. Don’t come to the book looking for uplift and you’ll be rewarded. The prose is clean, and the writer’s vision is clear and unsparing. Check it out.
12/16/2010 Spinetingler Magazine Review, Nerd of Noir
It’s doubtful you’ll read a novel more bleak, violent and nasty this year than Benjamin Whitmer’s Pike. Also unlikely: that you’ll read anything as starkly evocative and beautifully written.
September/October Crimespree Magazine — Reviews
Pike may just might be the best noir novel that we’ve seen in years, a true black novel if there ever was one. I won’t name names but much of the purported noir class of crime fiction just can’t hold a candle to what is on display here, Pike is hardcore and the real deal all others are pale imitators. In a just world Pike will salt the Earth, forcing others to re-examine what can be done with the form.
11/16/10 Signs and Wonders — Benjamin Whitmer’s debut novel “PIKE”, Rod Norman
I recently heard my buddy Jed Ayres of “Hardboiled Wonderland” raving about a book he’d just read called “Pike”. Well, I just finished up Benjamin Whitmer’s debut novel, and the praise was warranted. The book was published by PM Press & Ben was nice enough to have them send me a copy. It may be a bit strong for those who love cozies, because there is nothing comfortable about “Pike”.
11/01/10 Temporary Knucksline — TK Special Review: The best book of the year … Pike, Benjamin Whitmer (PM Press), Charlie Stella
Certain writers should be required reading in schools the way certain movies should be required viewing in schools (American History X, etc.). Pike is one of those books … the way Cormac McCarthy’s works have etched their way into our literary Americana, so does Whitmer’s Pike belong there. This is superb writing, start to finish. Absolutely mesmerizing. This morning I reread Pike during my commute because it is really that good.
10/29/10 Ransom Notes: The BN Mystery Blog — Kick Him Honey, Jedidiah Ayres
Pike, the new novel from Benjamin Whitmer is the most exciting debut of the year. It is a relentlessly violent tale of revenge and redemption that amount to too little, too late and features one of the most compelling protagonists this side of Charles Willeford. When we first meet Douglas Pike, he is having his twelve-year-old granddaughter, whom he’s never met, pawned off on him by his estranged and deceased daughter’s friend. He argues that he’s unfit to care for anyone, let alone a bereaved little girl, to no avail. There is no one else to do it.
07/22/2010 Spinetingler Magazine — Pike by Benjamin Whitmer — Review, Brian Lindenmuth
One of the books that I’ve been looking forward to reading the most this year was Pike by Benjamin Whitmer. It seems that the PM Press folks are running a bit behind schedule with getting their books out on time this year (all speculation btw nothing confirmed) so when the release date of July 1st came and went I did something that I’ve never done before, I ordered an e copy from the publisher, easily downloading a .pdf file within minutes. The main reason I mention this is so you know up front, at least for now, the availability of this book. Because you are going to want to read it.