Just bought a new (old) book called The Last Open Road by Burt Levy. Anyone else read this book?
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Regards,
Dennis David
Yahoo = dennis_a_david
Life is racing, the rest is waiting
Grand Prix History
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The Last Open Road
Started by
Fast One
, Dec 03 1999 08:04
11 replies to this topic
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#2
Fast One
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Posted 03 December 1999 - 08:04
No, but I've wanted to. Let us know if you likw it.
#3
Don Capps
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Posted 03 December 1999 - 21:02
Like FO, I have heard of it, but never really had much of a chance to read it. Didn't he sell them out of the trunk of his car at races or auto shows?
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Yr fthfl & hmbl srvnt,
Don Capps
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Yr fthfl & hmbl srvnt,
Don Capps
#4
Fast One
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Posted 03 December 1999 - 21:34
I've heard he has a sequel out.
#5
Dennis David
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Posted 03 December 1999 - 23:43
Toronto Star Bill Taylor, staff reporter
Burt Levy's self-published "novel" Montezuma's Ferrari .... and other adventures would be worth the US$30 cover price for the cover alone — a Robert Gillespie painting of a Ferrari sliding past a Mercedes on a Mexican dirt road in an early '50s Carrera Panamericana road race.
I put "novel" in quotation marks because as writer and racer "BS" Levy says at the beginning: "This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents described herein are either products of the author's imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. And if you believe that, I've got some swampland in southern Florida I'd love to tell you about!"
That pretty much sets the tone for the sequel to his 1994 cult-classic The Last Open Road, which was turned down by any number of mainstream American publishers. Levy and his wife Carol took out a second mortgage to put the book out under their own Think Fast Ink imprint.
The reviews were ecstatic.
The Levys have wisely opted to stay with self-publishing (Contact Think Fast at 1010 Lake St., Oak Park, Il. 60301; e-mail: thinkfast@mindspring.com Web site: http://www.lastopenroad.com/ backed by revenue from a centrespread of beautiful, period-piece but perfectly genuine automotive ads. Open Road dealt with '50s American road racing and Montezuma's Ferrari continues the saga of narrator/mechanic Buddy Palumbo as he ricochets from Old Man Finzio's gas station in Passaic, N.J. to Mexico and on to the Sebring 12-hour endurance race.
He finds time to get married along the way to Julie Finzio, after popping the question in "the warm, satiny-smelling darkness of that oversized coffin in the middle of Carson Flegley's family's funeral home's casket showroom."
The book is full of the XK120 Jags,T-series MGs, Allards and, yes, Ferraris that made that decade of racing in North America so electric. And the characters, too: Phil Hill, Masten Gregory, Briggs Cunningham, etc.
Levy is merciless. No one escapes his genial contempt, from the auto manufacturers and dealers ("... a ridiculous price could become a reason to buy just as easily as a reason not to...") to the sports- car-club snobs ("Charlie Priddle and his wolfpack of armband types on the SCMA's membership committee ...") who tried to turn the early races at tracks such as Bridgehampton and Watkins Glen into social-register events.
But he's not just outrageous and funny. Levy knows his racing inside out and how to put his readers in the shotgun seat. I haven't been left as breathless by an auto-racing novel since Stroker Ace's Stand On It!..
Britain's Classic & Sports Car magazine recently made Montezuma's Ferrari the first novel to be selected as its "book of the month." And as C&SC writer Paul Hardiman put it earlier this year when he declared The Last Open Road his favourite book, "I wasn't there then but I suspect this is how it really was."
------------------
Regards,
Dennis David
Yahoo = dennis_a_david
Life is racing, the rest is waiting
Grand Prix History
www.ddavid.com/formula1/
[This message has been edited by Dennis David (edited 12-03-1999).]
Burt Levy's self-published "novel" Montezuma's Ferrari .... and other adventures would be worth the US$30 cover price for the cover alone — a Robert Gillespie painting of a Ferrari sliding past a Mercedes on a Mexican dirt road in an early '50s Carrera Panamericana road race.
I put "novel" in quotation marks because as writer and racer "BS" Levy says at the beginning: "This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents described herein are either products of the author's imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. And if you believe that, I've got some swampland in southern Florida I'd love to tell you about!"
That pretty much sets the tone for the sequel to his 1994 cult-classic The Last Open Road, which was turned down by any number of mainstream American publishers. Levy and his wife Carol took out a second mortgage to put the book out under their own Think Fast Ink imprint.
The reviews were ecstatic.
The Levys have wisely opted to stay with self-publishing (Contact Think Fast at 1010 Lake St., Oak Park, Il. 60301; e-mail: thinkfast@mindspring.com Web site: http://www.lastopenroad.com/ backed by revenue from a centrespread of beautiful, period-piece but perfectly genuine automotive ads. Open Road dealt with '50s American road racing and Montezuma's Ferrari continues the saga of narrator/mechanic Buddy Palumbo as he ricochets from Old Man Finzio's gas station in Passaic, N.J. to Mexico and on to the Sebring 12-hour endurance race.
He finds time to get married along the way to Julie Finzio, after popping the question in "the warm, satiny-smelling darkness of that oversized coffin in the middle of Carson Flegley's family's funeral home's casket showroom."
The book is full of the XK120 Jags,T-series MGs, Allards and, yes, Ferraris that made that decade of racing in North America so electric. And the characters, too: Phil Hill, Masten Gregory, Briggs Cunningham, etc.
Levy is merciless. No one escapes his genial contempt, from the auto manufacturers and dealers ("... a ridiculous price could become a reason to buy just as easily as a reason not to...") to the sports- car-club snobs ("Charlie Priddle and his wolfpack of armband types on the SCMA's membership committee ...") who tried to turn the early races at tracks such as Bridgehampton and Watkins Glen into social-register events.
But he's not just outrageous and funny. Levy knows his racing inside out and how to put his readers in the shotgun seat. I haven't been left as breathless by an auto-racing novel since Stroker Ace's Stand On It!..
Britain's Classic & Sports Car magazine recently made Montezuma's Ferrari the first novel to be selected as its "book of the month." And as C&SC writer Paul Hardiman put it earlier this year when he declared The Last Open Road his favourite book, "I wasn't there then but I suspect this is how it really was."
------------------
Regards,
Dennis David
Yahoo = dennis_a_david
Life is racing, the rest is waiting
Grand Prix History
www.ddavid.com/formula1/
[This message has been edited by Dennis David (edited 12-03-1999).]
#6
Don Capps
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Posted 04 December 1999 - 00:58
If the SCCA hadn't been such a bunch of horses asses in the 1950's and into the 1960's, I believe, NAY! I am Convinced that racing in the USA would have been much different than it has turned out; and, it would have been mostly for the better.
Having read some of BS's stuff, I am ordering both of them tonight. Hell, there might be a literary future in the making for me. I'll dust off the old manuscript for my racing novel and reconsider it - what the hell, why not? Right!
Good way to use all those stories that I have been saving up in my notes that I hoped to Use Someday...
Such as like when the driveshaft in the car of a certain driver broke and made him a bronco buster hanging on as the driveshaft kept ricocheting twix the road surface and the drivers seat - leaving him was a very badly bruised posterior and other wondering just what the hell was he doing bouncing up and down in the cockpit like that for? Any guesses as to who the driver was, where & where it happened and the type of car? I swear, this really happened! Really!
Or the time...
------------------
Yr fthfl & hmbl srvnt,
Don Capps
[This message has been edited by Don Capps (edited 12-03-1999).]
Having read some of BS's stuff, I am ordering both of them tonight. Hell, there might be a literary future in the making for me. I'll dust off the old manuscript for my racing novel and reconsider it - what the hell, why not? Right!
Good way to use all those stories that I have been saving up in my notes that I hoped to Use Someday... Such as like when the driveshaft in the car of a certain driver broke and made him a bronco buster hanging on as the driveshaft kept ricocheting twix the road surface and the drivers seat - leaving him was a very badly bruised posterior and other wondering just what the hell was he doing bouncing up and down in the cockpit like that for? Any guesses as to who the driver was, where & where it happened and the type of car? I swear, this really happened!
Really!Or the time...
------------------
Yr fthfl & hmbl srvnt,
Don Capps
[This message has been edited by Don Capps (edited 12-03-1999).]
#7
Dennis David
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Posted 04 December 1999 - 01:11
Exactly. That's what I've been trying to get accross to you all this time! Are you dumb or just slow. ;-) Get those creative juices going and even your wife will start looking good to you. The great thing about the WWW is that it allows you to express yourself. What better way than writing your own book? That's what I'm doing. I've read your columns, you have what it takes.
------------------
Regards,
Dennis David
Yahoo = dennis_a_david
Life is racing, the rest is waiting
Grand Prix History
www.ddavid.com/formula1/
------------------
Regards,
Dennis David
Yahoo = dennis_a_david
Life is racing, the rest is waiting
Grand Prix History
www.ddavid.com/formula1/
#8
Don Capps
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Posted 08 December 1999 - 11:04
Doooh! Both! At times!
Finally ordered the two books by BS. I am looking forward to reading them.
BTW, any particular topic in mind?
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Yr fthfl & hmbl srvnt,
Don Capps
Finally ordered the two books by BS. I am looking forward to reading them.
BTW, any particular topic in mind?
------------------
Yr fthfl & hmbl srvnt,
Don Capps
#9
Dennis David
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Posted 08 December 1999 - 14:39
Well I'm working on the Art of Race Car Driving as it has evolved through time.
------------------
Regards,
Dennis David
Yahoo = dennis_a_david
Life is racing, the rest is waiting
Grand Prix History
www.ddavid.com/formula1/
------------------
Regards,
Dennis David
Yahoo = dennis_a_david
Life is racing, the rest is waiting
Grand Prix History
www.ddavid.com/formula1/
#10
Don Capps
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Posted 08 December 1999 - 08:27
That is out of my league since I don't know that much about Art Cross...
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Yr fthfl & hmbl srvnt,
Don Capps
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Yr fthfl & hmbl srvnt,
Don Capps
#11
BRiff
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Posted 16 December 1999 - 04:01
I found The Last Open Road at a used bookstore for a dollar or so. I read it in a couple days. I don't know much about "sporty cars" (as they say) in the 50's, but the book had a great feeling to it. Levy describes hillclimbs and races such as Bridgehampton Long Island, as well as all the paddock hangers on. He captures the snobbishness of the SCCA perfectly back in that era.
He also explains the fascination with Jags (cantakerous cars generally, but heavenly on the open road) and Ferrari. His description of the first time he saw a Ferrari at a race is memorable, if short.
The best part if your an (American) F1 fan is when the west coast and east coast sports car types meet at Elkhart Lake for their big annual meeting in 1952 or so. Some mysterious character named Phil Hill shows up and blows everyone away.
He also explains the fascination with Jags (cantakerous cars generally, but heavenly on the open road) and Ferrari. His description of the first time he saw a Ferrari at a race is memorable, if short.
The best part if your an (American) F1 fan is when the west coast and east coast sports car types meet at Elkhart Lake for their big annual meeting in 1952 or so. Some mysterious character named Phil Hill shows up and blows everyone away.
#12
Don Capps
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Posted 16 December 1999 - 23:15
My copies of the books popped up in the mail a few days ago and....
....The Last Open Road is better than I imagined it could be. It is simply superb. He absolutely captures the essence of the SCCA and that whole scene to a tee. That whole persona did not go away until well into the late 60's on the part of many of the SCCA members. There was some lengthy discussion of whether I could use my '64 ex-Bud Moore Mercury Marauder 427 in a few rounds of their silly "rallye" series. Eventually I was allowed in, but they got rid of the open controls and several of the special stages for some reason....
If possible, read the book. It is simply great. It is also proof that there can be excellent racing fiction. Superb book!
------------------
Yr fthfl & hmbl srvnt,
Don Capps
Semper Gumbi: If this was easy, we’d have the solution already…
[This message has been edited by Don Capps (edited 12-17-1999).]
....The Last Open Road is better than I imagined it could be. It is simply superb. He absolutely captures the essence of the SCCA and that whole scene to a tee. That whole persona did not go away until well into the late 60's on the part of many of the SCCA members. There was some lengthy discussion of whether I could use my '64 ex-Bud Moore Mercury Marauder 427 in a few rounds of their silly "rallye" series. Eventually I was allowed in, but they got rid of the open controls and several of the special stages for some reason....
If possible, read the book. It is simply great. It is also proof that there can be excellent racing fiction. Superb book!
------------------
Yr fthfl & hmbl srvnt,
Don Capps
Semper Gumbi: If this was easy, we’d have the solution already…
[This message has been edited by Don Capps (edited 12-17-1999).]
