Anti-Hero

By Michael Tenaglia

Screaming Hills Press

… Anti-Hero

By Michael Tenaglia

Screaming Hills Press

Michael Tenaglia’s first novel, “Anti-Hero,” has a warning on the cover: “This book may be offensive to the following groups: religious fanatics, actors, fat people, NYC cops, conservatives, Russian cab drivers, lawyers, heroin addicts, members of the religious right, yuppies, liberals…” etc. These are just a few of the groups he names, and it is clear from the very beginning that Tenaglia’s work is full of life and humor.

Billy Donovan, who describes himself as an “anarchist/actor/ex-boxer/construction worker”, tells the story. Donovan lives in New York City and is a true bohemian – not because he aspires to be one, like the suburban white kids trying to be gangster rappers whom he rails against, but because of his principles and choices. Majoring in theatre on scholarship from the bricklayer’s union, he learns that he is six credits short of graduating.

Deciding that experience is better than a degree, he forgoes a diploma and rents a dilapidated apartment in Greenwich Village. While this starts the story off, the novel is not about Billy’s struggle to break into show business. In fact, he doesn’t perform for fame or fortune, he performs for the sake of creativity and expression – he acts for humanity. This novel is essentially about a working class guy: his ideals, his dreams, his fights, his love for one woman and all women.

Billy is a character full of passion, rage, violence and love. He feels he has to “have adventures for all the people who can’t … for all the poets and free spirits that died. And live for every miserable bastard that is off chasing the advertised American dream.” Full of heart and a kind of truthfulness, he rages that our country has made an industry out of prisons and that creativity is judged on dollar value, all the while recognizing the beauty that lies in all of us.

After getting into a cab and realizing he doesn’t have any money on him, he tells the driver to stop. Explaining the situation, he gets out of the cab and begins to walk away. The irate Russian cab driver runs after him, demanding his $1.50.

They enter into a violent brawl, letting punches, threats and curses fly freely. They are both bleeding badly by the time they part. Afterwards, with a nasty gash in his head, Billy reflects that the cab driver was probably a great guy and that they just met under the wrong circumstances.

The novel is full of small adventures and moments like that one. Told in an almost episodic style, we easily get pulled into Billy’s life as he throws punches, frequents bars and makes love. He works hard to eat and live, but places no value on worldly possessions. As he paints rooms, teaches boxing at a gym, acts and bartends, he ultimately decides that writing will become his artistic outlet.

Like Billy Donovan, who likes to hear and tell stories, Michael Tenaglia writes with an easiness that lures the reader in and places him or her on a bar stool in an Irish pub called the Blarney Rock. Much like a crowded bar, “Anti-Hero” is full of funny and endearing characters that move in and out of the story. One of the most amusing and notable characters is Anthony, an Italian with attention deficit disorder who advertises penis enlargers in porn magazines and then sends his buyers magnifying glasses. With the last chapter of the novel titled “I’m a Misfit and My Story is Not Special,” Tenaglia spells out what is apparent throughout the book: his story is just that – a story.

Based on Tenaglia’s biography, however, one can’t help but wonder how much of the novel is fiction and how much is fact. With a narrator that is in some ways reminiscent of J.D. Salinger’s Holden Caulfield, Billy Donovan makes us want to shake off the conventions of society, trust in true love and find our own adventures, wherever they may lie.