Concrete Dreamland: Coming of Age in Underground New York

Music, drugs, and a search for belonging animate this kaleidoscopic debut from artist and drummer Dougher. In percussive prose, Dougher recalls growing up with a pronounced contrarian streak in 1970s and ’80s Brooklyn as the son of an Irish Catholic father and a Black Jehovah’s Witness mother. Major motifs include substance abuse—Dougher first got drunk at the age of six—and the poverty, prostitution, and homelessness that followed before, at 38, Dougher joined AA and rebuilt his life. The narrative unfolds in a string of gonzo, nonlinear anecdotes: Dougher barely escapes with his family from an elevator crash; he’s hunted by a serial killer; he endures a beat-down from white hoodlums in middle school; he’s nearly shot while standing up to a drug dealer. For all its heavy material, however, the book’s mood is often buoyant. There are grace notes, like Dougher’s “magical” encounters with pop singers Prince and Sade, whom he played music for, and David Byrne, whom he once met in Tompkins Square Park; and he celebrates his neighborhood’s charismatic denizens, including a criminal warrior-prophet named Freddy (“He could quote chapter and verse from the Bible, Quran, and Bhagavad Gita, and he kept those holy books on top of a stack of German porno magazines”). The resulting tale of endurance is both hard-bitten and heartfelt. (Apr.)