Here’s the story of Jimmy “Kamikaze” Kirkus, basketball phenom, son of a basketball great. Bryan Langlitz’s narration relies on emotion, which is so appropriate for Timothy Lane’s compelling drama about a troubled kid who is trying to find his way on and off the court in the Northwest. Langlitz sets the tone in the opening scene, then spends the rest of the book shaping the plot with a determined, animated narration. The story evokes alternating empathy and laughter as the nonlinear plot bounces to points before and after the incident described in the opening scene. Langlitz’s energetic narration helps listeners keep it all straight. He shines more with tone than with voices—a nutty grandfather is done well—in a story that is equal parts coming-of-age, family dysfunction, and sports. M.B. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine
Rules for Becoming a Legend: A Novel
Narrated by Bryan Langlitz
Timothy S. LaneUnabridged — 9 hours, 57 minutes
Rules for Becoming a Legend: A Novel
Narrated by Bryan Langlitz
Timothy S. LaneUnabridged — 9 hours, 57 minutes
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Overview
Everyone seems to know Jimmy “Kamikaze” Kirkus, the half-white, half-Asian basketball sensation from small town Oregon. College coaches flood his mailbox with recruiting letters, Sports Illustrated has already profiled him, and everyone in town hangs on his every shot. But nobody can possibly fathom the weight of all this upon Jimmy's shoulders, or the looming legacy that casts a wide shadow.
Todd “Freight Train” Kirkus seemed destined for the NBA until he impregnates Genny Mori, the tough yet fragile daughter of the only Japanese family in town. Dreams of stardom and riches are traded in for a hasty marriage and parenthood until tragedy slams the Kirkus family. Jimmy and his wisecracking little brother Dex are born into a broken family, one haunted by wasted talent, alcoholism, and death.
Like Chad Harbach's The Art of Fielding and Friday Night Lights (the book and cult television show), Timothy Lane's debut novel uses sports as a lens to understand family, community, catastrophe, passion, and hope. Populated with complex characters, Rules for Becoming a Legend is deftly written by an author who understands basketball as well as he understands the human condition.
Editorial Reviews
01/13/2014
Jimmy Kirkus, the hero of Lane’s debut novel, set in Columbia City, Ore., is a high school basketball prodigy on the brink of a crack-up. Practicing in the gym after an off day, his frustration growing, Jimmy begins to run at the gym’s brick wall over and over again until he knocks himself unconscious. This incident earns the half-Japanese Jimmy the nickname Kamikaze Kirkus, and makes him a legend in his hometown. From here, the novel ranges backward and forward in time, each chapter indicating its relationship to this event: “three years until the wall,” “74 days after the wall,” etc. It soon emerges that Jimmy is the son of another onetime basketball prodigy, Todd “Freight Train” Kirkus, who was sidelined by injury and poor choices. Jimmy’s Japanese mother is suffocating in her marriage, his mentally unbalanced grandfather is frequently homeless, and additional problems await the family. The prose and plot are serviceable, but the choppy structure obscures Jimmy’s feelings and motivations, ensuring that nothing he endures makes as vivid an impression as that early scene in the gym. And even that bravura moment raises more questions than the novel ultimately answers. Agent: Rachael Dillon Fried, Sanford J. Greenburger Associates. (Mar.)
Here’s the story of Jimmy “Kamikaze” Kirkus, basketball phenom, son of a basketball great. Bryan Langlitz’s narration relies on emotion, which is so appropriate for Timothy Lane’s compelling drama about a troubled kid who is trying to find his way on and off the court in the Northwest. Langlitz sets the tone in the opening scene, then spends the rest of the book shaping the plot with a determined, animated narration. The story evokes alternating empathy and laughter as the nonlinear plot bounces to points before and after the incident described in the opening scene. Langlitz’s energetic narration helps listeners keep it all straight. He shines more with tone than with voices—a nutty grandfather is done well—in a story that is equal parts coming-of-age, family dysfunction, and sports. M.B. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine
2014-01-23
Lane's debut novel is a doom-and-gloom tale about the travails of two high school basketball stars, a father and son. Columbia City, Ore., is a small river town near the ocean, and it lives and breathes basketball. In 2007, in the school gym, alone in the dark and in his underwear, the 16-year-old Jimmy Kirkus is hurling himself against a brick wall. By the time he collapses, he's covered in blood. This opening scene is both hook and fulcrum for a novel that spans 22 years and skips around chronologically. Back in 1985, Jimmy's father, Todd, is a sensation on the court. Unable to deal with the pressure, Todd gets drunk before the championship game and is suspended. Then his Japanese-American girlfriend, Genny, tells him she's pregnant, and in a drunken confrontation with the cops, Todd busts his knee; all his NBA dreams are over. Todd is not an attractive character (brash in victory, self-pitying in adversity), but he does marry Genny. Tragedy strikes when Todd falls asleep on the beach and their small daughter drowns. The town starts talking about the Kirkus Curse. It's a regular gossip factory, as Lane stresses tiresomely; the mythologizing does the family no favors. Genny has two more kids, Jimmy and Dex. When Jimmy, on the first day of kindergarten, shoots nine baskets in a row, the grapevine hums: A new legend is born. Not until he's 15, freshman year, does it fall apart; taunted by an opponent, he runs off the court crying, and suddenly he's Jimmy Soft, until the wall incident, when he's Kamikaze Kirkus. Now what? A suicide watch? Intensive therapy? No way. Todd yanks him out of the hospital. But with his team gunning for a state title, damaged Jimmy has a chance to return to the top of his game. What might have been a savage indictment is instead a morally confused, ineptly plotted debut.
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940171846510 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Penguin Random House |
| Publication date: | 03/13/2014 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
Read an Excerpt
***This excerpt is from an advance uncorrected proof.***
Copyright © 2014 by Timothy Lane
Rule 1. Value Those Who Keep Your Secrets
Monday, December 17, 2007
JIMMY KIRKUS, SIXTEEN YEARS OLD—MOMENTS UNTIL THE WALL
Look at this kid in the high tops. Purer kid you never seen. Pure in his intentions, pure in his eyes, and most important, oh top of the list for the 8,652 residents of Columbia City, Oregon: pure in his jump shot.
Jimmy Kirkus, alone in this gym. This old sweat-soaked gym people call the Brick House. This basketball cathedral tucked away to be forgotten—like the loose hair gathered behind Jimmy’s ear before he shoots foul shots—in the hilly, green folds of his small town. Forgotten, that is, except during winter: basketball season. In those coldest months the Brick House really heats up. Pulls people from a fifty-mile radius to duck in from the rain and the fog. To scream and love their team. To stomp their feet in the detritus of past games: stale popcorn, sticky candy wrappers, and crumpled game-day programs. To GO, FIGHT, WIN. Ever since four kids from Columbia City High went on to lead University of Oregon to the NCAA championship in the 1930s—and earn the nickname the Tall Firs—this town has been all about the dribble, dribble, shoot. Basketball to Columbia City is mass to church: a weekly expression of faith.
And Jimmy Kirkus was once anointed savior.
Jimmy—look at him—it’s like he’s floating in the yellow light on the edge of the three-point arc. Outside the gym he’s a fish out of water, but here and now, kid’s in his ocean. Flashing out in sparkly jumps, splashing down ball after ball.
Something’s wrong though. His eyes are filled to the brim. His nose is runny and his throat catches on every breath.
He goes and finds the breaker box. Turns off all the lights. There are far-off clicks from within the walls. Goodnight, goodnight, they say, and the whirring of fluorescent light slows and then stops. Then darkness.
The only thing lit anymore is the EXIT sign. Shines on and on. Enough light so he can still see the names he’s written and rewritten over the years on his gray basketball. One is darker and thicker than the others. Three letters. Painful to see. He grunts and throws the ball. It sails over the bleachers but bounces off something metallic. Stubbornly, it rolls back and stops a few feet away. Won’t leave him, not yet.
Right under the hoop is thick blue padding, so Jimmy lines up to the left, where bare red brick wall starts. He kneels into sprinter’s position. Puts his fingertips on either side of the out of bounds line. It’s his runway and he’s cleared for takeoff. He explodes a few steps. Then slows, then stops. He turns around, hands on his head. Back at midcourt, every sound he makes—breath or step— echoes. It’s like someone is in the gym with him, whispering something, and he can never turn fast enough to catch him.
He drops to the floor and does ten quick push-ups. He leaps to his feet. Once again into sprinter’s position. Once again an explosion of speed for a few feet and then let up, slow down, stop.
He can’t do it. He’s crying now. Face is slick with water. The wetness catches the shiny red of the EXIT light. He’s coughing and his nose won’t stop running. He takes off his shirt. He rips it in two. Listen how he screams so the echoes of the gym rise up to join him. The cold air touching his chest helps. A little. So he takes off his shorts. Over his shoes. Just in his underwear he crouches to the gym floor. He’s shivering worse than ever but he’s breathing still. If kid’s got nothing else, he’s got determination.
Up onto fingertips.
Toes dug in.
There he goes. Away from being Jimmy Soft and toward becoming Kamikaze Kirkus. Squeak, squeak, swish, swish, away with the old and in with the new . . .
It takes him fourteen full-out strides at the fastest he can muster to get to that brick wall. He plans on meeting it with open eyes. But. Some things you can’t plan for. Sweat for one thing. Automatic reflexes for another. He closes his eyes at the last second, puts up his hands—the coward. Jimmy Soft. His head does hit the wall, but not full on. It hurts, but not enough.
There’s a weakness in him and he wants to shake it loose, bang it out. He stands back up. Dumb kid. Gonna try it again. Same spot he started from as before. Sprinter’s position. Just twelve long strides this time. Eyes open. Brick wall coming. He does it. Keeps them open the whole while. Hands down at his side, helpless to help. Amazing, his eyes stay focused on the wall as long as they do. Cracks and textures of it. From four feet, from one, from six inches.
Crack.
Boom.
Light.
Let there be light . . .
Hit is something he hears and doesn’t feel. Or the other way around? He can’t tell. It scrambles his senses. Makes a shape in his head bone he thinks he can smell as metallic. He feels blinking white light rain from every eave inside his head. Like when his pops spent an entire curse-soaked Sunday cleaning out the gutters of their house. Everything that had ever been blown up there came down. Then, on accident, he knocked the Christmas lights down too. They blinked on their way to the ground.
It all drops. And so does he. A knife of hurt thrusting into the front of his head so big his skull can’t hold it. Not even close. He rolls to his back and stares up into the blackness, vents some of the pain in a crying jag. There’s a security camera somewhere in the Brick House, but Jimmy thinks with the lights killed, it’s too dark to pick him up.
After three times into the brick wall, Jimmy moves slower, but he’s figured it out. There is always a moment before he hits when he can still put up his hands. If he gets past this moment then bravery has nothing to do with it. The hit is coming. He gets good at getting past this moment. His head throbs and the blood hesitates at his eyebrows before mixing with sweat and running faster to his chin. Everything is red. He can’t focus. He’s singing to him- self, a Paul Simon song of all things. He’s tuneless and spotty with the lyrics. “People say she’s crazy, got diamonds on her shoes. Lose them walking blues.” A teenaged dude singing Paul Simon? Must be something very wrong with him.
Back at midcourt he spits bloody, mucus-filled saliva onto waxed wood floor. Lines up, runs again. Slips a few steps in and slides painfully on his bare chest. Worst Indian burn you ever saw. Turns the skin see-through to the blood and muscle beneath, some of his chest hair ripped off. Hurts in the same rhythm as his heart.
He stands up and tries to blink his vision clear enough to see the brick wall. He’s only five or six steps from it. There’s something wrong with his balance though. He sways. He coughs but vomit comes up. He tries to keep it down by closing his mouth, and it erupts through his nose. Mixes with the blood of his chin and then dribbles to the floor.
Oh damn, our kid’s a mess.
He shouts up into the blackness. “With Dex Kirkus in the. Middle. Jimmy outside. The Fishermen, Fishermen are a lock for Clatsop title! And Jimmy Kirkus shoots. He shoots. He SHOOTS, he SCORES!” He’s crying harder. It’s for everything. For Dex, his mom, and even himself. “Fucking sand toads,” he murmurs, “all bitten up from sand toads.”
He decides, fuck it. Runs from there. The wall is in the ether distance. He’s determined to give it the beat down. Give it the knowledge. He runs at it, as fast as he can. A dogged trot, he’s a pub brawler gearing up for a head butt. This wall. This stupid, fucking wall. He brings his head forward at full speed. Crunches into the red stone. Forehead, poor forehead, smashes the bricks and the cut grows bigger. Big enough to swallow. Jimmy falls for the final time that night. She’s got diamonds on the soles. His brain too haywire to instruct his hands to save him. He smacks the back of his skull. Feels like frayed wires are trying to pass electricity inside his head. Explosion of sparks. Jimmy gone down.
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