Bloody Finished

When I started reading My Bloody Life: The Making of a Latin King, one of the first things I noticed was the almost complete lack of imagery or figurative language. There is no artistry in this book other than Sanchez's willingness to plow forward with his story and tell it in as straightforward a manner as he can. It is unfair to compare this book with, say, The Great Gatsby or The Old Man and the Sea or Anna Karenina--or even any of the Conan stories of Robert E. Howard--but the stylistic flourishes in those books were never far from my mind as I read a book that has almost none of them. It didn't make the book any less enjoyable for me--Sanchez's tale is at times mesmerizing--but it did point out to me what I have come to expect from the books I read. I might call it the "overly-educated reader phenomenon." Or I could just call myself a book snob (and I have).

There were times I felt myself wishing Sanchez had used just a little more creativity in describing the pain and horror of his six years in a gang (from the age of 12 to 18). There was the occasional simile, "I drank wine like it was water," or "I ran like a crazy man," but nothing that pushed the envelope any more than that. There was nothing colorful about his descriptions or this book. And that seems to have been the point. One imagines that Sanchez would read his prose out loud as if it almost pained him to do so, but he still felt compelled to voice his experiences as if reciting "Our Fathers" and "Hail Marys" while working his way through the rosary. To indulge in any kind of literary flamboyance would seem, in a way, like an endorsement of the life Sanchez finally found the courage to quit.