Book Review: Hollywood Park

We were never young. We were just too afraid of ourselves. No one told us who we were or what we were or where all our parents went. They would arrive like ghosts, visiting us for a morning, an afternoon. They would sit with us or walk around the grounds, to laugh or cry or toss us in the air while we screamed. Then they’d disappear again, for weeks, for months, for years, leaving us alone with our memories and dreams, our questions and confusion. …

So begins Hollywood Park, Mikel Jollett’s remarkable memoir. His story opens in an experimental commune in California, which later morphed into the Church of Synanon, one of the country’s most infamous and dangerous cults. Per the leader’s mandate, all children, including Jollett and his older brother, were separated from their parents when they were six months old, and handed over to the cult’s “School.” After spending years in what was essentially an orphanage, Mikel escaped the cult one morning with his mother and older brother. But in many ways, life outside Synanon was even harder and more erratic.

In his raw, poetic and powerful voice, Jollett portrays a childhood filled with abject poverty, trauma, emotional abuse, delinquency and the lure of drugs and alcohol. Raised by a clinically depressed mother, tormented by his angry older brother, subjected to the unpredictability of troubled step-fathers and longing for contact with his father, a former heroin addict and ex-con, Jollett slowly, often painfully, builds a life that leads him to Stanford University and, eventually, to finding his voice as a writer and musician.

Before reading this book, I had not heard of Jollett or his band The Airborne Toxic Event. Yes, I am an older music fan so some of the newer bands from the 21st Century have slipped under my radar. But when our Volumaniacs' Book Club chose this title for August, I wanted to check out both the book and the music. I am so glad I did!

This memoir reads more like a fiction book in that it is poetic, symbolic and thematic. This is a huge compliment from me since, as a librarian, I read a lot of books and some are not always very good. This one is exceptionally good. It goes to show how powerful of a writer Jollett is. And that, of course, is expected when one listens to the songs by his band. The songs are real, honest and deep. Not all musicians are good at writing prose though; he is the exception there. I have become an instant fan.

There are a lot of heavy emotional and personal things in this memoir. Jollett focuses on that, keeping the music industry stuff to less than the last third of the book. Again, not the norm for memoirs, but also very refreshing. This is not a name-dropper piece; those that do get dropped are there for a reason and support the narrative of the story he is telling. This is a story about struggle, survival, coping and moving forward. It is a great message for everyone.