Lummox
The Evolution of a Man

By Mike Magnuson
HarperCollins, $24.95
ISBN 0060193727

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Not just your average guy

As a boy, Mike Magnuson scored high on intelligence tests, listened to opera and played Bach on the piano. In a typical teen movie, he'd be played as a skinny geek, someone smart and sensitive but weak and socially awkward.

Instead, he grew to a brawny, hard-partying young man who wore his hair long and bashed his drum kit all night. And he discovered something strange: people would see his hair, his unkempt appearance and his ample middle and assume he was a dull lout, the sort of guy who belches at the table and leaves his unwashed socks lying around -- in short, a lummox. And while Magnuson admits to some slovenly habits, he's always known there was much more to himself than people realized.

Magnuson's new memoir, Lummox, invites readers to kick off their work boots, pop open a cold one and relive the author's experiences working, partying, loving and trying to fulfill his ambitions of becoming a musician. Already an unconventional soul, Magnuson embarks on a unique path that embraces college, blue-collar work and dubious drugs. Although Magnuson seems to lead a charmed life when it comes to finding employment, romance is at times tantalizingly out of reach. More than once a casual parting proves permanent, and despite Magnuson's self-deprecating dismissals, the reader perceives a regret that endures through the years.

Like comedian Lenny Bruce and the jazz musicians Magnuson admires, Lummox is irreverent and full of surprises. Heavily salted with profanity and scatological detail, Magnuson's memoir is calculated and confrontational in its offensiveness. The author has clearly come to terms with the contradiction he embodies, and if he's quick to forgive himself some of the more typical foibles of a lummox, he's happy to overlook shortcomings in others, too.

Funny, honest, confessional and aggressively impolite, Lummox is an unusual memoir of an unusual man's struggle with his perception by others and his reconciliation with his own self-image. Magnuson, who has written two novels and teaches creative writing at Southern Illinois University, delivers an impertinent opus, an iconoclastic journey through a life of college classes, crash pads, factory jobs, lonely nights and happy hours.

Gregory Harris is a writer, editor and consultant in Indianapolis.