The Thousand Hour Club Review

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The Thousand Hour Club ReviewTHE THOUSAND HOUR CLUB, a novel written by George O'Har, is more than meets the eye. Protagonist and voice of the novel, Tommy Betz seems like an average guy, a young ne'er-do-well headed nowhere fast, but thanks to O'Har's energetic prose style and the novel's restrained ironic tone, the reader soon takes to him, and falls under the spell of what turns out to be a compelling and enchanting story of spiritual seeking, enlightenment, and redemption.

The novel opens, appropriately, in a New Jersey diner, with our protagonist receiving some unwelcome "news" from an unwelcome messenger. Fusco, a stupid and annoying doping acquaintance of Tommy's, bursts in to report that Tommy's best friend has been killed in a botched drug deal. It is under these inauspicious circumstances that we first meet our hero, Tommy Betz, who is harboring some serious guilt. As it turns out, Tommy was a witness to his best friend's murder, and has to keep the horrible secret to himself, or else. This diner scene and the other early passages of the novel in which O'Har describes the lonely landscape of New Jersey languishing in the shadow of a dynamic and remote Manhattan skyline are emblematic of its hero's humble beginnings, evoking the narrator's dreary prospects were he to stay put and live out a typical American life sentence: a passive existence punctuated by the occasional thrill or disappointment, but perpetually underscored by a profound sense of quiet desperation.

Tommy Betz, shocked by the senselessness of a violent act and grief stricken at the loss of his only real friend, begins to take a hard look at his own life. He has sidestepped his own death, and knows that if he does not leave, fate will come for him next time, possibly in the form a New York City drug dealer anxious to erase any potential witnesses to his crime. Aside from the benign and loving presence of his mother, and the exciting but not terribly fulfilling company of his girlfriend, Liz, Tommy has little keeping him tied to New Jersey, and so what follows (naturally) is the call to adventure. In Tommy's case, the call comes in the form of a draft notice, and a possible one-way ticket to Vietnam. Tommy's reaction to being drafted is almost one of relief, but in the back of his mind, he knows he could merely be exchanging one version of certain death for another.
From this point forward, the novel takes on the momentum and pace of a road story, but remains, in essence, a Bildungsroman, one of a particularly American style. O'Har takes the reader on a thrilling trip, not only through the vast beauty of the country itself--O'Har's majestic rendering of the American West is simply a pleasure to take in--but through the unassumingly bright and avid mind of his protagonist. Tommy Betz is a hero in the tradition of Holden Caulfield, an almost-lost soul on an achingly ardent search for redemption. Though O'Har first introduces Betz as a passive character, a young man riding shotgun in his own life, by the end of the novel, we find that Tommy Betz has taken the wheel, and we have been his passengers all along. The astute reader will appreciate O'Har's witty and sardonic style of narration, and will respond accordingly with a range of mild chuckles to the occasional full belly laugh at the amusing characters and predicaments Betz encounters in his travels. Not only does THE THOUSAND HOUR CLUB brim with humor, but remarkably, it is resplendent with utterly flawless descriptions of the natural world. Whether O'Har is describing the fearsome peaks of the Rocky Mountains, the mind-boggling heights of the California Redwoods, the melancholy coast of Monterey, or the arid, ancient sunbathed hills surrounding Athens, where the narrator finally finds what he's looking for, the effect on the reader is the same: pure delight.
In many ways, this is a book for writers. Only those who have attempted to tell a story that deftly employs the economy of Hemingway, the lyricism of Fitzgerald, the humor and vitality of Salinger, and the spontaneous exuberance of Kerouac will be able to fully appreciate the nuance and artistry at work in this deceptively simple story. O'Har's talent as a writer is immense--his ability to transfigure his own experience as a young man in the Air Force into an entertaining and moving work of fiction that echoes the voices and the concerns of America's greatest writers and thinkers is an achievement that should be lauded. THE THOUSAND HOUR CLUB is a throwback to a time when books mattered, and to a time when writing mattered. O'Har's narrative control is nothing short of masterful, and his prose, nothing short of poetry.
The Thousand Hour Club OverviewAmerica is at war in Viet Nam. Tom Betz drops out of college and is drifting about northern New Jersey, doing drugs, getting into trouble, when he receives his draft notice. Tom decides to enlist in the Air Force. Eventually, after spending some months in Texas, Tom finds himself at the Army Language School, in Monterey, California, where he is taught Arabic at the hands of an Iraqi ex-patriot. Tom is then sent to Winter Survival School. What happens to him after he finishes Survival School turns Tom into a latter day Huck Finn whose observations on life in uniform, and life in general, fuel this peripatetic, unpredictable and humorous road novel.

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