Review: INNOCENT WHEN YOU DREAM: THE TOM WAITS READER

Innocent When You Dream: The Tom Waits Reader
Mac Montandon
Thunder’s Mouth Press
Street: 06.15.05

Tom Waits is every man. He was your pool shark, chain-smoking uncle. He is a reclusive, hill-dwelling eccentric. He is a father of three and a doting husband. He is an inexplicable musical mystery. Innocent When You Dream is a compilation of interviews that chronicle the musical life of Waits from his sound-sensitive childhood to his beatnik Closing Time days to his latest beat box masterpiece, Real Gone. The interviews, which are conducted by Spin, Playboy and The Onion, to name a few, read a lot like Waits’ music — a beautifully dark hodgepodge of circus sideshow storylines told in a gruff voice over the clanking of an old oil drum.

A few poems by Charles Bukowski thrown in fit the Waitsian philosophy like a puzzle piece you lost under the couch six months ago. No one will ever truly know who or what Tom Waits is — he’s an artful dodger when it comes to personal questions — but Mac Montandon comes damn close. –Shane Farver