No one can say Michael Tenaglia isn't sensitive; insult his friends and he'll hit you.
The title of his debut novel, Anti-Hero, is not entirely accurate. True, he is obnoxious and violent and tends to view women as sex objects, but he does have his good moments as well. Working construction in the subway, he gets stabbed trying to stop a mugging. But one can't help but wonder if that woman he was trying to protect was one of those cute, young secretaries who he waited to walk by in the mornings. Would he have helped her if she were fat and old?
Probably.
See this guy is hard to get a handle on. He has a wonderful grasp of the human spirit, but his sensitivity is selective. He feels sorry for the old Irish man on the construction job, and in the next chapter is cheerfully beating the guy's countrymen to a bloody pulp. I wish I knew how tall he is, because his book makes me think he suffers from the Napoleon complex. When I get an opportunity I am going to comb through the Season 3 "Sex and the City" episodes where allegedly he has a small scene.
The narrator, Billy Donavan (presumably Tenaglia), got a scholarship from the bricklayers' union to any school he could get into. Because working construction full-time can be draining, he demanded the school's easiest major, theater (thus begins his chosen profession). He never bothers to finish the last six credits, but manages to get along well enough without. Besides, for a guy who is anti-institution, a college degree might be a little bit of a sell-out.
The book, which reads like an autobiography, is amusing enough to make you smile with its refreshingly raunchy and politically-incorrect humor from this amateur boxer/construction worker turned actor. It needs some technical development though; from what I can tell he developed his life philosophy while recovering from pneumonia (that was rather productive of him).
After reading his book I can't decide if this guy is a jerk or just a misunderstood boy from Queens. Probably both. I don't know how he gets so many women to sleep with him; maybe it's the pheromones.
-- Reviewed by Emily Morris
