We all wish we had more exciting lives. Well, most of us do. There are individuals out there who certainly could do with a more mundane existence. As that Chinese curse goes: may you live in interesting times. Nobody really wants to live in interesting times. Trust me. After you read the account of a life that went far beyond the limits of a fun time, the very idea of adventure is just slightly less palatable.
Or to put this another way: some people achieve shit, others have shit thrust upon them. And for a select few, both are true.
One of the few is Al Lovejoy, a man who started life as an orphan in Rhodesia. He was adopted by a young couple looking to save their marriage. Instead it kickstarts an almost never-ending saga of abuse - both mental and physical - and molded a young boy into a career criminal.
I am simplifying this tremendously. Al’s claim to fame was that Koos Kombuis lived in his kitchen, long before the man helped bring the VoelVry music revolution to white South Africans. But this is a tiny sliver in Al’s epic saga - a tour de force of abuse, action, criminality, adventure, daring and plain old insanity. Acid Alex is not an easy book to read. The accounts are harrowing, not because they are gruesome, but because it is hard to imagine someone go through such a reality. Bordering on the surreal, at times I had to wonder if Al wasn’t just making stuff up. But somehow I don’t think so (plus Koos vouches for him via the introduction, which is good enough for me).
What keeps this tale from taking flight into hyper-reality is the down-to-earth writing, almost salty with its slang and colloquialisms. It is subtle, but Al adjusts the language to reflect the period of life he found himself in. There is a big shift in tones between his early years, surviving a reformatory high school, a nasty stint in the army (including a interesting fling with being a mercenary), drugs, gangs and ultimately being an international dagga smuggler.
At the end Acid Alex is an obvious exercise in catharsis - a means for Lovejoy to purge his own demons. It is incredibly intimate, yet you have to do a lot of reading between the lines. Event descriptions range from detailed to sparse. At times it is impossible to really get a sense of time and scale. But it is a book meant as an experience, not a factual retelling of events gone. That it is too, but shot through a prism of a man that, frankly, is like no other.
Or to put this another way: some people achieve shit, others have shit thrust upon them. And for a select few, both are true.
One of the few is Al Lovejoy, a man who started life as an orphan in Rhodesia. He was adopted by a young couple looking to save their marriage. Instead it kickstarts an almost never-ending saga of abuse - both mental and physical - and molded a young boy into a career criminal.
I am simplifying this tremendously. Al’s claim to fame was that Koos Kombuis lived in his kitchen, long before the man helped bring the VoelVry music revolution to white South Africans. But this is a tiny sliver in Al’s epic saga - a tour de force of abuse, action, criminality, adventure, daring and plain old insanity. Acid Alex is not an easy book to read. The accounts are harrowing, not because they are gruesome, but because it is hard to imagine someone go through such a reality. Bordering on the surreal, at times I had to wonder if Al wasn’t just making stuff up. But somehow I don’t think so (plus Koos vouches for him via the introduction, which is good enough for me).
What keeps this tale from taking flight into hyper-reality is the down-to-earth writing, almost salty with its slang and colloquialisms. It is subtle, but Al adjusts the language to reflect the period of life he found himself in. There is a big shift in tones between his early years, surviving a reformatory high school, a nasty stint in the army (including a interesting fling with being a mercenary), drugs, gangs and ultimately being an international dagga smuggler.
At the end Acid Alex is an obvious exercise in catharsis - a means for Lovejoy to purge his own demons. It is incredibly intimate, yet you have to do a lot of reading between the lines. Event descriptions range from detailed to sparse. At times it is impossible to really get a sense of time and scale. But it is a book meant as an experience, not a factual retelling of events gone. That it is too, but shot through a prism of a man that, frankly, is like no other.
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