Synopsis: One evening in the mountainous forest of his isolated West Virginia farmhouse, Martin became disoriented when searching for a horse who had wandered off the property. Wading through the dark and guiding his horse with a belt around its neck, Martin felt as though every step was taking him deeper into the mountains. Instead, he unknowingly spent the night walking in a wide circle that brought him back to where he started. This quickly became a metaphor for Martin's life. "The more lost I get, the closer to home I come."
After growing up with a violent father who nearly killed Martin's clinically insane mother, Martin pursued a writer's life with a vengeance, becoming vulnerable to struggles with alcohol, financial ruin, and legal feuds. Then, after a betrayal by his soul mate, Martin's sanity was in as much jeopardy as his mother's had ever been -- a state of mind that in his case led to gunfire, divorce, and at least one trip to the emergency room.
But Losing Everything is less about getting lost and more about finding your way home again. In his pursuit of stability, Martin uncovered lessons that might help others who have encountered loss: take pleasure in something as small as an ampersand, keep a list of people you know who have died, meet your own death like a warrior, and be glad you don't own a monkey.
Deeply personal yet surprisingly universal, Martin's story is for anyone who has wandered astray. If not a road map, his journey is a guide, providing hard-earned wisdom to illuminate the path home.
I bought this book because I wondered what the heck happened to David Martin. In the 90s I bought and read several of his books – all thrillers as he categorizes them. Gruesome. Dark. Evil. Unspeakable. But they fed something in me that needed that at the time. When he dropped out of sight, I wondered what happened and now I know. I almost wish I didn’t.
It’s not his tale itself that puts me off, but how it was told. He interjects from time to time that he didn’t write the memoir to go on the shelf next to those other harrowing, daytime movie of the week books, but other than to get it off his chest, I don’t know why he did write it. He admits and I agree that others have gone through far worse, but sometimes his self-pitying tone is a bit much. The opposite swing from that is the self-congratulatory tone; especially when documenting (for our edification) his many conquests of the female persuasion. And his boozing. And I can’t help but visualize his many descriptions of the second worst night of his life with a patina of cartoon violence. He says he just crawled on the floor, swinging his head back and forth and mumbling. That and the gun in the mouth were the extremes of what he calls his madness. His insanity. The night in Tennessee insane.
He also did not name either of his ‘esteemed’ wives, each with 18 years of suffrage with him. Whether this was by request of both women or fear of law suits, I don’t know, but it seemed odd. Latter-day coworkers get named, wives don’t, they go by title and number only. His first wife gets barely a chapter devoted to her, but the second gets considerably more. Neither is characterized fully or well, but if he was as erratic and irresponsible as he says he was, they both have my sympathy.
Ultimately I suppose, the book’s message is that even when life sucks the most, when you can’t escape your tortured childhood, when you follow bad decision with bad decision, there is still something in your life that makes it worth living. You just have to stop chasing what you’ve lost and pay attention to what you still have.
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