by joe eskenazi
staff writer
Mark Hardie is a black former gang member with anorexia who earned a law degree, converted to Orthodox Judaism and fought in an Israeli commando unit.
Kind of makes your life story seem mundane, doesn’t it?
The offices here at j. are inundated with so many self-published books — many of them autobiographies — that a person could build a children’s fort out of them.
And while Hardie’s life story, titled “The King of Israel,” is overflowing with problems — and believe you me, we’ll get to them — it is also a visceral and, at times, addictively compelling tale of a tortured man who escaped a world of death and depravity.
Within the first five pages of the book, it becomes evident that Hardie has an excellent ear for dialogue. His grandmother — Hardie never mentions what became of his parents — alternately beats him bloody and lavishes him with love. She also plops him down on the couch, flips on the television and utters one of the best lines I’ve read in years: “Boy. This ‘Three’s Company.’ I tell you, it’s the funniest thin’ I ever seen. It’s a holy transmission from heaven and that John Ritta is an angel.”
It is difficult to put down Hardie’s book as he tautly describes gangland brawls, family members beating one another in the streets or white racists protesting as he and other black children are bused to schools in nicer parts of Long Beach.
The writer’s gift for dialogue is consistent — both gun-toting gang-bangers and blond surfer dudes in ripped jeans and Vans utter compelling, realistic lines. Hardie, who exists in both worlds, speaks both languages with ease.
Whether Hardie intended it or not, his life story reveals a man who seems to be uncomfortable in his own skin. As a boy, he falls in with Mexican friends, learns Spanish and even converts to Catholicism. Then he becomes a black gangster. Then he falls in with the white skateboarding crowd. Then he improbably, becomes president of the Vietnamese Student Union in high school before joining a largely white fraternity in college and espousing ultra right-wing views.
As a law student at the Hastings School of Law in San Francisco in the 1990s, he pondered running for mayor as a Republican and then became enthralled with Judaism. He converted once again before heading to Israel (where he worked for then-Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert).
By the time Hardie falls for Judaism, it’s hard to understand why this isn’t yet another of his chameleon-like phases.
Unfortunately, he does not adequately explain the reasons. Although he does a great a job of depicting the events around him, he doesn’t really allow us within him. A note accompanying the book states that Hardie is interested in adapting his story for television or the movies — and it shows. Rather than delve into his inner emotions, Hardie often conjures up dream-like visual images that scream “This would be cool on a big screen!” Ditto to the rap songs he “spontaneously” blurts out at every life-turning event.
Unfortunately, the more complicated Hardie’s life gets, the more this book begins to unravel, to the point where the writing — crisp and powerful at the outset — becomes unforgivably lazy.
When Hardie begins studying Judaism at San Francisco’s Congregation Beth Israel-Judea, he repeatedly refers to “Rabbi Morris” — never noting the man’s first name was “Herbert.”
Later, while recalling his anguish over the Columbine shootings, Hardie turns off his television set in his Los Angeles apartment, and goes on a “walk out to the plush greenery of Golden Gate Park.” Either that was a hell of a walk, or this is a jarring continuity error.
Finally, one is left with an ominous feeling when the back flap of this book describes Hardie’s prose as a “100 percent true story” while the cover page states “Based on a true story.” These are not synonymous.
Hardie does not begin to deal with his conversion to Judaism and immigration to Israel until about 90 percent into this book, leading to a slapped-together, poorly paced finish.
By the time he is describing combat during the second intifada, the writing has degenerated into “What I did on my summer vacation” level. I repeat — he made combat scenes seem obligatory and boring. Hardie does not even bother address why he left Israel in 2006 and subsequently joined the U.S. Army.
A man with Hardie’s obvious talent — and such a story to tell — owes the readers better. He owes it to himself as well.
“The King of Israel” by Mark Hardie (Hardie Books & Films, 214 pages, $25)
CopyrightJ, the Jewish news weekly of Northern California