The Cotton-Pickers by B. Traven (Allison & Busby 1926)

The thought that from now on I would be working with a murderer day and night, eating from the same pot, perhaps sleeping in the same room, this thought didn’t occur to me at once. Either I’d sunk so low morally that I’d lost all feeling for such niceties of civilization, or I’d moved so far ahead of my time and so far above the moral standards of the day that I understood every human action, and neither took upon myself the right to condemn nor indulged in the cheap sentimentality of pity. For pity is also a condemnation, even if not so recognized, even if it is unconscious. Should I have felt a horror of Antonio, a revulsion against shaking his hand? There are so many thieves and murderers on the loose with diamonds on their fingers and big pearls in their neckties or gold stars on their epaulettes, and decent people think nothing of shaking hands with them, but even regard it an honor to do so. Every class has its thieves and murderers. Those of my class are hanged; others are invited to the president’s ball and complain about the crimes and immorality of workmen like me.

When you have to struggle hard to get a crust of bread, you find yourself down in the mire, floundering among the scum of humanity.

Bollocks to bookfinder

Result! 

I took a wrong turning in Manhattan this morning and stumbled across a book stall selling a copy of Zamyatin's The Islanders for four dollars. When I looked online for a copy of the same edition a few months back the cheapest copy available was $52!

Being a 'the-glass-is-half-empty' kind of guy, I know I'll never find that book stall again.

The Man Who Lost His Wife by Julian Symons (Penguin Crime 1970)

'Think it's a bore,' Bunce repeated, and laughed in what might have been a meaningful manner. He turned to the sports page in the paper, as though reading an account of the previous day's play would provide some final answer to his questions. Gilbert closed his eyes and saw the cheek he had kissed at parting, wonderfully smooth. Why had she not kissed him on the mouth, did she now find him repulsive? Such ideas were alien to him. He was startled when Bunce said emphatically, 'Sex.'

One of the batsmen had been bowled, his middle stump knocked out of the ground. 'What?'

'That's why you get a kick from it.' He tapped the paper. 'You use the ball, see, and you try to get rid of the stump. See what it says here, Herman uprooted the middle stump and that's what just happened now, right?

'Yes, but -'

'Boy, that bowler's uprooted his middle stump all right, it's a castration symbol, see? And those pads the batter wears, he's protecting his stump with them. He wants to hit that ball, get the damn' thing away from him to the boundary, the limit. Get that ball away, he's saying, I don't want it near my stump. You read what Melanie Klein says about bat and ball games?'

'I can't say I have.'

'They symbolize a fear of sex, keep it hidden, that's the thing, destroy it if you can. And the white clothes, what do they mean but purity? It's a hell of a funny game.' The players went into the pavilion. 'That's it then, glad to have seen it.'

'They'' be coming out again. This is the tea interval.'

'I guess I've seen enough.' With cricket satisfactorily explained Bunce rose to his feet.

Death By Analysis by Gillian Slovo (The Women's Press Crime 1986)

Sam gave a long sigh. He put his face in his hands and groaned.

'Nothing happened. Absolutely nothing. Unless you count the fact that one of my students asked me a penetrating question about the foliation of space which took me all of thirteen minutes to answer. I got five circulars, two of them identical and I had an argument in the canteen with a Spartacist while eating a soya-bean casserole.'

'You're in a bad way,' I said. 'Arguing with a Spart.'

'Yeah, well he tried to tell me that soya was a sop thrown at the working class to divert it from the struggle.'

'So how was it?'

The soya? Terrible. If that's a sop, then I think we're saved. Anyway, what time are we leaving?'

Bogue's Fortune by Julian Symons (Perennial Library 1956)

Maureen got up off the floor and eyed him with undisguised interest. “l’m Maureen Gardner.I'm at the school, was rather, until it finished.”

“What are you going to do now?"

‘I'm leaving at the end of the week to join the Anarchist Country Community at Shovels End in Essex.”

“Are you now?" Bogue had a gaudy tie in his hand, and he talked to her while he knotted it. “I used to be very interested in Anarchism when I was a young man. In fact, l'll tell you a secret, I spoke on Anarchist platforms in Glasgow just after the war, that was the First War, you know. I was a red-hot revolutionary then, hot as you are now, I expect. Trouble with Anarchism, I found, was it’s against human nature. In a small group, yes, providing you’re all idealists, Anarchism's fine, answers all the problems. In a feudal society-well, yes, it’s still got some kind of answer. But once you get labor-saving machines, motor-cars, airplanes, not to mention all the bombs we’re inventing to save civilization, what can Anarchists do but settle down in country communities at Shovels End?" Bogue turned round and appealed to her, his arms spread wide, his face serious.

Maureen goggled at him. She had been won over, Applegate saw, won over as only a girl could be who had perhaps never been taken seriously before. “You think I shouldn’t go?”

“Not at all,” Bogue picked up a jacket that lay on the stairs behind him, thrust his arms into the sleeves. “We learn from our mistakes, if we ever learn. But the important thing is to have the capacity for making mistakes. To anyone of your age, faced with a choice, I’d say just this. Do the daring thing, the unusual thing, don’t do the commonplace thing.”

“Yes.” Maureen expelled what Applegate unhappily felt to be an almost reverent sigh.

New Cinema in Britain by Roger Manvell (Studio Vista 1969)

The Man Who Killed Himself by Julian Symons (Penguin Crime 1967)

In the end Arthur Brownjohn killed himself, but in the beginning he made up his mind to murder his wife. He did so on the day that Major Easonby Mellon met Patricia Parker. Others might have come to such a decision earlier, but Arthur Brownjohn was a patient and, as all those who knew him agreed, a timid and long-suffering man. When people say that a man is long-suffering they mean that they see no reason why he should not suffer for ever.