Full Time: The Secret Life Of Tony Cascarino as told to Paul Kimmage (Scribner 2000)

When I close my eyes and think of Glenn Hoddle, two images spring to mind. The first is of Hoddle the player, and that incredible goal for Spurs, when he raced with the ball to the edge of the Watford box and chipped the goalkeeper when everyone expected him to cross. The second is of Hoddle the manager, on the morning Paul Elliott arrived in our dressing room wearing an immaculate leather trenchcoat and stood there, stunned, as Hoddle the manager raced to the 'cover' of a bin in the corner and started shooting him with imaginary bullets — 'Pshhhh', 'Pshhhh' — like a five-year-old with a cowboy pistol set. What Paul didn't realize was that Glenn was trying to be funny, and when Glenn tried to be funny it was time pass around the laughing gas because he was probably the unfunniest man I have ever known, He was also completely besotted with himself.

Repetitive Beat Generation by Steve Redhead (Rebel Inc. 2000)

G. L. I think it was Simon Frith that told me this, that when he was working with Melody Maker the editor's idea of the ideal very loyal reader was somebody (male) who stayed in a town just outside Middlesbrough who didn't have a girlfriend. This was what they looked forward to every single week, this was the highlight of their week - reading Melody Maker or NME. Most of the provinces, and the towns that surround the provinces, things like the music they take a hold. Punk was still strong for a long time up here. Acid house was still very strong up here. The Scottish hardcore scene, the happy hardcore scene, it is basically acid house what 'oi' was to punk - it's that kind of boom boom boom all the time. It's just taking the basic elements. Things like that do stick longer in the provinces. We rely more on this. We don't have the same input from friends and all that to change us. My friends who I talk with about records are very good but there's not an awful lot. It's not a matter of somebody saying 'Have you heard this great new record?' and all that sort of stuff. That doesn't happen all the time. It happens with my good friends fairly regularly but then again I'm getting the same sources as they are - through the radio, through the papers, whatever. It's not a case of people I know going to clubs and saying 'I heard this great tune at a club blah blah blah'. Again the money thing came into it. You didn't have the money to go out and see too many bands. You can also tie that in to a love of the journalists from the music press at that time. The stalwarts - the Nick Kents, the Charles Shaar Murrays, the people who came in with punk, particularly Tony Parsons, Julie Burchill and Paul Morley - a 'Manchester' man, still a big hero of mine. He could have done anything. I once sent stuff off to NME where I reviewed a couple of records. It didn't get printed. It was probably rubbish. That was just after my mother died.

Gordon Legge in conversation with Steve Redhead

Raid and the Blackest Sheep by Harri Nykanen (Ice Cold Crime 2000)

Raid drove while Nygren slept in the back seat.

Nygren had folded up his wool overcoat beneath his head and curled up his thin legs. His hands were tucked against his chest. One knee was thrust against the back of the driver's seat and Raid could feel it pressing against the small of his back. Nygren's dark-blue, nearly black sport coat was unbuttoned, and a burgundy tie with white polka dots spilled over the edge of the seat.

Nygren was approaching sixty. His face was lean and furrowed with an inch-long scar at the left corner of his mouth. With his blond hair combed straight back to the nape of his neck, Nygren almost looked boyish. The expensive watch on his wrist topped off his stylish attire.

Nygren wore a tranquil expression, like that of a man who does only what he believes in.

Popular Music from Vittula by Mikael Niemi (Seven Stories Press 2000)

Grandad started scooping water onto the stones again, ignoring his sons' protestations that they were still made of traditional Finnish hardwood. Instead he declared that they had all become idle layabouts, that Tornedalen had been conquered by knapsut and ummikot and that what he regretted most of all was not smacking them more often when they were little. But it was too late now. Nobody understood any more the feeling of sitting in a sauna where you'd been born, where your father had been born and his father before him, where the family's corpses had been washed and shrouded, where kuppari, the medicine men, had bled the sick, where children had been conceived and where generation after generation of the family had cleansed themselves after a week's work.

His voice broke and, with tears in his eyes, he announced that life, my boys, is cold and pain and lies and rubbish. Take just one example: the revolution he'd been waiting for since the Pajala transport workers came out on strike for the first time in 1931, where the hell was it, had anybody seen any sign of it around here lately, well, had they? Only once had a spark of hope been lit, one day when he'd gone to Kolari to buy some provisions, and among the crowd of customers in Valinta Firberg's he'd caught a glimpse of Josef Stalin with a cart full of meat. But Uncle Joe had obviously decided it was a waste of time coming to Pajala.

A bottle was handed to Grandad as a crumb of comfort amidst all the heat, and he splashed a drop on the stones as well. A whiff of fusel oil drifted towards us. Grandad passed on the bottle, wiped his nose on his arm and said that life was a load of shit anyway and death wasn't far away. But he was still a Communist, he wanted to make that clear once and for all, and if on his deathbed he started rambling about seeking forgiveness for his sins and asking for Jesus, it would be no more than confusion and senility and they should stick a plaster over his cakehole. He wanted everybody to promise they'd do that, here and now, in the presence of his family and other witnesses. The fear of death was nothing compared to the fear of going gaga and talking twaddle at Pajala Cottage Hospital for anybody to hear. 

The Toy Collector by James Gunn (Bloomsbury 2000)

Our basement had a paneled corkboard ceiling. You could climb a ladder, push up the panels, and hide things in the space above them. Through the years the space housed chewing gum (my father despised the cracking sound), fireworks, smoke bombs, cigarettes, love letters from Stacey Kees, magazines with naked people, witchcraft tracts, porno videos, anarchist newsletters, condoms, a pair of handcuffs, alcohol of various grains and proofs, pills, grass, coke, a Graphix bong, a foam vagina, a .38 revolver, and many other useful items not sanctioned by the Gunn family government. The space's longest resident, though, was Scrunch 'Em, Grow 'Em Dinosaurs, known to the authorities only as The Lizard Game. Back in the early seventies my mother would probably have turned us in had we not outwitted her by hiding our contraband in the basement ceiling. She seemed all right, but after you had lived with her for four years you knew she'd turn rat if the circumstances were right. Due to renovation the space is now gone. Neither my brother nor I know what happened to the toy.

The 25th Hour by David Benioff (Plume Books 2000)

Monty locks the door of the small bathroom and sits on the closed toilet seat. Someone has written Fuck you in silver marker above the roll of toilet paper. Sure, he thinks. And fuck you too. Fuck everyone. The French hostess, the diners drinking wine, the waiters taking orders. Fuck this city and everyone in it. The panhandlers, grinning on the street corners, begging for change. The turbaned Sikhs and unwashed Pakistanis racing their yellow cabs down the avenues. The Chelsea faggots with their waxed chests and pumped-up biceps. Fuck them all. The Korean grocers with their pyramid of overpriced fruit, their plastic-wrapped tulips and roses. The white-robed Nigerians selling counterfeit Gucci on Fifth Avenue. The Russians in Brighton Beach, drinking their tea from glasses, sugar cubes clenched between their teeth. Fuck them. The black-hatted Hasidim in their dirty gaberdine suits, selling diamonds on 47th Street, counting their money while they wait for Meshiach. The sidewalk gimps, bodies crooked and spastic. The Wall Street brokers, smug and cologned, reading their folded papers in subway cars. Fuck them all. The skateboard punks in Washington Square Park, wallet chains rattling as they leap the curb. The Puerto Ricans, flags flying and radios howling from the open windows of their cars. The Bensonhurst Italians pomading their hair, with their nylon warm-up suits and St. Anthony medallions. The Upper East Side wives, with their pinched mouths and lifted faces, with their scarves from Hermès and their artichokes from Balducci's. Fuck the uptown brothers, they never pass the ball, they don't play defense, they take four steps on every drive to the hoop. Fuck the prep school junkies, smoking tar in Daddy's kitchen while the old man jets to Tokyo. Fuck the police, the bullyboys in blue with their thick-necked swagger, zooming through red lights on their way to Krispy Kreme. Fuck the Knicks - Patrick Ewing and his blown finger roll against Indiana, Charles Smith and his failed layups against Chicago, John Starks and his thousand missed shots against Houston - fuck them, they'll never beat Jordan, they will never beat Jordan. Fuck Jakob Elinsky, that whining runt. Fuck Frank Slattery, always staring at my girlfriend's ass. Fuck Naturelle Rosario, set free tomorrow when I'm gone. Fuck Kostya Novotny; I trusted him and he dimed me out. Fuck my father, alone in his darkroom, hanging wet prints from a line. Fuck my mother, rotting below the snow. Fuck Jesus Christ, he got off easy, an afternoon on the cross, a weekend in hell, and then the hallelujahs of all the legioned angels. Fuck this city and everyone in it - from the row houses of Astoria to the duplexes of Park Avenue, from the projects in Brownsville to the lofts in Soho, from Bellevue Hospital to the tenements in Alphabet City to the brownstones in Park Slope - let the Arabs bomb it all to rubble; let the waters rise and submerge the whole rat-crazed place; let an earthquake tumble the tall buildings; let the fires reign uncontested; let it burn, let it burn. And fuck you, Montgomery Brogan, you blew it.

Someone is banging on the bathroom door and Monty stands, walks over to the sink, and washes his hands. He stares at his face in the mirror. For all the good it did you, he thinks. Green eyes, high cheekbones, straight nose, perfect white teeth. Pretty white boy. Eyes, bones, nose, teeth. More banging on the door. And Monty knows what he has to do. "Fuck it," he whispers, and waves goodbye to the face in the mirror.

Shame The Devil by George P. Pelecanos (Dell Books 2000)

The reverend's thin lips turned up in a gaseous grin. "So you like Edwardtown."

"Yes. How about you?"

"Well, I'll tell you. I've lived in New York and some other glamorous places, too. But it was always my dream to come to a small town like Edwardtown to build a congregation from the ground up."

And to fleece the local hayseeds for everything they have.

"I moved around a lot," said the reverend, "searching for I didn't know what until I came here."

Failure.

"And because I never had a wife or children of my - "

Faggot.

" - this congregation has become my family. I'd like very much for you to become a part of that family."

Salesman.

Boiling A Frog by Christopher Brookmyre (Abacus 2000)

Given her pedigree, she was also a Tory target for accusations of selling out in endorsing Tony Blair's reforms. She had become yet another New Labour robot, they said, and had betrayed everything her father stood for simply to further her own career. Yeah, sure, and the band played "Believe it if You Like'. Labour politicians had always been accused of abandoning their principles in pursuit of power, since long before Tony Blair appeared on the scene. It was part of the Tories' time served pincer-movement strategy: if you took a hard line you were a dangerous lefty out to wreck the economy; if you softened your position, you were an unprincipled chancer who'd do anything for a sniff of power. The Tories knew they'd never face the same charge because they didn't have any principles in the first place. How do you ideologically compromise a stance built on greed, materialism and xenophobia?

Consequently, she didn't mourn Clause Four's passing. Holding on to it was a futile gesture of stubborn and misguided faith, like wearing the medal of some mediaeval saint whose canonisation had been rescinded. It was an anachronism and an impossible dream, but far more damaging, it was also a stick with which their enemies had too often beaten them.

Compromise was always depicted as a political sin by those in the grandstand. Those in the game knew that politics is compromise. If you want a party that believes in all the things you do, and with which you disagree on nothing, you'll have to start it yourself, and the membership is extremely unlikely ever to exceed single figures. In binary.

Smoking In Bed: Conversations With Bruce Robinson edited by Alistair Owen (Bloomsbury 2000)

How to Get Ahead in Advertising might almost be the modern equivalent of a satirical pamphlet by Swift.

I think there are elements of that, because being a pamphleteer was the most immediate and accesible way of communicating one's outrage and a lot of people did it. Every day you pick up your Guardian and there's a Steve Bell cartoon about a serious subject that can make you laugh out loud. Comedy is the greatest weapon there's ever been for dealing with politicians. I'd be sitting there with a boiled egg, saying, 'How can people not see what's going on?' I thought I was looking at reality, and I suppose I wondered why no one else was. If you rant and rave like I used to and you haven't got an outlet for it, people think you're a nut. That's when they say, 'Just lie down. A little bit of the old liquid cosh and you're going to feel much better.' I don't do that any more. Sophie says the first time I took her out to dinner I made an hour and a half speech about Margaret Thatcher. That was our first date. She told me that after twenty minutes she just cut off and nodded. And that's what became of the film: most of the audience cut off and nodded.

Joe College by Tom Perrotta (St Martin's Griffin 2000)

Only Howard Friedlin seemed oblivious to the now-public drama of my love life. He was too busy glowering at the copy of Reality he'd unearthed from the bottom of the coffee-table pile.
"What about Max?" Mrs. Friedlin asked. "Does he have a girlfriend too?"
Before I could answer, Mr. Friedlin raised the magazine like a kindergartner at show-and-tell. He tapped his index finger against the cover photo of the mangy constipated dog, hunched and grimacing.
"What the hell is this?" he demanded.
"A literary magazine," Sang replied cheerfully. "Danny here is one of the editors."
Mr. Friedlin gave me a look of incomprehension worthy of my own father.
"Did you intend it as some kind of statement?" He pronounced his last word with genuine distaste, as if we all knew about statements.
"It is what it is," I informed him, grinning like an idiot. I felt positively giddy. Polly wanted to sleep with me. She'd said so over the phone. "It's just reality."
"Why don't you just photograph some dog shit?" he asked. "That's part of reality, too."
"They're saving that for the spring issue," Ted explained helpfully.