A Season in Sinji by J. L. Carr (The Quince Tree Press 1967)

I particularly remember one evening at Blackfen. Wakerly and I hadn’t money left for the flicks and were pretending to drink W.V.S. tea, sitting in the bay window of a decaying vicarage dragged back to life for the Duration. It was lashing down—more even than its Lancashire usual—when down the drive, between the sooty laurels, marched this blonde, page-boy hair styling down to her shoulders, lack jumper moulded round a really promising bust, grey slacks and an open scarlet mac flapping around her thighs. She glittered.

Then, in this weather for wellingtons, I saw that she wasn’t wearing shoes. Only sodden silk stockings. She homed straight in over the gravel and through the pools and puddles and, after her, a private soldier paddled at a half-trot. She crossed the canteen in long strides, leaving heel and ball prints on the brown lino, glanced scornfully at us (she must have noticed Wakerly hopefully whip off his steel-rimmed spectacles) and shook the rain from her hair. She was a marvellous looker, officer fodder, and, when she spoke, it was like an aristocrat. Not like the female aboriginees of Blackfen & District.

The man padded humbly in after her and bought two teas. Even in his thick-soled boots the top of his head only came up to her nose. Then she began to slang the slosh in a very loud voice, describing it (rightly) as disgusting dishwater. Everybody stopped talking and the W.V.S. women (doing their bit for the boys) smouldered (but didn’t wither her). And her little man obediently nodded his head (but drank it). Then she shoved her cup back at him and stalked off into the downpour, leaving him to shuffle guiltily to the counter and, then, after her.

Like a film trailer, it had no ending. And no meaning. No, that’s untrue: it was a detail from a bigger picture, a flurry in the crowd watching a game. (And, anyway, I did see her just once more . . . in Africa, glaring insolently at me from a bundle of yellowing Daily Mirrors.) Put it like this— you’re fielding in the deep, the boundary’s edge, and, for a moment and for no reason at all, you catch the glance of someone you’ll never see again. But, for that brief moment, you’re part of each other’s life. This whole business, from start to end, was like that, like a game of cricket, the issue never sure, who’d win, who’d lose, and there were some, like these, who watched momentarily and went away. And others who prodded around, doing what they could but not really knowing what it was all about; I mean not understanding what was at stake as will was pitted against will, as we waited for the change of luck that always comes, watched for a grip to slacken as the game turned . . . That spectator, the one in the red mac, disappeared into the rain.

Smith by Leon Garfield (Farrar, Straus and Giroux 1967)

He was called Smith and was twelve years old. Which, in itself, was a marvel; for it seemed as if the smallpox, the consumption, brain-fever, jail-fever and even the hangman's rope had given him a wide berth for fear of catching something. Or else they weren't quick enough.

Smith had a turn of speed that was remarkable, and a neatness in nipping down an alley or vanishing in a court that had to be seen to be believed. Not that it was often seen, for Smith was rather a sooty spirit of the violent and ramshackle Town, and inhabited the tumbledown mazes about fat St. Paul's like the subtle air itself. A rat was like a snail beside Smith, and the most his thousand victims ever got of him was the powerful whiff of his passing and a cold draft in their dexterously emptied pockets.

Only the sanctimonious birds that perched on the church's dome ever saw Smith's progress entire, and as their beady eyes followed him, they chatted savagely, "Pick-pocket! Pick-pocket! Jug him! Jug-jug-jug him!" as if they'd been appointed by the Town to save it from such as Smith.

His favourite spot was Ludgate Hill, where the world's coaches, chairs and curricles were met and locked, from morning to night, in a horrible, blasphemous confusion. And here, in one or other of the ancient doorways, he leaned and grinned while the shouting and cursing and scraping and raging went endlessly, hopelessly on - till, sooner or later, something prosperous would come his way.

The Man On The Balcony by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö (Vintage Crime 1967)

He thought too of the swift gangsterisation of this society, which in the last resort must be a product of himself and of the other people who lived in it and had a share in its creation. He thought of the rapid technical expansion that the police force had undergone merely during the last year; despite this, crime always seemed to be one step ahead. He thought of the new investigation methods and the computers, which could mean that this particular criminal might be caught within a few hours, and also what little consolation these excellent technical inventions had to offer the women he had just left, for example. Or himself. Or the set-faced men who had now gathered around the little body in the bushes between the rocks and the red paling.

Inspector Ghote Caught in Meshes by H. R. F. Keating (Penguin Books 1967)

The three men had been sprawled there in the shade of the big Flame of the Forest for nearly two hours, but although it was very hot and almost intolerably muggy they had not slept. There was a feeling of tension behind their air of easy-going relaxedness. It showed in the way every now and again one of them would check over his gun.
The Sikh in the orange turban had an American self-loading Garand rifle and the other two had revolvers, one a British Army officer's issue Webley and the other a much abused Smith and Wesson dating from the early years of the century. This last was hardly reliable at a range over five yards, but none of the three expected to use it at even this distance.

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.

Division Street: America by Studs Terkel (New Press 1967)

I think the poor class of people, both Negro and white, as bad as I hate to say this, being a union man, I believe they've forgotten a lot of these things. In those days, if you had a car transfer, nobody threw away a transfer. They would put it where somebody else could get it. Nobody threw away a cigarette butt. It was awful hard to find a cigarette, but if a guy had one, he would choke it and give it to the next guy. Everybody was very friendly at that time.

Today, based on the war economy and the unions, some people make a few dollars, and the feeling, the atmosphere is different. Labor's respectable now, it's status quo. If you fight against these guys, you're labeled. Fear. A lot of fellas want to know how come George Meany don't walk together with Martin Luther King, you know, in these demonstrations. We evade the question. (Laughs.)

There was a meeting downtown where all the business agents were, labor leaders. I thought they were gonna pull Mayor Daley's pants down and kiss him. These guys go overboard. And they were raising a question of why we wasn't organizin' more. Why there wasn't more than five Negroes out of two, three hundred guys! So I finally got up enough courage to get the floor. (Laughs.)

So I told 'em, "Looking around the room here, you guys got all diamond rings, manicures." Honest, I didn't know Bill Lee* had a telephone in his Mark IV, air-conditioned, chauffeur, everything. (Laughs.) And I said, "The image of so-called labor leaders is not what it was in the old days. Now you can't tell 'em from a businessman." So they accepted the criticism.

('Lew Gibson' speaking to Studs Terkel about the contrast between the hungry thirties and the prosperous sixties.)

* Bill Lee was the President of the Chicago Federation of Labor at the time.

As We Saw the Thirties edited by Rita James Simon (University of Illinois Press 1967)

Another thing to remember about the twenties is that, after a brief postwar depression, it was a decade of unusual prosperity. Big business and we thought of as its government seemed absolutely impregnable. And most of us were in one way or another beneficiaries of national prosperity. How was H. L. Mencken able to publish a glossy journal such as the American Mercury? Because the publishing business of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., was flourishing. How were the expatriates able to live abroad? Because they were taking advantage of a favorable rate of exchange. Why did I get a raise in salary at Smith College? Because papas were able to pay increased tuition fees.

Then the depression came. It began, of course, with the stock market crash of October, 1929, but our awareness of it did not begin then. I had started teaching that fall at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and one or two of my colleagues got squeezed, but I thought it served them right for playing the market. After all, they still had their jobs, and their families would not starve. Some of the big operators had been badly hurt, and a few committed suicide, but we had no great sympathy for the men of Wall Street. This, we said to ourselves, was what a business civilization was like.

But as 1930 went by, we began to wonder what was happening, and in 1932 it seemed clear to some of us that this business civilization that we had been belaboring on cultural and moral grounds had collapsed. The machines - those wonderful machines that had given so many of us a high standard of living - had stopped running. And more and more people were out of jobs. By 1932 some economists said that as many as 17 million people were unemployed, and that meant that every fourth person we met was jobless . . .

[From ' Writers in the Thirties' by Granville Hicks.]