Unhappy-Go-Lucky by Ian Pattison (Tindal Street Press 2013)

 

When people die, their memories die with them. But their memories are not their exclusive domain, encompassing as they must, the lives of others. Contained within our memorabilia, other people walk and speak, inhabiting our dreams and anecdotes. The only person one never sees in a memory is one’s self, since we are otherwise engaged, crouched behind our mental camera. Memories, therefore, are not only a personal but a social history. One of the things Vaughan had said to me that day on Byres Road was: ‘I wish I’d got it all down before she died.’ He was talking about his own mother. I’d heard that same utterance several times from different people. But why didn’t anyone ever take their own advice? The reason, in my case, was simple: who the hell ever listens to their mother? Like a Facebook home page, they talk in an ever-flowing, unedited stream of trivia, gossip, local news, repetition, received opinion, stale myth, whimsy and spite. To listen out for items of true interest amid the babble is to risk turning oneself into a crazed prospector panning for decades through murky silt in the hope of turning over a golden nugget or two.

I tried though.

I found out that in Tradeston Church, Kathleen Cairns had married Ivan Moss. The bride wore a white dress with matching white skin, patent black shoes and a discreetly visible foetus. Father looked dashing in his naval uniform with its braided cuffs and faint reek of engine oil. Father’s brother Rolf was granted shore leave to attend as best man. Father was overjoyed at the prospect of fatherhood.

'Are you sure it’s mine?’

‘Of course it’s yours,’ protested Mother. ‘Who else’s would it be?’

‘I was away for months, anything could’ve happened.’

‘That cuts both ways – do you want to swap separation stories?'

Father demurred. Though back on dry land, my guess was that he would have felt himself all at sea – things were changing too quickly, too decisively, for him to keep a telling grip on life’s rudder.

Mother was close to tears. Father tried to put her at her ease, with silken words.

‘If it’s backward, we can always bung it into an orphanage.’

Mother grew alarmed. ‘Why would it be backward?’

‘It’s a precaution. A first child’s either the pick of the bunch or the worst.’

‘You’re a middle child,’ observed Mother.

‘I know,’ mused Father, darkly.

Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? by Raymond Carver (Vintage Contemporaries 1976)

 

The boy rocked from one foot to the other and looked at his father, and then he dashed into the house and began calling, “Mom! Mom!”

He sat on the porch and leaned against the garage wall and stretched his legs. The sweat had dried on his forehead. He felt clammy under his clothes.

He had once seen his father—a pale, slow-talking man with slumped shoulders—in something like this. It was a bad one, and both men had been hurt. It had happened in a café. The other man was a farmhand. Hamilton had loved his father and could recall many things about him. But now he recalled his father’s one fistfight as if it were all there was to the man.

(from “Bicycles, Muscles, Cigarettes”)

Never Stop: How Ange Postecoglou Brought the Fire Back to Celtic by Hamish Carton (Pitch Publishing 2023)

 

Unsurprisingly, the most infamous case of sheer Postecoglou ignorance was found on talkSPORT. The radio station specialises in bold ill-informed claims that tempt listeners into phoning up or sharing their clips on social media. In the days after Postecoglou’s name was first mentioned, a clip showed footballer turned broadcaster Alan Brazil mocking his credentials. At the time, there had been reports of the Aussie not having the required licence to manage in Europe.

Is this a wind-up? Breaking news from Scotland as Celtic have applied for an exemption with UEFA for Yokohama Marinos boss Postacoogloo [sic] to manage in Europe. He does not hold the required UEFA Pro Licence. Oh, this has got to be a wind-up. Dear oh dear. He’ll be a great manager. Where do they come up with these guys from?

(talkSPORT)

The former Scotland international had played against Postecoglou’s South Melbourne years earlier, not that he’d be likely to recall. As with virtually everyone in this chapter, he was found apologising at some stage over the following 12 months. A similar story of reprieve occurred with another former footballer who enjoyed his heyday in the 1980s – Charlie Nicholas:

There’s nothing wrong with having a plan B – but this is not plan B. This is desperation. I will give Postecoglou a chance because I’m a supporter but is the former Australia boss really the height of the club’s ambitions? It has nothing to do with his lack of knowledge of the Scottish game or me looking down on football in the southern hemisphere. It scares me just how unambitious the club has become, going from a position of strength to where they find themselves now. Luring Postecoglou from Yokohama F. Marinos is not quite the same as when Arsène Wenger left Japanese football to join Arsenal in 1996.

(Daily Express)

Nicholas was at it again in late September. Celtic had just been held to a 1-1 draw at home by Dundee United and had three league wins from seven matches. The knives were out for Postecoglou, with many reaching some wild conclusions:

Ange Postecoglou looks to me to be the new Ronny Deila. I am not sure Postecoglou has realised how big Celtic really are before he came in. I believe he has missed a pitch. I think Ange thought he would just come in here, and his playing style would get him over the line, no problem. But it is not about style. It is about winning.

(Daily Express)

Nicholas and Postecoglou would meet by chance in Glasgow months later. By that stage the Aussie had won the former Celtic striker over. Just as well:

We had a wee five-minute conversation where I thanked him for the job he is doing and what he is building at Celtic.

(Daily Express)

A Prefect's Uncle by P. G. Wodehouse (A & C Black 1903)

 

Gethryn strolled to the gate, where the station-master’s son stood at the receipt of custom to collect the tickets.  His uncle was to arrive by this train, and if he did so arrive, must of necessity pass this way before leaving the platform.  The train panted in, pulled up, whistled, and puffed out again, leaving three people behind it.  One of these was a woman of sixty (approximately), the second a small girl of ten, the third a young gentleman in a top hat and Etons, who carried a bag, and looked as if he had seen the hollowness of things, for his face wore a bored, supercilious look.  His uncle had evidently not arrived, unless he had come disguised as an old woman, an act of which Gethryn refused to believe him capable.

He enquired as to the next train that was expected to arrive from London.  The station-master’s son was not sure, but would ask the porter, whose name it appeared was Johnny.  Johnny gave the correct answer without an effort.  ’Seven-thirty it was, sir, except on Saturdays, when it was eight o’clock.’

‘Thanks,’ said the Bishop.  ’Dash the man, he might at least have wired.’

He registered a silent wish concerning the uncle who had brought him a long three miles out of his way with nothing to show at the end of it, and was just turning to leave the station, when the top-hatted small boy, who had been hovering round the group during the conversation, addressed winged words to him.  These were the winged words—

‘I say, are you looking for somebody?’ The Bishop stared at him as a naturalist stares at a novel species of insect.

'Yes,’ he said.  ‘Why?’

‘Is your name Gethryn?’

This affair, thought the Bishop, was beginning to assume an uncanny aspect.

‘How the dickens did you know that?’ he said.

’Oh, then you are Gethryn?  That’s all right.  I was told you were going to be here to meet this train.  Glad to make your acquaintance.  My name’s Farnie.  I’m your uncle, you know.’

‘My what?’ gurgled the Bishop.

‘Your uncle.  U-n, un; c-l-e—kul.  Uncle.  Fact, I assure you.' 

One Corpse Too Many by Ellis Peters (Macmillan 1979)

 

Cadfael had persuaded every man of the guard to view his unknown, but none of them could identify him. Courcelle had frowned down at the body long  and sombrely, and shaken his head.

“I never saw him before, to my knowledge. What can there possibly have been about a mere young squire like this, to make someone hate him enough to kill?”

“There can be murders without hate,” said Cadfael grimly. “Footpads and forest robbers take their victims as they come, without any feeling of liking or disliking.”

“Why, what can such a youth have had to make him worth killing for gain?”

“Friend,” said Cadfael, “there are those in the world would kill for the few coins a beggar has begged during the day. When they see kings cut down more than ninety in one sweep, whose fault was only to be in arms on the other side, is it much wonder rogues take that for justification? Or at least for licence!” He saw the colour burn high in Courcelle’s face, and a momentary spark of anger in his eye, but the young man made no protest. “Oh, I know you had your orders, and no choice but to obey them. I have been a soldier in my time, and borne the same discipline and done things I would be glad now to think I had not done. That’s one reason I’ve accepted, in the end, another discipline.”

“I doubt,” said Courcelle drily, “if I shall ever come to that.”

“So would I have doubted it, then. But here I am, and would not change again to your calling. Well, we do the best we can with our lives!” And the worst, he thought, viewing the long lines of motionless forms laid out along the ward, with other men’s lives, if we have power.

Maigret Sets a Trap by Georges Simenon (Penguin Books 1955)

 

'What qualifications do you have?’

‘I began by doing painting, fine art.’

‘When was that?’

‘When I was seventeen.’

‘You have your baccalaureate, do you?’

‘No, when I was young I wanted to be an artist. The paintings you saw in our drawing room, they’re by me.’

Maigret had not been able to work out what they represented, but they had disturbed him by their sad and morbid character. Neither the lines nor the colours were clear. The dominant shade had been a purplish-red, combined with curious shades of green that made him think of light under water, and it was as if the oil paint had spread by itself, like an ink-stain on a blotter.

Death in the Andes by Mario Vargas Llosa (Picador 1993)

 

When he saw the Indian woman appear at the door of the shack, Lituma guessed what she was going to say. And she did say it, but she was mumbling in Quechua while the saliva gathered at the corners of her toothless mouth.

“What’s she saying, Tomasito?”

“I couldn’t catch it, Corporal.”

The Civil Guard addressed her in Quechua, indicating with gestures that she should speak more slowly. The woman repeated the indistinguishable sounds that affected Lituma like savage music. He suddenly felt very uneasy.

“What’s she saying?”

“It seems her husband disappeared,” murmured his adjutant. “Four days ago.”

“That means we’ve lost three,” Lituma stammered, feeling the perspiration break out on his face. “Son of a bitch.”

“So what should we do, Corporal?”

“Take her statement.” A shudder ran up and down Lituma’s spine. “Have her tell you what she knows.”

“But what’s going on?” exclaimed the Civil Guard. “First the mute, then the albino, now one of the highway foremen. It can’t be, Corporal.”

Maybe not, but it was happening, and now for the third time. Lituma pictured the blank faces and icy narrow eyes that the people in Naccos—laborers at the camp and comuneros, the Indians from the traditional community—would all turn toward him when he asked if they knew the whereabouts of this woman’s husband, and he felt the same discouragement and helplessness he had experienced earlier when he tried to question them about the other men who were missing: heads shaking no, monosyllables, evasive glances, frowns, pursed lips, a presentiment of menace. It would be no different this time.

Reach for the Stars: 1996–2006: Fame, Fallout and Pop’s Final Party by Michael Cragg (Nine Eight Books 2023)

Spoken-word intro

I’m going to start with a confession. As a closeted teenager in the early ’00s I did some things I am ashamed of. I went to see the Libertines. I was a fan of post-Kid A Radiohead. I once went to Ireland to see Travis only to be hit on the head by warm beer and, at one point, an inflatable armchair. For a while, I thought hiding in indie music would help me keep my secret for a bit longer when in fact it just fed my covert obsession; glorious, shiny, ludicrous pop. I’d secretly gorge on the Latin flavours of ‘Spice Up Your Life’ or get a delicious sugar rush from ‘Don’t Stop Movin’’. Later I’d sit with my proudly pop-obsessed uni housemate and listen to ‘hard-edged’ ladband Five and the high street R&B of Blue, before hitting the local indie club. I’d carelessly align myself with the throng of NME readers trying to justify their love of Girls Aloud or the Sugababes via the prism of credibility (‘It’s pretty good for a pop song!!!’), when in fact I owned all their albums and distinctly remember singing along to the former’s pearlescent six-minute epic ‘Untouchable’ in a full-length mirror, willing myself to be who I was.

Perhaps because I only lived this UK pure pop boom – instigated by the Buffalo boot-stomping swagger of the Spice Girls in 1996, which is where this book starts – on the periphery, when I started writing about music as a journalist years later, I immersed myself fully. As pop shifted through the gears over the following two decades, taking in post-ironic synthpop, Lady Gaga, gloom wobble dubstep, drop-obsessed EDM and Billie Eilish-adjacent mope-pop before settling on a sort of generic streaming-friendly dance-pop sound, I often found myself harking back to the weightlessness of, say, Liberty X’s ‘Just a Little’ or Five’s ‘Keep On Movin’’ or A1’s ‘Caught in the Middle’. Like most people, this rose-tinted nostalgia – hey, this book is about the late ’90s and early ’00s, get used to it – ramped up as a pandemic-ravaged world went into lockdown. Gazed upon from a modern world seemingly on fire, this prelapsarian era suddenly represented even more of a refreshing change. A time before the threat of nuclear war, climate crisis, global financial collapse, social media, culture wars, Piers Morgan’s TV career, TikTok and, of course, the pandemic.

Cannery Row by John Steinbeck (Penguin Books 1945)

 

Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream. Cannery Row is the gathered and scattered, tin and iron and rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and junk heaps, sardine canneries of corrugated iron, honky tonks, restaurants and whore houses, and little crowded groceries, and laboratories and flophouses. Its inhabitants are, as the man once said, “whores, pimps, gamblers, and sons of bitches,” by which he meant Everybody. Had the man looked through another peephole he might have said, “Saints and angels and martyrs and holy men,” and he would have meant the same thing.

Alright, Alright, Alright: The Oral History of Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused by Melissa Maerz (Harper Collins 2020)

 

Richard Linklater: When I was in high school, our school had a ’50s day, where you could dress up 1950s and roll cigarettes up in your sleeve. My uncle had been a teenager in the ’50s, and he was like, “You guys like the ’50s, but let me tell you, the ’50s sucked.” I took that in for Dazed, like, yeah, the ’70s kind of suck, too.

Tom Junod: Many people who grew up in the ’70s felt that they had missed out on growing up in the ’60s. Linklater nails that so accurately. The second-phase baby boomers, the people who came of age in the ’70s, were almost Gen X precursors, because we felt that the real meat of the revolution had happened before we got there. In the ’60s, people had protested. They had stopped a war. They  had pioneered using drugs. They had pioneered rock music.

By the time that stuff made its way to us, it was simply as lifestyle choices. You weren’t making a political statement by smoking a joint. The few times we did protest, we were already self-aware enough to look at it ironically. The movie nails that with perfection.

Chris Barton: By the time you get to 1976, when Dazed takes place, the Beatles are done. The Rolling Stones haven’t had a great album in years. The economy was not great. In a couple of years, Carter would use the word “malaise” in his televised speech from the White House. I could see how you might think the best stuff has passed you by.

Tom Junod: My generation was guilty of nostalgia way before they got old. I was class of 1976. When I think of my own experiences in the ’70s, it’s like, Happy Days was on. Sha Na Na was an act that people my age went and paid money for, even though it did not in any way memorialize their own time. American Graffiti was a really popular movie with people who graduated high school in 1976 rather than in 1962. And it was the same way with Dazed being popular with people who graduated in the ’90s.

Brian Raftery: When they were making Dazed, I don’t think they realized there was ’70s nostalgia on the horizon. By the early ’90s, the ’60s revival had reached a saturation point. We had The Wonder Years. We had Oliver Stone relitigating the entire ’60s, whether it was Vietnam or the Doors. I think the height of the ’60s nostalgia was an infomercial for a record set called Freedom Rock, with two grizzled hippies who were like, “Turn it up, man!”

There was a weird rewrite of the ’60s because the boomers had taken over the media, and these guys were like, “Hey, we were the second-greatest generation!” and it became insufferable by the end of the ’80s. So Dazed was definitely a turning point. It was like, the ’70s? That sounds cool.

Richard Linklater: I think teenagers are looking to escape the misery of their own time, whatever that time is. It’s like, “It had to have been better back then.”

Bellies and Bullseyes: The Outrageous True Story of Darts by Sid Waddell (Ebury Press 2007)

 

During my first performance I managed to upset some of the crowd and players. David and I did our thing on a first-floor balcony, about sixty feet up and back from the stage action. We were not soundproofed in any way, because, I assume, at the snooker, ‘Whispering’ Ted Lowe and the others operated at the table side and very much sotto voce. Not the style of the lad who was soon to become dubbed ‘The Geordie Lip’. I got really excited and loud when a Geordie team, from Cramlington near Ashington, were going well. So much so that an angry voice from below threatened to ‘come up and smack that bastard on the balcony’. Then I loudly predicted a player would try to go out from 128 with 60, 60, double 4. The bloke froze on stage, turned theatrically, looked up at me and bellowed: ‘No I bloody won’t’ – then went out with 60, 18, bull! It brought the house down, not so much for winning the leg but mainly for putting me in my place. But, believe me, this was small beer compared to the stick that lay ahead.

Fletch Won by Gregory McDonald (Vintage/Black Lizard 1985)

 

“Society.”

“Society?”

“Society. Seeing you’re so quick to identify deceased people who never accomplished a damned thing in their lives, and point out to the public first cousins who intend to marry each other, I think you might have a little talent for covering society.”

“You mean society, like in high society?”

“High society, low society, you know, lifestyles: all those features that cater to the anxieties of our middle-class readers.”

“Frank, I don’t believe in society.”

“That’s okay, Fletch. Society doesn’t believe in you, either.”

Fletch by Gregory McDonald (Vintage/Black Lizard 1974)

 

“What's your name?”

“Fletch.”

“What's your full name?”

“Fletcher.”

“What's your first name?”

“Irwin.”

“What?”

“Irwin. Irwin Fletcher. People call me Fletch.”

“Irwin Fletcher, I have a proposition to make to you. I will give you a thousand dollars for just listening to it. If you decide to reject the proposition, you take the thousand dollars, go away, and never tell anyone we talked. Fair enough?”

“Is it criminal? I mean, what you want me to do?”

“Of course.”

“Fair enough. For a thousand bucks I can listen. What do you want me to do?”

“I want you to murder me.”

Thatcher Stole My Trousers by Alexei Sayle (Bloomsbury 2016)

 

One of the unexpected ways in which my upbringing as the son of Communists had helped prepare me for the challenges of celebrity, an advantage that my fellow comedians didn’t have, was in the matter of staying true to yourself. The idea of the traitor, the sell-out, the apostate was central to Joe and Molly’s state of mind. Even when I was quite small we would be out shopping in town and  my mother or father would gesticulate towards some harmless-looking individual and say in a whisper, ‘See him over there trying on gloves, he left the Party over Hungary in 1956 and now he’s . . .’ Here they’d pause before revealing the full horror. ‘A Labour councillor!’ Or, ‘Don’t look, but that woman by the bacon counter, she used to be in CND but now she’s . . . joined the Air Force!’ At first I couldn’t see anything different about the people my parents pointed out but over time it did seem to me that they possessed a certain haunted quality, an air of sadness, and though their mood probably wasn’t helped by being whispered about in shops by a red-haired woman and a man in a trilby hat accompanied by a silent watchful boy I sensed that the main critical voice was within their heads, that they themselves were aware on some level of the abandonment of their younger more idealistic self and it corroded them from the inside.

I did not want to end up like that. The trick it  seemed to me was to not be blind to the many faults of the left while at the same time to try and stay true to those core values of workers’ rights, social justice and equality.

Me doing fund-raising benefits for left-wing organisations was an attempt to stay connected with those ideals.

As a left-wing entertainer it was accepted that you would inevitably perform unpaid at concerts in aid of various radical causes – doing benefits had become a sort of national service for alternative comedians. There was very little pleasure in appearing at them though. I did a bit about benefit concerts in my act: how you told a joke, then there was a pause while the audience vetted the joke for its political content, possible sexism, any hints of neo-colonialism, adherence to the theory of dialectical and historical materialism, and only once it was cleared would they laugh – it was like doing your material over a faulty phone line.

I went up to Sheffield to appear in a show at the Crucible Theatre in support of Nicaragua’s revolutionary, anti-American, pro-moustache Sandinista government. Following the show the cast and their friends were introduced to the guest of honour – David Blunkett the radical left-wing leader of Sheffield City Council. After the line-up Linda said, ‘I don’t like that man, there’s something funny about his eyes.'

Prick Up Your Ears: The Biography of Joe Orton by John Lahr (Open Road Media 1978)

 

'I used to write false blurbs on the inside of Gollancz books,”Orton remembered. ‘Because I discovered that Gollancz books had blank yellow flaps and I used to type false blurbs on the inside.’ Halliwell told the police: ‘I saw Orton typing on the covers of books. I read what he typed, and I considered it a criticism of what the books contained.’ The target for most of this mischief was Dorothy. Sayers’s Lord Peter Wimsey whodunits:

When little Betty Macdree says that she has been interfered with, her mother at first laughs [Orton wrote on the flap for Clouds of Witness]. It is only something that the kiddy had picked up off television. But when sorting through the laundry, Mrs Macdree discovers that a new pair of knickers are missing she thinks again. On being questioned, Betty bursts into tears. Mrs Macdree takes her to the police station and to everyone’s surprise the little girl identifies P.C. Brenda Coolidge as her attacker. Brenda, a new recruit, denies the charge. A search is made of the Women’s Police Barracks. What is found there is a seven inch phallus and a pair of knickers of the kind used by Betty. All looks black for kindly P.C. Coolidge…What can she do? This is one of the most enthralling stories ever written by Miss Sayers.

It is the only one in which the murder weapon is concealed, not for reasons of fear but for reasons of decency!

READ THIS BEHIND CLOSED DOORS. And have a good shit while you are reading!

'My blurbs were mildly obscene,’ Orton admitted. ‘Even at the trial they said they were only mildly obscene. When I put the plastic covers back over the jackets you couldn’t tell that the blurbs weren’t printed. I used to stand in corners after I’d smuggled the doctored books back into the library and then watch the people read them. It was very funny, very interesting.'

The Greatest Show on Earth: The Inside Story of the Legendary 1970 World Cup by Andrew Downie (Arena Sport 2021)

 

Gordon Banks (England): . . . The moment the ball left his head I heard Pelé shout ‘Golo!’

Carlos Alberto (Brazil): When Pelé prepared to jump and head the ball I think we all thought that it would be a goal.

Gordon Banks (England): Faced with a situation like that your mind becomes clear. All your experience and technique take over. One thing did flash through my mind: if I do make contact, I’ll not hold this. The ball hit the deck two yards in front of me. My immediate concern was how high it would bounce. It left the turf and headed towards my right-hand corner, but I managed to make contact with the finger of my gloved right hand. It was the first time I’d worn these particular gloves. I’d noticed that the Mexican and South American goalkeepers wore gloves that were larger than their British counterparts, with palms covered in dimpled rubber. I’d been so impressed with this innovation that I’d invested in two pairs. Those little rubber dimples did their stuff: the bouncing ball didn’t immediately glanceoff my hand and I was able to scoop it high into the air. But another thought flashed through my mind. In directing the ball upwards, I might only succeed in flicking it up into the roof of the net. So I rolled my right hand, slightly, using the third and fourth fingers as leverage. I landed crumpled against the inner side netting of the goal, and my first reaction was to look at Pelé. I hadn’t a clue where the ball was. He’d ground to a halt, head clasped between his hands, and I knew then all that I needed to know. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred Pelé’s shout of ‘Golo!’ would have been justified, but on that day I was equal to the task. It was really just about being in the right place at the right time – one of those rare occasions when years of hard work and practice combine in one perfect moment. As Pelé positioned himself for the resulting corner he turned to me and smiled. He told me he thought that he’d scored. So did I – and I told him as much. ‘Great save . . . mate,’ he said. At a critical stage of the game, it was 0–0, if the ball had gone in at that particular stage I think the heads would have gone down.

Drowned Hopes by Donald E. Westlake (Mysterious Press 1990)

 

Dortmunder said, “How long were you in, Tom, all in all?”

“All in all?” Tom made that sound again. “All my life, all in all. Twenty-three years, this last time. It was supposed to be for good, you know. I’m habitual.”

“I remember that about you,” Dortmunder said.

“Well, the answer is,” Tom said, “while I been eating regular meals and getting regular exercise and a good night’s sleep all these years on the inside, the world’s managed to get worse without me. Maybe I’m not the one they should of been protecting society from all along.”

“How do you mean, Tom?”

“The reason I’m out,” Tom said. “Inflation, plus budget cuts, plus the rising inmate population. All on its own, Al, without any help from yours truly, society has raised up a generation of inmates. Sloppy ones, too, Al, fourth-rates you and me wouldn’t use to hold the door open.”

“There is a lot of that around,” Dortmunder agreed.

“These are people,” Tom went on, “that don’t know a blueprint from a candy wrapper. And to pull a job with a plan? When these bozos take a step forward with the right foot, they have no really clear idea what they figure to do with the left.”

“They’re out there, all right,” Dortmunder said, nodding. “I see them sometimes, asleep on fire escapes, with their head on a television set. They do kinda muddy the water for the rest of us.”

“They take all the fun outta prison, I can tell you that,” Tom said. “And the worst of it is, their motivation’s no damn good. Now, Al, you and me know, if a man goes into a bank with a gun in his hand and says gimme the money and a five-minute start, there’s only two good reasons for it. Either his family’s poor and sick and needs an operation and shoes and schoolbooks and meat for dinner more than once a week, or the fella wants to take a lady friend to Miami and party. One or the other. Am I right?”

“That’s the usual way,” Dortmunder agreed. “Except it’s mostly Las Vegas now.”

“Well, these clowns can’t even get that much right,” Tom said. “The fact is, what they steal for is to feed their veins, and they go right on feeding their veins inside, they buy it off guards and trusties and visitors and each other and probly even the chaplain, but if you ask them why they ignored the career counselor and took up this life of crime for which they are so shit-poor fitted, they’ll tell you it’s political. They’ll tell you they’re the victims.”

Dortmunder nodded. “I’ve heard that one,” he said. “It’s useful in the sentencing sometimes, I think. And in the parole.”

“It’s a crock, Al,” Tom insisted.

Gently, Dortmunder said, “Tom, you and I’ve told the authorities a couple fibs in our time, too.”

“Okay,” Tom said. “Granted. Anyway, the result is, inflation makes it cost more to feed and house a fella in the pen in the manner to which we’ve all become accustomed, and budget cuts—Did you know, Al,” he interrupted himself, “that health-wise, long-term cons are the healthiest people in America?”

“I didn’t know that,” Dortmunder admitted.

“Well, it’s the truth,” Tom said. “It’s the regularity of the life, the lack of stress, the sameness of the food intake, the handiness of the free medical care, and the organized exercise program. Your lifers are the longest-lived people in the society. Any insurance company will tell you so.”

“Well,” Dortmunder said; “that must be some kind of consolation, I guess.”

The Hot Rock by Donald E. Westlake ( Simon and Schuster 1970)

 

Dortmunder blew his nose. “Warden,” he said, “you don’t know how much I appreciate the personal attention you been paying me.” There wasn’t anything for him to do with the Kleenex, so he just held it balled up in his fist.

Warden Outes gave him a brisk smile, got up from behind his desk, walked around to Dortmunder’s side, patted him on the arm, and said, “It’s the ones I can save that give me the most pleasure.” He was a latter–day Civil Service type — college–trained, athletic, energetic, reformistic, idealistic, and chummy. Dortmunder hated him.

The warden said, “I’ll walk you to the gate, Dortmunder.”

“You don’t have to do that, Warden,” Dortmunder said. The Kleenex was cold and gooey against his palm.

Good Behavior by Donald E. Westlake (Mysterious Press 1985)

 

That produced the comfortable laugh of the professional thinking about amateurs, which Pickens ended, in his carefully paced presentation, by balling up the Guerreran flag, hurling it offstage in the same direction as the rifle, and showing another assault rifle lying on the card table. He picked this one up, held it out in front of him, and said, “Gentlemen, the Valmet.”

“That’s that Finnish fucker!” cried a voice.

“Very good,” Pickens told him, grinning as though he didn’t at all mind having his surprise spoiled. “That’s just what this is, the Finnish M-60 Valmet. Essentially, this is the design of the AK-47 adapted to the needs of Finland. It’s like an AK-47, but it isn’t an AK-47, so it isn’t as familiar as you might think, and if you don’t keep the differences in mind, the head you blow off may be your own.”

He had their attention now. Weapons, travel and money were the only things these fellows cared about, probably in that order. Holding the Valmet out, pointing to its features, Pickens said, “In the first place, you’ll notice it’s all metal, much of it plastic-coated, it doesn’t have the AK’s wooden stock or handguard. That’s fine in a cold country like Finland, but we’re going to a hot country, so keep this thing in the shade. The other thing, you’ll notice it doesn’t have any trigger guard, just this little piece of metal out in front here and nothing down under the trigger at all. The later model, the M-62, they added a skimpy little guard on the bottom, and some of you’ll have those, but mostly we’ve got the original, the M-60. And you see also there’s almost no curve to the trigger itself. Now, the reason for all that is, the Finnish troops have to be able to fire this thing with big heavy mittens on, because of the cold you got up there in Finland. And what it means to you is, you don’t have that guard there where you’re used to it, to protect you if your mind wanders. And your finger wanders.”

A voice from the auditorium called out, “Why the fuck are we taking some fucking North Pole fucking weapon to the fucking tropics?”  A lot of other voices growled agreement with the sentiment.

“Well, now, that’s The People Upstairs,” Pickens said. “They make the decisions, I just implement them. They didn’t want to use Warsaw Bloc weaponry because they don’t want anybody saying the revolution’s Cuban supplied. And they didn’t want to use NATO weapons because they don’t want anybody saying we’re fronting the CIA. And maybe they got a price on these Valmets, I don’t know.”

“It’s always the same fucking thing,” cried a disgusted voice. “They want us to fight the wrong fucking war with the wrong fucking weapons on the wrong fucking terrain at the wrong fucking time of the year.”

“You’re goddamn right!” several voices cried, with variants. More and more of them got into the thing, some rising in their places to make their points, shaking their fists, yelling out their professional opinions.

It was becoming bedlam out there. Pickens hunched his head down into his shoulders, and waited for the storm to subside.

It wasn’t easy, dealing with homicidal maniacs.

The Man Who Came Uptown by George P. Pelecanos (Mulholland Books 2018)

 

“Lennie was a re-tard,” said the man with the heavy-lidded eyes. “George couldn’t carry him no more.”

“Nah,” said Antonius. “George did that thing for Lennie because Lennie was his boy. ’Cause Curley was gonna string Lennie up and lynch his ass. Or, if Lennie did go to prison for killin that trick, he wouldn’t make it in San Quentin or wherever they’d put him out there in California, back in the old days.”

“Lennie couldn’t jail,” said Larry.

“Exactly,” said Antonius.

“You’re saying,” said Anna, “that George killed Lennie out of friendship.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s what this book is about,” said Michael. “Friendship and brotherhood. Companionship. The author means to say that people together are better than they are alone.”

“Does anyone say that outright in the novel?” said Anna.

“Sure.” Michael opened his book to where he had dog-eared a page. “I marked a spot. It’s in that chapter when Crooks is talking to Lennie in Crooks’s room. Can I read it?”

“Go ahead.”

“Michael squinted as he read. “‘“A guy needs somebody—to be near him. A guy goes nuts if he ain’t got nobody. Don’t make no difference who the guy is, long’s he’s with you. I tell ya,” he cried, “I tell ya a guy gets too lonely an’ he gets sick.”’”

“For a friend, though,” said Antonius, “Lennie be buggin the shit out of George.”

“‘Tell me about the rabbits, George,’” said Donnell, in his idea of Lennie’s voice.

“‘Which way did they go, George, which way did they go?’” said the heavy-lidded one, and then, when no one laughed, embarrassed, he said, “Ain’t none a’ y’all seen that old cartoon?”

“They gonna get a farm,” said Antonius, picking up on the vibe. “‘An’ live off the fatta the lan’!’”

Now many of the inmates laughed.

“All right.” Anna picked up an article that she had printed out down in the workroom. ”

“Let me read something to you that John Steinbeck wrote himself. It might have been from his acceptance speech when he won the Pulitzer Prize, or it might be from his journals. I don’t remember which. I got it off of Wikipedia, to be honest with you. But for me it sort of speaks to this book and his worldview in general.”

“Read it,” said Michael, leaning forward.

“Okay,” said Anna, and she began. “‘In every bit of honest writing in the world there is a base theme. Try to understand men, if you understand each other you will be kind to each other. Knowing a man well never leads to hate and almost always leads to love. There are shorter means, many of them. There is writing promoting social change, writing punishing injustice, writing in celebration of heroism, but always that base theme. Try to understand each other.’”

“What if someone step to you and try to take you for bad?” said Donnell. “What you supposed to do then? Understand their ass?”

“Turn the other cheek,” said Larry. “It’s right there in the Bible.”

“An eye for an eye is in there too,” said Donnell.

“The man is saying, try to do what’s right,” said Michael. “Reach out to other people. Try.”

The conversation drifted to money and fame, as it tended to do.

“Was Steinbeck rich?” said Antonius.

“I’m sure he was,” said Anna. “His books were huge bestsellers. Many of them were made into movies and plays.”

“I bet he got mad respect too,” said Donnell.

“Not from everyone,” said Anna. “Many academics don’t really care for his work. They think it’s too simplistic and obvious.”

“You mean people could relate to it too easy.”

“Well, yes. He was what’s called a populist author. He wrote books that could be read and appreciated by the people he was writing about.”

“This book was deep,” said the soft-spoken man.

“Seriously, that was, like, the best chapter-book you ever gave us,” said Donnell.

“Thank you, Miss Anna.”

“You’re very welcome,” she said.