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.

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.”

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.'

Quick Change by Jay Cronley (Doubleday 1981)

 

Grimm didn’t feel like a clown, but he handed the kid a balloon, anyway.

“Is that a light bulb on your nose?” the kid asked.

“Get lost,” Grimm said.

“That doesn’t sound like clown talk to me.”

“You want the balloon or not?”

“You’re the meanest clown I ever met.”

“Listen, kid. You’re getting on my nerves.”

The suit was hot and the makeup smelled like turpentine, and wearing tennis rackets would have been easier than the floppy shoes, but a plan is a plan.

One thing Grimm hadn’t particularly counted on was the number of greedy children following him along the sidewalk. You can't think of everything. The children couldn’t follow him into the bank, that was for sure.

“Hey mister clown, stand on one finger.”

Grimm took some change out of his front pocket and threw it in the grass in front of the bank; so much for the children, they zeroed in on the money.

He walked into the bank, exactly the way it had been drawn on the practice paper.

You just don’t rob a bank. You try that, without a well-conceived plan, and they'll gun you down—that is, if you aren’t electrocuted first. In the modem bank, there are wires hooked to plants, and cameras behind clocks.

The plan is what separates the pros from the cons.

And whereas the plan might be that you rob the bank of millions of dollars and live happily ever after, there are many sub-plans that determine whether you will have to give the money back, or live happily ever after in jail.

Grimm knew about a guy who lost a button on his pants at a very bad time—when he was stealing some money. This guy reaches down and his mask slips off and the next thing he knows he is banging a tin cup on the bars, asking for more swill.

A plan is equal to the sum of its parts. Somebody stubs his toe at the wrong time, and this triggers an electronic device that drops the bars around you.

For example, you have to start somewhere, like with the mask.

It's obvious a man has to wear a mask so his face won’t be on the evening news. Money is no fun if you have to spend it down in the sewer or somewhere as dark. You don't put a burglar's mask on and walk three blocks to the bank. Somebody might say, “That guy is going to rob the bank.” You don’t put the mask on right outside the bank, either. This attracts attention, and you might be clubbed by the guard. So whereas a mask sounds like a simple proposition, it isn’t. You have to think it out.

It was Grimm’s idea to go as a clown. Clowns don’t rob banks.

“Hi there, mister clown,” the guard said.

“What’s your name?” Grimm asked.

“Hugh,” the guard said. “Hugh Estes.”

“Have a balloon, Hugh.”

“Thanks.”

There was some doubt whether Hugh Estes could draw his gun inside five minutes. And if he could get it out of his holster, he would have to figure some way to get it over his gut. A bank guard’s primary responsibility is to keep rich old women from bumping into the window's.

“Hugh,” Grimm said. “I have terrible news for you.”

He frowned. “I don’t get to keep the balloon?”

“Worse than that. Come over here.”

Hugh Estes got up from his desk. Grimm put his arm around the old fellow and led him toward the door. “How’s your heart, Hugh?”

“Never better. You with Easter Seals?”

“No.”

“United Way?”

“Hugh,” Grimm said. “I’m a criminal. I’m robbing this bank”

Grimm had his left arm tightly around the guard’s neck. “That’s funny,” Hugh Estes said. “You’re one of the best clowns I ever saw.”

“I’m no clown. Clowns don’t talk. Underneath this calm is a guy who’s getting a little nervous. I’ve got dynamite taped all over me, Hugh, so if you don’t want all these people blown to bits, just do what I say.”

Hugh Estes thought. They had taught him about this sort of thing in bank guard’s school. One out of approximately 475 people who say they are loaded with explosives actually detonates himself or herself.

“I’ve got a terminal illness,” Grimm said. “So it doesn’t matter what happens to me.”

That was the one who blows himself up!

Hugh Estes was getting real nervous real fast.

This would look very bad on his resume.

“Lock the door,” Grimm said.

Hugh Estes looked back at his desk, where the alarm button was. “You can’t rob this bank. There’s only one way out. This bank has never been robbed. It’s foolproof.”

“Yeah, but I’m no fool,” Grimm said.

No. 17 by Joseph Jefferson Farjeon (Collins Crime Club 1926)

 

Figures in the Fog

Fog had London by the throat. It blinded its eyes and muffled its ears. Such traffic as was not at a standstill groped its way with scarcely a sound through the jaundiced streets, and to cross a road was no longer a casual matter, but an adventure into the unknown. For this reason, the timid stayed indoors, while the more daring, and those who had no choice, groped gingerly along the pavements. The pickpockets were busy.

But it is not in the heart of London that our story commences. The fog had stretched its fingers far and wide, and a man who was approaching along one of the arteries that led Londonwards from the north-east paused for a few moments to rub his eyes, and then his stubby chin.

‘Gawd ’elp us!’ he muttered, staring into the great, gloomy smudge ahead of him. ‘If that ain’t the Yeller Peril, wot is?’

He had trudged out of a land of sunshine into a land of white mist, and now the white mist was becoming opaque orange. The prospect was so thoroughly unappetising that he even considered the idea of turning back. Had he known what awaited him in that gloomy smudge he would have acted very promptly on the idea, but the future itself is as impenetrable as a fog, and he decided to go on.

‘Arter all,’ he argued to himself, ‘one plice is as good as another, when you ain’t got nowhere helse!’

So he lit his best cigarette—barely more than half of it had been smoked by its previous owner—and resumed his way.

The Arsenal Stadium Mystery by Leonard Gribble (Poisoned Pen Press 1939)

 

The dispersal of seventy thousand spectators is not achieved in a few minutes. At the top of Highbury Hill, foot and mounted police controlled the queues invading the Arsenal Station of the Underground. More mounted police kept the crowd in Avenell Road on the move. All the tributary roads were choked with cars that had been parked throughout the game. A score of taxi-drivers who had seen an opportunity of combining business with pleasure that afternoon now tried to worm their cabs through the throng, which took singularly small notice of honking horns and verbal exasperation. Peanut vendors and newsboys were exercising their lungs and taking a steady flow of coppers for their trouble. Over the crowd hung a pall of tobacco smoke and dust.

“Come on now. Move along there.”

The good-humoured invitations of the police produced little apparent result. There is something viscous and sluggish about the mass movements of a football crowd that is homeward bound. Having witnessed a game, it seemingly has only one thought, to know the results of games played in every other corner of the Kingdom.

“Chelsea again—”

“See the Wolves got a netful.”

“What did the Wednesday do?”

“Another away win for Everton…”

“Got the Scottish results in your paper? How about the Rangers and Aberdeen?”

Pencils check the first batch of published results with pool forecasts. Anxious inquiries are answered with almost savage terseness.

“Draw… won away… lost at home…”

Slowly the bright possibility of those other match results fades, and interest returns to the game that has been watched. Fresh cigarettes are lit, more peanuts and chewing-gum are bought and munched, and discussion begins, sometimes heated, sometimes very partisan and not sincere, but never disinterested.

And all the time that shuffling, mooching crowd that has overflowed on to every inch of pavement, gutter, and roadway is slowly pouring into Underground trains, buses, cars, and motor-coaches. There is plenty of shoving with elbows, trampling of less nimble feet, and poking of more prominent ribs. In the trains the corridors and entrance platforms are choked. Cigarettes are knocked from mouths and clothes are singed. Hands press heavily on strangers’ shoulders.

“Sorry, mate.”

“That’s all right, old man. We all got to get home, ain’t we?”

The air is full of expunged breath, smoke, human smells, and heat. But there is plenty of laughter, plenty of Cockney chaff. Whatever happens, however great the discomfort, the crowd keeps its good-temper. This herded homegoing is just part of the afternoon’s entertainment. The bigger the crowd the bigger the crush, and correspondingly the bigger the individual’s satisfaction at being there.

“Record gate to-day, eh?”

“Must be.”

“Glad I didn’t miss it.”

“Me too.”

That rib-bruising, foot-crushing scramble is endured with something of pride. It is the final proof that the individual has not been wasting his time, that the game was worth seeing because everybody else wanted to see  it. A generalization that holds strangely true throughout the entire soccer season.

Of course, there are the few who protest at the crush. But the real followers of football, the “regulars,” the “supporters,” who make the Leagues possible and provide Britain with a professional sport in which she is supreme, they have only a tight-lipped contempt for these casual spectators—and occasionally a helpful suggestion.

But like every other natural tide, the football crowd leaves behind it tiny pools, groups who persist in debating some point of play on a street-corner, and of course at Highbury there is always that bigger pool that remains doggedly at the Stadium entrance.

Dog Day Afternoon by Patrick Mann (Dell Publishing 1974)

 

"If I felt that way about law officers, I’d—”

“Shut up, Boyle,” Joe interrupted, trying not to sound unpleasant. “You just don’t know your ass from your elbow about life. Take the Chase. What do they owe you, man? For fifteen years you been dumb enough to give them loyalty and honesty. That’s so much gravy to them.

“They’re laughing up their sleeve at you, man,” he went on. “They had your ass for fifteen years and they don’t owe you a fart. Not a fart in the wind. To Chase you’re just meat. Buy it, sell it. What did they buy you for all these years? Are you even making fourteen grand a year now? Sixteen? I don’t think so. And for a chickenshit salary you put out something that money can’t even buy, loyalty. What a sucker play, Boyle.

“The first time Chase profits dip below a certain point they won’t hesitate to chop you off like any other bad investment. Cut losses. It isn’t even something another human being decides, Boyle. They feed the problem into their computer and, clickety-click, out comes a name. Your name. Get rid of Boyle at fourteen thousand a year. Let some young black or Puerto Rican run the joint at half Boyle’s salary.”

Littlejoe paused. He saw that Marge was listening to him so intently that she hadn’t puffed even once on her lighted cigarette.

“Sure he’ll steal you blind, because he isn’t a dumdum like Boyle. But what he steals is a business cost that’s already been passed on to the poor, stupid customer anyway. So who cares? Insurance covers it, and the insurance costs are part of what the customer pays for. Fuck everybody, but start with the poor, loyal Boyles of the world.”

Who Goes There? by John Wood Campbell Jr. (Jerry eBooks 1938)

 

The place stank.

A queer, mingled stench that only the ice-buried cabins of an Antarctic camp know, compounded of reeking human sweat, and the heavy, fish-oil stench of melted seal blubber. An overtone of liniment combated the musty smell of sweat-and-snow-drenched furs.

The acrid odor of burnt cooking fat, and the animal, not-unpleasant smell of dogs, diluted by time, hung in the air.

Lingering odors of machine oil contrasted sharply with the taint of harness dressing and leather. Yet somehow, through all that reek of human beings and their associates—dogs, machines and cooking—came another taint. It was a queer, neck-ruffling thing, a faintest suggestion of an odor alien among the smells of industry and life. And it was a life-smell. But it came from the thing that lay bound with cord and tarpaulin on the table, dripping slowly, methodically onto the heavy planks, dank and gaunt under the unshielded glare of the electric light.

Wild Pork and Watercress by Barry Crump (Penguin 1986)

 

I got lost one day and nearly spent the night in the bush. I had no idea where I was, but just on dark I dropped down off a ridge and came out on the creek bed just where I’d lit a fire a few days earlier to have a brew. I reached camp an hour after dark, but I didn’t say anything to Uncle Hec about getting bushed. I was supposed to be able to remember exactly where I was at all times.

Uncle Hec’s foot was improving, especially after we changed the shirtsleeves for a proper bandage. He could take a bit of weight on it and get around more easily, but he still couldn’t get his boot on. It made him real crotchety, that foot. I was reading Don Quixote again and he used to say it was turning my head. But he was only looking for something to grumble about. It’s a good book, that.

(Pages 167-168.)

They appeared suddenly from among the rocks, from where they must have been watching me, and it was all I could do to keep the shock off my face. They were both dressed in rags tied around them with strips of torn cloth and flax. Where a button was missing they’d poked the cloth through the button-hole and inserted a piece of stick through it. One of the boy’s trouser-legs had frayed off above the knee and the leg was covered with old bruises and scratches and he had a large scab on his knee that didn’t look at all healthy.

Similarly one of the old man’s shirtsleeves was torn off at the shoulder; his arm was scratched and scarred and there was a filthy piece of rag tied around a deep graze on his wrist. Their boots were falling to pieces and by all rights should have crippled them.

The old man, Hec, was gaunt and stringy, with a straggly grey hacked-off beard and sunken piercing eyes. He had a pronounced limp, which I learned later was the result of an accident to his foot that had never healed properly.

The boy, Ricky, was a good-looking Maori chap. His hair stuck out in tufts from his head and his hands and face were streaked with inground dirt. There was something almost primitive-looking about him.

And they stank. Badly. Both of them.

The old man carried a battered old pea-rifle and they had two very thin dogs with them. They were both very nervous, especially the boy.

(Pages 309-310.)

Loose Connections by Maggie Brooks (Abacus 1984)

Harry was twenty minutes early. He located the ICA in an unlikely spot amongst some blind government buildings in the Mall. It was a white, low-lying block, like a slab of impenetrable wedding cake. He walked up and down in front of it a few times, uneasy and uncomfortable in the borrowed suit. The shadows were black and geometric in the overhead sun. He fancied the building had an Egyptian flavour to it. A parched palm tree would have looked at home.

His spirits soared momentarily. Perhaps next week he’d be in a foreign country under a foreign sun. The suit was lightweight seersucker, white with blue stripes. This morning it had seemed just the thing - rather casual and devil-may-care, a suit for someone used to travelling, crisp and cool and effortlessly elegant. Now he was not so sure. The sweat was trickling down his back and running a stream into the bunched fabric of the outsize waistband and he was increasingly aware of the way the trousers ballooned out at the knees and ended up lapping unwanted over his glistening brogues. An image of Andy Pandy in a white and blue one-piece kept humping into his mind unasked and he scowled as he felt his confidence ebbing. He swerved into the doorway before he could think better of it and lurched into the bookshop with a purposeful air. The assistants had the air of people who’d agreed to lower themselves to the task as a short-term favour and who found each contact with a customer unspeakably droll. They sparred roguishly with one another, letting out occasional hoots whilst keeping a weather eye on Harry’s spade fingers as he leafed through creamy pages of text looking for pictures. Harry turned on his heels and made for the gents, his confidence ebbing to rock bottom.

George Orwell was right, he told himself bitterly as he quarrelled with the towel roller, it’s something you give off in your pores and people have an infallible nose for it. He jutted his jaw at himself in the mirror. I may not have class, he told himself defiantly, but what I do have is boyish charm. At thirty-three this was a rare and useful tool to have in the kit. It had always served him well before and in this instance it was his only card. He had never been so determined about anything. He was going to Munich.

I Believe In Miracles: The Remarkable Story of Brian Clough’s European Cup-winning Team by Daniel Taylor (Headline 2015)

The only player Clough doted on was the podgy little Scot he once described as ‘the Picasso of our game’. When Clough walked into Forest’s dressing room for the first time, John Robertson had a chip-fat grin, a slapdash attitude and a packet of Polos strategically hidden in his back pocket to help cover up his fag-breath. Robertson’s career was drifting and it took a “while for the chemistry between him and Clough to work. Yet he has never forgotten Clough’s first day and the instinctive feeling that something better might be on the way. It wasn’t anything Clough said that resonated. It was the aura. It was the moment the dressing-room door almost flew off its hinges. It was the way, before uttering a single word, that in one swift movement Clough was already taking off his jacket and flinging it at a wall peg, as if he had been there years. Clough being Clough, it landed plum on the hook. ‘It was like a whirlwind coming in,’ Robertson says, with the awe still apparent in his voice. ‘I’d never seen anyone in my life with so much charisma. All I could think was: “Jesus, this guy means business.” Right from the very first minute.

Jack's Return Home by Ted Lewis (Michael Joseph Books 1970)

Thursday

The rain rained.

It hadn't stopped since King's Cross. Inside the train it was close, the kind of closeness that makes your fingernails dirty even when all you're doing is sitting there looking out of the blurring windows. Watching the dirty backs of houses scudding along under the half-light clouds. Just sitting and looking and not even fidgeting.

I was the only one in the compartment. My slip-ons were off. My feet were up. Penthouse was dead. I'd killed the Standard twice. I had three nails left. Doncaster was forty minutes off.

“I looked along the black mohair to my socks. I flexed a toe. The toenail made a sharp ridge in the wool. I'd have to cut them when I got in. I might be doing a lot of footwork over the weekend.

I wondered if I'd have time to get some fags from the buffet at Doncaster before my connexion left.

If it was open at five to five on a Thursday after“noon in mid-October.

I lit up anyway.

It was funny that Frank never smoked. Most barmen do. In between doing things. Even one drag to make it seem as if they're having a break. But Frank never touched them. Not even a Woody just to see what it was like when we were kids down Jackson Street. He'd never wanted to know.

He didn't drink scotch either.

I picked up the flask from off the Standard and unscrewed the cap and took a pull. The train rocked and a bit of scotch went on my shirt, a biggish spot, just below the collar.

But not as much as had been down the front of the shirt Frank had been wearing when they'd found him. Not nearly so much.

They hadn't even bothered to be careful; they hadn't even bothered to be clever.

Killing Bono by Neil McCormick (Pocket Books 2004)

I always knew I would be famous.

By the time I left school, at seventeen, my life was planned down to the finest detail. I would form a rock band, make a series of epoch-shifting albums, play technologically mind-blowing concerts in the biggest stadiums on the planet until I was universally acknowledged as the greatest superstar of my era. And I would indulge in all manner of diversions along the way: make films, write books, break hearts, befriend my idols . . . oh - and promote world peace, feed the poor and save the planet while I was at it.

You might think I was just another teenage airhead with fantasies of omnipotence. Indeed, there were plenty around me at the time who did their best to persuade me that this was the case. But I wasn't about to be put off by lesser mortals jealous of my talent. Because I knew, deep, deep in the very core of my being, that this wasn't just another empty dream. This was my destiny . . . 

So there I was, thirty-five years old, sitting in a shabby, unheated little excuse for an office above a bookie's in Piccadilly, watching the rain drizzle down my single, grimy window, wondering where it had all gone wrong. I'd wanted to be a rock star and wound up becoming a rock critic. To compound my torment, I was suffering from a bad case of writer's block with my newspaper deadline looming and the fucking telephone hadn't stopped ringing all morning with a succession of PRs pestering me about their shitty rock bands, all of whom I secretly resented for, I suppose, just being more famous than me. But at least talking on the phone gave me an excuse for not writing my column.

"It better be good," I snapped into the receiver.

"This is the voice of your conscience," announced my caller in a gravelly, wasted Dublin accent that reeked of smoke, late nights and fine wines.

"Bono," I said in recognition.

"You can run but you can't hide," he laughed.

"The way I feel right now, I don't think I could even run," I sighed.

It was, indeed, Bono: rock legend, international superstar, roving ambassador for world peace and (though it is unlikely to feature prominently on his CV) a schoolfriend of mine from Mount Temple Comprehensive.

True Grit by Charles Portis (The Overlook Press 1968)

I pointed the revolver at his belly and shot him down. The explosion kicked me backwards and caused me to lose my footing and the pistol jumped from my hand. I lost no time in recovering it and getting to my feet. The ball had struck Chaney's side and knocked him into a sitting position against a tree. I heard Rooster or LaBoeuf call out for me. "I am down here!" I replied. There was another shout from the hill above Chaney.

He was holding both hands down on his side. He said, "I did not think you would do it."

I said, "What do you think now?"

He said, "One of my short ribs is broken. It hurts every breath I take." I said, "You killed my father when he was trying to help you. I have one of the gold pieces you took from him. Now give me the other."

"I regret that shooting," said he. "Mr. Ross was decent to me but he ought not to have meddled in my business. I was drinking and I was mad through and through. Nothing has gone right for me."

There was more yelling from the hills.

I said, "No, you are just a piece of trash, that is all. They say you shot a senator in the state of Texas."

"That man threatened my life. I was justified. Everything is against me. Now I am shot by a child."

"Get up on your feet and come across that creek before I shoot you again. My father took you in when you were hungry."

"You will have to help me up."

"No, I will not help you. Get up yourself."

He made a quick move for a chunk of wood and I pulled the trigger and the hammer snapped on a bad percussion cap. I made haste to try another chamber but the hammer snapped dead again. I had not time for a third try. Chaney flung the heavy piece of wood and it caught me in the chest and laid me out backwards.

He came splashing across the creek and he jerked me up by my coat and commenced slapping me and cursing me and my father. That was his cur nature, to change from a whining baby to a vicious bully as circumstances permitted. He stuck my revolver in his belt and pulled me stumbling through the water. The horses were milling about and he managed to catch two of them by their halters while holding me with the other hand.

The Graduate by Charles Webb (The New American Library 1963)

"Come on in the living room a minute," Mr. Braddock said. "You'll get to bed right after a little food."

Benjamin slid back down the stairs, stood and followed his father slowly into the living room. He dropped down onto the sofa.

"Well now," Mr. Braddock said. "Let's have the report."

Benjamin's head fell back and he closed his eyes again.

"What about the money. Did you cash my check?"

"No."

"Well what happened. Did you get some work?"

"Yes."

"What kind of work was it."

"Dad?"

"Come on, Ben," he said. "I'm interested in this."

Benjamin took a deep breath. "I fought a fire," he said.

"That big fire up there?" his father said. "You fought it?"

"That's right."

"Well that's right up there by Shasta. You must have been right up there in the Shasta country. That's beautiful country."

Benjamin nodded.

"How much did they pay you on a deal like that," his father said.

"Five an hour."

"Five dollars an hour?"

"That's right."

"They give you the equipment and you go in and try to put out the flames."

Benjamin nodded.

"Well what about the Indians. I was reading they transported some Indians up there from a tribe in Arizona. Professional fire fighters. Did you see some of them?"

"I saw some Indians. Yes."

Mr. Braddock shook his head. "That is real exciting," he said. "What else happened."

Benjamin didn't answer.

"You didn't have any trouble getting rides."

"No."

"Well tell me where you stayed."

"Hotels."

Mr. Braddock nodded. "Maybe this trip wasn't such a bad idea after all," he said. "Did you have any other jobs besides the fire?"

"Yes."

"Well what were they."

"Dad, I washed dishes. I cleaned along the road. Now I am so tired I am going to be sick."

"Talk to a lot of interesting people, did you?"

"No."

"You didn't?"

"Dad, I talked to a lot of people. None of them were particularly interesting."

"Oh," his father said. "Did you talk to some of the Indians?"

"Yes Dad."

"They speak English, do they?"

"They try."

"Well what else did you-"

"Dad, the trip was a waste of time and I'd rather not talk about it."

"Oh?" his father said. "Why do you say that."

"It was a bore."

"Well it doesn't sound too boring if you were up there throwing water on that fire."

"It was a boring fire."

It was quiet for a few moments. "Can't you tell me a little more about it?"

"Dad-"

"Let's hear about some of the people you bumped into."

"You want to?"

"Sure," his father said. "What kind of people stopped to give you rides."

"Queers."

"What?"

"Queers usually stopped," he said. "I averaged about five queers a day. One queer I had to slug in the face and jump out of his car."

"Homosexuals?"

"Have you ever seen a queer Indian, Dad?"

"What?"

"Have you ever had a queer Indian approach you while you're trying to keep your clothes from burning up?"

Mr. Braddock sat frowning at him from the chair. "Did that happen?" he said.

"Dad, for what it was worth I did the whole tour. I talked to farmers, I talked to-"

"What would you talk to them about."

"The farmers?"

"Yes."

"Their crops. What else do they know how to talk about."

Fast Times at Ridgemont High - A True Story by Cameron Crowe

In the summer of '79, I had just turned twenty-two. I discussed the idea for this book with my New York publisher. Go back to high school, he said, and find out what's really going on in there with the kids. I thought about it over a weekend, and took the project.

I had attended Ridgemont Senior High School in Redondo Beach, California, for a summer session seven years earlier, and those eight weeks had been sublime and forbidden days, even if it did mean going to school in the summer. I normally attended a rather strict Catholic school, and there were many of us who believed that all our problems would be solved, all our dreams within reach if we just went to Ridgemont public high school.

In the fall of '79 I walked into the office of Principal William Gray and told him the plan. I wanted to attend classes at Ridgemont High and remain an inconspicuous presence for the full length of the school year. The object, I told him, was to write a book about real, contemporary life in high school.

Principal Gray was a careful man with probing eyes. He was wary of the entire plan, and he wanted to know what I had written before. I explained that I had authored a number of magazine profiles of people in the public eye.

"Like who?" he asked.

I named a few. A president's son. A few rock stars. A few actors. My last article had been on the songwriter-actor Kris Kristofferson.

Principal Gray eased back in his chair. "You know Kris Kristofferson?"

"Sure. I spent a few weeks on tour with him."

"Hell," said the principal. "What's he like?"

"A great guy." I told him a few Kris stories.

"Well now," said Principal Gray, "I think I can trust you. Maybe this can be worked out."

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. 

Submarine by Joe Dunthorne (Random House 2008)

"Ah ha," Chips says, finding a page upon which he cameos. He adopts a whiny voice that is a bad impression of Zoe: "Jean who works breakfasts understands. She says that I am very mature for my age. She says that she has had a fluctuating waistline all her life and it's never done her any harm. She says that kids can be cruel. I told her I felt like crying in Geography when Chips said: 'I bet you eat your dinner off a tectonic plate.'" Chips looks up.
"I forgot I said that."

The Wheel Spins by Ethel Lina White (Rosetta Books 1936)

To his surprise Iris changed the subject.
"What sort of brain have you?" she asked.
"Fair to middling, when it's lubricated. It works best on beer."
Could you write a detective thriller?"
"No. Can't spell."
"But could you solve one?"
"Every time."
"Then suppose you give me a demonstration. You've been very clever in proving Miss Froy could not exist. But - if she did - could you find out what might have happened to her? Or is it too difficult?"
Hare burst out laughing.
"I used to think," he said, "that if ever I liked a girl, I'd be cut out by some beautiful band conductor with waved hair. I'm hanged if I thought I'd have to play second fiddle to an ancient governess. Time's revenge, I suppose. Long ago, I bit one. And she was a good governess . . . . Well, here goes."

Billy Liar by Keith Waterhouse (W.W. Norton & Company 1959)

The breakfast ceremony at Hillcrest had never been my idea of fun. I had made one disastrous attempt to break the monotony of it, entering the room one day with my eyes shut and my arms outstretched like a sleep-walker, announcing in a shaky, echo-chamber voice: 'Ay York-shire breakfast scene. Ay polished table, one leaf out, covahed diagonally by ay white tablecloth, damask, with grrreen stripe bordah. Sauce-stain to the right, blackberry stain to the centre. Kellogg's corn flakes, Pyrex dishes, plate of fried bread. Around the table, the following personnel: fathah, mothah, grandmothah, one vacant place.' None of this had gone down well. I entered discreetly now, almost shiftily, taking in with a dull eye the old man's pint mug disfigured by a crack that was no longer mistaken for a hair, and the radio warming up for Yesterday in Parliament. It was a choice example of the hygienic family circle, but to me it had taken on the glazed familiarity of some old print such as When Did You Last See Your Father. I was greeted by the usual breathing noises.
'You decided to get up, then,' my mother said, slipping easily into the second series of conversations of the day. My stock replies were 'Yes,' 'No, I'm still in bed' and a snarled 'What does it look like?' according to mood. Today I chose 'Yes' and sat down to my boiled egg, stone cold as threatened. This made it a quarter to nine.