Last Night: ANOTHER DAY IN PARADISE by Eddie Little, 1987, 9780670872176.
Recommended by an instagrammer account I follow, olnoirtown. I forced myself to finish this. The writing did not speak to me. Little's life story is juvenile crook, drug addict, adult crook, con and ex-con, drug recovery, crime recovery, drug relapse, crime relapse, new indictments. The story is presumably based off real-life experiences.
14-year-old Bobbie lives in an unnamed Midwest city in the 1970s. He left his abusive home and family a couple years ago and gets by on small time crime. His girlfriend is a couple years older and was sexually abused by everyone in her family. Bobbie squats in a drug house and has a few crook and drug friends.
Bobbie's idea of a big score is hitting a college laundromat and robbing all the cash changers and machines. He's caught by a security guard, has an epic fight, almost kills the guard, and stumbles home with serious injuries. A pal calls his uncle, a former med school student and Army commando, to patch Bobbie up. The Uncle, Mel, takes Bobbie under his wing. Mainly because Mel needs a small guy to work a pharmacy burglary with him.
Things happen. Bobbie brings along girlfriend Rosie and they follow Mel and Mel's girlfriend Syd across the Midwest and to Denver. Mel has crook connections and ex-Army-crook connections. They burglarize the pharmacy. Set up a to sell the drugs. Get into gunfights. Meet crook-friends of crook-friends. Plan scores. Get tipped on scores for a percentage to the planner. And shoot more and more and more heroin.
Hey, this is a novel. It's fiction. It's written by an ex-con bullshitter who was later indicted for financial fraud. The plot has a 14-year-old on the road, committing murder, and getting his 17-year-old girlfriend pregnant. Sure, it's possible. But, it goes a bit far for me with Bobbie joining this loose association of crooks and druggies dodging the cops/prison, fighting ripoffs from other crooks, and moving city to city.
Anyhoo. Like I wrote earlier, the writing did not grab me.
8 comments:
Replying more to your note on last Monday's status quo check in at Patti's blog:
Terribly sorry, Gerard...but our "orange" or ginger tuxedo tabby, Nikki, was one of our smartest cats. If also grumpy around the others, till she beefed up enough to beat up our tomcat Domino on a consistent basis (Domi was dumb, and almost a textbook example of a feline on the Spectrum as well...but when he eventually learned he could no longer bully Nikki successfully, he turned into a Friend of the female cats in the house, while Nikki never warmed up to the other females). Domino was, like Emmy/Emma, a piebald, and at the end of his life a pretty good friend to our longest-term cat, so far, Ninja. Sadly, it took Nikki two sequential scratches across her nose to realize that Ninja wouldn't simply evaporate if cornered. Ninja buddied up with Domino during their year or so of being the only cats in the house.
Cats can be difficult to introduce, particularly if they've had bad experience previously, as have both Ninja, who nonetheless will be friendly if allowed toward all other felines, and particularly the new cat, Whiskers. Woof, as they don't say.
Seems like a Lot of '80s and '90s criminals were publishing fiction, perhaps in the wake of that Jack Whatsits Normal Mailer fell in love with. Thanks for the warning!
I readily admit to cat ignorance and can only go on what the rest of the family has told me about orange cats.
The cats have been safely interacting for a few days now and chase each other around. The new cat, Orange Assassin, has a lot of energy and still enjoys exploring. He has developed a skill of sneaking up behind people and sitting there. We have to look for him when opening an outside door.
Good news, then, in terms of feline amity! Good luck with the door-watch.
3yo Whiskers will explore, but has decided that we all are suspect, particularly since she would want attention 24-7 while we were keeping her in bedrooms to slowly introducer her to the house. This didn't work out so well for anyone. 10yo Ninja is suitably annoyed at her default hostility, if not so much afraid of her as avoidant.
Ginger females are apparently a 1 in 10 shot...so perhaps the toms have been letting down the side (I've never kept a ginger tom).
And, even, Norman Mailer! I wonder if I was typing too fast, or was autocorrected on Alice's computer...
Well, detente started early and has led to a strong acquaintanceship that involves licking each other's heads.
Excellent!
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