Mark Sullivan wrote:
>There were two bits of slang that were new to me,
though. The first >was
P" for heroin, or "heh-rawn" as his characters say it. Does
the >P stand for pure? At some points it does seem to
refer to the quality >of the drug, but at others it just
seems to mean the drug, alone.
Hmmm, I had assumed that "P" stood for product.
THE JONES MEN was a fine read, my preferred of the reissues
by Old School Books from a couple of years back. Did anyone
try S.R.O by Robert Deane Pharr? I could not get through it;
too bleak. Utterly hopeless, in fact. It is (according to the
cover blurb) "heavily autobiographical", and if so I would
not want to walk a mile in Pharr's shoes. An intelligent,
literate man becomes embroiled in the seedy doings of a
Single Room Occupancy live-in hotel in Harlem. The narrative
wanders from scene to scene, becoming more far-out, fantastic
and sordid with each step. Very harsh. Has anyone made it
through the whole book? Any hope at all for the writer
character?
Call me soft-boiled but I like my reads to leave me with an
inkling of redemption, that it is at least a remote
possibility. I always felt this to be true in Hammett (esp.
the Op stories) and Chandler; one reason I am not a Jim
Thompson fan is the absence (in what I've read) of this
feeling. Same can be said of Teran's GOD IS A BULLET; too
nihilistic for my tastes.
Keith Logan
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