On 24 February 2005, Vince Keenan wrote:
: When you're talking about Thomas' best novels - and
BRIARPATCH is easily
: among them - it's like splitting hairs. For me, the
richness of Lucifer
: Dye's character in FOOLS, aided by the immediacy of the
first person,
: makes it first among equals.
To tempt you to reread BRIARPATCH, here's a quote. If you say
FOOLS is its equal, I'll go back and reread it, because I
loved BRIARPATCH.
Ben Dill, the fellow who returns to his home town because his
sister died, is talking to Cory Corcoran, an immense former
footballer player turned private detective/"frightener." It's
one of the conversational interludes between wheeling,
dealing, intriguing, and scheming in a southern US town, with
hard cases, enforcers, arms dealers, and beautiful
lawyers:
"Who do you frighten?"
"Deadbeats. Say some guy loses his job out in
Packingtown and falls
behind on his car payments. Well, he's a
deadbeat, right? Now some folks
would say he's a victim of an outmoded economic
system that scraps
people the way it scraps old cars, but you and I
know better, don't we?
You and I know that anybody in this grand and
glorious country of ours
can go out and find himself a job if he'll just
put on a clean white
shirt and go look. I mean a guy who's fifty-four
years old and has been
wrapping bacon for seventeen years for Wilson's
out in Packingtown and
gets laid off, well, hell, he can go wrap bacon
for somewhere else. I'd
hire him if I needen't some bacon wrapped,
wouldn't you? Sure, you
would.
"So this guy, this skilled ex-bacon wrapper,
falls behind on his car
payments and the finance company turns him over
to me. And if his phone
hasn't been cut off, I call him up and say in my
real deep scary voice,
'My name's Corcoran, pal, and you owe use money
and if you don't pay up,
something's gonna have to be done about
it--understand?' I'm really a
pretty good frightener. Well, sometimes the guy
pays up--I don't know
how, but that's not my worry. If he doesn't, I
get hold of this kid who
used to steal cars for a living and we go out and
repo the car so the
guy can take the bus when he goes out looking for
a job wrapping bacon."
Corcoran paused. "Like I said, I'm a little
ridiculous." There was
another, longer pause. "I think I'll have another
drink."
Bill
-- William Denton : Toronto, Canada : http://www.miskatonic.org/ : Caveat lector.
------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Has someone you know been affected by illness or disease? Network for Good is THE place to support health awareness efforts! http://us.click.yahoo.com/rkgkPB/UOnJAA/Zx0JAA/kqIolB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~->
RARA-AVIS home page: http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/rara-avis-l/
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: rara-avis-l-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 24 Feb 2005 EST