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and yeah I'll have to check out his first two at some point I'd assume w/o looking into it that the social bandit badman thing harks back to escaped slaves and maroon communities and so on, in folk memory sounds like The Book of Night Women gets into that era - sounds like a really interesting...

initial generation often has some kind of resistance purpose, even if it's just blindly lashing out against injustice and can't be articulated if that generation survives and prospers, it becomes a business, its own power structure new generation comes along and 1) isn't desperate, or as...

once they get to the U.S. - i.e. are removed from their community - they're just gangsters like any gangsters, the social bandit element is gone

there's a strong element of social banditry in the novel's gangsters - at least when in they're in JA, in the 70s reflecting the strong vein of social banditry - outlaw as folk hero - running through the JA badman tradition, i.e. The Harder They Come etc I think James does an excellent job of...

I was thinking of Papa Lo Josey Wales is also an excellent character but not sympathetic in the same way, or at all, from what I remember tho I did like that the gangsters, at least the important ones, were three-dimensional figures with agency rather than stereotypical rude bwoys or badmen...

one time when we were getting absolutely crushed during lunch catering rush the owner, who was dispatching, came on the radio bemoaning how fucked we were, orders late etc - which is bad form, tbc - and to calm him/everyone down I got on and was like "listen, in 100 years we'll all be dead and...

mostly it is more like the banality of Knausgaard or whatever tho you're waiting for work to come in, you're waiting on orders for to be ready, you're waiting on customers to answer their phones you're riding through traffic all day doing this task which is both relatively mindless - i.e. it...

I didn't find it any more difficult than getting thru Irvine Welsh Scots/Edinburgh. significantly less difficult, probably. I do remember the child shooter and I agree he is sympathetic, tho more in the literal sense than what people usually mean by "sympathetic character" had forgotten the...

yeah I totally get that I suppose all jobs have it, it's just so literal with messengers - the suffering is physical and includes the element of everpresent danger it's rare but I did know a guy who was killed by a bus a few years ago. plenty of other people who've been hit and hurt pretty...

remember when you wrote somewhere in some thread about ghost kitchens (or dark kitchens or whatever you call them in Europe)? I don't remember the description but it was pretty accurate my company tried them out when we we were desperate during the pandemic - like 80-90% of our normal clients...

you shouldn't I worked for an independent company that predated all the apps and it's a proper courier company - radios, some level of professionalism, lots of big catering clients (which is where all the $ is) app people are at the mercy of Uber or whoever, the zones are insane, tips are meh...

unfortunately I must have accidentally deleted it at some point bc I went looking for it and couldn't find it anywhere maybe I'll redo it some point but I wouldn't hold your breath tbh, don't really have time or inclination these days wouldn't want to just throw something together either if...

and @shakahislop Seven Killings is a pretty quick read it's real-ass Literature but it moves quick, has plenty of action, doesn't drag plenty of internal dialogue but it's not really of the knotty abstruse philosophical kind iirc

is that the older head gangster? or his queer (Omar Little vibes) right-hand man? or someone else? been a minute since I read it, don't remember character names agree in re the music journalist, tho he was kinda more of a plot device than a character and cool, def gonna check the fantasy...

like if I was going to write an autobiographical account of being a bike messenger (which I was for 8 years, tbc for anyone who didn't aleady know) I'd make it - or try to make it, at least - a lot more compelling than the day-to-day reality of being a bike messenger, which is full of both...

sure, totally valid, other people may different things more (or less) compelling than I do, bc they relate to them or simply find them interesting or whatever - I'm not knocking autofiction, it's just not my thing I just don't find the detail of the lives of authors to be that interesting, like...

currently reading a book that isn't contemporary but feels like it could be The Siege of Krishnapur by J.G. Farrell will probably feel topical as long as imperialism exists you'll never find a better or funnier dissection of the stiff upper lip and Victorian absurdities in all their sordid glory

is McCarthy contemporary? I guess how it depends how far back "contemporary" extends (i.e. the artificiality of dividing events into temporal periods) just looked him up and I see he's publishing 2 novels this year, his first since 2006, so I guess he's a contemporary writer I guess you'd say...

the stuff about minions sometimes outstripping Hitler in cruelty gets into the Holocaust historiography functionalist vs. intentionalist debate which Binet touches on iirc? tho briefly

I had mixed feelings about this in HHhH. I did find that refusal of stylization interesting, but mainly as a starting off point for inquiry into the ethics and practice of stylizing real people and events in historical literature, especially in the way that it highlights the way in which...