by James SPILLANE

Books you should read to­mor­row, while skip­ping out on work. Cold gru­el­ing work that in­volves ham­mers and bricks and the smash­ing of things, and some­times while at work you imag­ine your­self as Will Hunt­ing and you keep telling your­self it is an hon­est job, a hard fuck­ing job, but at least it’s honest…

1. The Col­lect­ed Works of Bil­ly the Kid. By Michael On­daat­je: (a word I can­not say, a name I can­not spell!) the book is good, great, groundbreaking.
2. 1982, Ja­nine By Alas­dair Gray: this book is about pow­er, and pow­er­less­ness. It is al­so about pol­i­tics and pornog­ra­phy. Plus Dave Eg­gers steals a lot of his gim­micks from this book. There is no doubt in my mind that he read it be­fore writ­ing You Shall Know Our Ve­loc­i­ty.
3. Ask the Dust. By John Fante. Bukows­ki idol­ized this guy, I don’t know if that is a good thing or a bad thing. But he does write bet­ter than Bukows­ki. The main char­ac­ter is a dream­er, a lon­er, and a liar. A small man, who slow­ly be­comes a full man, has sex and caus­es an earthquake.
4. Fer­ma­ta: by Nichol­son Bak­er. A sort of stop time and mas­tur­bate book.
5. Guns Germs & Steel. By Jared Di­a­mond. This book makes you feel smarter, smart and lucky to be Caucasian.

Of course there are more books, but re­mem­ber you are on­ly skip­ping one day of work and to read any­more than five books in a 24 hour time pe­ri­od is a daunt­ing task. And be­sides you are poor, ex­treme­ly poor, so poor you wear your shirts in­side out to as a sym­bol of your pover­ty. But work is mon­ey, so once again you brave the cold to build mar­velous struc­tures for oth­er peo­ple to live in.

Filed under Books on December 4th, 2004

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