Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre

The surprise winner of the 2003 Man Booker Prize, Vernon God Little is a riotous satire of adolescence, death, crime and punishment in small-town Texas.

The protagonist, Vernon Little, has somehow managed to get himself into a world of shit without trying. His best friend Jesus Navarro, has shot the rest of his class and Vernon is under suspicion as an accessory, or worse still, an accomplice. His dysfunctional teenage life is now under intense scrutiny giving everything he does a air of perceived delinquency.

When he gets sent to a sinister psychiatrist, he decides the best thing to do is go on the lam to Mexico with Taylor Figueroa, a girl with whom he is besotted. Money, however, is a bit of an issue. In fact, he has none, so he decides to get drunk and think about things. Still, the barter economy is alive and well in Martirio; beer can be exchanged for online pornography with local amputee Silas:

“We-ell,” he says, stroking his chin. “How much ya want fer it?” “A case.” “Git outta here.” “No kidding, Sie, this list can save you a truckload of beer over the summer. A goddam truckload, at least.” “I’ll pay a six pack.” “We-ell,” I hesitate. You have to hesitate with Silas. “We-ell. I don’t know, Sie, plenty of kids’ll wanna kill me, after I bust the business like this.” “Six-packa Coors, I’ll go git it.” He swings a way into the house like a one legged monkey. You can’t drink until you’re twenty-one around here. I ain’t twenty-one. Good ole Silas always keeps some brews in stock, to trade for special pictures. Us Martirio kids are like his personal internet. He’s our personal bar. By seven thirty this morning, I’m sat in a dirt clearing behind some bushes at Keeter’s sucking beer and waiting for ideas about cash.

He finally pulls off a scheme for getting enough bucks together and manages to get to Mexico where he hitches a lift with a truck driver. Flat broke, he hasn’t even got enough for a drink.

A cold beer turns up for the truck driver. I pull a music disc out of my pack, point to it, then to the beer. The bartender frowns, looks the disc over, then thumps a cold bottle down in front of me. He hands the disc to the driver; they both nod. I know I should eat before I drink, but how do you say ‘Milk and fucken cookies’ in Mexican? After a minute, the men motion for my pack, and gently rummage through the discs. Their eyes also make the inevitable pilgrimage to the New Jacks on my feet. Finally, whenever a beer turns up for the truck driver, the bartender automatically looks at me. I nod, and a new beer shows up. My credit’s established. I introduce myself. The truck driver flashes some gold through his lips, and raises his bottle. “Sa- lud!” he says.

After which, things get a little messy:

Don’t fucken ask me when the first tequila arrived. Suddenly, later in life, glass-clear skies swim through the open side of the bar, with stars like droplets on a spider’s web, and I find myself smoking sweet, oval-shaped cigarettes called Delicados, apparently from my own pack. I’m loaded off my ass... An aneurism wakes me Friday morning. I’m curled up on the floor behind a table. A brick in my head smashes into the back of my eyes when I look around.

Having traded the last of his possessions and the clothes he stood in for a night on the tiles, he’s once again desperate for money. Can he persuade Taylor to come down to Mexico with the money. You betcha! Especially if he starts talking to her as if he really did commit all those murders. She takes him to a hotel room and they raid the mini-bar:

“Welcome home,” she says. She pulls some tequila minatures out of the mini-bar, while I just stand here like a spare prick, then she curls up on the bed closest to the window... Taylor raises her bottle, and we slug our tequilas down. I lie back on the bed like I’m wearing guns. She crawls half off the bed to grab some beers, and as she does it, her ass strains into the air. Panty-line. Bikinis. I’m fucken slain.

All this drink and physical temptation. Young Vern couldn’t be being set up to say something foolish might he?

Johnny Come Home by Jake Arnott

There’s a lazy train of thought that has reduced the 1970s simply to a decade that ‘taste forgot’, nothing more than a parade of kitsch, regurgitated on ‘I love the 70s shows’ with their fixation on Marc Bolan and the Bay City Rollers. Jake Arnott’s novel shifts the focus back from the fluff to radicalised politics, social deprivation and the vacuous heart behind the glam of the music scene.

Sweet Thing is a teenage hustler, a seventeen-year-old rent boy, plying his trade at Piccadilly Circus. His best punter is Johnny Chrome, a has been pop star who somehow flukes a number one hit. With a follow-up single demanded by the record company, Chrome falls apart under the pressure, washed out on tranquilisers and white wine:

“I’m ridiculous, ain’t I?” Sweet Thing didn’t know what to say. He didn’t want to upset Johnny. He was a good customer, he reckoned. Johnny shakily poured himself another glass of wine and fumbled for his pills. Time to go, thought Sweet Thing.

Sweet Thing falls in with Pearson and his flat-mate Nina who live in a Somers Town squat off the Euston Road. Pearson’s lover has recently committed suicide, but what he doesn’t know is that he was also involved with the Angry Brigade’s bombing campaign. Sweet Thing’s arrival drives the fragile household apart: Pearson is smitten by the androgynous rent-boy and Nina seduces him. Oblivious to the chaos he is causing, Sweet Thing flits back to Johnny Chrome, now dependent on the boy to give him the courage to perform.

When they got back to Johnny Chrome’s house they sat and watched Top of the Pops. Johnny opened a bottle of white wine and poured them both a glass. He took the pills from his pocket and swallowed two of them. “What are they?” Sweet thing asked. “Downers,” replied Johnny. “Want some?” “Yeah, all right.” Johnny handed the boy a couple and Sweet Thing chased them down with the sweet wine. T. Rex was number one with ‘Metal Guru’.

As Sweet Thing starts to realise how much he has been exploited he hits the town with a pocket full of cash. Wired up on speed, he picks up a punter called Walter, a former male prostitute himself, who warns him that he is a lost soul:

Walter went to get a bottle of brandy and two tumblers. “Make yourself comfortable,” he implored. Sweet Thing slumped on to a sofa. Walther handed him a glass and poured out a couple of inches of spirit. He sat down next to him, one hand holding his own glass, the other snaking around the upholstery to rest on the nape of the boy’s neck. Sweet Thing’s shoulders spasmed. The man patted him gently. Sweet Thing leaned forward and took a gulp of brandy. “Are you OK?” asked Walter. Sweet Thing swallowed and sighed, breathing the spirit’s vapours. Another gob of speed-phlegm trickled down his throat. He felt the brandy glow inside him, his face blushing with its infusion.

Disorientated, he goes back to the squat. Pearson and Nina invite him along to a fund-raiser for the Stoke Newington Eight. Sweet Thing gets pissed on Bacardi and Coke:

“It’s Sweet Thing. He’s drunk. We better take him home.” They found him propped up at the bar. “Fucking hippies!” he was calling out... They hailed a cab and bundled him in. When they got back to the squat they pulled him out and steadied him up the stairs. They got him into his room and lowered him onto the bed. He looked up at them and grinned. The ceiling began to spin above his head.

The hangover is going to last a while. As Johnny Chrome’s Faustian pact with Sweet Thing lurches to its terrible conclusion, Pearson plans one last spectacle in the name of the Angry Brigade. Like the decade itself, the results are explosive...

Drunkards Tales by Jaroslav Hašek

I felt that it was time to return to Hašek’s book of short stories. A notorious toper himself, Hašek seems to have little time for the practice of abstinence and attempts to give up the sauce usually meet in failure in this collection. Take, for example, the case of Professor Dr. Sahula in Fighting Against Alcohol:

Professor Dr. Sahula used to be a severe alcoholic in his youth. He used to drink up to thirty beers a day. Then he got kidney disease, an expansion of the stomach, fat around the heart and the result was, that he stopped drinking beer, spirits and wine, and began drinking mineral water.

Unfortunately, Sahula develops a prodigious appetite for Geisshübel saltzer and starts corroding his stomach with that instead. Finally forgoing restaurants as well, he has no choice but to apply himself to his studies, where he consumed learning just like alcohol before, with zest, with vigour and in unusually large quantities.

After several unorthodox treatments for insanity are patented, (the Sahula system sees a madman locked in a cell for three months with a sane man: when released the madman is sane, the sane man is mad. Repeat ad infinitum...) he turns his attention to his old nemesis, alcohol:

...at first he based his attempts on a principle that alcohol must be despised. He carried with him a small bottle of some loathsome liquid for retching, and went around to pubs and bars. There he treated all drunks and secretly dripped his poison into their glasses. They drank it like water and when he was discovered, one even begged, “Give us a drop as well, it gives me a devil of a thirst.”

Seeing that the emetic doesn’t work, Sahula investigates the side effects of booze:

According to his discoveries, alcohol works like radiation at a distance. Therefore, a photographer taking pictures of some drunken group cannot be sure that his children will not be born stupid. His book “About the Effects of Alcoholism” is a colourful collection of interesting documents showing the rampages of alcohol from a distance. An example, An eight-year-old son of a cooper fell into an unfinished barrel. When they pulled him out, he had a red nose.

His book lists 116 illustrations similar to the above, but what he really wanted was a live audience on the lecture circuit:

He managed to obtain a typical example of acute alcoholism. A man with a red nose stands in front of him, with a swollen face and shaking hands. “You are an alcoholic Bezděk.” “You bet!” says Bezděk happily. “Are you married?” “Somewhere in the Hradčany area,” replies Bezděk...

Now all he needs is the wretched man’s family. Mrs Bezděk makes an appearance with five kids and Sahula is ready to test his theory on the offspring of a man who drank up to two litres of slivovitz daily, and was able to stand fifty beers and five litres of wine at the same time. Sadly, his hypothesis never gets off the ground. Mrs Bezděk hasn’t seen her husband in twenty years and the kids are someone else’s. Sahula gives up:

When professor Dr. Sahula was crossing the square on his way home from the lecture, people walking behind him heard him pound the pavement and mutter, “I am going to get smashed tonight.”

Trix by Stephanie Theobald

Another road-trip across the US, this time from Florida to California, in the company of the volatile and unpredictable Ruby Rose, small time hustler, dominatrix and California courtesan...

Shy and uptight Mo is on holiday from Scarborough when she runs into Ruby in a New Orleans diner and is equally captivated and appalled by her. At six foot and fifteen stone, Ruby is larger than life in more than one sense, with an interesting taste in drinks, Mo notes, as a jug of fizzy stuff the colour of the ocean in Biloxi appears:

She pours a slug of Jack Daniel’s into her glass, followed by some of the yellowy brown liquid. “Damn climate,” she says, “God’s punishment for country music.” She takes a swig and bangs the glass down on the counter, panting. “Jack Daniel’s and root beer: best drink in the world.”

Agreeing to give her a lift to New Mexico, Mo finds herself becoming increasingly obsessed by her new friend, a woman with an insatiable thirst for food, drink, drugs and sex. She is also beginning to wonder if Ruby isn’t in fact bonkers. In the darkness of a power cut, Ruby starts on the sauce again:

Another match is struck. The blackness shrinks back to reveal a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and a brown and orange can. An ear of flame appears from a hand on the bed. “Are you mad?” “So I’ve been told,” she says, with a ripple of laughter... “Once, I set fire to three acres of hillside,” she says, taking a swig from the Jack Daniel’s bottle and slashing another match.

Beneath her chaotic exterior, Ruby is hiding deep and terrible secrets, which are slowly coming to the surface in a haze of whiskey and marijuana. Between drinking bouts she scribbles a memoir of her troubled childhood in a diary and Mo cannot help sneaking a read. Their arrival in small town New Mexico sees them at a tiny motel run by the sexagenarian Vera who at least is up for a glass of something herself:

Vera looks pleased to see us. “Good to see you girls made it!” she says, thumping the bar. She asks us what we’d like to drink and Billie orders tequila for both of us... “Let’s get really hammered?” Billie says, to nobody in particular, slugging back her tequila. “You go, girl!” Vera says, downing her whiskey in a few gulps. “They say that the beginning’s one half of the deed.”

While a drunken and shocked Mo contemplates what she has read in Ruby’s diary, he friend is coaxed into performing her burlesque of Doris Day/Courtney Love. Truly unhinged, it’s Ruby’s tour de force, complete with stage props of fake drugs and a bottle of vodka:

She wraps the pink dress around her hurriedly and carries on lip-synching ‘Que Sera Sera’, mouthing sweetly about what she’s going to do when she grows up. And then it comes again: the music rips savagely into Courtney Love and the deranged, twisted Doris comes back to life. She gulps down the rest of the vodka, she chucks a handful of Valium down her neck, she tears open the cocaine envelope, throws the contents all over her face and cleavage, then rips off the dolls head and pulls out the day-glo red and blue brains with such frenzy that I’m not sure this is play acting any more. I think that maybe she’s gone completely off the rails and as the Love music becomes slower she takes the vodka bottle and licks the rim suggestively, ominously... The only thing that keeps coming back to me is the line from the Doris Day song when the little girl asks her mother what the future holds. And I want to cry but I can’t do that or I’ll give the game away. So I drink. I drink and drink.

With still two states to drive through before they reach the Pacific Ocean, none of this augurs well...

The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling

The Difference Engine is a wonderful piece of speculative fiction set in the19th century where Charles Babbage’s mechanical computer of the same name succeeds in bringing forward the information revolution by over one hundred years. Part Victorian pastiche, part pseudo-historical document, it’s debatable whether it is a novel at all, though this is in no way a criticism. One of the more remarkable books I’ve read of late, (and my first proper foray into the genre of steampunk), The Difference Engine is something I’ll almost certainly return to.

The authors’ research is impressive and the characters only have to step into a great bright Whitechapel gin-palace, with glittering gold-papered walls flaring with fishtail gas-jets for me to be able to smell the sawdust on the floor. Sadly the drinks themselves are less impressive:

He’d bought her a noggin of honey gin. She sat beside him. “You did well, girl,” he said, and slid the glass towards her. The place was full of Crimean soldiers on furlough. Irishmen, with street-drabs hanging on them, growling red-nosed and screechy on gin. No barmaids here, but big bruiser bully-rock bartenders, in white aprons, with mill-knocker clubs behind the bar. “Gin’s a whore’s drink, Mick.” ... He sipped his gin-twist, rolled it over his tongue with an unhappy look, and swallowed. “Never mind, dear – they’ve cut this with turpentine or I’m a Jew.”

The book’s focus flits between Sybil Gerard, a ruined woman whose father was a famous Luddite, Laurence Oliphant, journalist and secret government agent, and Edward Mallory, discoverer of the Leviathan, a set of Brontosaurus bones in Wyoming. Mallory is first encountered at the Epsom Derby, attending the steam races:

He put it from his mind, seeing that drink was being sold from a striped canvas tent, men crowding the counter, wiping foam from their mouths. A thirst struck him at the sight of it. Veering around at trio of sporting-gents, crops under their arms, who argued the day’s odds, he reached the counter and tapped it with a shilling. “Pleasure, sar?” asked the barman. “A huckle-buff.” “Sussex man, sar?” “I am. Why?” “Can’t make you a proper huckle-buff, sar, as I haven’t barley-water,” the fellow explained, looking briskly sad. “Not much call for it outside Sussex...Mix you a lovely bumboo, sar. Much like a huckle-buff. No? A good cigar, then. Only tuppence! Fine Virginia weed.” The barman presented a crooked cheroot from a wooden box.

Poor fellow has to make do with beer, but before the racing is done, he has found himself mixed up with a wayward Ada Byron and in possession of a very dangerous box. In short, he is in trouble, and ends up under the protection of the mysterious Oliphant, who later rescues him from assault, with the help of five visitors from Japan. Oliphant then proposes that it’s tincture time:

“Under the circumstances,” Oliphant mused, “Dreadful hot day, a tiring foray after enemies of the realm – a small libation is in order.” He lifted a brass bell from the table and rang it. “So, let’s get friendly, eh? Nani o onomi ni narimasu ka?” The Japanese conferred, their eyes widening, with happy nods and sharp grunts of approval. “Uisuki...” “Whisky, an excellent choice,” said Oliphant.

Not that Mallory, a bluff lad from Lewes, wants protecting. He’s soon slipped his guardians and is off to the Cremorne Gardens, looking for a dollymop to take him home. First, he needs to get up a bit of Dutch Courage:

Mallory had two more whiskys at the platform’s bar. The whisky was cheap and smelled peculiar, either tainted by the Stink or doctored with hartshorn or potash or quassia. Or perhaps indian-berry, for the stuff had the colour of bad stout. The whisky shots sat in his stomach like a pair of hot coals.

Even so, he succeeds, and for the promise of a guinea, goes back to Whitechapel with a young lady called Hetty. He tries to explain how London works:

“London is a complex system out of equilibrium. It’s like – it’s like a drunken man, blind drunk, in a room with whisky bottles. The whisky is hidden – so he’s always walking about looking for it. When he finds a bottle, he takes a long drink, but puts is down and forgets it at once. Then he wanders and looks again, over and over.”

Unfortunately, the bottle is about to explode. A combination of the Great Stink and pea souper fogs has led to riots and looting. Mallory is going to wake up in Whitechapel with a dreadful hangover and a hellish walk back to Kensington through a city in the grip of Luddite revolt...

Damnation Alley by Roger Zelazny

I have to confess that once again I’m allowing my reading choice to be dictated by listening to my old Hawkwind records, in this case the song of the same name from their 1977 album Quark, Strangeness & Charm. A post-atomic apocalypse road trip from LA to Boston to deliver a serum to a dying city, Damnation Alley is pretty pulpy stuff, both on vinyl and in paperback.

Hell Tanner is the last of the Angels, a motorcycle outlaw whose gang has been destroyed by the Nation of California, one of three cities left in North America after a catastrophic nuclear war. He’s given an ultimatum; either spend the rest of his life behind bars or help drive medicine to bubonic plague ridden Boston through the nightmare of Damnation Alley, a deadly landscape spanning America, full of rock storms, tornadoes, giant snakes and vampire bats and Gila monsters the size of barns.

Damnation Alley is a book about redemption and Tanner is no hero at the start. As the man releasing him at the beginning of the book puts it:

You’re a drunk and a degenerate, and I don’t think you’ve had a bath since the day you were born... You are not a human being, except from a biological standpoint.

Tanner’s ride is exhilarating stuff; he is part of a convoy of eight-wheeled cars, armed with flame throwers, rockets, grenades and heavy machine guns. The empty wastes of the Mid-West see him pass through the empty remains of Kansas City and St Louis, crossing the mighty Missus Hip on a creaking bridge cluttered with broken down cars. By the time he’s made it to what used to be the state of New York, he’s in need of refreshment:

He drew up in front of a flickering red sign that said: “Bar and Grill”, parked, and entered. It was small, and there was jukebox music playing, tunes he’d never heard before, and the lighting was poor, and there was sawdust on the floor. He sat down at the bar and pushed the Magnum way down behind his belt so that it didn’t show... When the man in white apron approached, he said: “Give me a shot and a beer and a ham sandwich.”

It’s not over yet. He still has to get to Boston and he quickly tangles with a motorcycle gang. Killing all but one, he picks up the survivor who is a chick and who he quickly takes a shine to. Especially when it turns out she has a bottle of hooch on her:

“I can buy you a drink.” “What do you mean?” She drew a plastic flask from the right side pocket of her jacket. She uncapped it and passed it to him. “Here.” He took a mouthful and gulped it, coughed, took a second, then handed it back. “Great! You’re a woman of unsuspected potential and I like that. Thanks.”

Too bad she doesn’t make it to Boston with Tanner, but it’s a rough world out there in the post-apocalypse.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

A fantastic book that came my way by chance (the vagaries of choosing a title in a reading group to be precise...) The Help tells the story of three women in Civil Rights era Mississippi, two black maids, Aibileen and Minny, and local college girl Miss Skeeter.

What brings these women together is an idea that Skeeter has for a book, a factual report of what life is like in Jackson MS for black women working for the rich white ladies in the city. Initially reluctant and always fearing reprisal, the maids slowly tell Skeeter their stories and the book is written.

Stockett’s extremely moving and powerful novel flips between the three main characters, each of whom have more than their fair share of problems. Of the three, I found myself enjoying the chapters about Minny the most. A woman whose sassy tongue has lost her several jobs, her attitude to drink (hence the inclusion in 120 Units) is forthright. Thinking that she has discovered her new boss, Miss Celia, drinking shined whiskey in her bedroom, Minny boils over into a rage:

She’s sitting on the yellow twin bed by the window and she’s not smiling. The package I toted in from the mailbox is open sand on the bed are a dozen bottles filled with brown liquid. It’s a slow burn that rises up my bosoms, my chin, my mouth. I know the look of those flat bottles. I nursed a worthless pint drinker for twelve years and when my lazy, life sucking daddy finally died, I swore to God with tears I my eyes I’d never marry one. And then I did. And now here I am nursing another goddam drinker. These aren’t even store-bought bottles, these have a red wax top like my Uncle Toad used to cap his moonshine with. Mama always told me the real alcoholics, like my daddy, drink the homemade stuff because it’s stronger. Now I know she’s as much a fool as my daddy was and as Leroy is when he gets on the Old Crow, only she doesn’t chase me with the frying pan. Miss Celia picks a bottle up and looks at it like it’s Jesus in there and she can’t wait to get saved. She uncorks it, sips it and sighs. The she drinks three hard swallows and lays back on her fancy pillows.

Worse still, it’s a case of mistaken identity – the bottles of brown liquid are a quack remedy that Celia has mailed off for in an attempt to ward off another miscarriage, sadly unsuccessfully. She does, however, make up for things on the booze front later on in the book. Come the society annual dinner that Celia is desperate to go to, she starts early:

“Miss Celia, now what is going on in here?” I mean, she’s got stockings dangling from chairs, pocketbooks on the floor, enough costume jewelry for a whole family of hookers, forty-five pairs of high-heel shoes, underthings, overcoats, panties, brassieres, and a half-empty bottle of white wine on the chifforobe with no coaster under it.

In fact, by the time she gets there she’s drunk as a Injun on payday:

Celia grabs for Johnny’s arm as they make their way into the room. She teeters a bit as she walks, but it’s not clear if it’s from the alcohol or the high heels... Johnny squeezes her hand, gets her another drink from the bar, her fifth, although he doesn’t know this.

Determined to fit in and make a good impression with the snooty queen bee, Hilly, Celia does everything wrong, from turning up half cut in a ghastly pink dress (Minny’s account of this is worth picking up the book for alone) to trying to corner Hilly and ask her why she won’t talk to her. Johnny runs into a friend and more drinks are procured:

Celia lets out a loud hiccup and she frowns, covers her mouth with a tissue. “You getting tipsy?” asks Johnny. “She’s just having fun, aren’t you, Celia?” Richard says. “In fact, I’m fixing to get you a drink you’re gonna love. It’s called an Alabama Slammer.” Johnny rolls his eyes at his friend. “And then we’re going home.” Three Alabama Slammers later...

Which is when Celia manages to get Hilly alone for a moment and disaster strikes. Not only does she managed to tear the cuff off Hilly’s dress, the combination of wine and Alabama Slammers finally catches up with Celia’s beleagaured digestion causing the dreaded anti-peristalsis and she parks a leopard in the middle of the party:

Celia stops, looks around like she recognises no one around her. She has tears in her eyes. Then she groans and convulses. Vomit spatters onto the carpet.

Needless to say, the subsequent hangover lasts for several days...