Crime and Shit
Crime
And Shit
I grew up loving detective and crime thrillers. Law & Order, The Silence of the Lambs, CSI, a billion and a half true crime podcasts — it’s pretty mainstream stuff. I’m not going to go into the fascination with crime: what that fascination means, why we have it, etc. Plenty of people do that too.
Some time ago I found William Burroughs. (His work, not his corpse. Calm down.) Burroughs was clearly fascinated with the criminal underworld. His debut novel Junky, contrary to the bulk of his experimental work, is a straightforward story about, well, becoming a junky. It reads like a hardboiled crime novel. And it’s good.
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I liked gangster lore, and I liked it from a young age. I read Mario Puzo’s The Godfather. Coppola’s adaptation in Parts I and II are hallmarks of superb storytelling. Again, this isn’t news to anyone here.
Lately I’ve been listening to former gangsters talk on podcasts about their gangster life. It started with Michael Franzese and it graduated to Sammy the Bull. I like listening to Sammy the Bull. I like the way he tells stories.
After Sammy the Bull, criticisms against him — from other ex-gangsters — started popping in up in my feed, and I listened to a few.
A lot of these fucking gangsters are still running businesses. They get released, they do their time, write a book, get a show, and run businesses.
Tough on crime, my ass.
Swivels in, Swivels out.
