#258 The Rock of Crack as Big as the Ritz- Will Self
What do you say about a collection of short stories that
begins with a long detailed description of a man smoking crack, a crack rock as big as the Ritz? More please!
Danny (aka. Bantu, aka London) goes from England, to
Jamaica, to Philadelphia to nowhere…and ends up in a recruiting office on his
way with the Royal Marines to Iraq during Operation Desert Storm. The drug
business has taken its toll:
“A year muscling rock in Trenchtown was about as full an
apprenticeship as anyone could serve. This was a business where you moved
straight from work experience to retirement, with not much of a career in
between.”
War changed him, as it does. “Danny had been changed by the
army. He went in a fucked-up, angry, potentially violent, colored youth; and he
came out a frustrated, efficient, angry black man.”
He vowed to go legit and get out of the crack business, but
sometimes the crack business comes to you, surrounds you, seeps out of the
ground of your very home…literally. We are what we are, no matter how many
times we may change what we call ourself.
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