The Personal is Political. The Political is Personal.

 
what hooked me (2)

I had never heard of George Mandel or his novel Flee the Angry Strangers. But I knew I would not leave the library sale without the 1952 edition that cost a buck, when I scanned the chapter headings:

Sounds Out of Gone Debris

Shrines to Zero

Designs Colored with Remorse

While Rivers of Angry Strangers Roar

Turns out that Mandel was a buddy of Joseph Heller and FtAS was "the first Beat novel."

It includes passages like this:

The needle had found a vein, and Paddy, with setup firm at his hip, drew his real blood into the gleaming syringe, where it lost color in boiled heroin. A mixture with the power of a thousand snorts settled, and he pumped it back into his vein, drew it out again, in, out, in. . . .

Mama shrieked It's the police!

The naked Swede ran, pulling things from a drawer to the window and heaving them out. The Ghost moved nothing but his mouth, and from it words came clumsily, as if through thick gelatinous bubbles. "Wha'ya wan? Who ithid?"

"The police! Open this damn door before I kick it in!"

The bookplate identifies the volume as having been owned by Jean and Irv Segall of Mamaroneck, NY.




posted by TiR at 7:27 PM