The book that I read recently has a lot of inspiration for how I want to write, it was a short read and packed with punches. No fat, very less fat, only enough for flavor and the flavor was plenty.
The book follows a boy who is going in and out of prison, there is little influences in his life; it is a critique of the American prison system and nature of crime first which I don't really have much to say about. But there is a idea of love developing out of modern barbarism which stands out.
The book starts with a tragic birth of the protagonist Jack, his mother is an underage girl who kills herself after putting him in an orphanage. Through this orphanage he grows up into a life of crime, small crime, which he feeds himself with and gambles away the rest. The gambling afters from his hustler friends take place in a game room with pool tables where he meets a small black boy called Billy while Jack is tall and strong and mean looking. Billy has natural talent for pool and he bets on himself and wins gambles, a pure lawful-good expression of masculinity that contrasts the crime, foul mouths, aggression and violence. Jack has no natural talent other than survival and thinks of conning Billy for his money but something about his talent stops him. Jack and another hustler rob a rich man with no real plans and are arrested.
This begins the second act of the book where Jack is going into a prison, making enemies, with inmates, with authority, lashing out and trying to understand the rebellious directionless resistance he has to any authority. A theme throughout this second act is finding a min wage job, embracing vices which is usually a bottle of liquor and thinking. At times he would think by himself for himself. At times he would be forced to like the isolation cell. Some of strongest most potent writing on the animal creature like nature of man taking over and chasing power followed by hollowness and introspection are seen here. Perfectly encapsulates the experience of talking to chatgpt about your profound thoughts and connections and the thoughts and connections deleting themselves the moment your swiggy order arrives in your rot apartment room in Bangalore.
He is reunited with Billy in the second last going into jail and they fall for each other. For a hetero-normative book where a fight can breakout any second, the gay scenes were tenderly written. This is one of the first instances of a man raised in an orphanage, who has engaged with men and women with strict transactional power relations, first instances of him feeling what he philosophizes as authentic love, [*SPOILER ZONE NOW*] which comes to a tragic end as Billy dies while fighting for Jack. He names his child Billy. Jack and Billy are symbols for nature and nurtured forms of masculinity, through many of Jack's thinking sessions he has books and ideas of many philosophers brought to him by secondary characters in the book.
Third act is Jack getting out and staying out, at peace with his thoughts and the warmth of authentic love in changing him. He decides to live a life of giving love and gets married to a woman and births his child promising to love him. The bittersweet building up is taken down as the life of being an ex inmate, lack of money, lack of love for his wife catches up to him. He loses custody of his child to his mother who marries a rich man. As his son grows a distant life to Jack, he has resources and will lead a better life, much better life than him. But on the same direction sadly. Jack can resist and rebel against his fate as an unintelligent ex inmate with dead end menial jobs and a bittersweet cycle completes itself.