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Welcome goonlings to the Awful Book of the Month! In this thread, we choose one work of Resources: Project Gutenberg - http://www.gutenberg.org - A database of over 17000 books available online. If you can suggest books from here, that'd be the best. SparkNotes - http://www.sparknotes.com/ - A very helpful Cliffnotes-esque site, but much better, in my opinion. If you happen to come in late and need to catch-up, you can get great character/chapter/plot summaries here.  For recommendations on future material, suggestions on how to improve the club, or just a general rant, feel free to PM the moderation team. Past Books of the Month [for BOTM before 2019, refer to archives] 2019: January: Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky February: BEAR by Marian Engel March: V. by Thomas Pynchon April: The Doorbell Rang by Rex Stout May: Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman June: 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann July: The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach August: Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay September: Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay October: Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado November: The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett December: Moby Dick by Herman Melville 2020: January: The Jungle by Upton Sinclair February: WE by Yevgeny Zamyatin March: The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini by Benvenuto Cellini April: The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio May: Black Lamb and Grey Falcon by Dame Rebecca West June: The African Queen by C. S. Forester July: The End of Policing by Alex S. Vitale August: The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, of Great Renown in Nottinghamshire, by Howard Pyle September: Strange Hotel, by Eimear McBride October:Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things (怪談)("Ghost Stories"), by Lafcadio Hearn November: A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear: The Utopian Plot to Liberate an American Town (And Some Bears) , by Matthew Hongoltz Hetling December: Ignition!: An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants by John Drury Clark 2021: January: The Mark of Zorro by Johnston McCulley February: How to Read Donald Duck by Ariel Dorfman and Armand Mattelart March: Carrier Wave by Robert Brockway April: The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brian Current: You Can't Win by Jack Black  Book available here: https://archive.org/details/youcantwin00blac/page/n7/mode/2up https://www.amazon.com/You-Cant-Win-Jack-Black/dp/1902593022 https://archive.org/details/youcantwin00blac Technically this book is out of copyright but the 1926 original edition is rather difficult to find in a free download, so you may have to pay a dollar or two for a modern ebook edition; it's worth it especially if you get an edition with Burrough's introduction. About the book quote:“I first read You Can’t Win in 1926, in an edition bound in red cardboard,” William S. Burroughs writes in the introduction to a paperback reissue of Jack Black’s classic story. Burroughs never made a secret of the profound influence upon his youthful mind, back in suburban mid-1920s St. Louis, of one book above all others, the true confessions of a wandering West Coast safecracker, petty thief and hobo from the pre-WWI era named John “Jack” Black. quote:You Can't Win is an autobiography by burglar and hobo Jack Black, written in the early to mid-1920s and first published in 1926. It describes Black's life on the road, in prison and his various criminal capers in the American and Canadian west from the late 1880s to early 20th century. The book was a major influence upon William S. Burroughs and other Beat writers. quote:The main criminal activity of Black's life and of the book is thievery, which leads to discussions of various technical aspects of the thief's "trade", including casing of prospects (surveillance of targets), safe-cracking, fencing of stolen goods, the disposal of evidence, maintaining aliases and avoiding attention or traceability, the social networks of criminals, the experiences of being arrested, questioned, and tried, and the experience of doing time in jails and prisons. quote:William S. Burroughs first read the book as an adolescent and cited You Can't Win as influential in his life and writing, mentioning the autobiography in his 1953 book Junkie.[2] He wrote a Foreword to the 1988 edition of You Can't Win which was reprinted in the 2000 edition. quote:And if you are a fan of Burroughs or The Beats, you probably need to read You Can’t Win, just for form. I met Burroughs once, when he was doing a signing in City Lights, in company with John Law and Lance Alexander of The Suicide Club, and among other things we asked him about various pulp magazines such as Weird Tales. I was a bit surprised to find that Burroughs knew about Donald Wandrei and his story “The Red Brain” — but I shouldn’t have been surprised. Burroughs was obviously sharper than hell, and what kind of illiterate doesn’t know about stuff like You Can’t Win and “The Red Brain”? About the Author  quote:You Can’t Win opens with its author describing his own alienating, off-putting, asymmetrical face, which never opened any doors for him: “I do not scowl, I do not sneer, yet there is something in my face that causes a man or woman to hesitate before asking to be directed to…church. I can’t remember a time that any woman, young or old, ever stopped me on the street and asked… Once in a great while a drunk will roll over to where I am standing and ask how he can get to ‘Tw’ninth n’ Mission.” Pacing  Read as thou wilt is the whole of the law. Please post after you read! Please bookmark the thread to encourage discussion. References and Further Materials https://pleasekillme.com/burroughs-jack-black/ https://www.amazon.com/Junky-Definitive-William-S-Burroughs/dp/0802120423 https://donherron.com/rediscovered-you-cant-win/ https://bellemeadebooks.blogspot.com/2008/02/you-cant-win-jack-black-1926.html Suggestions for Future Months These threads aren't just for discussing the current BOTM; If you have a suggestion for next month's book, please feel free to post it in the thread below also. Generally what we're looking for in a BotM are works that have 1) accessibility -- either easy to read or easy to download a free copy of, ideally both 2) novelty -- something a significant fraction of the forum hasn't already read 3) discussability -- intellectual merit, controversiality, insight -- a book people will be able to talk about. Final Note: Thanks, and we hope everyone enjoys the book!
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May 4, 2021 10:32
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quote:Jack Black meanwhile, as revealed in You Can’t Win, was clearly an unusual personality himself. Aside from being a master survivalist (albeit a beaten-down one), he was bright and well-read (it’s said that he read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica during one of his longer stretches in prison) as well as crafty, self-aware, magnanimous, and from beginning to end, incorrigibly dishonest…though candid about that in a joking kind of a way, which is something you often find in the memoirs of intelligent criminals. https://pleasekillme.com/burroughs-jack-black/ Obviously this book is going to contain some offensive language. It's an autobiography written in vernacular though, and from the period, so to be expected. One really big question is how reliable Mr. Black's narrative really is as written here.
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May 5, 2021 14:30
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Copped. Definitely reading this one.
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May 5, 2021 21:36
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This is cheap enough that I'll make it my very first BOTM.
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May 6, 2021 00:43
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Hey I've actually read this one! Great book and his descriptions of robbing people while sleeping in their beds is nail biting!
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May 6, 2021 01:49
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Lord Zedd-Repulsa posted:This is cheap enough that I'll make it my very first BOTM. It really should be free, but $2 is probably worth it just for the Burroughs introduction.
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May 6, 2021 14:51
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:One really big question is how reliable Mr. Black's narrative really is as written here. why does this matter? as a reader of literature you already know that something can be true without being factual
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May 6, 2021 20:07
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artism posted:why does this matter? as a reader of literature you already know that something can be true without being factual Because there are multiple ways to read a book, especially a book like this that at least purports to be a true history of a time and place and culture. And even accidental falsehoods can have long-term consequences. For example, this book is filled with a lot of descriptions of thieves' vernacular language, and I can't help but be reminded of the story of the word "gunsel" in The Maltese Falcon: quote:Sam Spade uses the word “gunsel” three times in reference to Wilmer, the hitman who works for Kasper Gutman, a.k.a. the Fat Man. Hammett used the same word in his novel, but only after his editor objected to the word he used first: "catamite," which is a young man kept by an older man for sexual purposes. While Hammett's novel identified Cairo (Peter Lorre’s character) as a homosexual and hinted at it for Wilmer and Gutman, this term was considered too explicit. Hammett replaced it with "gunsel," which his editor assumed meant “gunslinger” or some such. But it didn't. Gunsel—from the Yiddish word for "little goose," and passed along in American hobo culture—was merely a synonym for "catamite," but was too new to be familiar. Hammett got away with it in the book, and it slipped past the Production Code censors when it popped up in the screenplay. Because of Hammett's usage, the word came to take on "gunman" as a secondary meaning. But make no mistake, it wasn't Wilmer's possession of a firearm that Sam Spade was referring to. So even something as simple as a word origin can turn on how that word is presented in a single book. For a lot of the stuff reported in this book, this book is the major / primary source; if he's wrong, or lying, that isn't easily checked. So this might be real history -- or it might be fiction. Maybe that doesn't matter ! But, on the other hand, maybe it does.
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May 6, 2021 20:45
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I can see how he might have exaggerated some of his exploits, like the whole adventure with Julia comes off as very heroic and neat in a way that makes it seem unlikely to me. Also the robbery he conducts with Sanc feels like he might have condensed several exploits down into one so that he could explain as much poo poo about yegg operations as possible. I think he's telling the truth most of the time - poo poo like how he just walks out of his own trial because no one's watching him, I can definitely see that happening. Anyway I'm nearly halfway through and I think it's very funny that he doesn't see himself as an 'unfortunate' even though he just got arrested for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, for like the third time.
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May 6, 2021 23:32
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Finished the book. Great read. I love the gradual switch in mood from the more adventurous days where he's learning yegg-craft to the more sombre sections as he ends up hooked on dope and the horror of the straitjacket in prison. The scene where he has to plead for his life in the Chinese laundry in broken English is equal parts tragic and comic. As a Chinaman I'm glad he thinks that I'm frugal and honest.
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May 14, 2021 01:25
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It's pretty wild how easy it was to get away with crime before mug shots and fingerprints. It's also pretty wild to see opiate addiction being written in such a recognizable fashion. All in all an interesting and educational read.
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May 14, 2021 01:57
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Early impression is this is very well written. Maybe a little too well written. Not just in the sense of putting words together, but as a narrative, it feels well constructed. I'm not that deep in yet but enjoying it so far. I had to look up buck dancing.
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May 17, 2021 23:56
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Noms for next month?
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May 24, 2021 12:46
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Seeing as Travels with Charley lost the nomination, I'll put up Blue Highways by William Least Heat-Moon.
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May 28, 2021 02:15
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I saw this book nominated in a botm thread... last year? It didn't get picked then but I thought it seemed interesting so I pitched it for my book club. Turned out to be one of the very few books that people have really liked! I thought it was very pleasurable to ramble along with him, interesting character and an interesting fate. Who cares how true it might have been? Also pretty fun to imagine the current Jack Black having hobo troubles.
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May 29, 2021 13:04
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Unfortunately I've been playing Mass Effect and Kenshi for the past month so I didn't get a poll up in time. Gonna just throw up Treasure Island as the BotM for next month tomorrow unless someone stops me with a better idea real fast.
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Jun 1, 2021 01:55
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artism posted:why does this matter? as a reader of literature you already know that something can be true without being factual Is it literature if its an autobiography?
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Jun 15, 2021 18:07
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just finished the jack black book yesterday what a weird time to be a criminal also acab
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Jun 15, 2021 20:11
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I read this book as a child, I think, because it was so familiar to me reading it for what I thought was the first time. But of course it could be that so much of what I read was influenced by it that it only seems similar for that reason. Fascinating book that like very few, really pouring out how the past is a forgotten country. It it just me or does he spend a little too much time denying that he was a pimp?
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Sep 5, 2021 01:20
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