Word: breslin
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...Jimmy Breslin's colleagues at the old New York Herald Tribune used to wonder how much of his Runyonesque column was fiction. The question was settled with the suggestion that Jimmy did not write fiction because he had enough trouble making up the truth. That, in part, was how the New Journalism was born. From barroom, cloakroom and police station, Breslin cut slices of life in which big guys squeezed little guys; people who read too many books didn't know what they were talking about; and politicians were vain, greedy and corrupt-except Bobby Kennedy...
...usual Breslin column, which now appears in the New York Daily News, is marked by aggressive resentment and romantic disillusion. His monosyllabic prose rolls down the page with the subtlety of a bowling ball, although the kingpins he aims at and often hits are automatically respotted with no lasting damage. Breslin's ability to entertain is another matter. His Archie Bunker accent and appearance as a working-class wide body put him in beer commercials and a movie. It was not too hard to parlay his writing talents into popular hardbacks. His fiction to date: The Gang That Couldn...
...this unholy trinity, Breslin brings adventure, excitement and a commuter version of West Side Story. His three principal characters are Teenager, a Caribbean-born drug dealer; Maximo, a young Harvard-educated lawyer with a desire to serve his Latin community; and Nicki, daughter of a gang boss, who lives in New Jersey with her parents while her hus band serves time in prison...
...Breslin's Teenager is a monster of social determinism: "Rising out of a blank life, he found his identity depended upon his level of violence . . . His search was for domination, his basic urge was to destroy; sexual conquest for the sake of humiliating a woman was the first duty of a man to himself." Stretched between a Hispanic past and American future, Max imo has the makings of a tragic figure, "his feet slipping each time he tried to turn about." Nicki, foulmouthed, man hungry and bound by family code and prejudice, is almost endearing as she figuratively holds...
...Breslin attaches a long and sultry fuse to the plot's ethnic charge. There are many preliminary explosions as Teenager casually murders his way through the business day. At times, this nonchalance is carried too far: "Teenager shot Gigi in the back of the head with the gun in his left hand and Victor in the back of the head with the gun in his right hand. He fired once more into each head. He stuffed the guns into his belt and dove out of the Lincoln on the street side, so schoolyard kids would...