In the competitive market of
rationales, explanations, and motives (which we call life) , what is calculably
better for me is what wins. What is better for me, is a question of
life-preserving qualities. What can be calculated, if at all, is pleasure and
pain.
--
There is always an apparent reason that not only masks – that would be far too simple – but supersedes and overwhelms (into near oblivion) the instinctual , the impulsive, the human. This 2nd-order dominant reasoning that - like decrepit broken down stone homes in a newly industrialized city – is testament to another, dare we say, archaic vision of humanity, consumes for the sake of a logic not wholly complete in view of what it seeks and which, because it is incomplete, is torn and thrust forth always in an incessant direction towards an endlessly enlarging appetite. Perhaps now it will be satisfied! This simple fact it does not come face to face with, for it would mean oblivion of itself. All the while, of course, the 1st-order instinctual lingers awhile and as yet unrecognized, recedes and withdraws and sometimes we notice it implode.
There is always an apparent reason that not only masks – that would be far too simple – but supersedes and overwhelms (into near oblivion) the instinctual , the impulsive, the human. This 2nd-order dominant reasoning that - like decrepit broken down stone homes in a newly industrialized city – is testament to another, dare we say, archaic vision of humanity, consumes for the sake of a logic not wholly complete in view of what it seeks and which, because it is incomplete, is torn and thrust forth always in an incessant direction towards an endlessly enlarging appetite. Perhaps now it will be satisfied! This simple fact it does not come face to face with, for it would mean oblivion of itself. All the while, of course, the 1st-order instinctual lingers awhile and as yet unrecognized, recedes and withdraws and sometimes we notice it implode.
--
The novel begins with Roy wrenching in pain. Thompson tells us " a hard blow in the guts can do that to a man, and Dillon had gotten a hard one". What kind of man receives such blows as this? What kind of a man is Dillon? Certainly one who seems to be normal, he possesses all the characteristics of a man in debt to society which is how we measure normalcy. Credit cards in stow, a police office ( discipliner of delinquents - those who leave society) is satisfied. Is it difficult to satisfy a police officer when you are a professional con-artist?
The novel begins with Roy wrenching in pain. Thompson tells us " a hard blow in the guts can do that to a man, and Dillon had gotten a hard one". What kind of man receives such blows as this? What kind of a man is Dillon? Certainly one who seems to be normal, he possesses all the characteristics of a man in debt to society which is how we measure normalcy. Credit cards in stow, a police office ( discipliner of delinquents - those who leave society) is satisfied. Is it difficult to satisfy a police officer when you are a professional con-artist?
To be specific, Roy is a grifter. Thompson has entitled his novel, The Grifters. What then is a grifter? Thompson is kind enough to provide us clues. Let us return to Roy. After assuring the police officer that he is a typical white, credit-card owning man in the 1960s Los Angeles, Roy returns to his predicament. "He was in a suburb of Los Angeles, one of the many which resist incorporation despite their interdependence and the lack of visible boundaries". The last part of that sentence gives us a clue to the state of affairs within the novel. Roy is in a space which occupies a paradoxical position in relation to the world around it. Like the suburb, Roy seems to lack visible boundaries with the normal civil society around him and yet he resists incorporation, despite a sort of reasonable call for him to do otherwise. Roy manages this desire and his simultaneous aversion from it in a strangely precarious way. Let us, however, take a step back. Roy "needed to be in better shape than he was". Having just escaped an event that seems to have caused much unease, Roy is in a transformative moment in his life. He tries hard to remember and reconstruct the events in his mind.
In what does a good con or grift consist? Certainly not what happened at the "confectionary" or "fountain" we would hope. What did happen? Its not entirely clear, not to us and not to Roy. On the surface, superficially, we can say that Roy tried to steal money using the first grift he ever learned and one which he is admittedly not very good at and he was caught and beaten as a result. Viewed with a bit more reflection, and following Thompson's narrative clues, we find that this image of Roy's memory, recounted in the narrative, is a little more complicated. The setting is a confectionary, for which there are various names, all of which reflect the shifting development of divergent histories, of West and East and America. A bat on the wall. Roy goes through with the "twenties" which he has done for the "tenth time" that day. "Some marks fall for the twenties repeatedly, without ever tipping". The clerk at the counter, however, has fallen one time too many. Apparently recognizing that he has been cheated, he assails his bat upon Roy. The clerk's language dances, moving from of justice, retribution and reputation to shame, blame, and accountability. From "dirty crook", "cheatin" , "cusses me out" to "askin for it", "you know what you did" and finally to "it w-was j-just a mistake mister. Y-you made a m-mistake an' I m-made a m-m-mistake" and most interestingly "d-don't look at me like that" (7). The clerk cannot bear to be seen in the administering of retributive force. It is terribly uncomfortable, inconvenient, and puzzling to come face to face with the effects of violence. Much easier to resort to m-mistakes, m-mis-understandings, and to turn away. The clerk cannot face the gaze not because Roy is in exceptional pain, but because to face Roy would be to face another human being - naked and without any euphemism possible about who he is, and who Roy is and what it is that has driven them to their current condition - blood, ulcers, internal bleeding, shame and everything in between. The clerk ends with an abstraction (it was a mistake). Roy is indeed dying, but he is not the only one.
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