Friends in low places
Higgins lets his characters go about their business without the burden of reflection, doubt or regret.
They inhabit a natural world of deceit and scheming; friend and foe alike are told what they want to hear, each successive teller calculates which version of the truth will suit his own purpose (and it is always a 'he', except for Wanda), skimming and priming the listener to act or not act as the teller requires.
The same evasions and power struggles happen in more predictable workplaces everyday but in this workplace, the seedy twilight world of easy money and hard men, the lies are under-pinned by the certainty of ruthless violence, and the law are as callous and treacherous as the outlaws - deals are made, deals are broken, and down in the gutter it doesn't matter.
We follow the action through trailer parks and bars, in Chargers and Roadrunners, shopping centers and parking lots, a soulless landscape for a transient crew.
Higgins doesn't waste his ink on intricate descriptive passages or on overwrought exposition - the characters don't tell us why they do what they do, they just do it, and you can almost smell the cold breath of the cons and crooks as they blaze through their stories. Nobody has time for a crisis of conscience or a shot at redemption. The closest to that is one passage where two bank robbers debate whether it is appropriate to shoot a bank clerk who disobeys a command even when the robbers are already making their exit with the bags of cash or whether such deadly force should be reserved for intimidating the bank staff to hand over the cash in the first place.
Eddie Coyle is a stocky man, Higgins tells us that much, then shows us the hopeless life that is the grimy reality for such men, from such a place, normal men, normal places.
"Is there any end to this shit? Does anything ever change in this racket?"
"Hey Foss," the prosecutor said, taking Clark by the arm, "of course it changes. Don't take it so hard. Some of us die, the rest of us get older, new guys come along, old guys disappear. It changes every day."
"It's hard to notice, though," Clark said.
"It is," the prosecutor said, "it certainly is."
They inhabit a natural world of deceit and scheming; friend and foe alike are told what they want to hear, each successive teller calculates which version of the truth will suit his own purpose (and it is always a 'he', except for Wanda), skimming and priming the listener to act or not act as the teller requires.
The same evasions and power struggles happen in more predictable workplaces everyday but in this workplace, the seedy twilight world of easy money and hard men, the lies are under-pinned by the certainty of ruthless violence, and the law are as callous and treacherous as the outlaws - deals are made, deals are broken, and down in the gutter it doesn't matter.
We follow the action through trailer parks and bars, in Chargers and Roadrunners, shopping centers and parking lots, a soulless landscape for a transient crew.
Higgins doesn't waste his ink on intricate descriptive passages or on overwrought exposition - the characters don't tell us why they do what they do, they just do it, and you can almost smell the cold breath of the cons and crooks as they blaze through their stories. Nobody has time for a crisis of conscience or a shot at redemption. The closest to that is one passage where two bank robbers debate whether it is appropriate to shoot a bank clerk who disobeys a command even when the robbers are already making their exit with the bags of cash or whether such deadly force should be reserved for intimidating the bank staff to hand over the cash in the first place.
Eddie Coyle is a stocky man, Higgins tells us that much, then shows us the hopeless life that is the grimy reality for such men, from such a place, normal men, normal places.
"Is there any end to this shit? Does anything ever change in this racket?"
"Hey Foss," the prosecutor said, taking Clark by the arm, "of course it changes. Don't take it so hard. Some of us die, the rest of us get older, new guys come along, old guys disappear. It changes every day."
"It's hard to notice, though," Clark said.
"It is," the prosecutor said, "it certainly is."
date
newest »
newest »
message 1:
by
Jay
(new)
Oct 01, 2016 07:50AM
It's very important to state the similarities between the criminal world of today and that of he "underworld" of the 70s. The viciousness of intimidation is exactly the same, and the rationale too. When to intimidate the powerless with your own advantage--the example you gave--is a great one. Higgins' version is set among thieves. Today, the discussion would take place in a 30th floor conference room, and the subject would be would be Honduras, Libya, a former Soviet satellite, the Falklands, or a Black ghetto.
reply
|
flag
I wonder if even Higgins, back in the early 70's, could have created a fiction close to the scale of conspiracy and abuse of power we now take for granted after Stuxnet/Flame, Wikileaks and the Panama papers?Never mind the end of history, if Trump becomes President then I think it will be the end of fiction and writers may as well decommission their keyboards because there really won't be a need anymore to create such nóir otherworlds in parallel to the 'ordinary'.
