Paromita’s Reviews > Crook Manifesto > Status Update

Occasionally Carney wove a private dread into a universal condition.

“It’s like in my store,” Carney said. “Reform is changing what’s already there to make it better, like stain-proof upholstery, or wheeled feet, and then wheeled feet with brakes. Revolution is when you throw out everything and start new."
“The convertible sofa is revolution,” Carney said. “Takes every idea we have about sleeping, about space, and flips them upside down. Living room? Boom—it’s another bedroom.”

They stopped coming by, the thieves, bit by bit, only momentarily glum, for there was always another hand, another conduit, another deal to be made in an enterprise as vast, complicated, and crooked as New York City.

Then again, Pepper himself had visited ten of these United States—eleven if you count Connecticut—and he couldn’t say they’d made a big impression. A cup of coffee costs the same all over and the person who serves it is miserable in the same way, so maybe when you think you’re moving around you’re marching in place.

Uncle Heshie said his inventions came from seeing something in his mind’s eye and then delivering it to the world. That was art—manifesting your idea in the world. If it were enough to have the idea, all those white boys Zippo went to art school with—who talked and talked but never got off their asses—would be celebrated geniuses. The idea had to be executed, find its worth in its passage into existence.

All the sorrows he met on the road remained at their stations, waiting for his children to come along. You sing the sad songs first, then you act them out.

It was his own fault. He had been on the straight and narrow for four years, but slip once and everybody is glad to help you slip hard. Crooked stays crooked and bent hates straight. The rest is survival.