Work! Consume! Die!. Frankie Boyle
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FRANKIE
BOYLE
WORK! CONSUME! DIE!
Copyright
First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2011
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
© Frankie Boyle 2011
Illustrations by Nick Morley
Frankie Boyle asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
The novel element of this book (identified by the italic type) is a work of fiction. The fictional names and characters are the work of the author’s imagination, as are the incidents portrayed in it. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
The remaining chapters (identified by the upright type) contain previously published material.
p. iii John Dos Passos, Manhattan Transfer © the estate of John Dos Passos; p. 14 Slavoj Žižek, Violence (Profile Books, 2009); p. 76 Hakim Bey, Immediatism, reproduced by kind permission of Autonomedia; p. 76 R. D. Laing, The Politics of Experience © R. D. Laing, 1967. Reproduced by permission of Penguin Books Ltd; p. 94 Bret Easton Ellis, The Informers © Bret Easton Ellis, 1994; p. 122 Raj Patel, The Value of Nothing, published by Portobello Books © Raj Patel, 2009; p. 148 David Icke, Children of the Matrix, reproduced by kind permission of David Icke books; pp. 161–162 Obituary of Jeff Conaway by Ronald Bergan, 30 May 2011 © Guardian News & Media Ltd 2011; p. 168 C. P. Snow, reproduced by kind permission of Curtis Brown Group Ltd; p. 182 Thomas Geoghegan, The Law in Shambles, reproduced by kind permission of Prickly Paradigm Press; p. 190 and p. 302 Terence McKenna, reproduced by kind permission of the estate of Terence McKenna; p. 228 Robert Anton Wilson, permission granted by Writers House LLC as Agent for the Estate of Robert Anton Wilson; p. 252 Noam Chomsky, What We Say Goes © 2007 by Aviva Chomsky and David Barsamian. Reprinted by arrangement with Henry Holt & Co; p. 270 David Madsen, Memoirs of a Gnostic Dwarf, reproduced by courtesy of Dedalus Ltd © 1995.
A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-0-00-742678-2 (hardback) ISBN 978-0-00-742680-5 (trade paperback)
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Ebook Edition © SEPTEMBER 2011 ISBN: 9780007426812
Version 2016-10-17
If rape, poison, dagger and arson
Have not as yet adorned with their pleasing artistry the banal canvas of our piteous destinies It is, alas, because our soul lacks boldness
Baudelaire
Contents
Copyright
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Credits
His stomach turns a somersault with the drop of the elevator. He steps out into the crowded marble hall. For a moment not knowing which way to go, he stands back against the wall with his hands in his pockets, watching people elbow their way through the perpetually revolving doors; softcheeked girls chewing gum, hatchetfaced girls with bangs, creamfaced boys his own age, young toughs with their hats on one side, sweatyfaced messengers, crisscross glances, sauntering hips, red jowls masticating cigars, sallow concave faces, fat bodies of young men and women, paunched bodies of elderly men, all elbowing, shoving, shuffling, fed in two endless tapes through the revolving doors out into Broadway, in off Broadway. Jimmy fed in a tape in and out the revolving doors, noon and night and morning, the revolving doors grinding out his years like sausage meat. All of a sudden his muscles stiffen. Uncle Jeff and his office can go plumb to hell. The words are so loud inside him he glances to one side and the other to see if anyone heard him say them. They can all go plumb to hell.
John Dos Passos, Manhattan Transfer
I sincerely hope you will be disappointed by this book. To disappoint, anger and dismay has always been my ideal. Of course I’ve made the book a fairly commercial collection of light-hearted topical comments. This is so I can dismay you further by pocketing a huge advance and spending the rest of my life surfing, reading crime thrillers and fucking.
If I had it my way this book would be an impeccably researched novel about the friendship between Tom, a young white boy, and Jefferson, an old black gardener, set in turn-of-the-century Mississippi. It would possess an air of complete authenticity. The old gardener would have an encyclopaedic knowledge of herbs and their uses, but he would be an illiterate and solitary curmudgeon. He would heal the boy’s broken arm with a poultice and later save his little brother from dying of a fever. Young Tom would convince Mr Bridges, his schoolmaster, of the gardener’s gifts and together the three of them would start to write a herbal encyclopaedia. The three protagonists would come from very different worlds, so there would be a lot of conflict but also a lot of wry humour and wisdom.
After the first 50 pages the reader would wonder what kind of follow-up this was to the jokey autobiography of a panel-show contestant. After 100 pages they would be completely drawn into the world of Tom, Jefferson and Mr Bridges. After 150 pages they would be nervously wondering whether Tom’s stepmother could really have been so spiteful as to burn the manuscript.
For the final 50 pages I would have a description of Old Jefferson surprising Tom in a hay barn and the two of them