The Max
Here's one of those fun posts where I get to highlight a book's exuberantly funny lines. Along the way, I may discuss what makes some of them funny. The book is The Max, third of Ken Bruen and Jason Starr's collaborations for Hard Case Crime, and here are some of those lines:
"The coke kicking in, she took a sip of her stone-cold vanilla latte. (Decaf. She wasn't reckless. That caffeine was, like, addictive.)"And, among many others, this, from the novel's title character, which pushes the book into Detectives Beyond Borders territory:
"`I might have to make it into a trilogy,' she said, and Max suddenly had a vision of the great Hollywood trilogies. Star Wars. The Godfather. Shrek. Revenge of the Nerds."
"Yeah, okay, there was a downside, he had to be fucking Irish, maybe for the rest of his life, but hey, he could pull it off. After all, how hard could it be to be Irish? He already liked to drink and kill people, he'd be a goddamn natural."
Someone asked me if Bruen and Starr planned a fourth book in the series, to follow Bust, Slide and The Max. I didn't and don't know, but The Max leaves possibility open, albeit with a twist.
© Peter Rozovsky 2009
Labels: Hard Case Crime, Ireland, Jason Starr, Ken Bruen, United States
posted by Peter Rozovsky at 12:02 AM
79 Comments:
What? None of our Irish crime writing friends have beat me to the punch here?
Never mind. Maybe they've been a little too busy with this post. Or perhaps this one.
The second of those two links is especially relevant to the matter at hand. I don't know how I'd feel if I were Irish, of course, but it's obvious from the context that Max is a blowhard and that he's the one being made fun of.
You made me laugh out loud at the office. Again.
The Max has the best final line I've read in years. It totally nailed me. I have to go back and read Bust and Slide very soon.
gb
Loren, that is a gratifying reaction. I recently complimented a story by noting that it had made me laugh at work. How delightfully subversive!
I'm surprised you haven't read them already, ya bollix.
Ah fook. I've been busy. I'll get to it, like.
gb
About time, ya big ganch.
A kind fairy was nice enough to send me the Max and it is a terrific read from start to finish.
Yes about that line...its a great one.
Is Brennan a ganch? More of a pochle if you ask me.
What can I tell you? My grip on Northern Irish slang is shaky. A ganch is a big, bumbling fellow, isn't it? What does one call a somewhat smaller version of a ganch?
"Ganch" appears to have several unrelated meanings, raning from a cat's belly to a verb meaning to talk incessantly. Some of these meanings appear to have found their way to Australia, according to some Web site I found. I don't know if Irish immigrants brought the word there or if a separate meaning evolved independently. Whatever the case, I like the word -- which I learned from one of the Michael Forsythe books, by the way.
Peter
I think Ger is about six inches too small to be a ganch. Of course its not just about height. Michael Jordan could never be a ganch, but Shaquille O'Neal when he was overweight definitely had ganch tendencies.
The best way to define pochle? You know Tim Gunn from Project Runway -the opposite of that. Not exactly the most coordinated and together of individuals you could say.
Someone ought to prepare a guide, complete with diagrams, to help visitors and other neophytes recognize ganches and pochles when they see them.
I get the idea fromt he following Scottish example that pochle does not embody great size: "Nae need tae get in sic a stoochie Mister, it's nithin but a pochle o apples."
I'm 1,80 cm (is it 6 feet?)
Not too tall neither too short, but not very coordinated and together and probably the opposite (or is it inverse?) of Tim Gunn.
hmmm...
Amber:Victoria=Tim:Marco
Nah, the equivalence is probably wrong.
Anyway, ganch or pochle?
Marco
Despite your claims to be a fashion naif, I suspect that you are not, anyone living in Tuscany is unlikely to be a pochle. You could be a ganch though. How many times have you spilled coffee on yourself in the last year? That could be a good indicator.
I myself am more of an eejit, though not a buck eejit I am glad to say.
Seana
Oh and of course thank you for the linkage. If I was making money from the blog I'd cut you in. Nice to see that Peter's blog has remained ad free too despite the temptations offered by these dire economic times.
Don't mention it. One of the beauties of the blogosphere is that linkage between things that seem related is so easy. (Well, thanks to Marco,it is.) So unlike attempts to do so in the physical realm.
Marco, 1.80 cm is a little under 6 feet, I think, maybe about 5 feet, 10 inches. In any case, I suspect that that might be under the standard for being considered a ganch unless the person in question made up the deficit with a few extra pounds.
I suspect Brussels and Strasbourg are developing EU-wide standards on such matters, though in the case of Northern Ireland, Westminster might want a voice as well.
If fashion sense and pochlehood mutually exclusive? If so, I am inclined to the belief that any Italian even remotely cosmopolitan is no pochle.
I may be a ganch, and I suspect some would call me a shitehawk.
Fook, Adrian, I would sell my soul and my principles if I could figure out how to make money off this thing. Do not attribute to nobility of motive that which is a product of laziness. Which makes me a ganch, I guess.
Seana, we build bridges between apparently unrelated matters. Is that creativity, or is it wasted time? And what about the attempt to answer that question? Is that creativity, or ...
It's wasted time. But so what?
Sorry, I've been rereading 'Catcher in the Rye' all day, and I expect it's warped my view temporarily. Better sign off now, or I'm going to end up calling us all a bunch of phonies. Also, have to head to my book group to discuss it.
You'll call me a real prince of a fellow!
V-word (and I'm not making this up): ached
I was in a book group briefly that met about 5:30 on Monday evenings. This was a day off for me, and by 5:30, I am rounding into fine fettle and ready to begin my day. My fellow members, on the other hand, had just reached the end of the week's first work day. They'd break up the session just when I thought the discussion was hitting its stride.
Peter
I've been reading your blog on and off since you started. I left several comments back in the early days (I think about Peter Temple). I had a blog back then but removed myself from blogging and reading blogs for quite a while.
I seem to remember you did try ads once upon a time. I wondered if you removed them because they didn't pay or because your readers complained.
Also, a lot of Irish, Cockney etc slang is used in Australia. I'm occasionally surprised to find something I've always considered to be exclusively Aussie slang comes from elsewhere. I don't know any ganches or pochles though.
John, no one complained about the ads, but I was making no money, and it was a pain to change the ads from time to time. If I do put ads up again, I'll want to make sure they're more carefully targeted and likelier to interest visitors to the blog.
Ganch is not the only slang/dialect term I've come across for both Ireland and Australia. It would be no shock for Irish or English slang to turn up in Australia, of course.
Do you not know any ganches or pochles, or do you just call them something else in Australia? I don't remember the definition of ganch that I saw cited as Australian, but it bore no apparent relation to the meaning under discussion here.
I wasn't quite clear there. I meant I've never heard the words ganch or pochle. But I'm sure I'll pick up the paper tomorrow and read the word ganch and then find out everyone in Australia except me has heard it.
I can't think of any Aussie equivalents off the top of my head, but if I were to meet an eejit I'd probably call him a drongo.
Yeah I heard drongo only yesterday.
Skateboarder #1 "Watch out!"
Skateboarder #2 "You drongo!"
I'm trying to introduce "pal" as the menacing antithesis of "mate". So in a pub style facedown I can say "I wouldnt do that if I were you, pal" which works in most of the US but not here (and mate just doesnt have the same existential threat).
Ah, I was just yanking your chain, there, what an earlier generation would have called pulling your leg. I understood what you meant.
I like drongo, and I've always loved seeing eejit in print. It looks wonderful on a page.
I've got books by Chris Nyst and Shane Maloney in my TBR pile, so I may soon renew my acquaintance with Australian vocabulary.
I've always thought "pal" worked best in precisely the threatening context you suggest. Have you considered Mac, bub, buster, or Reb Yankel?
Here’s an article under the headline “Now you can ganch 'Aussie', too!” The author says he’s a third-generation Australian from Melbournse with ancestors from Ballymena, which ought to count for something in this discussion.
Until I started reading Irish crime fiction, my main source for colorful invective was probably Yosemite Sam. It was a highlight of my young life the first time I heard him call Bugs Bunny "Ya long-eared galoot."
What's galoot, you may ask? I have just looked it up, and it appears to mean something very much like a ganch.
I'm reading a book at the moment called The Faloorie Man for that crime project Dec and Ger and myself are putting together (mainly Dec but he'll never take the credit). Its interesting that Gene McEldowney definition of Faloorie is quite a bit different than mine for him a faloorie man was a purely mythical figure in a Belfast's children's song and word itself has no meaning, but my father actually used the word to be mean cute or innocent esp towards a child or baby, i.e. and this a direct quote from memory "ach look at her wee faloorie feet". So there we are Carrick and Belfast 6 miles apart and in one place a word has currency and in another it does not.
One wonders where Gene McEldowney picked up the word -- and how old he is, where he lived, what kind of influences he was exposed to, and so on. This is the sort of thing that sociolinguists love.
Perhaps the qualities of the mythical creature later became reified as the word your father used. (OK, reify is not the right word, but you understand what I mean, I think. Perhaps the name faloorie later came to stand for the qualities of the figure called faloorie.)
I just opened Shane Maloney's Something Fishy at random and found this: Hooley-dooley, I thought. Whacko the did. All the senses, all at once. Count me in.
I had a look at the article. Yep, all genuine Strine.
Adrian,
Do you have a lot of pub style face downs? As you would expect, I have my share, and I find the word pal can be effective, but I usually accompany it with smashing an empty bottle on the bar and thrusting the jagged end towards whoever I'm trying to convince of the correct way to go about things.
John
I havent been in a fight fight for about 9 years and that was a mere shoving match on Amsterdam avenue.
The last two serious fights I was in was in were both defeats for me. A bouncer beat me up in a pub in north London and two guys knocked seven bells out of me outside of a restaurant in New Orleans.
Also, as I was saying in another place in school I lost a fight so badly that I had to get 17 stitches in my face and have my tear duct sewn back on again.
Yesterday i was nearly in a fight though, some guy was saying "fuck" over and over in Saint Kilda public library very loudly and I had to tell him to cool it. He was obviously a nutter and for a second I thought it was all going to get exciting but he did shut up and then left the library.
It's fascinating that after reading today about Holden Caufield running across 'fuck you' everywhere, I am now hearing of a modern day equivalent of his plight. I suppose I should point out that his insight was that even if he spent a million years wiping this off the walls of the world, he would still only reach half. So take care of St. Kilda's library, yes. But don't drive yourself crazy over it. It's a thumb in the dike kind of thing.
The interesting thing is that, despite a large Irish immigrant community, neither 'pochle' nor 'ganch' has made any inroads into American usage as far as I know.
John, I've read a number of Australian crime writers (and this is just a guess, but perhaps slang is more frequent in crime fiction than in other kinds), and I always love slang, especially if I have to use my head a bit to figure out what it means. I wince when I hear talk that some English-language publishers want to translate Australian for the U.S. or Canada or the U.K. Why the hell would you want to deprive anyone of one of the pleasures of reading?
"I usually accompany it with smashing an empty bottle on the bar and thrusting the jagged end towards whoever I'm trying to convince of the correct way to go about things."
Effective in some bars, no doubt, but probably frowned upon in, say, a library.
It's been even longer since I was in a fight, and I have never been in a bar fight. I generally prefer to insult bar jerks under my breath or behind their backs.
Hmm, "fuck you" must have had some shock value when Catcher in the Rye was first published. Oddly enough, I don't remember the fuck yous from when I read the book for high school English. Whether this was due to a bowdlerized school edition or to indifferent reading on my pat, I can't be sure.
In re ganch, I think I have come across the word only in writers from Northern Ireland. I don't know if the word is used in the south. What, if anything, this has to do with the word's lack of currency in the U.S., I don't know.
A bouncer beat me up in a pub in north London and two guys knocked seven bells out of me outside of a restaurant in New Orleans.
There must be interesting stories there. Not to mention the 17 stitches.
I once spent a couple of years working in the State Library of NSW in Sydney. A lot of nutters - including a few of the staff. Dangerous places.
I wince when I hear talk that some English-language publishers want to translate Australian for the U.S. or Canada or the U.K.
Does that sort of thing ever happen? A horrible idea.
That was an eye-catching comment, John. One does not think of libraries as dangerous places, or if one does, the staff is not ordinarily regarded as the source of the danger.
I'm in touch with a number of Australian crime-fiction readers through blogs and the Oz Mystery Readers group. Some of those folks have told of hearing about publishers elsewhere in the English-speaking world wanting to perform such translations on Australian novels. Whether they have done do, I don't know. I do seem to recall Adrian Hyland's saying that the U.S. publishers of his novel Diamond Dove had thought of including a glossary.
How many times have you spilled coffee on yourself in the last year? That could be a good indicator.
On myself? I don't know, a couple of times, but if you count all the times I spilled it on the nearest environment- including once when I uniformly sprayed it on my old keyboard, permanently changing its color from gray to brown...
I had my average of school fights, but I've never been involved in a bar fight-I try to be a calm and soothing influence.
Four years ago I interposed on a disagreement played out in broad daylight between some gentlemen of Slavic extraction and a fellow of theirs- that had the potential to turn out really ugly.
I once interposed myself between a neighbor waving a meat cleaver and the belligerent drunk who had burst into his apartment.
The situation was surprisingly non-threatening. The neighbor seemed to intend strictly defensive use ot the cleaver.
I've been in a couple of bar fights, but I maintain that none of them have been my fault. I think I just have a face that attracts trouble, or I need to be more picky about where I drink. Luckily, I've never been too badly beaten. Cuts and bruises. No stitches.
On Irish slang, Adrian's right, I'm too short to be a ganch. Pochle sounds about right for me, though I try to make an effort for the office. I hardly ever forget to brush my hair anymore. I've been called a buck eejit and a rocket in my late teens and early twenties, but my wife's been a calming influence.
Scundered is another good NI word. In and around Belfast and as far as I know in Antrim and Down scundered means embarrassed. If I trip in the street, I'm suitably scundered. However, some folks I've met from West of the Bann (Derry, Tyrone, Fermanagh) use scundered in place of 'pissed off'. That can get confusing.
gb
Ger
As in "I was fair scundered when me trousers ripped so I was."
I remember this locution from my early youth:
"Yon boy keeked his whips when our ma smacked his bake and told him he was a skleekit wee skitter so he was."
Marco
Yes that might qualify for ganch hood.
John
I saw a terrible fight about a month ago on Saint Kilda beach. Two 16 year old boys started fighting and they were wailing these big hay makers at each other not connecting at all and just totally embarrassing to watch when the girls they were with ran up from the beach and broke it up and then one of the boy started to cry. It was a very sorry spectacle and I almost told them so but decided not to be the Adrian Veidt common enemy in their little drama.
Pochle sounds about right for me, though I try to make an effort for the office. I hardly ever forget to brush my hair anymore.
Brushing hair? what a novel concept.
Adrian - Bake -- I love that word. 'Shut your bake, wee lad.' Powerful.
Marco - Yeah, it took a bit of getting used to, but I have it nailed now. Of course, we're heading into the nicer weather now and I'll be shaving it all off soon. I'll have to retrain next winter.
gb
Despite your claims to be a fashion naif, I suspect that you are not, anyone living in Tuscany is unlikely to be a pochle.
If fashion sense and pochlehood mutually exclusive? If so, I am inclined to the belief that any Italian even remotely cosmopolitan is no pochle.
Ah, those persistent prejudices...
Aussie slang
I love "A few kangaroos loose in the top paddock".
v-word: peacho. I also had prose, previously.
"I've been called a buck eejit and a rocket in my late teens and early twenties, but my wife's been a calming influence."
Context provides a clue here, and I'm guessing a rocket is someone with a temper, apt to go off? Since you're too short to be a ganch, though you are a (former) buck eejit and rocket, I'm guessing you're feisty. American sportswriters always describe energetic, fiery professional athletes that way, but only if the athletes are short by athletic standards, i.e., 5 feet, 10 inches or under.
"I saw a terrible fight about a month ago on Saint Kilda beach. Two 16 year old boys started fighting and they were wailing these big hay makers at each other not connecting at all and just totally embarrassing to watch when the girls they were with ran up from the beach and broke it up and then one of the boy started to cry. It was a very sorry spectacle and I almost told them so but decided not to be the Adrian Veidt common enemy in their little drama."
Sounds like a heart-rending fight, all right. I have just read some Allan Guthrie, and his characters tend either to get into embarrassing fights, to cry, or both.
In re Adrian Veidt, the promotion for the Watchmen movie is kicking in. I've seen trailer in theaters and online, and several expensive books about the movie -- you know, those "making of," Watchmen companion, art-of-the-movie things. One displays Dave Gibbons' name prominently on its cover, but not Alan Moore's.
V-word is what you've been experiencing in Australia if you speak Spanish: calor
"Brushing hair? what a novel concept."
I always brush my hair -- and I always find a belt to hold up my pants.
"Bake -- I love that word. 'Shut your bake, wee lad.' Powerful."
I always liked "Shut your pie hole." The only time I've heard it, as opposed to read it, is from my brother, said with gruff affection, to his young sons.
If fashion sense and pochlehood mutually exclusive? If so, I am inclined to the belief that any Italian even remotely cosmopolitan is no pochle.
Ah, those persistent prejudices...
This prejudice may have more foundation than most. My experience of Italy may not be wide, but two of my Roman memories concern clothes. One is that women over a great age range, from about 12 until well into their sixties or older, would dress stylishly in short skirts or dresses and black stockings, and they always looked good, never slutty or cheap. The other is that I once took a load of laundry to the cleaners wearing just a T-shirt, shorts and shoes. The friends I was visiting were aghast when I mentioned this, (They were not Italian, but they knew that Romans simply did not dress that way in public, the way Americans do.)
I'm guessing you're feisty
Or maybe spunky.
It's funny because in Rome there's also the stereotype of the suburban
coatto (elsewhere cafone, tamarro ,buzzurro )the not much fashion conscious and "differently polite" youth from the suburbs.
Perhaps even pugnacious once you've had a few drinks.
Yes, I'm sure Italy has its versions of hicks and city slickers and the mutual suspicion, condescension and snobbery that lend texture to life.
I like the world spunky but it does have an unfortunate conotation. Oh how we sniggered back in primary school when Mark Twain said that Tom Sawyer was "full of spunk."
I also remember having to read out loud (we did that in those days) a bit in Nicholas Nickleby when one character who had a gold tipped cane was "absently sucking his knob."
And all those old texts which use ejaculate in the sense of utter?
"Here," he said in basic Italian. "Keep the change." The waiter ejaculated with evident pleasure.
From Ngaio Marsh's novel 'When in Rome' found after a brief googling.
That must have been a huge tip.
I regret the passing of "spunky" out of polite use. I fear that many people today would be unaware of the meaning Mark Twain intended.
I, too, reject the loss of ejaculate, meaning "to utter suddenly and vehemently." No immediate, handy substitute comes to mind.
Just a few minutes ago, I was about to type the words "friendly intercourse." The phrase suited the tone of the sentence in question, but I backed down and typed "friendly relations" instead.
Peter - I think feisty, and even spunky as descriptions are a little too positive for what I was back then. A bad tempered wee shite comes closer to the mark.
As far as the term rocket goes, a feisty person of small stature is usually referred to as a pocket rocket (though that might have slipped into my vocabulary via my southern relatives) but in Belfast a rocket is a bit of a lunatic. It's a label most wear with pride...
gb
Gerard, feisty and spunky are indeed positive descriptions, and they'd likely have a bit of an archaic or at least nostalgic edge in current fiction. I'm not sure any current lexicon of mine has a term equvalent to rocket in its Belfast sense, which is too bad. The term is vivid and richly descriptive.
The Montreal Canadiens ice hockey team used to have a great player named Maurice "Rocket" Richard. When his shorter and younger brother Henri joined the team, he became known as the Pocket Rocket.
Needless to say, "bad-tempered wee shite" is a gorgeous description.
Oh, let's reclaim those words like 'spunky' and 'ejaculated' and use them proudly, although maybe in a half-scundered way, just like we Democrats have now taken to waving the American flag. At least on Inauguration Day.
I would definitely be marked as a pochle, or even a grand pochle, at least judging by coffee stains, if it were not for one of my fine young co-workers, who tuned me in to "Tide on the Go", which turns out to be something like a marker pen, except with top secret Tide in it. Sure, you've gotten yet another leaky paper coffee cup and dribbled coffee all down the front of your shirt. But fear not. With "Tide to Go", you just write all over those leaky coffee stains, and if they don't disappear within the hour, they will in the next wash.
I swear to God, Tide should be marketing the hell out of this one. Hey, Tide? I will personally do a commercial for the price of nothing more than a lifetime supply of Tide marker pens. And it's not like I'm even that young.Investmentwise, it just makes sense. With all my bad habits, you're probably only out about forty dollars.
"Hey, authors! Tired of leaving dribs and inky drabs of that rough draft all over your work clothes? Try the Tide on the Go, the pen that every writer should have!"
Okay, Peter, when I cut the deal, you'll get a spot too. Which is kind of ironic in this context. I mean, the whole point is no spots, right?
OK, good ad. That's my next career.
I know a kid called Ngaio.
I don't want to overdo it with the ganch/pochle thing, but,as someone noted today, another area where my technique needs a bit of refining is the tying of shoelaces.
(There's also a small hole in my right shoe, but it is nearly invisible, no need to worry just yet).
v-word: comici (comedians)
Named after Dame Ngaio?
One can never have too many ganches.
Sure you can't go to some finishing school to study shoelace tying? Or just wear loafers?
Yup named after Dame Ngaio, but it is a not uncommon Maori name, apparently.
Yep, one figures she was not the first.
I just looked her up, and I found that Ngaio was her middle name. Her first name was Edith. I'd say calling herself Ngaio may have been a good move.
you probably figured this out already but its pronounced Nyeyo.
I've never had to pronounce it. I'd have guessed Neye-o. My Maori pronunciation is a little rusty.
A ganch is someone who follows the old Irish rule: whatever you say, say nothing at all.
The word derives from the Irish word 'caint', meaning 'speech' &, in West Béal Feirste [Belfast, as Anglophones say] it's pronounced 'kontch'.
Thanks, mail. A Derryman of my acquaintance said (or guessed) that the word was an abbreviation of "gargantuan." Possibly this is connected with the word's application to large fellows and not smaller ones. And thanks especially for the pronunciation guide.
"marco said...
It's funny because in Rome there's also the stereotype of the suburban
coatto (elsewhere cafone, tamarro ,buzzurro )the not much fashion conscious and "differently polite" youth from the suburbs."
This all sounds like Glasgow's neds.
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