Headhunters

John King

Description

Headhunters is the story of five friends. Carter USM is a live wire who lives on the edge and tries not to think too much; Mango can’t stop thinking, has made money but is weighed down by family tragedy; Harry is a beer-lover and dreamer; Balti is his drinking partner, out of work and hoping for a fresh start; while Will is the quiet romantic, a voice of reason as the lives of the others become increasingly chaotic and veer towards disaster.

Headhunters is also a story of London. The novel is rooted in its streets, workplaces, pubs and music, but a parallel society exists, where the planet’s wealthy are able to buy and sell whatever they like. This is a world from which the Londoners of this novel are excluded, resentment too often directed against their own kind. The Unity is the boys’ local pub and it is here that they form a tongue-in-cheek Sex Division to celebrate a new year. Based on the idea of a football league, the most Woman can offer Man is four points—unless she leaves her handbag unattended.

Carter is the Unstoppable Sex Machine and soon leads the table, while Mango breaks the rules and buys success. Harry and Balti are overweight and hard up, know they have little to offer apart from their personalities, turn to cold lager and hot curries instead of sex. Will falls in loves and retires. Recognition of the affinities between the sexes soon becomes clear. Background is more important than gender.

Headhunters mixes humor and longing as the real feelings of these men break through, moving beyond expectations. A missing brother, prophetic visions, genuine romance and a tit-for-tat confrontation draw the characters out into the open—revealing the individuals behind the words and their craving for respect. Events run out of control, but several happy endings seem possible.

Sujets

• Humor
• Proletariat
• Blue-collar worker
• Drinking
• Violence

Informations

• Publié par: PM Press
• Date de parution: 15 novembre 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781629633213
• Langue: English

Extrait

Praise for Headhunters
John King is the authentic voice of contemporary London.
-Michael Moorcock
Brutal, honest and poetic in the way that only a tough guy can be, King loads the gun and shoots us into the lager-filled, lust-fueled lives of five London lads. Headhunters is sexy, dirty, violent, sad and funny; in fact it has just about everything you could want from a book on contemporary working-class life in London.
- Big Issue
King loads his characters up with enough interior life, but it s the raw energy of their interactions-the beano to Blackpool, the punch-ups, the casual fucks, the family skeletons and the unburied fantasies-that make this excellent book run.
-Steve Grant, Time Out
Headhunters is an odyssey into southern English blue-collar manners as King deconstructs the stereotype of Essex Man and his outer London contemporaries and finds rather more complex attitudes towards gender and class than the tabloid image suggests.
-Teddy Jamieson, The List
King s achievement since his debut has been enormous: creating a modern, proletarian English literature at once genuinely modern, genuinely proletarian, genuinely English and genuinely literature.
-Charles Shaar Murray

Headhunters
John King
John King 1997
First published by Jonathan Cape, a division of The Random House Group Ltd In England s Fair City John King 2016
This edition 2016 PM Press
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be transmitted by any means without permission in writing from the publisher.
John King has asserted his right to be identified as the Author of the Work.
ISBN: 978-1-62963-226-1
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016948147
Cover design by John Yates / www.stealworks.com
Interior design by briandesign
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
PM Press
PO Box 23912
Oakland, CA 94623
www.pmpress.org
Printed in the USA by the Employee Owners of Thomson-Shore in Dexter, Michigan. www.thomsonshore.com
CONTENTS
I NTRODUCTION In England s Fair City
PART ONE
Beautiful Game
Cogs
Pigs in Knickers
Kicking Off
Black Vinyl
PART TWO
Dreamscape
Scum of Toytown
Beano
Balham on Tour
Death Tripping
PART THREE
Skin-Bone-Drum-Bass
Rent Boy
Burning Rubber
Northern Lights
Happy House
To Anita
What was even funnier was what happened when I went to sleep that night, O my brothers. I had a nightmare, and, as you might expect, it was one of those bits of film I d viddied in the afternoon. A dream or nightmare is really only like a film inside your gulliver, except that it is as though you could walk into it and be part of it.
- A Clockwork Orange , Anthony Burgess
IN ENGLAND S FAIR CITY
Not long after Headhunters was first published, a friend of mine-Ray-was sitting in a pub tucked into a backstreet near King s Cross station in London. He had a pint of Guinness and a copy of the novel on the table in front of him, and was about to settle into a relaxing, mid-afternoon session. It was that time of day when a hush can settle over a pub and turn it into a chapel. Sunlight filters through frosted and even stained glass, the congregation is mainly middle-aged and over, with the more dedicated souls sitting in solitary, prayer-like reflection. The main difference is that these worshippers are male-retired, unemployed, self-employed, one or two on early shifts. There is contentment, resignation and some sorrow, but none of the noise and chaos of the night. Rough edges are smoothed and peace reigns.
Despite being close to a major rail terminus with areas of prostitution and homelessness, the passing nature of those travelling by train, this establishment was used by locals. A big man with a shaved head came over and sat opposite Ray. Uninvited, he was nevertheless friendly and not stopping for long, just keen to explain that the bloke who had written Headhunters drank here. He had not met him yet, but knew it for a fact, went on to list the real-life regulars behind the novel s main characters. Ray said he didn t think that was the case, but his new friend was adamant and, in a way, he was right, because Carter, Balti, Harry, Mango and Will-the self-styled, tongue-in-cheek Sex Division of this story-do seem familiar, and they would definitely use this sort of pub.
Ray told me about this a few weeks later in The Ship in Soho, an area at the heart of London which, until two years ago, had miraculously escaped the mind-numbing gentrification that is destroying the city. Speak, act, think the same Do not laugh, swear, disagree Spies monitor what is said in case they are offended on behalf of someone else, too often failing to grasp the subtleties of a common English that shouldn t be taken too literally. At its most flamboyant, with the restraints loosened by alcohol, this language is loaded with double meaning and a self-deprecating humour. To understand Headhunters , it is important to read more than just the words.
Listening to Ray s story, it made me think how every group of drinking men has its archetypes, and others would make similar comments to the Kings Cross skinhead, recognising people they knew but I had never met. Perhaps people get on better when not sharing their beliefs too closely. It certainly makes life more interesting, and in a pub setting opinions are expressed freely and arguments can rage, but grudges are rarely held. There is a balancing of opposites-the yin and yang of the taproom philosophers; a brotherhood of the hop; the love and hate of bare-knuckle tattoos. In the harder pubs things might escalate, but there is generally an etiquette, a shared belief in free speech, the willingness to listen to the other person s point of view.
As the day progresses the chapel becomes a theatre. Evening approaches, the light fades and the doors clatter as people arrive after finishing work. That first pint slides down. The tension is eased. Night turns the streets black, lights come on and the beer has its effect, increasing the volume and intensity of conversation. The daytime drinkers drift off, followed by most of the after-work brigade, replaced by a fresh wave of thirsty people who will stay until closing time. There are no set rules, as every place is different, but most follow this pattern.
One of the best things about Britain is its pubs, and there is nothing like a proper London boozer. This doesn t mean they are all the same, as they are not, vary according to location and clientele, reflect a mass of local histories, characteristics that have passed down through the decades. Greater London is the result of villages linking as the city grew, populations changing their make-up as housing filled the gaps. The city is a jigsaw, the same as those gangs of drinking men, a mass of contradictions and quirks. Churches and pubs have long been focal points for communities, and while the buildings are modified and the people change, they offer a sense of continuity.
Short for public house, a pub is a licensed establishment where people of all ages, backgrounds, sexes and interests have traditionally come together. In London, they vary in scale, range from the small local sitting on a street corner or wedged into a terraced street, to grand gin palaces with their snugs and cut glass and maybe the remains of a music hall. The larger taverns and inns were where travellers stopped to lodge overnight. From The Ship in Soho, Ray and I walked for a minute and were in The Blue Posts, named after the coloured poles where riders used to tie their horses.
In Headhunters , The Unity is the main characters pub of choice. Home to a bunch of hooligans, Denise and Eileen work behind the bar, while the resident nutter Slaughter looks on. It is here that the Sex Division is drunkenly formed, a soccer analogy that connects with the first novel in a trilogy that starts with The Football Factory and continues into England Away, as faces from the first two books join up and head across the English Channel to run riot in Amsterdam and Berlin, losing themselves in the kindred beer cultures of Holland and Germany.
A good session rinses the brain, flushes out the toxins of life, frees the imagination and releases the tongue. Love and hate become more than smudged ink. Friendships are formed and mistakes made. Ideas and opinions flow, inner lives expressed as more is revealed drunk than sober. Boundaries are broken. Every gang is made up of individuals, each person influenced by events, and as youths we are introduced to the magical world of the public house by others. It is one we soon grow to love. This is our tradition and our culture, and there is always a beginning.

The first three pubs I used were The Rising Sun in Slough, The Stag And Hounds in Iver Heath and The Three Tuns in Uxbridge, all of them on the margins of West London. Standing outside The Rising Sun one evening in 1977, peering through the window to see what it was like inside, if three underage boys would get served, a man s voice asked us what we were doing. Turning, we found ourselves facing our form teacher, mumbled a few words that included nothing, and started to walk away. He laughed and told us it was fine to go inside, but to avoid the bar where he was meeting other teachers from the school. With its generously poured light-and-bitter and a jukebox full of glam hits, we kept returning.
The Stag And Hounds was a pub I went to with my father, often at midday on a Sunday, which is a tradition in England. This was and remains a small locals pub. It also had two bars, which made it seem even tighter inside, the space crowded with personalities that included the very different grocer and chemist, who had shops next