White Trash

John King

Description

Ruby James lives life to the full, the state-run hospital where she works as a nurse a microcosm of the community in which she was born and bred. While some outsiders might label the people of this town “white trash,” she knows different, reveling in a vibrant society that values people over money, actions above words.

For Ruby, every person is unique and has a story to tell, whether it is skinhead taxi driver Steve, retired teacher and rocker Pearl, magic-mushroom expert Danny Wax Cap, or former merchant seaman Ron Dawes. She encourages people to tell their tales, thrilled by the images created. Outside of work she drinks, dances, and has fun with her friends, at the same time dealing with her mother’s Alzheimer’s and a vision from the past, aware that physical and mental health are precious and easily lost. The epitome of positive thinking, Ruby sees the best in everyone—until the day true evil comes to call.

A mystery figure roams the corridors of Ruby’s state-run hospital. He carries special medicine and a very different set of values. He tells himself that he wants to help, increase efficiency, but cost-cutting leads to social cleansing as humans are judged according to that white-trash agenda. Excuses and justifications flow as notions of heaven and hell are distorted. Set against a background of pirate radio stations, pink Cadillacs, and freeway dreams, White Trash insists there is no such thing as white trash.

Sujets

• Graphic violence
• Pirate radio
• Ordinary People
• Nurse
• Hooligan

Informations

• Publié par: PM Press
• Date de parution: 15 novembre 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781629633220
• Langue: English

Extrait

Praise for White Trash
Complete and unique, all stitched up and marvellous, the two sides of the equation brought together, realistic yet philosophical.
-Alan Sillitoe, author of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning
There are no white trash-that s the point of the title . The cumulative effect of King s style is astonishingly powerful in its detail and depth. A quarter of a century after punk rock, the core punk ethos-of a robust and adaptable form of resistance, based on inclusive, DIY community-making and a concentration on immediacy-is still inspiring some of our most vital writers. An immensely timely and necessary book: stylish, witty, and passionate. It s about time someone slapped the smugness from the face of broadsheet Britain.
-Mat Coward, The Independent
King is a writer who adeptly avoids clich and caricature and is one of the most accomplished chroniclers of contemporary life. White Trash is very much a state of the nation book.
- Big Issue North
The sharpest commentator on modern times is back, with a plot running so close to the bone it s almost skeletal.
- The List
White Trash tones down the severe language of King s football hooligan trilogy, but his themes-rich versus poor, state versus individual-remain as explicit as ever.
- GQ

White Trash
John King
John King 2001
First published by Jonathan Cape, a division of The Random House Group Ltd
From Cradle to Grave 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: 978-1-62963-227-8
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016948148
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
For my family
Old clothes are beastly, continued the untiring whisper. We always throw away old clothes. Ending is better than mending, ending is better than mending, ending is better
- Brave New World , Aldous Huxley
FROM CRADLE TO GRAVE
During the Second World War, the Conservative politician Winston Churchill led a coalition government that was essentially socialist, with the profit motive suspended and the nation working for the common good. In the decades that followed, those who lived through the conflict marvelled at the unity they had experienced, the success of Britain s cross-party cabinet dependent on what became known as the spirit of the Blitz, a determination by the wider population to never surrender their country, culture and democracy to the might of Nazi Germany.
Hitler planned to build a European empire, and it was going to be one that was stocked with a race of Aryan supermen. This would be achieved through careful breeding, an unnatural selection where obsessions with race and eugenics meant there was no place for subhumans such as Jews, while a secret policy of euthanasia led to the extermination of the incurably sick, those with physical and mental disabilities, the elderly and infirm. These murders were described as mercy killings and had the bonus of saving the state money. In some ways, the supremacism of the Nazis reflected the monotheism of Christianity, with its single, all-powerful god who can never be questioned. The destination of a person s soul became a decision for the righteous, as was the nature of their heaven or hell.
In the immediate aftermath of the war, and despite his popularity, Churchill was easily defeated in the 1945 election by a Labour Party led by Clement Attlee. People wanted a new sort of society and were not about to accept the unemployment and hardship that had followed the First World War. Their victory had to continue into peacetime, so they rejected the old system operated by the rich for the benefit of the rich. After six years of bloodshed, Britain was in ruins and its population exhausted, but while there was austerity, the nation would be reborn under the Attlee government, and this was a time when everything seemed possible.
The 1942 report on Social Insurance And Allied Services-known as the Beveridge Report, after the economist William Beveridge-had already laid the foundations for a welfare state, and this was now implemented by the minister of health, former miner and trade unionist Nye Bevan. The plan was to confront what the report called the five great evils -want, idleness, ignorance, squalor and disease. The plan had universal support and the country was energised.
Funded by taxes, the welfare state belonged to the people and was part of a post-war consensus that would see a mixed economy aiming for full employment, which would in turn lead to freedom from want and the dignity that comes with fair labour. Incentives and protections were built in, while the pre-war slums and bombed-out areas were going to be replaced by the building of council houses to rent and a series of new towns. Education would broaden and encourage free-thought, things such as free school meals and milk introduced to strengthen the children. The nationalisation of core industries would allow for efficient forward-planning, the idea of common ownership one that reaches back through Britain s rebel traditions.
The Transport Act of 1947 established an efficient, joined-up system, while the nationalisation of the mining industry meant investment and increased safety for its workers, neither of which had been a priority in private hands. Water, gas and electricity were natural monopolies and also went into state ownership. The country needed to start producing quickly, and there was no time to waste on wasteful competition and vested interests.
To this day, the National Health Service remains the jewel in the crown of the welfare state. It was established to provide socialised care for every single person from the day they are born to the day they die-from cradle to grave. Improved housing and nutrition were important in the fight against the causes of disease, but the way of treating the sick had to change as well. Previously help had only been available to those with the cash to buy it, and doctors could be exploitative and judgmental, the poor causing their own suffering by being lazy, dirty, even immoral. Condemned for their poverty, it is an ongoing truth that those who do some of the hardest and most necessary jobs are often paid the lowest wages. For the lack of proper housing, food and care, thousands were dying. The welfare state offered compassion and unity, and this was the foundation of what some saw as a new Jerusalem, with the satanic mills of William Blake firmly in its sights.
The real immorality lay in a system run for profit, as there is always going to be the temptation for a doctor to invent or exaggerate illness, prescribe needless treatment. To this day, the majority of people in Britain believe that the privatisation of healthcare is wrong, and the NHS retains a special status in the national consciousness. It is one of the last gems in a crown that has been stripped bare. American lobbyists may invent the idea of NHS death panels when arguing against socialized medicine, but we are shocked by the idea that walking into an American hospital leads to the question: Are you insured? The NHS is an example of a genuine community, and it is people like nurse Ruby James, the star of White Trash , who make it work.
Set in an unnamed town on the edge of London, the novel is part of The Satellite Cycle, which begins with Human Punk and ends with Skinheads. It is easy to work out that this is Slough, one of the areas Londoners moved to when they left the blitzed inner cities at the end of the war. More than half a century later, this is Ruby s home, the place where she was born and raised and has always lived, the hospital in which she works a microcosm. For Ruby, every person is unique and has a story to tell, and she encourages the patients to tell their tales, thrilled by the images created. Outside of the hospital she drinks, dances and lives her life to the full, at the same time doing her best to deal with her mother s Alzheimer s and a memory from childhood, aware that physical and mental health are precious and easily lost.
Ruby is a hero. There are no doubts, and the way she is presented is deliberate, aims to show a clear division between good and evil. This is reflected in the prose, with different styles applied. If the NHS is part of the new Jerusalem of post-war idealism, then Ruby is one of its angels. The text reflects her natural positivity. It is essential to be optimistic.
The soundtrack of this novel would be dominated by the techno of Headrillaz and Spiral Tribe. Fast and driving, there is no need for lyrics. Ruby leaves work and wants to try and live in the moment. She feels the emotions of the sick and elderly, grasps how fast time flashes past. Inside, we are all the same age. It is the body that breaks. A hospital ward can be one of saddest places on earth. The old and dying are defenceless and scared, wish they could go back to better days, or at least become well enough to return home, where they can at least sleep in their own beds one more time.
Ruby absorbs the social history passed down by these people, pictures a merchant seaman s trips around the world, imagines the tragic loss of love and a career in service as a teacher, sees the magic-mushroom munching of a good-time pagan and his Green Man pals. The epitome of positive thinking, she sees the best in everyone-until the day true evil comes to call.
White Trash is