I Didn't Bail Him Out

I wrote this submission for the column "LA Affairs" in the Los Angeles Times. It never ran, so I'm running it here. I may post more stories about weird guys in subsequent posts.

I DIDN'T BAIL HIM OUT

“He has a heart condition and we can’t keep him here,” explained the police officer who called me, to ask if I’d bail a certain prisoner out. I had cut off contact with the locked-up guy for longer than I cared to think about. I’d been assuming he was gone for good, at long last, for the last time. I’d broken up with him for the absolute last time perhaps a year or more earlier, but now the police were requesting that I bail the guy out.

Because he had a heart condition, I was told, that I knew nothing about—and the police didn’t have "the equipment to keep him" in the San Pedro facility.

If the guy himself had called to ask, I would have flatly told him, “No,” perhaps sprinkled with some choice words about where he could go and what he could do.

I’d bailed the guy out a couple of years earlier and told him, that was the one and only and last chance he would ever get. I wasn’t spending my hard-earned salary to get his lazy you-know-what out of jail ever again.

Except I couldn’t very well just tell the police that. I had to be courteous to the police, at least. Even though, knowing the guy the way I did, I suspected the mysterious “heart condition” may have conveniently developed just at the very moment when he wanted to get out of the slammer. 

Because I lived in Anaheim at the time, getting to the police station in San Pedro involved literally driving into the next county, in an unreliable old beat-up car, into a scruffy industrial area I didn’t know anything about. This was long before GPS so I had to read a street map, follow scribbled directions, and find my way down an unfamiliar freeway and through the dreary streets to the police station that's near the Port of Los Angeles.

Once I got to the police station, I was told the bail was $500, cash only. My checking account had about $1000 in it—of my money, earned and saved from my employment, and once I paid that bail, I could kiss that $500 good-bye, all for a guy that couldn’t be bothered to get a job and couldn’t even be bothered to stay out of jail.

Those were the days when you could write a check at a local grocery, provided you had a check-cashing card issued by the grocery. I drove around more unfamiliar streets and asked directions until I  found a grocery I had a check-cashing card for. The grocery had a limit of $300 for cashing a check. I needed $500 in cash.

I drove around some more and found a branch of my bank but the bank was closed. The ATM had a limit of $300. To get $500, I'd have to get $300 one way and the remaining $200 another way. Two places, two checks, my money, for a guy I had given up caring about anything that happened to him a long time ago.

I didn’t get the $500 and instead went back to the police station. I don’t remember what I first said to the desk sergeant when I returned, but he somehow appeared to mistake me for someone who was desperate for the welfare of a dear loved one. (As in, “Honey, are you alright?”) Actually the only reason I was going through all this was to be nice to the police, not the guy.

The desk sergeant picked up the desk phone and, in a sympathetic tone of voice, said, “Here, you want to talk to him?”

I picked up the receiver. (This was in the 1980’s, kids, when phones had those receivers you see in old movies and TV shows.) The guy I once did love, fat lot of good that did, on the other end, started in with the same pack of lies I’d heard before and I hadn’t believed the first time. I told him he was the only person who could solve his own problems, nobody else was going to do it for him. I'd told him that before, and a lot of good that did.

He demanded, “Are you going to bail me out?” He said it like a master demanding obedience from a servant.

I couldn’t say he was treating me like an object, because an object, at least, implies some degree of independent existence. I was a mere convenience whose existence began and ended with my usefulness to him. To him, my reason for existing was to be his “Get Out of Jail Free” card, free for him, anyway.

“That’s all you care about, isn’t it?” I asked, returning his demanding coldness with my own.

“Yeah,” he was forced to admit.

I remember I hung up the phone and started to walk out. I remember the desk sergeant protesting, “But we don’t have the equipment to take care of him.”

I turned, smiled, shrugged, and politely answered, “I don’t have the equipment to take care of him either.” Then I added, with as much politeness as I could, “So take him someplace you’ve got the equipment to take care of him, then.”

As I walked out the door I heard the desk sergeant saying something about a prisoner transfer. That was all they had to do. They didn’t have to involve me in any of it.

That was the last I heard from or about the guy. He’d come into my life when I wanted a man who stayed and that was all. Along came a guy whose one lonely virtue was, he stayed. My mother had an expression about such men, “a bad penny that keeps turning up.” Another comparison I’ve heard, is to a bad cold that won’t go away. He was my lesson in, some people, even some you love, you just have to walk away.

Occasionally I Google the guy’s name, not out of any desire or nostalgia, simply to see if the Internet contains any evidence that he ever existed. It doesn’t. Whatever happened to him is beyond the reach of even the Internet, and I’m at peace with that.

  

Strange Exclusions: 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die, Part VI

There's one book called 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die and there's another called 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. I'm not an advocate of the "must . . . before you die" school of thought--there are no "musts" before you die--but I can understand the desire to see what a list of the top 1001 books on your lifetime reading list would look like. What would mine look like? It wouldn't look very much like the bibliography found in 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die, that's for sure.

For the book's title being 1001 Books it's strange how the introduction appears oriented towards novels--and then, in the actual list, the term "novel" appears to be used rather loosely, and if the goal was to recommend 1001 novels then that should've been the title. I thought I'd find much more of these kind of books:

Classics of World Literature

The Illiad and The Odyssey

The Dialogues of Plato

The Prince by Machiavelli

The Communist Manifesto by Marx

Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau (Walden is listed in 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die but Civil Disobedience isn't)

The Federalist Papers

Women's Literature

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft

The Second Sex by Simone Beauvoir

The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan

Twentieth Century Classics

The Greek Way by Edith Hamilton

The Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T. E. Lawrence

Churchill's four-vol. History of the English-speaking Peoples

Kon-Tiki by Thor Heyerdahl

Born Free by Joy Adamson

The Diary of Anne Frank

From Here to Eternity by James Jones

The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck

Riders of the Purple Sage by Zane Gray

Strange Omissions Considering Various Authors

Mark Twain is represented by The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn but not The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (which is almost a pre-requisite for Huckleberry Finn)

Poe is represented by The Fall of the House of Usher and The Pit and the Pendulum (which is usually classified as short fiction) but not by Masque of the Red Death or The Murders in the Rue Morgue 

Theodore Dreiser is represented by Sister Carrie but not An American Tragedy

Steinbeck is represented by The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men but not East of Eden or Cannery Row or The Pearl or Travels With Charley or Tortilla Flat

Dickens is represented by Bleak House and David Copperfield and Great Expectations and Oliver Twist but not A Tale of Two Cities or A Christmas Carol

Sinclair Lewis is represented by Babbitt and Main Street but not Arrowsmith or It Can't Happen Here or Kingsblood Royal 

Annie Proulx is represented by The Shipping News but not Brokeback Mountain (which is one of those works that sometimes is treated as short fiction and sometimes as a novel)

Robert Louis Stevenson is represented by Treasure Island and Jeckyll and Hyde but not Kidnapped

Joyce's Ulysses and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Finnegan's Wake are included, but not Dubliners

Emphasis on the "novel" may explain--but not excuse--classic book-length poetic works, not just The Illiad and The Odessey, but also such works as Kahil Gibran's The Prophet and Longfellow's Hiawatha and Evangeline and The Courtship of Miles Standish. 

Children's and YA Classics:  The Little Prince, Pippi Longstocking, Carroll's Alice books, Twain's Huckleberry Finn, those are mixed in with adult--sometimes very adult--reading, but nobody thought to include the following:

Heidi by Johanna Spyri

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

Bambi by Felix Salten

Rabbit Hill by Robert Lawson

Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little by E. B. White

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl

Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie

Hans Binker

The Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss

Black Beauty by Anna Sewell

The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

YA classics such at The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton and Are You There, God, It's Me, Margaret by Judy Blume

A few more strange exclusions, before I close:

Generation X by Douglas Coupland

Forever Amber by Kathleen Winsor

The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron

The Autobiography of Malcom X and Roots by Alex Haley

Maybe someday when I have "nothing better to do" (like read a classic book), I'll undertake my own list of 1001 Books that should be on everyone's lifetime reading list. I'll probably have to break it up into five or ten installments.

Strange Inclusions: 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die, Part V

 While browsing the book 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die I often thought, of all the books in the world, why are these 1001 books the ones that you "must read" to have the richest fullest life possible (if that's what "before you die" means)? The introduction says much about "the novel" but the compilation lists 1001 books, not 1001 novels. Emphasising the novel may explain the absence of much of the world's non-fiction and poetry, but, in that case, several of the listings don't appear to fit the common definition of "novel," either. 

Some examples of non-fiction included:

Walden by Henry David Thoreau (which the compliation admits is, "not exactly a novel")

The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

An account of the conquest of "New Spain" written by one of Cortez' soldiers

A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift, which is a short satirical essay

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe

One Thousand and One Nights is an ancient collection of ancient folklore tied together by a framing device

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote (his famous "non-fiction novel")

Some examples of short fiction included:

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, which is a collection of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's short stories

The Pit and the Pendulum by Edgar Allan Poe

The Kreutzer Sonata and The Death of Ivan Illyich by Leo Tolstoy

Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

Contributors to 1001 Books are largely from British institutions and the book was originally published in Great Britain, so that may explain why there is so much emphasis on British and European authors, along with works from the former British empire. (Republicans could lose their minds over how "woke" this compilation is, containing so many works from Asia, Africa, and Latin America.) An American compilation would probably come up with a very different list of books. 

Further, I expected more emphasis on the world's great works of scholarship and not so much emphasis on pop-culture entertainment, including what appears to be an over-representation of sci-fi, horror, and detective literature. 

Some of the more dubious examples of pop-culture entertainment include: H. G. Wells being represented three times, by The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds and The Island of Dr. Moreau, or that Nabokov is represented by Lolita--and three other books.

The Long Goodbye and The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler

The Maltese Falcon and The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett

American Psycho by Brett Easton Ellis

Fear of Flying by Erica Jong

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson (which brushes up against non-fiction)

Religous works: Considering that books of the world's great religions--like the Bible and the Koran--are absent, it's strange that the list includes such religous-themed works as The Last Temptation of Christ and The Satanic Verses.

Lastly, several works normally considered children's literature are haphazardly thrown into the general list, when you think they'd be more likely considered a side category, if included at all--making for something like 1001 Books You Must Read, Including 100 You Should've Read in Grade School.

 Perhaps we may accept as explanation, the entry for Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn which states, "Like many of the titles found in the "Children's Classics" section of bookstores, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is not a children's book as we understand the term these days, and it is not surprising that adaptations of Twain's work aimed at children are usually quite heavily edited." I question the wisdom, though, of throwing Pippi Longstocking into the same catch-all net as the Marquis De Sade.

Just See the Movie: 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die, Part IV:

 Like a student trying to get out of reading the book by seeing the movie, I decided, while browsing through the book 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die that for many of the listings, just seeing the film version may be preferable to trying to slough through the book. After you see the movie, you can then decide if the book interests you enough to read it or not.  

1. The Age of Innocence

2. Casino Royale (2006 version, which is the film version that actually follows the book--and represents the only Fleming/Bond book on the list--so if you're a Bond fan, you'll probably read every book, if you're not, you're probably not interested, period.)

3. Closely Watched Trains

4. Death in Venice

5. Day of the Dolphin

6. Far from the Madding Crowd

7. The Garden of the Finzi-Continis

8. Get Shorty

9. The Go-Between

10. Jakob the Liar

11. Like Water for Chocolate

12. Lolita

13. The Lost Honor of Katrina Blum

14. Madame Bovary

15. Mansfield Park

16. Of Human Bondage

17. Rashomon

18. Quo Vadis 

19. Requiem for a Dream

20. The Shipping News (This book by Annie Proulx makes the 1001 list but Brokeback Mountain doesn't.)

21. Sometimes a Great Notion 

22. The Black Dahlia (which isn't considered that good a movie, which may make one suspicious of the quality of the book)

23. The Graduate

24. The Big Sleep

25. Things Fall Apart

26-27. Dangerous Liaisions (and its sequel Valmont)

28. In Cold Blood

29. The 39 Steps

30. The Tin Drum

31. Breakfast at Tiffany's

32. There have been so many versions of, and riffs on, Tarzan. The 1918 silent movie is considered the most faithful to the book, and it only dramatizes the first half, while the second half was adapted into another silent film that is now lost--but whether the many media adaptations justify reading the book or not, may be a decision left after determining how much one enjoys spending time in the Tarzan universe.

33. Wings of the Dove

34. A Town Like Alice (adapted into a TV mini-series, and whether the series is available or not, and whether one enjoys the series or not, may determine whether one thinks reading the book is worthwhile)

35. Z (The people who made the selections for 1001 Books appear to have been especially fond of modern Greek literature, while ignoring the great classic Greek literature--this is one of at least three modern Greek novels on the 1001 list, but this one and Zorba the Greek are better remembered as classic movies.)

But I've Seen the Movie: 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die, Part III

 You know how schoolkids sometimes try to get out of reading the book by seeing the movie? Well, here are the books listed in 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die that, as far as I can tell, I haven't read the book--but I've seen the movie (or at least a TV or stage dramatization), sometimes multiple versions, and in many cases, that'll do:

1. Anna Karenina 

2. Before Night Falls 

3. Ben-Hur

4. Casino Royale (although the 60's movie is nothing like the book)

5. The Cider House Rules

6. A Clockwork Orange

7. Catch-22 (I tried to read the book, too, but gave up)

8. The Count of Monte Cristo

9. Crime and Punishment

10. Cry the Beloved Country

11. David Copperfield

12. Doctor Zhivago (and I didn't like it)

13. A Dry White Season

14. A Farewell to Arms

15. The French Lieutenant's Woman

16. For Whom the Bell Tolls

17. The Godfather

18. The Hunchback of Notre Dame

19. Ivanhoe

20. All Quiet on the Western Front

21. Kiss of the Spider Woman

22. Zorba the Greek

23. Life of Pi

24. The Little Prince 

25. Les Miserables

26. Oliver Twist

27. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

28. Out of Africa

29. A Passage to India

30. The Postman Always Rings Twice

31. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

32. The Razor's Edge

33. The Reader

34. Room with a View

35. Rebecca

36. Sense and Sensibility

37. The Talented Mr. Ripley

38. Tess (full title, Tess of the D'Urbervilles)

39. They Shoot Horses, Don't They?

40. The Time Machine

41. War and Peace

42. Women in Love

43. Tom Jones

44. To Kill a Mockingbird

45. The Maltese Falcon

46.  The Man With the Golden Arm

47. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

48. The English Patient

49. Look Homeward, Angel (TV production)

50. Lord of the Flies (1990 version)

51. Schindler's List (based on the book Schindler's Ark)

52. The Thin Man

53. 2001: A Space Odyssey

54. Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass

I've read the book and seen the movie:

55. Around the World in Eighty Days 

56. Wuthering Heights

57.  Gone With the Wind

58.  Jane Eyre