Table Of ContentFRANKIE
BOYLE
WORK! CONSUME! DIE!
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Introduction
Chapter 01
Chapter 02
Chapter 03
Chapter 04
Chapter 05
Chapter 06
Chapter 07
Chapter 08
Chapter 09
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Acknowledgements
Credits
Back Ad
Copyright
About the Publisher
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
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
Introduction
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 having brutal, unprotected consensual
sex. As he fucked the boy, he would scream about how he didn’t give a shit
about plants. Perhaps in modern words, because he was a time traveller or
something. His cock would grow to a fantastical size within the boy, and glow
and hum like a lightsaber. The boy’s arsehole would start to talk. ‘I clench and
unclench just like a vagina’ it would note cheerfully in poor French.
Perspective would shift jarringly to a microscopic civilisation that lived in the
hay under Tom’s face. They would be a poetic, romantic people for whom time
moved incalculably slowly. Tom’s face would have hung in their sky like the
sun for millennia before Old Man Jefferson started fucking him. Its gradual
sun for millennia before Old Man Jefferson started fucking him. Its gradual
change to a rictus of pain would excite and disturb the minds of their greatest
philosophers. Eventually, the glowing tip of a huge black cock emerging from
his mouth would cause the whole society to commit mass suicide.
Ideally, the title of the book would be an endless binary number and it would
scream when you opened it and then a brawny fist would shoot out from
between the pages and rip the nose right off your face. As you fell to the ground
squealing, the hand would hail a cab that would run over your head. A passer-by
would film your death on a mobile, making it an internet phenomenon. Huge
crowds of Japanese teens would gather at stadium events to masturbate each
other as they watched it on overhead screens. This footage of your nonchalant
and motiveless murder by a book would attract a billion YouTube hits and not a
single sympathetic comment. In a million years a super-advanced civilisation of
androids would misinterpret the film and you would become a figure in their
culture analogous to a paedophile Guy Fawkes.
Through advanced scientific methods they would re-create your consciousness
and you would re-live your whole life over and over again, but with all the
enjoyable stuff taken out. On the day of your 18th birthday someone would hit
you so hard on the back of the head with a polo mallet that your eyes would pop
out. Crawling from your burning house you would have your arse clawed out by
a mountain lion and when you reached the hospital you would be diagnosed with
AIDS of the leg and cancer of your empty eye sockets. Through a synaptic quirk
you would have one image frozen in your mind so it was as if you were looking
at it constantly – your long-dead Chinese stepfather’s dead arsehole. The only
way to treat your eyes would involve, every night just before bed, playing the
screams from a horror movie loudly to encourage a wolverine to fuck the
sockets. Somehow its stinking cock would numb the holes even as its scrabbling
feet shredded your face and scalp. You would continue to re-live this life in
ever-increasing detail long after the universe had ended, praying for death to a
God who was already dead himself.
I got into comedy because I loved watching comedy as a child. I later discovered
that’s a bit like loving burgers as a child and deciding to become a cow. I’ve
never found anything in life particularly heart-warming or uplifting. Except the
smiles of my children and even those are ruined by the knowledge that someday
my children will die, their smiles having long gone as they struggled with the
mental and social handicaps they developed from having a cunt like me for a
dad. If you want to hear something uplifting go read something else. You are
dad. If you want to hear something uplifting go read something else. You are
well catered for in our culture; there are hordes of halfwits who want to help you
find an upside. One day both you and I will be hipbones and shinbones buried in
a box being eaten by worms. You will find no solace here.
Just fuckin witcha! I’ve always had an instinct to laugh at everything, the good
stuff, the horror, everything. With laughter comes perspective. You might be
scared of the dark, you might be sitting alone in the woods in the dark but if you
suddenly heard laughter … no, wait a minute. Some people don’t hold with the
old ‘gallows humour’, it’s not civilised, there’s some stuff you shouldn’t laugh
about and so on. I think we’re all in this trench together and everything is fair
game. Do me a favour. Any time you have a problem with somebody having a
laugh, have a think about where your grandparents went, look around and tell me
what you think a gallows looks like.
