Larceny in My Blood: A Memoir of
Heroin, Handcuffs, and Higher Education. By Matthew Parker. Gotham Books.
$20.
A book with a
determinedly upbeat conclusion, but written to appeal to those interested in
wallowing in the seamiest aspects of modern life, Larceny in My Blood is the memoir of a drug addict and petty
criminal who is utterly without self-awareness but is undoubtedly quite
talented in telling stories – or at least telling his own story, which is what
he does here. A graphic novel in which
the writing is better and more attractive than the drawings, the book chronicles
Parker’s years of crime, addiction and existence on the very fringes of
society, taking him at last out of prison (in which he spent more than 11 years
after accumulating more than 30 arrests) and into college – indeed, to the Ivy
League, where he earned an M.F.A. degree in creative writing at Columbia
University.
It is possible to
respect Parker’s accomplishments and admire the way he eventually got his act
and his life together without liking him very much. He never makes himself the slightest bit
likable, retaining much of the boringly boastful street cred that he spent
decades building up. That he has
considerable strength of character is shown in his eventual emergence from a
life that has killed or incapacitated many others, including both his brothers. But has he really changed in some fundamental
way, or simply found a new set of suckers of whom to take advantage? Like other criminals, Parker objectifies his
victims and never feels believable remorse for what he has done; similarly, he
stays distanced from his eventual success and the people who helped him attain
it. The man has talent, but he has
always been, and remains, a taker, not a giver.
But he certainly can
write. He appears to care for his
mother, but he also attributes much of his addiction and criminal attitudes to
her, quoting her at one point as saying, “A college degree from a good law
school will put you in a position of legalized larceny,” right after he has her
commenting, “The trick is not to go to prison at all, but if you do have to go,
go federal.” Parker’s stories of his
criminal and drug-focused family, of the music he listened to, of his sexual encounters,
are told matter-of-factly and often with more underlying pride than they
warrant. But when Parker isn’t busy
justifying himself or shirking responsibility for his behavior, he comes up
with some really interesting writing.
After a section explaining his difficulties with most elements of math,
for example, he explains that his formula “for staying clean in my first year
out of prison” is E=mc2 – where E = energy, m = music and c = “the
speed of endorphins squared.” Or, in a
chapter in which he has extended conversations with his penis, he makes a
series of juvenile but amusing observations that he illustrates with aplomb:
“If given free rein, most dicks would have harems of virgins waiting on them
head and scrotum,” he writes, and the picture shows an anthropomorphized penis
being fed and fanned by traditional “harem girls.”
It is good that there
are flashes of humor (if not self-knowledge) in Larceny in My Blood, because they help make up for long sections
that are flat-out dull. Those include
observations like this: “There appears to be no room in natural selection for
selfless acts of kindness.” And family
analyses like this, about one of his brothers: “John had an innate engineering
sense…and was a natural thief.” And what
passes for revelation, like this: “As a child, I had always wanted to be a
fighter pilot.” Or this: “I’ve gotten so
many tickets over the years that I could use them for wallpaper.” Or: “I made lots of acquaintances, but few
real friends.” Parker’s descriptions of
prison, rehab programs, police, fellow criminals, parole boards, courts and
attorneys are telling and ring true, as well they should with his
experience. In fact, a chapter that
starts with the line, “Cops love junkies,” is one of the most revelatory and
amusingly wry parts of the book. But
Parker is less believable when he says certain things that he seems to want
readers to take at face value, such as, at one point, “I had a lot of respect
for judges in general, and the law in particular.”
Parker just doesn’t have much insight into
himself. Certainly he is a survivor –
very much like his mother but quite unlike both his brothers, whose deaths come
across as pointless and utterly without meaning (although Parker says they were significant to him). A comment that “I wasn’t a thorn in the side
of The Man, but rather old meat trapped in his intestines,” is about as close
to self-understanding as Parker ever gets.
He tells his story with skill and often with relish, unflinchingly
addressing his drug habit, thievery and awful (and not-so-awful) experiences
both within the prison system and outside it.
But he never stops indulging unashamedly in a bad-boy self-image that he
seems, even in middle age, to relish – for example, the most he says about the
horrors to which he subjected his mother (who admittedly is something less than
a saint herself) is, “She was too kind and I used her.” Larceny
in My Blood is often fascinating, and certainly it is a thrill ride of
sorts for people looking for a vicarious experience of the underbelly of
society. But it’s not the intestines or
underbelly that the book is missing.
It’s the heart.
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