Gabriel Krauze

"Knowledge is to be found on the edge of experience. As long as you don’t fall off the edge"
Who They Was by Gabriel Krause is a visceral plunge into the poor housing world of street crime and drugs experienced first hand by this Booker Prize nominated author. These high rises in Northeast London are within walking distance to the more affluent neighborhoods where Snoopz and Gotti first begin mugging the well dressed women who sport Cartier watches. Their crimes afford them money for drugs and diamond grills on their teeth. It also lands them in jail for periods of time.
His narrative depicts his early adult years balancing his dual life of violence with his university experiences pursuing an English Literature degree. So yes, he discusses Fredrick Nietzsche, comparing his philosophy to the need to demonstrate revenge in a world of violent alpha males. The language is authentic and that means at times takes some concentration to puzzle out, but the overall experience is well worth the effort. There's a good interview on Apple podcast where he talks about influences like Steinbeck and his depiction of this gritty life does remind me of Cannery Row or Tortilla Flat. I will be interested in seeing where this talented young man takes his next book about trans generational trauma.
Recommend

Lines:
If you’re nothing without your reputation then violent revenge can be like salvation and deliverance.

Half the time I have to proper concentrate to understand what they’re saying. Tameeka’s got bare piercings; tongue, lips, nose, eyebrow, left cheek, and she has this bright platinum-blonde weave that looks like it wants to get off her head and die somewhere quietly.

They talk about you should get an honest job. But the way I see it, the way Dario sees it, they mean they want you to submit. Grind hard to fill someone else’s pockets more than your own, come home with just about enough to keep you alive for another month so you can repeat the whole ting over and over again. Drains your spirit. Turns you into a shell. If you press your ear to a shell like that you can hear the sound of dreams in the distance. But it’s just an illusion. Bun dat.

The professor talks about human suffering being a confirmation of our existence and I start rubbing my finger over the sharpness of the diamonds in one of my teeth, looking at faces in the room, attentive, uninterested, thinking you don’t know what I know about myself and then I raise my arm. The professor says Gabriel. I say one of the points that Nietzsche makes is that morality is just a rule of behaviour relative to the level of danger in which individuals live. If you’re living in dangerous times, you can’t afford to live according to moral structures the way someone who lives in safety and peace can. So it’s not actually some universal natural ting, you get me, and the professor says did everyone just get that?

I become prisoner TF6677 and get put on the induction wing with all the newcomers: a gang of tired faces, cardboard skin, hard stares and haunted eyes, anaesthetised emotions, expectations ripped out.

When we picked up the food from the connec in East London, we passed a massive billboard on the side of one building just before Stratford. There was no advert on it, just big black letters on a white background that said Sorry! The lifestyle you ordered is currently out of stock.

No one tells you that when you’re known for being a certain way, there’s not just the pressure to live up to your reputation, but you also absorb the power of it and act upon it, fuelled by it, reinforcing and furthering it, until what’s really holding you back from getting out of this greazy life is yourself.… (lisätietoja)

32. Who They Was by Gabriel Krauze
reader: the author
published: 2020
format: 9:29 audible audiobook (336 pages in hardcover)
acquired: June 28
listened : Jun 29 – Jul 14
rating: 4
locations: London
about the author: 34-yr-old London native of Polish parents.

This came out on the Booker longlist over a year ago, but there aren't any reviews on LT yet. I found it, for some reason, the most clouded in mystery of all the books on that list, and had no idea what to expect until I listened to the audible sample and started looking this up. Krauze (he pronounces the last 'e' something like 'eh') is a child of Polish immigrants to England who grew up in London's impoverished South Kilburn, got involved in a very violent criminal life as a teenager and kept at it while attending a university. The novel is heavily autobiographical.

I was immediately taken in by the narrative, read by Krauze himself in his north London accent, influenced by Jamaican English. "Wagwan" is a curiously used greeting. It's a Jamaican version of "what's going on?", but in London has a gang-life implication. In this accent Krauze takes us straight into his criminal life, at a point where he worked with a small team of scouters, a getaway car and partner as ruthless as he his. He basically jumps carefully selected victims, violently takes anything of value from them, and runs off leaving a battered, bruised and possibly partially broken victim whom he doesn't give one thought to. He's not interested in that, because there is too much going on in his quasi-gang life where compromise is a kind of suicide. Any and every perceived challenge is met with violence, knives bloodied, and his main concern afterwards is whether he hurt the other guys enough. In between he goes to classes on literary theory.

This stuff is constant and some readers find it repulsively repetitive and dull. I never did. I was fascinated by him. And a bit shocked when I began to pick up the nature of his own involvement. He was not really like the other people he was doing crimes with because he didn't come from a broken home, with an abusive or absent father, but from a loving, if financially strapped, family, including a twin brother who excelled at playing violin. That is, he was doing all this criminal stuff not because he was desperate but by choice, for some cash and because he loved it. And mostly he got away with it. He does cover spending time in a couple lock-ups, but notes that he was never caught for his worst crimes. And, he doesn't expressively say it, but he really dodged the gangs. This was bad when he would find himself isolated, his partners locked up or on the run, but eventually a blessing because he was free of the warfare and could walk away without anyone looking for him. He's clearly not a typical story.

It leaves me in an ethical conundrum. I really enjoyed this book. It's fascinating, seems authentic and is well written. It‘s also by a guy who really hurt people for no legitimate reason, and is now, later, out of that life, mining those experiences to put into his book. Mind you, I read plenty of authors with terrible personal ethics. And this book certainly has value as a look into this mindset. The reader realizes no corrective policy could have stopped him from doing what he did, and that's maybe instructive in some way. Not sure. Not sure how I judge this one overall.

2021
https://www.librarything.com/topic/333774#7558556… (lisätietoja)