A Diet of Treacle

By Lawrence Block

Book Overview

SO A WAR VET, A PSYCHOPATH, AND A HOT BABE WALK INTO WASHINGTON SQUARE PARK... ...and years later they tell us what Greenwich Village was like in the 1950s. Lawrence Block was on the scene, just... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0843959576
• ISBN13: 9780843959574
• Release Date: January 2008
• Publisher: Hard Case Crime
• Length: 205 Pages
• Weight: 0.27 lbs.
• Dimensions: 6.8" x 0.5" x 4.0"

Customer Reviews

Block at his brilliant best

A Diet of Treacle is one of my all-time favourite Block books. New York in the swinging 60's is vividly brought to life, telling the story of Joe and Shank. Drugs play a major part of the story, but murder and rape is also brought to the table. Perhaps not to everyone's taste, but Block manages to make the reading compelling. Highly recommended. Buy it. Read it. Steal it.

a paperback version of film noir

This book hits you hard with the counter culture of the beat generation of the late 50s in Greenwich Village. A trio of young beatniks entertain themselves with drugs and philosophizing about how uncool the squares are. But you know something is brewing with the young drug dealer, who is volatile. He creates tension with the girl, and just as she is trying to get her and her boyfriend in a safer situation, things implode in a hurry. Soon our trio of misfits are on the run from the law, and just like so many black and white movies from the 50s, you know it isn't going to be a pretty ending. A very enjoyable read!

Vintage Block

Block is a grand master who never disappoints. This 1961 reprint offers a rat and roach's eye view of the beatster's Village. Two barely-likeable individuals and one distasteful thug come together and form a dysfunctional trinity. When the latter begins killing anyone and everyone who gets in his way the other two start to reconsider their triangulated relationship and the degree to which it is guaranteeing them a one-way trip to a ride on Old Sparky. Decision time. As always with Block, the plotting is economical, the dialogue excellent, the multi-dimensional characters contributing to a bad juju stew. The suspense holds and the resolution is satisfying. Another gift from the past via Hard Case Crime. Enjoy.

Worth re-reading --- or discovering for the very first time

It's really too early to tell, but it appears that one of my favorite books of 2008 is one that was originally published in 1961. Re-released by Hard Case Crime, A DIET OF TREACLE by Lawrence Block is a title worth re-reading --- or discovering for the very first time. The novel is set in mid-20th century Greenwich Village during what has been called the "Beat" era. Glamorized by the mainstream media, the reality for most was far darker and seedier than the down-at-the-heels glamour that was imputed to it. Block focuses on that dark side with a laser-like aim, injecting a set of characters into a web of excess of sex, drugs and violence with a subtle undercurrent of world-weary nihilism. There are three principals in A DIET OF TREACLE, somewhat different people whose lives intersect with dire results. Joe Milani is a Korean War veteran who is attending college in New York on the G.I. Bill, and doing well, when he abruptly terminates his studies and sinks into the idle Beat lifestyle. He is living with, and supported by, Leon "Shank" Maston, a quietly sociopathic marijuana dealer who is content with the living arrangement for reasons never quite made clear (there are some mild, though not overt, homosexual overtones to their relationship). The dynamic between the two men changes when Milani meets Anita Carbone, a college student living in "wop Harlem" with her grandmother. Carbone is the stereotypical good girl (she agonizes about smoking on a public street), and her life appears to be all planned out. She is on her way to getting a degree and is in some state of pre-engagement to a man on the fast track to success. However, she is bored and, as a result, is attracted to Milani, who is everything her boyfriend is not. Carbone abruptly moves in with Milani and Maston, embracing the Beat lifestyle wholeheartedly and without reservation. Interestingly enough, it is Maston, not Milani, who changes, and not for the good. Maston begins dealing heroin, in addition to the marijuana he previously had been selling, and his psychopathic tendencies move even farther to the forefront of his personality, culminating in an angry and shocking encounter that will have lasting repercussions for the three of them. His impulsive actions put the trio suddenly on the run, involving them in a dilemma from which there seems to be no escape --- until Milani and Carbone find one that is as obvious as it is unexpected. Block has appeared to be incapable of writing badly, yet A DIET OF TREACLE is stunning on so many levels --- its characterization, its setting, its plotting --- as to exist in a class all by itself. It is hard to believe that this work did not remain in print since its initial publication. So it is a tribute to Hard Case Crime that it's available again, hopefully for good this time. --- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

Early Block

Lawrence Block has been writing for around fifty years, primarily mysteries. In his early days, he churned out novels quickly, more interested in making a little money and establishing himself than trying to produce material of real quality. That would come later. A Diet of Treacle is one of his earliest works, originally published in 1961, and while it definitely has a feel of a cheap, throwaway paperback, it also is a Lawrence Block book, and that means it is good. A Diet of Treacle focuses on the lives of three characters in New York's Beat culture, where you're either Hip or Square. Joe Milani is an ex-soldier who after Korea, has come back to the States disillusioned and gone from Square to Hip, spending his days getting stoned on pot and not doing much else. Shank is his drug-dealing roommate, a sociopath who has little regard for most people but who likes Joe and allows him to live off of Shank's drug profits. Anita is a nice girl who goes slumming and falls quickly for Joe; she wants to shed her Square life and become Hip, but she finds it hard to completely shed her Squareness. The three will wind up sharing the same apartment, a recipe for potential disaster, especially considering that Shank views women as mere objects that he has no qualms about raping if they don't willing give in to his attentions. When Shank goes from dealing pot to the more profitable heroin, things will get them tangled up with the law and the unplanned complications that result. This novel is good but not without its problems, most notably with Joe, the story's nominal hero who is such a willing loser that he's hard to really sympathize with. Anita has her own self-destructive streak, leaving the reprehensible Shank as the dominant character. I think this is what Block intended as he is somewhat critical of the Beat Generation (although he is never condescending and also sees the flaws of the Squares); still, it makes it harder to really embrace anyone in this book. Nonetheless, for fans of Block - or of these old pulpish novels - this is worth reading.