The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace

The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace is subtitled A Brilliant Young Man Who Left Newark for the Ivy League and here begins the first of many juxtapositions. Newark, the largest city in New Jersey, is known as ‘Brick City’ due to the amount of brick high-rises that litter its landscape. Over time, this has taken on even worse associations to mean: a place where bricks of crack cocaine are bought and sold. For years, Newark has had problems with unemployment, crime and institutional corruption. The Ivy League on the other hand is the American equivalent of our Red Brick universities. One such university that belongs to this esteemed chain is Yale, of which Robert Peace attended. This then is a story of a boy who went from economical rags to educational riches, who exchanged life in Gomorrah for the ivory tower.

Newark.

I should mention that this social ascension is true; it is a story stranger than fiction. It is authored by Jeff Hobbs, Rob’s university roommate; an aspiring novelist at Yale, who never knew his greatest story slept next door. After Rob died, he set about interviewing friends and family to piece together this extraordinary life.

Robert Peace was a young man born in St Mary’s hospital, less than half a mile from his soon-to-be family home in Chapman Street. His father Skeet dealt in low-level drugs and high-level wisdom, making the boy both street-smart and book-smart. Jackie saw the academic potential in her son and was wary of his father’s influence. Consequently, she kept Skeet at arms length. Perhaps she was right to do so: Skeet was found guilty of murdering two women; a charge he vehemently denied. As a man with a history of non-violence and an alibi it seemed like he had a good hand; when his witness died before his trial the cards were stacked against him. He was put away for life.

Rob and his dad.

Untethered from his father and idol, Robert Peace was an astronaut lost in space. His mother knew that if she didn’t do something then his intelligence would be stomped on by the local school. So she scrimped, saved, trained and got promoted. She kept her nose to the grindstone to continue Rob’s private school education. This cost wouldn’t be astronomical for suburban couples ($400 dollars/£300 per month), but for a lady in low-paid work, who had a house to maintain, ailing parents to care for and regular prison visits to attend, it was a job to remain solvent.

For Jackie though it was all worth it. Her son prospered under the auspices of the school. His grades were sky high; his reputation with staff and peers equally so. Yet she still worried. Every day he walked home he had to cross the temptations that caught so many: the drugs; the machismo. Rob though assimilated with ease. He called it ‘Newark-proofing,’ the ability to change stance, gait and lexicon in order to dissolve and thrive in a tougher environment. Although he was the private school boy in a world of broken social housing, he didn’t experience much trouble – the reason? He never became ‘uppity.’ This word kept people in their place- for good or bad – in Newark. It stopped people from being condescending, kept them real to their neighbourhood; but stopped them from climbing out of their circumstances too; no one wanted to be a traitor to their people.

Rob continued to climb due to a combination of his mother’s sacrifice, his natural intelligence and the patronage of a benefactor. In many ways it is a story of Great Expectations where an impoverished boy is plucked out of poverty and sent to live as a gentleman. For Peace it wasn’t a convicted con of Dickens’ tome, but Charles Cawley, a philanthropist, who paid for Rob's transformation. Cawley, a former student of Rob's school, knew what a service the institution had done for him, and wanted to pay it back. On meeting Rob at a graduation evening, he was struck by the young man’s brilliance and charm. So mesmerised by the boy’s dazzling enterprise, Cawley offered to pay for him to go to Yale.  Finally, Jackie and Rob had achieved the American Dream. Together they had flown through the glass ceiling of colour, stopping only to land when they reached the manicured lawns of the Ivy League.

So how did Rob, who worked in a cancer and infection research unit whilst majoring in molecular biochemistry and biophysics, come to be killed aged thirty over dealing marijuana?

How did a boy who climbed out of the mire get sucked back in?

Read it; the answers aren’t simple.

Robert Peace was murdered in the basement of his friend's house.

The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace is available to buy from all good bookshops.

Freaks and Geeks

I don't give a damn 'bout my reputation
You're living in the past it's a new generation
A girl can do what she wants to do and that's
What I'm gonna do
An' I don't give a damn ' bout my bad reputation.

(Joan Jett, Bad Reputation - theme tune to Freaks and Geeks)

I’ve written about my adolescence in blogs before. Many of you have already heard the one about the navel-gazing teenager. For those of you who haven't read my back catalogue – shame on you! – I’ll summarise briefly.

I was a cliché of a schoolchild. A mess of contradictions, a tangle of torment; I was incredibly complex. I loved football, but had no sporting ability. I loved reading, but wasn’t a nerd. I could listen to girls, but not talk to them. I had an ear for comedy, but not a mouth for it. I wasn’t popular, nor unpopular. I didn’t mix with the ‘IT crowd’ or the ‘IT crowd;’ I simply blended into the crowd.

Despite sitting here bald-headed and baggy-eyed, I would not swap my life for a teenagers To my mind, Josh reversing his transformation in Big was a terrible mistake. I mean alongside getting paid to be creative he was having regular sex. Is there any better life than that? The paperboy world he returned to would be sad and depressing in comparison. That wild imagination would soon be tamed by educational drudgery. He probably became an accountant with a less springy sex life.

Idiot.

Because I’m naturally cynical towards ‘the best years of your life myth’, I appreciate TV shows that depict the reality of teen experience. I was never a fan of Skins when it came out. I don’t want to see popular kids with issues. In choosing a playground life of celebrity they made a pact with the devil; consequently they don't get my sympathy when things go belly-up. Anyway, humanising the ‘in crowd’ cheats me out of ignorant hate, which is why I never liked watching it. (In the age of Trump, who wants their prejudices challenged?)

Skins made problems look impossibly glamorous, but the best shows reveal the ugliness and brutality of adolescence. The Inbetweeners was for the most part a brilliant distillation of what being a teenager meant for most people. Most schoolchildren exist in an unhappy centre: there are a few at the top – the 1 percenters, who protect their popularity by locking it in a safe behind their sports day pictures; and there are a few at the bottom – the 1 percenters, who are perfectly happy in school so long as they have access to the board games cupboard. Most of us though were caught in an endless game of piggy in the middle where our opponents proved too tall, too athletic, to ever drop the popularity ball. 

By the third season though The Inbetweeners had run out of steam with gross out laughs replacing finely observed embarrassment. It lost its verisimilitude, becoming cartoonish and oafish; a shame because the early episodes are great.

Skins: hard to feel sorry for them.

A series I’ve been watching this week that surpasses The Inbetweeners is Freaks and Geeks. The fact that you might not be familiar with the show is because it’s something of a lost classic. When it was aired in the late 90’s it attracted a loyal following; this fan-base wasn’t enough for NBC though, who quickly pulled the show. It was only because of a public clamour that it was brought back to complete its run. With its awards and critical recognition it’s often cited as a show that was cancelled too soon. Like The Office and Fawlty Towers, the programme never lost its sparkle; with familiarity denied so too was contempt - it is therefore pretty much faultless.

Freaks and Geeks is different to The Inbetweeners: its scope is far more ambitious. For a start, it doesn’t just focus one group of teens, but two. Also, it has more emotional range: embarrassments are scored by sympathy as well as laughs. All in all, Freaks is a show that looks at the bruises behind the banter, a feat achieved with humour and sensitivity.

The first episode is indicative of the writer, Paul Feig’s aspiration to capture the range of people that inhabit teenland. Initially, the camera’s focus is on the American Football field where a coach barks instructions; it then pans up to the stand where a cheerleader seeks a four letter word from her four letter boyfriend; next, it sidles down to a surly band of gum-chewers; then pans to a trio of Bill Murray acolytes re-enacting his scenes; before ending on a gang of bullies. Within two minutes, we’re deftly introduced to the whole fabric of adolescence; a coterie of characters that will be our friends - and enemies - for the next eighteen episodes.

A jock and a cheerleader.

The two cliques that we spend most time with are the titular Freaks and Geeks. The Freaks aren’t the popular kids in school; they’re not the cheerleaders or American Football players; instead they’re the latecomers, the burnouts, the failures. They are going nowhere fast. Lindsay, a straight A student, is drawn to them. Within this motley crue, she finds an expression that is missing from her regimented life of competition and deadlines. Her father is not pleased. (You know who cut class? Jimi Hendrix. You know what happened to him? He died.) Lindsay doesn’t want to give up on her studies completely; she just wants to escape the pressure that comes with it. Her new surrogate family that consists of Ken, Nick and Daniel (Seth Rogen, Jason Segal, James Franco) seduce her into a world of light drugs and heavy tunes.

In the other corner is Lindsay’s younger brother Sam. His group of friends are much like mine. They are comedy nerds. On Sam’s door is a poster of that wild and crazy guy, Steve Martin; on Neal’s wall is a poster for Duck Soup; on Bill’s TV is the stand up of Larry Sanders. For the boys laughter is the be all and end all. If you don’t like The Jerk, then it doesn’t matter how beautiful you are you’ve become personas non grata. Comedy gives them the sense of humour to survive the ritual humiliations they are subjected to.  In today’s world of Sheldon Cooper's being a geek isn’t a big deal; in the 1980’s it was a kamikaze act of courage, only laughter could break your fall.

The Freaks and The Geeks.

Over the course of the season, Feig excavates the bravado of adolescence and finds its soul. The fact that he does this without resorting to Dawson’s Creek melodrama makes it an incredible achievement. Feig recognises that for the Geeks asking a girl to dance at prom is a valid plot-line; he doesn’t put young concerns in inverted speech marks and allow us to scoff; instead he recognises that a small step for some might be a giant leap for others. Feig himself documented his travails with love in his book, Superstud or How I became a 24 year-old virgin, and you sense his youthful timidity in the boys.

As for the Freaks he shows the cost of freedom. Yes, Lindsay loves their carpe diem lifestyle, but she learns that it’s at a cost to their future. As the series slides towards the end of school, the Freaks begin to question, ‘what next?’ It’s all very well driving through life at a breakneck speed but eventually you’re going to crash. The gang know reality will soon come hurtling into them, giving their escapades a tinge of sadness.

Freaks and Geeks is ultimately a show that celebrates teenagers, whilst denigrating the age they have to live through. It is a beautiful, bitter-sweet meditation on what it means to be young. I’ll happily watch it again-  just don’t make me live through it.

Freaks and Geeks is available on Netflix.

His Bloody Project

Last week Paul Beatty’s The Sellout won the Man Booker Prize. A satire on America’ racial failings, the book earned praise for its wit, daring and cunning. The public’s favourite, however, was another novel, His Bloody Project, a work that had outsold its rivals five times over in the run up to the ceremony. Its success is remarkable: borne out of independent publishing house, Contraband, the book had only sold 500 copies prior to its nomination. Much like the Mercury Prize in music, the Booker offers small publishing houses an opportunity to break into the big league; so Contraband distributed the work to as many reviewers as possible, hoping that it could gain some attention. Fortunately it did, and since then it’s gone on to be the underground hit of the year.

My relationship with The Booker Prize is mixed to say the least. I’ve loved some (Line of Beauty and Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha), admired others (Life of Pi) and given up on many (A Brief History of Seven Killings, Wolf Hall, The Sea). Often Booker winners can feel very worthy without being particularly enjoyable. This calls to mind the recent documentary on Sue Townsend where her publicist argued that Sue was never garlanded with awards because she was entertaining – humour is seen as trite by award bodies. His Bloody Project is not a comedy, but it has been met with similar disapproval – the reason? It's been branded a ‘crime novel.’ A crime novel in literary circles means a book that other people enjoy but is of no artistic merit. Concerned that people would see the genre and not the tale, the author shot back, defining it as, “a novel that features a crime.” This isn’t a whodunit book – we know it was the seventeen-year-old Ronald Macare – instead it’s a whydidhedoit – or rather – didheknowhewasdoingit. 

In reading this, I felt like another of Henry's victims.

It isn’t just a book about murder; it’s a novel about the nature of truth, the question of justice, the impact of one’s environment – it’s the smartest page-turner you’ll read all year.

Macrae Burnet is a fiendishly clever writer. He imbues in his story the appearance of reality by alleging that the story is true, that he uncovered it whilst researching his grandfather. Typically, the preface of a book is an exercise in earnestness where the writer distils how their book came to be. In Macrae Burnet’s hands, the introduction is where the fiction begins. In purporting to be factual, the author is both respecting and satirising the zeitgeist’s thirst for true crime- he is having his cake and eating it, saying: Here’s a postmodern book for The Booker Prize crowd. Here’s a non-fiction account for the Making A Murderer crowd. From the start then, he is pulling the wool over our eyes, making us see lies as truth – a thematic concern that runs throughout His Bloody Project.

After ‘finding out’ that his ancestor was a triple murderer, Macrae Burnet sets about finding documents that relate to the case. His novel is a crime file where he displays the witness statements, the criminal’s version of events, psychiatrist's report and newspaper cutting of the trial. All of these ‘documents’ (I promise I’ll stop the inverted speech marks soon; I think you’re getting the idea of the fiction masquerading as fact) are presented in such a cunning way that we’re kept guessing until the end – even beyond the end – as to the true motives of the crime.

The writer and his book.

The superb plotting of the book is illustrated firstly in the opening to the ‘report’ (sorry!). We hear statements and testimonials from the neighbour, teacher, priest and victim’s cousin. Already a tricksy portrait of the murderer is drawn. Roderick is described as ‘gentle,’ ‘queer’ and ‘wicked’ from teacher, neighbour and priest respectively. How can one boy elicit such different responses from a tiny Highland community? Another issue that isn’t deliberately addressed in the statements is what exactly Roderick has done and to whom. The first witnesses reveal the victim is neighbour Lachlan Mackenzie, yet it is only when we get to Lachlan’s cousin’s testimony that we’re told about ‘murders.’ Who else has Roderick killed? It’s not until much later on in the book we find out.

 After the witness statements we’re told that Roderick wrote an account of the events whilst in prison. For me, this section of the novel is the writer's crowning glory. Within it, Roderick recounts 19^th century life in the Highland crofting community. Times were hard during this period, close to impossible. With the land a long way from arable, people had to work bloody hard to get any kind of yield. A long way from the city the community was largely self-sufficient. They worked their plot hard but helped others in need. With little money coming in it was a struggle to meet the rents. Hiding behind a big house, the factor that owned the land would enlist a constable, a community official, that would ensure debts were paid, regulations met. When the respected constable grows tired of being caught between the factor’s whims and the tenants' need, the position becomes available. Lachlan, the disreputable neighbour, seizes control and quickly uses bureaucracy to flagellate Roderick's family. Gagged and bound by red tape, Roderick and his family are soon rendered voiceless.

A Highland family being evicted for not paying their rent.

This is why the book is more than a crime novel: it evokes Orwell’s Animal Farm where the manipulator seizes control; Kafka’s The Trial with people caught in officialdom; and finally Dickens’ Great Expectations revealing the laws slippery nature. Given the turmoil of Roderick’s life, it is easy to forget that he has killed and killed again. Again, this is Macrae Burnet’s success as a writer, he gives the telling of the tale over to Roderick, meaning for the first half of the book we hear a one-sided account the events. By the trial scene, you’ll question everything you thought you knew about Roderick Macrae.

Ultimately, this a novel that will appeal to true-crime, crime and literary fans. I raced to finish it in a weekend. Usually with Booker novels I hide behind the sofa until my girlfriend has promised me they've gone away. So the jury may have declared Macrae Burnet ‘Not Guilty’ of writing a Booker winner, but I’m appealing to you to give this book a second chance.

It would be criminal to do otherwise.

His Bloody Project is out now.