Sutton

Popular culture often follows itself; genres becoming momentarily popular across books, films, and television. For the last couple years we have seen a bit of gangster resurgence, with television programs like "Boardwalk Empire" and Ken Burn's documentary "Prohibition", and the recent film "Gangster Squad" detailing the lives of what are strangely a kind of American hero - the gangster. The dramatic appeal is undeniable. They are often initially portrayed as complex and charismatic souls, first or second generation immigrants driven to a life of crime by poverty, corruption, and often the opportunity posed by Prohibition and drug dealing. They are cunning and intelligent, but uneducated, almost always the victims of childhood abuse of some sort. They slowly blossom into heroes, typically stealing from those that somehow deserve to be robbed. Finally, their true psychopath personalities are revealed, and in the end they must almost always die. No matter how much you like them, real and fictional gangsters like Clyde Barrow, Mickey Cohen, and Tony Montana must be dead for society to be secure.In Sutton, J.R. Moehringer conjures up the real-life gangster Willie Sutton, nicknamed "Willie the Actor" and "Slick Willie" for the performances he would often employ to get into a bank or jewelry store; usually dressing up like a cop or deliveryman. Willie's true story slides right into the classic gangster dramatic arc; he grows up poor, uneducated, and abused in an Irish immigrant family in New York. He begins robbing banks and stores in the 1920's out of desperation and as a kind of pay-back for the economic disparities of the period. He uses the wonderful visual tools of the gangster - big Thompson sub machine guns and flashy get-away cars. He hangs around with the colorful and very famous gangsters of the period like Lucky Luciano and Al Capone. He exudes charisma, spending his loot on fancy suits and "booze and broad-filled evenings". He gains hero status among much of America because he takes on the hated banks and aristocrats that became lower-class enemies during the Depression.But in the end he breaks character. He doesn't reveal himself to be the psychopath we always expect. He manages to complete his life of crime with very little - or perhaps no violence - depending on whom you believe. His life becomes a kind of unfinished love story. He spends most of his years squirrelled away in prison, where he takes up a studious and contemplative existence centering on books and gardening. And he doesn't die the gangster's death: instead living comfortably until 1980, enjoying his retirement in Florida.And it is that Slick Willie that Moehringer introduces us to. We pick up the story as an old and thoughtful Willie is released from prison in 1969 after spending seventeen years in Attica. Willie is famous and beloved, his release big national news, the clever crook that used his brain instead of violence to "stick it to the man". In need of cash, he sells his story to a newspaper, and the book becomes the telling of that story; Willie relating his life to a young reporter and photographer as they drive around New York, essentially an entire novel of "backstory" that takes place in one day. Moehringer even manages to infuse a bit of mystery into the journey, as the reporter try to find out whether or not Sutton actually broke his credo of non-violence and murdered a man.It is a wonderful and innovative way to approach historical fiction. The story is told in flashback by a wiser and more developed character; with the added patina of a Rip Van Winkle tale; a man goes into prison in the conservative post-World War II years, and emerges a celebrity at the height of the experimental Hippie generation in a country trying to find itself."You've come back to a different world," a friend warns him when he leaves the prison and sees a woman wearing a mini-skirt.Sutton roams his old streets, sometimes visiting familiar places, but he often discovers his old haunts have been bulldozed and reinvented as something new and often much worse. There is a sense of the ugly New York of the 60's and 70's - a city as lost as Sutton. The format allows Willie and the reader to explore his demons and lost loves, while moving through a lifetime in one day. The contrast between the legendary Willie and the young, long-haired, dope-smoking reporters provides a great contrast between Sutton's generation and 1969.Moehringer employs a third person approach to the book, utilizing mostly short paragraphs and a lot of colorful period dialogue. We want Willie and all his cohorts to talk like mobsters, and we're not disappointed. But Willie is also the "smart guy" that just never got a chance. In prison he educates himself, and old Willie can quote Ezra Pound, Tennyson, and Jack Kerouac, along with Lucky Luciano, making him a much richer character. He is constantly surprising and irritating his handlers as he walks through most of the book in a kind of fugue - often alcohol induced - flipping between the past and present - and confronting his demons. The dialogue is sparse and to the point; often severely clipped to one or two words, very noir. He is wise and surprisingly patient.This format - backstory related to a reporter that then resembles a memoir - would seem a natural approach for Moehringer. The author began his career as a journalist writing for The New York Times and several other newspapers, winning a Pulitzer for Feature Writing. His own memoir, The Tender Bar related his life growing up in a bar. After that he was hired to write Andre Agassi's memoir Open before tackling Sutton. So in many ways his latest book becomes a kind of amalgam of his previous literary endeavors; part journalism, part memoir, wrapped in a historical novel.There is a lot of very familiar territory covered here; immigrant poverty, misunderstood charismatic criminals, lost loves, the romance and violence of the gangster lifestyle, never-ending class struggle; subjects covered ad nauseum in hundreds of attempts that range from awful to magnificent. It's tough to put a new face on such a trod-upon ground, but Moehringer manages to pull it off with a really terrific book.

I like the author's writing style, having read two other books he was involved with. In Sutton, it was left up to the reader to determine what was fact versus fiction, but an enjoyable story just the same.

Historical Fiction dances along the tracks like a kid with a new toy. Willie Sutton was born, lived and died. There is not a lot we don't know about this infamous and thoroughly Irish-American character but as the man said the problem is that not everything we know is true. And so it goes with Willie the Actor a quintessential New York hood who made robbing banks a science. He rubbed shoulders with folks whose names became synonymous with Big Apple Hoodlum mythology. Yet he was raised in Brooklyn in that time leading up to WWI when the escapees from the famines and poverty of the Olde Sod concentrated in a borough which seemed to be reserved especially for them. His early life was not especially trying by comparison but he had his crosses to bear.Sutton was born in the first year of the 20th century with few prospects but went on to make a name for himself. He was frequently arrested, spent time in prison, was implicated in events where lives were lost but through it all maintained a veneer of the Hero-Crook, portrayed in the same way as the lore of Jesse James and the tales of Robin Hood. The banks were the enemy in the Capitalist system. They were ruthless and when they failed spectacularly the government bailed them out. Little wonder that those who lost homes, jobs, and life savings loved it when someone took them for a ride.And this someone was well read, acted like a gentleman, and pursued a policy of non-violence. There seems little doubt he was brilliant and his exploits seem to validate that position. He had a heart of gold and dressed like a banker. Despite his somewhat poor upbringing, his frequent drab housing (he spent half his adult life in prison), occasional beatings, and a habit of smoking Chesterfields non-stop, he lived to be 79.You will recall J.R. Moehringer from The Tender Bar a memoir in which we suspect he stretched a few points for entertainment effect. This book is entirely entertaining even though clearly the conversations are reconstructed and the story line is significant from start to finish. Sutton loved and lost or so he said and he chased the remnants of that dream his whole life notwithstanding the probability that much of it was the fantasy which inhabits all of our fondest remembrances.This is the story of real life exciting and brazen celebrity who found his way to the top of the FBI Most Wanted List. It is as much a love story as a crime novel and you will find yourself rooting for this guy against perhaps your better angels. 3* GIBO

I enjoyed this enormously. This really falls more into the Fictionalised Biography and Literary Fiction genre than it ever does into the Crime Fiction category, even though its subject is Willie Sutton, a notorious, audacious, bank robber who was highly successful (despite getting caught several times!) at bank heists and escaping from prison. Sutton spent more than half his adult life behind bars. He captured the public's imagination, and became a somewhat romanticised folk hero, not least because he did not personally shoot anyone, and appeared (or so the legend said) to abjure violence against the person.Moehringer is a stylish, well crafted writer, and the literary devices he uses in this novel work perfectly, giving added dimensions.This is not a whodunnit - we know it was Willie, and we know right at the start of the novel that our protagonist did not get away with it, as it starts with his release from prison, on health grounds,as an ailing, elderly man. Instead, we have a psychological picture of a society and an individual life in that society.The novel is told in a series of snapshot flashbacks. Following Sutton's last release from prison in 1969 in his very late 60s, he agrees a deal to tell his story to a paper, and the book follows the day of the interview with a reporter and photographer. So what we have is Wiilie's life story as told to 2 other individuals, the developing relationship between Sutton and the Reporter and Photographer (this is how they are referred to). There is Willie's story, there are references to the research information which may be a little different from Willie's accounts, which the Reporter has used, and of course, there is the shifting, unreliable fact of subjective interpretation and memory.This has the effect, for the reader, of a continual change of focus, where we think we know where we are going with this, and suddenly the focus is ever so slightly changed, so that the whole picture looks a little different.Sutton was born in 1901 and was active in his profession of bank robbing (with interruptions through incarceration), until his final arrest in 1952. What Moehringer is also giving us is a snapshot of America from the beginning of the nineteenth century, through the interwar and postwar years - but through the prism of 1969 - and beyond, as the book ends finally in 1980, after Sutton's deathSutton became a great reader and philosopher, an auto-didact, so we are also being given surprising and thoughtful reflections, from, challenging one's prejudicial thinking, an unlikely source. The reader, like the Reporter and the Photographer, thinks a bank robber must be a particular sort of person, whereas inevitably individuals are more complex than their categorisationsA very sure, finely crafted story, beautifully constructed, with a fine, melancholy, romantic, mood.Rhapsody in Blue!

After reading Agassi’s autobiography for the second time, I was curious to see who helped him write his (also truly amazing) book.Sutton is so beautifully written, so creative and endearing.Highly recommended

This is a superior piece of literature. It's extremely funny, very moving and psychologically convincing as a story of a person who wanted to do everything right but found there was no way to get anywhere unless he did everything wrong. Thoroughly recommended

Una vita reale talmente estrema da sembrare un romanzo di fantasia. Ben scritto. L" espediente di alternare il racconto del tempo presente con quello dei tempi passati dà un ritmo avvincente alla lettura. Un libro bello da leggere e una storia che fa riflettere e dà speranza: nonostante condizioni sfavorevoli di ogni tipo il protagonista è riuscito a conservare e coltivare negli anni la parte intimamente più nobile della sua personalità, quella del gentiluomo colto.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It is a fascinating story filled with unforgettable characters. Lots and lots of tension to be had.