(talk about a hard one to place!)
My co-worker was just asking me if I had read any of the Tookie Williams books. I haven’t, not being a child, or a gang-banger.
Has anyone here read them, or flipped through them at Borders?
What’s your take on them?
This one may be moved at any moderator’s desire, since it’s obviously an incindiary topic with a lot of potential baggage.
I have a feeling you’ll get reasoned responses… You’re not asking if the guy deserves to die or not, just asking if anyone has read his books. And since this is CS rather than GD, anyone engaging in asshattery will get spanked pretty quick.
Other than that though I’m afraid I don’t have much to offer this thread. I haven’t read his books although I am curious about them. How exactly do you write a children’s book about gang violence (“See Jack… Jack sells crack. Jack’s homies stabbed him in the back…”)?
Thank you, DWMarch, both for keeping my thread from dying the lonely death of the unwanted post, and for cracking both myself, and my co-worker up.
I may try another thread in another forum, but I figured a discussion on literature, even literature by the now departed Mr. Williams would go here.
See Jack… bwahahahahahha!!! 
I haven’t read them either, having neither the desire nor, up until a few days ago, an awareness of them. One thing struck me, though. Couldn’t he have found a less Milli Vanilli looking picture of himself for the cover? That (nice?) grandfatherly looking one would have been better, IMO.
Please, Crips, don’t kill me. It was simply an observation.
:changes name and moves somewhere they’ll never find me, just in case:
Well, I guess now he’ll never finish the long-awaited sequel to “Snoop and Tookie Clock Some Hoes”
I had never heard of Williams until a couple years ago. An ex-gf checked the “Milli Vanilli” one out of the library for her ten-year-old rambunctious, starting to get in midl trouble at school son to read. I read it. It is a bit of a bio, with details of his life, and observations on prison life, its mind-numbing routines, dehumanizing searches, etc.
Honestly, and I hope this doesn’t sound racist, but I got the impression they may have been ghostwritten. After reading of his background, education (or lack thereof), etc., the style just seemed too polished. I’m sure it was his thoughts, but perhaps channeled through a co-writer.
Sir Rhosis
I’m thinking similar thoughts, and I haven’t even read any of “his” books. I smelled a rat, even though I had no knowledge other than what I’ve heard on the news in the last week/month/whatever. Then, this morning, I heard (on CNN?? I think Rita Cosby was the one that said it) about one of his last visitors was a special writer friend. Hmmmm…
A brief clip from an interview (11/28/05) on the news yesterday tipped me off that he wasn’t any Hemingway, or Marquez. He said something uproariously idiotic, showing that perhaps literacy wasn’t his forte. Wish I could find a transcript of it, but Google is not MY forte.
Looking at the Amazon co-author credit, it looks like his books were ghostwritten by Barbara Cottman Becnel.
This interview? I’ll let you pick the “uproariously idiotic” thing you’re thinking of, because, frankly, I can’t decide which one of them you mean.
Hey, who doesn’t want to be remembered in history in tandem with one’s sanguinary legacy and one’s legacy of redemption. And also for making good popcicles.
