Writers

In Irvine Welsh we have one of the rawest writers to appear on the scene since the Beats of the '50s, the New Journalists of the '60s and the Realists of the '80s.

Rafael Perez didn't talk much about it when his father died. "Son, have a good day. Come right home." That's the last thing his dad said to him, the same thing he'd said every day before Rafael went to school. But this time, he checked himself out of the neighborhood for good while Rafael was gone. Rafael, now 16, turned a cold eye on anyone who wanted to poke around in his pain. "Man, he died," he would tell the teachers and the guys at school when they asked. "Leave it alone."

Ben Aronoff's mountain cabin is a gallery of mass-murderer art. On the walls hang a signed self-portrait of Charles Manson, a greeting card designed by serial murderer Lawrence Bittaker, water colors by child killer Theodore Frank and smiling snapshots of William G. Bonin, who was executed Friday. Aronoff, a former San Quentin guard turned prison reformer, has befriended notorious prisoners over the past decade and coaxed them through their bleakest days on death row.

David McCumber is about to kiss $500 goodbye. And there isn't a damn thing he can do about it. He sits helplessly next to the man to whom he has entrusted his wad of cash: Bay Area pool hustler Tony Annigoni, who is deadlocked at 10 games apiece in a "race to 11" of nine-ball with local pro Israel "Morro" Paez. Paez is a flashy player cut from the look-good-play-good cloth--he wears slacks and a cream silk shirt, a stark contrast to Annigoni's jeans and loose-fitting polo shirt.

It was 35 years ago this week that he walked into the minds and hearts of Los Angeles sports fans. Walked is probably the wrong word. More liked barged. His name was Jim Murray, and his first offering as a sports columnist for the Los Angeles Times, Feb. 12, 1961, was a fastball down the middle. Perceptive readers knew right away that this guy wasn't going to throw changeups or nibble at the corners.

The awful thing about the shy, sweet smile of Ingo Hasselbach is that he probably smiled it while bashing in faces with his storm trooper boots. And maybe he smiled it while smearing bloody swastikas on East German walls; or tossing Molotov cocktails into homes; or playing what used to be his favorite board game, a revisionist kind of Monopoly in which the player who gets the most Jews into the gas chamber wins. But Ingo is a nice guy now. Honest.

Frank Javier Garcia Berumen, educator and author of "The Chicano / Hispanic Image in American Film," lives in a world of mirrors. As a child growing up in Lincoln Heights, he saw the movie screen as a mirror reflecting a distorted image that defined his people for a hundred years. But on summer trips with his family to Mexico he saw in the people and on the screen a different reflection--of pride in culture, family and history.

Alice Walker began by writing the book for her mother. By the end, "The Color Purple" had won a Pulitzer Prize, the world's grace and 11 Oscar nominations for its film incarnation. But Walker failed to entice her mother, queen of her singular and ironic constituency--people who don't read much. The Southern-born novelist wooed her with the musical lilt of black folk speech, but her mother closed the book after five pages.

Peggy Rathmann was keeping a group of friends in stitches one evening, or so she thought. But they really were laughing at something going on behind her. That embarrassing situation became the springboard for "Officer Buckle and Gloria," a children's book about a police officer upstaged by his dog. The book won this year's Caldecott Medal from the American Library Assn.