Customer Reviews

Five-Finger Discount: A Crooked Family History

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

I am not a huge fan of memoirs but I found Helene Stapinski's family history to be an interesting and well-organized read of life in Jersey City, as she and her family lived it. I am surprised at other reviewiers taking offense to her descriptions of her hometown and her views - while I found Ms. Stapinski to be opinionated, I also found that she did an excellent job of maintaining an emotional distance from the "story". I enjoyed peering into this life, with its stolen luxuries and potential for destruction - I don't imagine that this memoir is much different than what many others remember, or are experiencing now. While the book is not very cheerful, it is an honest and poignant view of a memorable childhood. I recommend Five Finger Discout for both its historical interest and its unique ability to draw the reader into the world of petty crime and abuse and for its understanding of family dynamics and loyalties. Not everyone grew up in Mayberry!

Helene Stapinskis story of her Polish immigrant family is a real eye-opener into the way of life of a New Jersey family of crooks. Tony Soprano eat your heart out ! Almost without exception, the males in the family are either in jail, going to jail or coming out of jail and are into every lurk and perk possible.The boys in the extended family have no hope from childhood, growing up in a depressed neighbourhood amongst ugliness in the old buildings and deserted factories. Getting food and "swag that fell off the back of trucks"is a way of life and conditions them to thinking that stealing is ok if you're not caught, right from childhood. I found it an interesting read as it exposed a world totally foreign to me and almost nonchalantly recorded the chicanery of the local political systems. It could have been a very depressing story except for the way that she describes the strength and weaknesses of the women of the family who hold the whole structure together.

In "Five Finger Discount," Helene Stapinski has given us a memoir of both a town and a family. Jersey City, NJ, has long been considered the most corrupt town in the US, and from Ms. Stapinski's history of crime and politics the town deserved its appellation. It also seems her family deserved its place in the town, with a history of petty crime that started with the grandparents and ran its way through the generations. Although "Five Finger Discount," is localized, I think Ms. Stapinski has written about many Northeastern, immigrant, industrial communities. I grew up in Erie, PA, and her stories were not foreign to me. The numbers, the goods fallen off the backs of trucks, the crooked politicians and police figured enough in my life, and in the life of the Polish ghetto we finally escaped that "Five Finger Discount," could have easily been about Erie, if not in kin, at least in kind.

The one shortfall of this memoir occurs within the memoir of place. For a non-Jersey-ite I felt the extent of the history of Jersey City slowed the narrative. I could have done with less. For folks who live in the region, however, I'm sure the history will prove fascinating. Whenever my interest would lag, though, "Five Finger Discount," would return to the family. The strength of the memoir lies in the melding of both, but for me the family stories proved more rewarding than the sociology.

I'd recommend this book to anyone interested in a good family story mixed with true crime.

Stapinski deftly weaves the story of her own family's misdeeds with the culture of corruption that has pervaded Jersey City. From the lovable aunt who smuggled leather-bound books in her girdle to the psychotic grandfather who tried to kill the entire family, Stapinski paints a loving portrait of the people who live in the shadow of glittering New York City, the people the Statue of Liberty has turned her back on.

Stapinski escaped a Polish-Italian American legacy of petty crime and violence when she fled to college in Manhattan and a career in journalism, but she never entirely escaped her roots in Jersey City, a smelly city in the age of urban deterioration. This salty account of her growing up years across the river from New York joins the ranks of other memoir, coming-of-age tales that are so popular right now.

How easy can it be to write a memoir about your childhood when one of your earliest memories is of your grandfather's attempt to murder you and your family? How pleasant can it be to write about your childhood home given its now ubiqitous reputation as America's citadel of crime and corruption? The enormous moral and social courage alone Helene Stapinski had to muster to describe her life in Jersey City in the last third of the twentieth century make her memoir "Five-Finger Discount" worth reading. At times maddening, frightful, depressing and hilarious, the memoir magically brings us into the Stapinski family -- with its heritage of crime, violence and family abuse -- while simultaneously providing us with an enormously readable history of Jersey City, a place so corrupt, so venal, so thoroughly crooked, that its moral taint seems to rub off, along with sundry industrial residues, on its population. Indeed, theft is so common, that swag, as it is called, is not even considered wrong; it is simply a way of life. Thus, Stapinski's subtitle, "A Crooked Family History" is appropriately accurate, both a description of of her own personal circumstances, but as that of the larger political community, whose criminality looms everywhere.

As a child, Helene never considers her family anything but normal. Living upstairs from a neighborhood bar, she accepts the arrest of her abusive grandfather Beansie (a nickname derived from the fact that he stole some beans from a truck earlier in his life) as normal, the most recent of "a string of family crimes and tragedies, which I thought most people experienced on a regular basis." The diminuitive Beansie, nothing more than a small-time bully and crook, becomes the central lens through which Stapinski examines her family history. Not an intellectual crook, like some of her other relatives, Beansie "was more of a freelance criminal, committing crimes whenever the opportunity arose." An abusive husband and father, Beansie's welcomed disappearances into jail provide the family with its only opportunity for coherence and sanity.

As she grows, Helene prefers attending well-fed funerals than going through the Holland Tunnel to New York City to play with new toys in the showrooms of Macys. She relishes watching the numbers game, which to her was a community activity, and rejoices at the number of people who "hit" on her birthday. She learns from "my mother to stand up for myself and to dislike careless and unfair people. There were quite a few of them living in Jersey City." This linkage with Jersey City and family identity emerges as one of the strengths of the memoir.

Stapinski's portrait of Jersey City will stagger the uninitiated. Literally staring at the backside of the Statue of Liberty, this city, pillored as once and always "ugly," was the debarcation spot for millions of immigrants who passed through Ellis Island. Jersey City, howeve, became a place "settled for," inhabited by settlers "of a different kind, the kind who always feel cheated, because they settled for less." It is a place where "people were actively illiterate and proudly went around saying things like 'I never read a book in my life.'...I wanted to say, 'Well, good for you, you idiot. Look where you are. You're still in Jersey City.'" It is a city where spring is not announced by "tulips or crocuses," but by the first "floated or dead body to wash ashore" from the Hudson River. The author gracefully ties the political corruption of the notorious Democratic Mayor, Boss Hague, to the personal corruption of her grandfather, Beansie.

The adult Helene Stapinski returns to Jersey City, despite an incomplete attempt at personal liberation through university life and intellectual freedom. Working in the "knewsroom" of the city's newspaper, the Jersey Journal, Stapinski grows more reflective on her family's place in this morass. Anger, disgust and outrage over civic graft intertwines and conflicts with family shame and a need to protect her mother. Uncovering family involvement in a civic scandal, Stapinski upbraids her own silence. "I told myself that journalistic ethics were for people more fortunate than I...They were for people whose parents could afford them, whose families didn't have to rely [on politically connnected public jobs]. I was rationalizing, but it beat ratting out my mother." She comments immediately after that if Stapniski were to report of "courthouse swag, I would have to get rid of at least half of my wardrobe. Then I would have to find Ma a new job, because she would be fired, or worse, ostracized from her circle of swag-buying friends."

"Five-Finger Discount" never preaches, never loses its humanity, never pinches its nose in disgust. It is a dirty, messy, bloody, grinding work. Its majesty derives from the lucidity of its writing, the moral vision of its author, and its bold personal and historic intent. This memoir is personal history at its best. The memoir preserves a scarred city's battered, ugly past and gives it life for current and future generations; it captures a trapped family -- limited by poverty, hopelessness and resignation -- and gives it the dignity of its own self-definition. Helene Stapinski's work will emerge as a treasured addition to not only urban history, but to the growing body of literature of the very nature of the American family.

...I am from Jersey City, NJ...I was expecting an irreverent version of Growing Up, by Russell Baker. Instead, I got the acerbic cynicism of Helene Stapinski.

The parts of the book that were enjoyable were the historical accounts of corrupt city politics. I learned a lot about the history of Jersey City. Her coverage of the gentrification that took place downtown helped me understand the changes that I saw growing up.

Her sketches of her older family, and their colorful lives were well done. Her grandfather, Beansie, had a big influence on her and her family, and she draws him well.

I also very much enjoyed her reminiscing about her childhood, which was very lively. The stories of getting her father from the bar, and eating food that fell off the back of a truck were humorous.

While the rest of the book was reasonable, I found Ms. Stapinski blaming a lot of her life's woes on Jersey City itself, as if a city could be subject to blame. Environment plays a strong part in the development of a person, but I felt she gives Jersey City too strong a role, when she should really be looking at herself. Yes, there was corruption at all levels in Jersey City. Yes, there was 'swag', but there is also choice, and I would have enjoyed the book more if she had come to realize that one must choose between right and wrong.

Towards the end of the book, as she finally 'breaks away' from Jersey City, she discovers a wider world, and perhaps begins to realize that a city can't be blamed for all the angst in her life. Of course, she's the writer, and she's chosen to frame Jersey City in this manner.

A good family tree, and a map of her old neighborhood would have added some value to the book. I also would have been interested in seeing more pictures of her family members, in addition to the ones on the book jacket.

As a memoir, I found the book fair. As a memoir that revisits the same city where I grew up, it could be more fair.

This unusual memoir was a surprise. It is equal parts evolution of Helene Stapinski and family and the history of Jersey City.

Jersey City had an illustrious founding by Alexander Hamilton, and it was downhill from there. The descriptions of the city are bleak, ugly with the worst of the aging industrial northeast. The present day prospects are brighter with gentrification, and renovation of the riverfront, which the author views with mixed emotions. She has a reverse sense of pride in the Jersey City in which she grew up. As if to say, "you want ugly; I'll show you ugly."

Her family on both sides had and have a number of petty and not-so-petty criminals that go back three generations, and the tendencies are still alive and well in the present generation. Her central question is: does the general moral decay and corruption of the city politic infect the citizens, or does her particular family have a "bad" gene for crime?

She was a tough little girl, though very much protected and shielded by a devoted mother. She sees more crime in the streets in her first five years than many people see in a lifetime. Her family is poor but not deprived. They eat and dress well. She attends parochial schools and is never neglected. The extended family has more than its share of explosive temperaments, and anti-authority types. But they seem to take individual paths to crime, don't seem to influence each other and are in no way joined together by any criminal operations. She takes it for granted that "swag" is ok, but theft is not. Swag is what falls off the truck she explains. What most people would call it would be pilfering from your employer. Dad works at the cold storage and brings home steaks and lobster tails for dinner. Aunt works in a clothing store and brings home sweaters, blouses and jackets. But dishonesty is all around them; to do city business in Jersey, you have engage in corruption, and graft is a way of life.

The scenes from her childhood are well realized. She has a brisk and wryly humorous tone with an underlying resentment for her stark habitat. Would she have been more forgiving if Jersey City just looked a little better? A few more trees and greenery, better maintained buildings, streets and rivers?

She presents her case, and does it well. It is a worthwhile read on more than one level. The history of Boss Hague and city politics from the top down plus the story of one sprawling, but close-knit family is excellent.

I read FIVE FINGER DISCOUNT cover to cover in no time at all, and immediately recommended it to all of my friends. Like many other reviewers, I didn't agree with Stapinski's conclusions all of the time, and I really didn't like her attitude some of the time, but I was completely absorbed in her troubled story of growing up in an atmosphere of petty criminality--where graft is essentially taken for granted.

FIVE FINGER DISCOUNT also had me reaching back in my memory for things I hadn't thought of for years, just because they're a part of a by-gone era that probably no one wants to remember. Phrases like "splash pregnancy," and how it's preferable to getting pregnant the regular way (which means you're a tramp); having to get married because of the "consequences," and the casual violence of domestic life that was taken for granted just a few decades ago. Then there are the delightful details, like Stapinski's mother shaking her head over the author's teen-age "gallivanting" (gosh, that word takes me back!). Then there's the eerie part (in the wake of the WTC tragedy) of how, growing up in the shadow of the Twin Towers, she was afraid they might fall on her.

If FFD succeeds because of personal details like these, it also falls short of the mark because Stapinski lacks the distance (emotional, not geographic) that would give her perpective beyond her sometimes not-quite-there conclusions. Even so, it's a powerful story, and I applaud her for sharing a great personal history.

Five Finger Discount is a great read. The author clearly speaks from the heart and knows what she is talking about. She gave me access to a world I had never even heard of before reading her book. I highly recommend this book!