Five-Finger Discount: A Crooked Family History (Paperback)

Fans of Mary Karr's groundbreaking memoir The Liars' Club will relish the similarly funny, tough-minded tone of Helene Stapinski's recollections centering on her family's petty criminal history in the sordid precincts of Jersey City. But Stapinski is nobody's clone; her autobiography has a tart, distinctively urban Northeast flavor that will ring a bell with anyone familiar with America's aging, deteriorating cities. You can practically smell the soap suds from the local Colgate factory and the stink of the bone-rendering plant in nearby Newark; people didn't settle in Jersey City, writes Stapinski, "they settled for Jersey City ... they settled for less." She was 5 years old in 1970 when her Italian American grandfather was arrested for threatening to shoot her whole family, capping a long career that included armed robbery and beating his children. The Polish American relatives on her father's side included a bookie and an epileptic prone to fits of rage who nearly killed a sibling by breaking his back. None of this was a big deal in Jersey City, notes Stapinski, who deftly interweaves her family's story with the rancid saga of Hudson County's corrupt political machine. She fled to college in Manhattan and a career in journalism without ever really escaping the ties of blood and loyalty; her frank rendering of her mixed feelings as Jersey City was slowly upscaled reminds us what is gained and lost through gentrification. Stapinski's salty, savory account conveys the gritty, enduring legacy of Jersey City: "so tough, I was always prepared for what might come my way." --Wendy Smith --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

"The night my grandfather tried to kill us, I was five years old, the age I stopped believing in Santa Claus, started kindergarten, and made real rather than imaginary friends." This chatty and often engaging memoir of growing up among a rogue's gallery of tough characters may leave readers thinking Stapinski might have been better off with an imaginary family. Reminiscent of Michael Patrick McDonald's highly praised All Souls: A Family Story from Southie, but without that book's overwhelming moral force, this is the sad, often funny story of Stapinski's extended family of grifters, con men and women and petty crooks. At its best, it's a vivid portrait of working-class life in Jersey City, N.J. But too often it veers uneasily between disarming anecdotes (Stapinski's grandfather steals books from the public library where he works as a security guard) and terrifying details of lives out of control (her father almost loses his legs because of untreated but obvious diabetes), and doesn't sustain dramatic intensity. Stapinski, who has written for the New York Times and New York magazine, can be funnyAas in her descriptions of attending New York University, where she meets Jews, punks and lesbians, and reads the Village VoiceAand even illuminating, as when she describes the Machiavellian, if mundane, workings of the multitude of patronage systems that have corrupted Jersey City politics. Though she has a good eye for the details of family and community life, too often the emotions in this memoir feel imagined, not real. (Mar.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

The author weaves a fascinating tale of growing up amid the decay and corruption of 1970s-80s Jersey City, NJ. Using her family's story as a mirror for the best and the worst the place has to offer, this journalist goes beyond the family to frame a distinct history and sociological description. She begins with the family legend of the night her grandfather threatened to kill her entire family, then goes on to tell stories of corrupt mayors and bookie uncles, embezzling DMV officials and embezzling cousins, sadistic nuns, and "swag" that fell off the truck and found its way home from work each night. Although Stapinski uncovers family skeleton after family skeleton, her writing never turns maudlin. Just as she couldn't reject her family, she is still connected to her hometown. Her imperfect family comes across as a loving, tight-knit clan, and Jersey City, while built on toxic wastes, comes across as a compelling place where marvels hide in decay. Of interest especially to sociology/ urban studies collections, this well-written, heavily researched, thoroughly enjoyable read is highly recommended.
-DKaren Sandlin Silverman, Ctr. for Applied Research, Philadelphia
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

This is certainly not the run-of-the-mill memoir that's being cranked out these days, and what sets it apart from the others are two things: it takes place in Jersey City, New Jersey, a place with such a history of corruption that if it didn't exist, Dashiell Hammett would have had to make it up; and the Stapinski family on both sides seem to embody the Jersey City ethos. There's even a bit of it in the author herself, the toughness, that is, not the corruption. Anyway, Stapinski's relatives seemed to have run the gamut from killers and maniac street punks to bookies, embezzlers, and swagsters. (The goods that "fall off the truck" are called swag; the guy into whose arms it just happens to drop is a swagster.) She draws some memorable portraits of many of her family members, especially her parents and her great-aunt Katie, and an especially haunting one of her maternal grandfather, a man who was probably better off in jail than out. But the family, while it is the main story, is not the only one, and the various corrupt politicians she describes give you a lesson in how municipal government is not supposed to work. Frank Caso
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

“[Five-Finger Discount] will steal your heart.”
—People

“By turns hilarious and alarming, uproarious and depressing, [stapinski’s] book reads on the surface like something by Damon Runyon and Elmore Leonard, with a dark undertow of real-life pain and disillusion.”
—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

“It’s a brilliant book, a darling book. It is the blessedly modest chronicle of a magical consciousness that seems to have been born pulling diamonds out of the muck, hearing angels’ voices in the fiercest thunder....I adored every word of this wondrous book. Get it. Read it.”
—Michael Pakenham, Baltimore Sun

“In the tradition of...Rita Mae Brown and Amy Tan, Ms. Stapinski is an exciting writer, unabashedly candid, and at the same time unashamedly self-contained. Five-Finger Discount is a must-read.”
—Victoria Gotti, The New York Observer

“What [Frank] McCourt did for Limerick, Ireland, Helene Stapinski does for Jersey City.”
—Newark Sunday Star-Ledger

“Hugely entertaining.”
—London Sunday Times

?[Five-Finger Discount] will steal your heart.?
?People

?By turns hilarious and alarming, uproarious and depressing, [stapinski?s] book reads on the surface like something by Damon Runyon and Elmore Leonard, with a dark undertow of real-life pain and disillusion.?
?Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

?It?s a brilliant book, a darling book. It is the blessedly modest chronicle of a magical consciousness that seems to have been born pulling diamonds out of the muck, hearing angels? voices in the fiercest thunder....I adored every word of this wondrous book. Get it. Read it.?
?Michael Pakenham, Baltimore Sun

?In the tradition of...Rita Mae Brown and Amy Tan, Ms. Stapinski is an exciting writer, unabashedly candid, and at the same time unashamedly self-contained. Five-Finger Discount is a must-read.?
?Victoria Gotti, The New York Observer

?What [Frank] McCourt did for Limerick, Ireland, Helene Stapinski does for Jersey City.?
?Newark Sunday Star-Ledger

?Hugely entertaining.?
?London Sunday Times -- Review

"A book teeming with unruly life. That is, with laughter, violence, early death, buried histories, and much larceny. The reader will never look at New Jersey again in the same way." --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

With deadpan humor and obvious affection, Five-Finger Discount recounts the story of an unforgettable New Jersey family of swindlers, bookies, embezzlers, and mobster-wannabes. In the memoir Mary Karr calls “a page-turner,” Helene Stapinski ingeniously weaves the checkered history of her hometown of Jersey City—a place known for its political corruption and industrial blight—with the tales that have swirled around her relatives for decades. Navigating a childhood of toxic waste and tough love, Stapinski tells an extraordinary tale at once heartbreaking and hysterically funny.

With deadpan humor and obvious affection, Five-Finger Discount recounts the story of an unforgettable New Jersey family of swindlers, bookies, embezzlers, and mobster-wannabes. In the memoir Mary Karr calls "a page-turner," Helene Stapinski ingeniously weaves the checkered history of her hometown of Jersey City—a place known for its political corruption and industrial blight—with the tales that have swirled around her relatives for decades. Navigating a childhood of toxic waste and tough love, Stapinski tells an extraordinary tale at once heartbreaking and hysterically funny.

“[Five-Finger Discount] will steal your heart.”
—People

“By turns hilarious and alarming, uproarious and depressing, [stapinski’s] book reads on the surface like something by Damon Runyon and Elmore Leonard, with a dark undertow of real-life pain and disillusion.”
—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

“It’s a brilliant book, a darling book. It is the blessedly modest chronicle of a magical consciousness that seems to have been born pulling diamonds out of the muck, hearing angels’ voices in the fiercest thunder....I adored every word of this wondrous book. Get it. Read it.”
—Michael Pakenham, Baltimore Sun

“In the tradition of...Rita Mae Brown and Amy Tan, Ms. Stapinski is an exciting writer, unabashedly candid, and at the same time unashamedly self-contained. Five-Finger Discount is a must-read.”
—Victoria Gotti, The New York Observer

“What [Frank] McCourt did for Limerick, Ireland, Helene Stapinski does for Jersey City.”
—Newark Sunday Star-Ledger

“Hugely entertaining.”
—London Sunday Times

Helene Stapinski began her career at her hometown newspaper, The Jersey Journal, and since then has written for The New York Times, New York magazine, and People, among other publications. She received her B.A. in journalism from New York University in 1987 and her M.F.A. from Columbia in 1995. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and son.

1
Majestic Memory

The night my grandfather tried to kill us, I was five years old, the age I
stopped believing in Santa Claus, started kindergarten, and made real
rather than imaginary friends.

Because Grandpa was one of two grandfathers in their family, my cousins
called him Grandpa Jerry. For me, he was simply Grandpa. I had only one.
The other--my father's father, the Polish grandpa we called Dziadzia
(pronounced Jaja)--was hit over the head during a burglary in his front
hallway seven years before I was born and died after slipping into a coma.

Everyone in Jersey City knew Grandpa "Italian Grandpa" as Beansie, because
when he was young, he stole a crate of beans from the back of a truck.
Details about his life started to bubble into my consciousness during the
summer of 1970, the year my memory kicked in full force. There were stories
about Grandpa "going away" to Trenton for murder. Being arrested for armed
robbery. Beating my mother, her sister, and her three brothers.

Grandpa was a well-known neighborhood bully and crook, though the only
stolen objects I knew of firsthand were the ones he swiped while working as
a security guard at the Jersey City Public Library and Museum in the late
1960s. The fact that Grandpa was able to get a city job as a security
guard (through an uncle, who knew a local judge, who was connected to the
mayor) says a lot about Jersey City's patronage system and general
reputation. Everybody stole. It was no big deal.

My brother inherited most of the objects Grandpa took from the library and
museum--the shiny, shellacked coins with Indian feathered heads; a
photograph of Abraham Lincoln; small, black Indian arrowheads; a set of
encyclopedias. I always wondered if Grandpa stole them book by book or had
one of his friends with a car pull up to the library and help him load them
in.

The only stolen object of Grandpa's that I possess is a dictionary, a
Webster's Seventh New Collegiate edition, which he inscribed to my sister
the year I was born: "From Grandpa. Hi Ya Paula. Year-1965." The call
numbers on the spine and the blue stamp on a back page, which reads free
public library jersey city, n.j., have been crossed out in blue indelible
marker, his attempt to legitimize the gift. Grandpa obviously had his own
interpretation of the phrase free public library.

Before I started school, my grandma Pauline baby-sat for me while my mother
worked as a clerk at the Jersey City Division of Motor Vehicles office,
three blocks away. When Grandma died in February of 1970, my mother had no
one to baby-sit, so she quit her job. Though I'm sure I missed my grandma--a
saintly woman with a halo of white hair and small, pretty hands--my world
changed for the better. I was suddenly the center of my mother's attention.
With Grandma gone, Grandpa was at the center of no one's.

Because my grandmother had stayed married to Grandpa for four decades, she
died fairly young. She was only sixty. She died on Ash Wednesday, the first
day of Lent. By then Grandma hated Grandpa so much that on her deathbed,
with the smudge of ashes on her forehead, she made my mother promise that
Grandpa wouldn't be buried on top of her when he died. She couldn't stand
the thought of his remains mingling with hers.