Otherwise the book is complete

Otherwise the book is complete.But Cohn aims to do more than produce, as he has, the definitive Dropouts of Late Twentieth Century England. I am engaged, though not consistently, by his cast of characters; often I’m moved; once in a while I’m utterly absorbed. Only one thing is missing: an enterprise of this size would have deserved (and still deserves – fast, while they are alive) a set of impressionistic pencil portraits, sketched with a light touch. Professionally speaking, I admire the effort and energy he has invested in what might have been accomplished in a more sketchy way, but which would have lacked integrity His writing has palpable integrity. He makes one such, Laurence in Kings Cross, would-be pornographer and former pimp, lovable: “`Talent management,’ he replies, silky smooth, `I am a facilitator.’” Affectionately teasing his subjects, as Dickens does, he achieves more for them than hero-worship or vilification ever could.Taken on this level the book not only justifies but distinguishes itself Cohn has worked hard. Like D H Lawrence, Nik Cohn writes best low-key and at his least self-conscious; quiet observation, not overlaid with meaning, can mean the most.

Of this there is much in the book.I especially find his neutral and meticulous portrayal of the kind of black man whom we might carelessly call a coxcomb, revealingly honest. Sometimes though, when overwrought, he overwrites, working himself into a lather of introspection and wild imaginings. I would include these four pages in any anthology of 20th-century profile-writing. One sketch in particular, that of Peter Vincent the elderly busker (“Here lies Peter Vincent – Finally Moved On”) is a masterpiece of good writing, human sympathy and fine, understated characterisation. “The slithering and flopping of breasts,” he says of a bare- bottomed bar in Manchester, “carries me back to the piers at Grimsby, when the herring catch comes in.”Some of his characters come alive. If you’d spread me on Mother’s Pride you could feed a regiment,” says his transvestite friend, Grace And Cohn’s own imagination arrests and amuses the reader.

`She’ll tell you she’s Colombian and pisses Dom Perignon,’ he tells me. `But I remember when she was Maxine from Bolton and she was on the gin and orange.’”Unlike so many authors he has a good ear for the way people really speak and a sharp, almost slick eye for the telling phrase, his own and others’: “Fat as butter darling. He is direct and tersely funny (“I notice that Pride is mentioned freely on the builders’ placards: never a good sign”).Nor does Cohn care to be fooled: “We’re introduced [to Manuela from Manchester] through a mutual friend who describes her as a diva. This is done sparely, with style (“didn’t so much drop out of school as plummet”) and without self-indulgence; and it does help illuminate. At his best he has what Rian Malan has – an unpitying sympathy with the world and a nicely intimate way of expressing it. A ragbag, but what rich and colourful rags!The journey flashes back to, and fitfully retraces Cohn’s own boyhood and personal history. Following up leads, pursuing personal introductions and seeking out the living legends of the slums and subways Cohn has assembled what is really a collection of essays about outcasts, eccentrics and the underclass.

“Outlaws and insurgents, rampaging natives and incomers, clubbers, visionaries, street-fighters, born-agains, fetishists, new age travellers, anarchists, graffiti artists, rastas and Ordinists, bikers, squatters, Elvis impersonators, faith healers – even the Antichrist” says the blurb: and that just about sums it up. Quite a few are pretty funny, though probably not to themselves or each other. Cohn is not quite sure whether he wants them to be funny to his readers, for he feels, I think, painfully ambivalent.Commandeering a beat-up Mini Metro which he and Mary christen Teal Wheels, the pair make a summer tour of almost everything you could not call mainstream England. On his tour Nik and his wild companion Mary meet many it is possible to admire, many more about whom it is possible to be a touch sentimental, and some of whom he frankly despairs. Yes We Have No – a silly title to a serious and sometimes moving book – is a grand tour of the fringes of functioning society in England. Yet there was a remarkable gentleness and childishness about these people.