Singer, songwriter, and politician Richard S. "Kinky" Friedman is also the author of a series of detective novels featuring a wise-cracking detective named, coincidentally, Kinky Friedman. In these two paragraphs from Armadillos and Old Lace, Friedman indulges in an interior monologue (that is, he talks to himself) "on the subject of loners." Consider how contractions and slang contribute to the colloquial tone of the passage.
from Armadillos and Old Lace*
by Kinky Friedman
I leaned the shotgun up against the wall, poured another cup of coffee, and lit up a cigar. I sat down in the sunlit doorway of the trailer and sipped the coffee, smoked the cigar, and reflected upon the subject of loners in this world. There've been some very good loners down through the ages. Henry David Thoreau, Emily Dickinson, Johnny Appleseed, the woman who worked with gorillas in Africa whatever the hell her name was, even Benny Hill in the last years of his life after they canceled his television show. These people all knew that the majority is always wrong, and even if it isn't, who gives a damn anyway. They knew that within is where it's at, and if nothing's happening within it doesn't really matter if your co-dependent wife throws a black-tie surprise birthday party for you and hundreds of well-wishers show up who would just as soon wish you'd fallen down a well.
I liked loners. The downside, of course, was that every serial killer who'd ever lived had also been a loner. Well, you can't have everything. People just tend to drive you crazy after a while. That's why penthouses, nunneries, sailboats, islands, and jail cells do such a booming business. And trailers.
Selected Novels by Kinky Friedman
- Greenwich Killing Time (1986)
- When The Cat's Away (1988)
- Elvis, Jesus and Coca-Cola (1993)
- Armadillos and Old Lace (1994)
- The Love Song of J. Edgar Hoover (1996)
* Kinky Friedman's Armadillos and Old Lace was published by Simon & Schuster in 1994.
