Children of the Streets

by Harlan Ellison

When he's down, kick for the head and groin. Avoid cops. Play it cool There aren't many rules in the primer for gang kids, but they all count. They're all easily understood because they use a simple and sound philosophy it's a stinking life, so get your kicks while you can. The gang is home, take what you want, tell them nothing and don't get caught. Two gangs of juvenile delinquents run riot in New York City. They constantly try to outdo each other with their clothes, weapons, language and lack of morals. They are not just kids playing at war they mean business. The only person who can infiltrate the gang is someone they can trust, someone like themselves. Someone who knows how to handle a knife and a gun

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Science Fiction

192 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 1956

About the author

Harlan Jay Ellison (1934-2018) was a prolific American writer of short stories, novellas, teleplays, essays, and criticism.

His literary and television work has received many awards. He wrote for the original series of both The Outer Limits and Star Trek as well as The Alfred Hitchcock Hour; edited the multiple-award-winning short story anthology series Dangerous Visions; and served as creative consultant/writer to the science fiction TV series The New Twilight Zone and Babylon 5.

Several of his short fiction pieces have been made into movies, such as the classic "The Boy and His Dog".

Reviews

[Steve Carter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Children of the Streets
By Harlan Ellison

This is a collection of juvenile delinquency stories from the 1950s.
They are all set in NYC where Ellison grew up.

High school didn’t work then for many teens and still doesn’t work now, 60 years later. Well, that’s my opinion because I’m generally anti-school. It’s just basically a place to put people, to condition them to be productive and obedient workers in a complicated society that separates people into categories of age when they might be better off intermixing more organically. I don’t think children should be separated from adults all the time as schools do. Some of us even when very young can feel that it is not right, and certainly not nurturing. Most find ways to more or less cope. The ways some find to get through it are not helpful to the community at large.

There is a lot of gang stuff in the stories. Much of it rather extreme with deaths occurring at “rumbles”, even a principal assassinated with a zip gun. That stuff gives the book a feeling of unbelievability, but who knows maybe things like that actually happened. After all Tony did get killed in a knife fight at a rumble in West Side Story.
Anyway, the book provides a view of a system that doesn’t work.
I don’t think high school is much better now. The book has stories of bullying of a gang type and the feeling that high school is almost like prison.
But that’s OK. If school doesn’t work, just bring in more cops, or, as I have been hearing in the news, just arm teachers and other school workers.
Great, good luck, but I’m telling you that isn’t going to work either.

This is the first Ellison I have read. It’s a good read with action and conflict filled pulp fiction type stories. The 1950s gang jargon is fun to decode.

[Craig Childs · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection of crime stories was first released in 1961 as a paperback original with the title The Juvies and the tag line: "Life and Death of the Gutter Kids".

It is Ellison's fourth collection of juvenile delinquent stories, following on the heels of Web of the City (1958), The Deadly Streets (1958), and Sex Gang (1959). It is a cut above those earlier efforts. Most of these stories pop with the same verve that marks classic early Ellison stories like "Life Hutch" and "The Sky is Burning".

This unabridged audiobook edition was published in 2020 and follows the table of contents from the previous 2004 Severn House hardcover. It does not include the bonus material from the print on demand 2020 Edgeworks Abbey Archive edition.

Ellison kicks off the collection with the introduction "10 Weeks in Hell" which summarizes his experiences infiltrating a Manhattan street gang. This material is explored at greater length in his nonfiction book Memos from Purgatory.

Here are my individual story reviews:

"No Way Out" (1957) -- Rusty is trying to leave the Cougars, but the new gang president Candle wants to prove his mettle in a stand… The climactic face-off with switchblades later formed the basis for the most memorable scene in the novel Web of the City.

"Matinee Idyll" (1958) -- The press agent for rockabilly star Stag Preston arranges the musician's trysts with underage fans. This tale of fame, rape, and murder is Ellison's first take on the Elvis Presley phenomenon. Later expanded into the novel Spider's Kiss.

"No Game for Children" (1959) -- Delinquent teen Bruce terrorizes the meek professor who lives next door. He tries to wreck the older man's car. He peeps into windows while the man's wife is undressing. He kills the family cat. He will learn even worn-down academics can strike back when they are pushed too far…

"The Rough Boys" (1956) – Two mob hit men get more than they can handle when they face off against a teenage street gang. Ellison’s first published crime story. Even though the surprise ending is painfully telegraphed, this is still fun to read.

"A Tiger at Nightfall" (1961) -- A derelict teenager at the Salvation Army befriends a blind ex-boxer who desperately wants to track down an old manager who owes him money.

"School for Killers" (1957) -- Softy decides to fight back when a street gang takes over his inner city high school. The plot of this story is far-fetched--in truth, John Adams High School makes the schools in Lean on Me and Dangerous Minds seem tolerable--but the rumble killings and the torture scene are memorable.

"Memory of a Muted Trumpet" (1960) -- The story of a failed romance--and a murdered newborn baby in a burlap sack--is related during two Bohemian parties in Greenwich Village. This story is the spiritual antecedent to the author's more well-known "Shattered Like a Glass Goblin".

"Stand Still and Die!" (1956) -- Neil is a good Samaritan cabbie who tries to stop members of the Falcons from mugging a man in a business suit. He is shocked to wake up in the hospital and find the cops accusing him of stealing the man's uncut diamonds…

"Gang Girl" (1957) -- Julie wants nothing to do with street gangs, until she falls in love with Puff. Now she is an initiate to the Cavaliers Debs auxiliary, but will they survive their feud with the crosstown Eagles?

I listened to the audiobook read by Graham Halstead and Mia Barron.

[Jim Davis]

I thought the book was very exaggerated and the stories pretty redundant. I only liked a couple of the stories such as "no Way Out" and No Game For Children". I was born in 1947 and grew up in a very rough housing project in South Philly. I saw a lot of fights and got in a few myself although I tried to avoid them whenever possible as I wasn't that good at it. In South Philly the gangs were identified by the corner they mainly hung out at like "30th & Tasker". Some corners had big reps for being tough and you stayed away from them. There were also the young Italian Mafia wannabees who hung out around 9th Street. I was a teenager in the early 60's and rarely saw or heard about the type of rumbles and extreme violence Ellison portrays. Of course things may have been a lot different in NY 10 years earlier but I still think he exaggerates the amount and severity of JD violence using a lot of artistic license. My milder group of teenagers hung out at at "29th & Morris", a block south and a block east of the very tough ""30th & Tasker" gang. We knew a lot of them and vice versa and knowing we were no threat they didn't bother us most of the time. I did get "jumped" and beaten up twice, once by "30th street" and once by "the Hill" the gang that dominated the Tasker housing project I lived in. Both times I was told they didn't recognize us as being from the project and one guy actually apologized for a case of mistaken identity. In high school the big weapon was thick heavy belts with big belt buckles that were used more than knives in gang fights. I wore one to be "cool" but never used it.

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

"If you haven't read Harlan Ellison, you haven't read." ~ Richard Halasz

[j_ay · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don’t think, in this day and age, a collection of ‘juvenile gang’ fiction works very well. Aside from the historical wishes of Ellison, it is probably best to have them scattered through various (wide-themed) collections, as the storylines here generally do not have much range. One of the street punks knew who Kafka was, though….

No Way Out ***oo
Matinee Idyll ***oo
No Game for Children ***oo
The Rough Boys **ooo
A Tiger at Nightfall **ooo
School for Killers **ooo
Memory of a Muted Trumpet **ooo
Stand Still and Die! **ooo
Gang Girl **ooo
--------
Black Money
Blind Date

[David Allen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Straddling the line between exploitation and intervention, this 1961 collection of stories about juvenile delinquents (by the writer better known for his SF) now seems almost quaint, as he admits in the introduction to this 2004 reissue. The stories, which now evoke a vanished era of zip guns, malt shops and razor-studded potatoes, still pack a sleazy, sincere punch.

[Trent · Rating 4 out of 5]

Trent very much enjoy.

[L. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cool and gritty.

[Ralph Carlson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ellison is one of my favorite writers. I have a massive collection of his books.