But underneath the tough-skinned Breslin, behind the wall of bullshit, in back of the Queens accent, the slovenliness, the vainglorious earthiness, is another Breslin. A Breslin who is frustrated and angered by a society that programs people to failure and ignores compelling social problems.

When he talks about these things, the bravado front softens. Foremost in Breslin's book is the problem of jobs in the cities--especially for blacks: "If you don't put jobs in the ghetto, you're going to have crime and fear forever. We need these jobs, because as long as you can start them on the work you can cut down the crime. But you can't expect results right away. You're going to have to struggle and make excuses and work with these bastards for another 50, 75, who knows how many, years. But you got to get to the start of it sometime and face it. Go tell that to an audience. Now you're telling the truth. And it's hard. Most voters would boo you."

Another thing that strips back the Breslin bravado (a thing he deals with in his writing) is the "lost possibilities" of people coming out of neighborhoods like Queens. "I love to examine the lost possibilities of guys coming out of these neighborhoods, that never knew, never went anywhere--anything they had got thrown into the wind.

"I think it's a very important theme, because that's where the rages appear from those people. Later on in life the rage is terrible. They rage against kids, they rage against this, they rage against that. The level of annoyance is continually high, never lowered, always right up under the surface. Violence erupts. Your courtrooms are filled with the debris, with their kids. It's scary. It's the scariest part of life I know. Because they're capable of anything, the resentments are so huge. And nobody bothers with them.

"Most people don't know where the Harvard library is. Most people don't know where the Twenty-One Club is in New York. Most people don't know anything. They know the television, they know the neighborhood saloon, they know the job they have to go to, and they know that they don't get along with their wives and yet they're stuck with them because they have four kids and a home.

There's tremendous abilities lost in lives like that. Who knows how many artists, who knows how many writers, who knows how many engineers, how many poets or musicians they could have been?"

It's the same Breslin style. Yet subtly, underneath, it's not the same Breslin. Under the tough exterior, under the quick quip and the profanity, is a legitimate interest in people.

This Breslin seldom comes out. The fast-talk New Yorker conceals it assiduously. But it is there, and it explains the curious compassion that runs through Breslin's work. He's a tough guy, he writes strong, crude, simple prose. He likes it that way. But underneath....well.... Jimmy Breslin is a helluva firetruck ride. And it's worth hanging on to see what's under the hood.