Price Lines

Last night I had the honor of introducing Richard Price at his Free Library of Philadelphia book tour stop. I've been a Price fan since Clockers, and was truly knocked out by his latest, Lush Life. So, of course, I spent a lot of time preparing some notes for my intro. It is not cool to sound like an idiot in front of one of your heroes.

I thought about what I really admired about Price's work, and realized that it's the same thing I love about Elmore Leonard and George Pelecanos: the raw, powerful street reporting that energizes the work. Price's method is to go somewhere and absorb his surroundings like a kind of psychic battery; it might be a year or so before a plot even develops. Last night, Price talked about how he knew he wanted to write about Manhattan's Lower East Side, so he just went there an opened up a conversation. One source led to another, which led to another... which is pretty much how good cops and reporters do their jobs. But it wasn't as if Price was chasing after a perp or a news hook. He just opened his eyes and ears and took it all in. The result is Lush Life, which is a fascinating look at a single neighborhood where at least six different worlds collide... and a murder investigation that slices through all of them like a tracer bullet.

I tried to capture some of this in my short intro; I hope it came across.

Then Price took the stage to read from Lush Life, and he just killed. He handled rapid-fire conversation between multiple characters without any of the usual contortions/voices you might hear from another writer. Every punchline, every piece of dialogue, every pause was dead perfect. He could have kept reading for two hours, and he wouldn't have lost a soul. This is rare. I've been at too many readings where after 10 minutes I'm like, Get me the fuck out of here.

(Note to self: Channel Richard Price at next reading.)

Afterwards, a bunch of us had drinks with Price, which was a blast. We ended up at McCrossen's Tavern, a few blocks away from the library. Conversation wound around cities, novels, kids, sports, childhood obsessions... but the coolest discovery? Price is a fan of old-school horror—Gothic horror novels, Arkham House editions, Twilight Zone episodes—as well as 1950s/60s satire mags like Mad and Help! Of course, I shouldn't be surprised. Price's novels are packed with that same blend of gallows humor.

Big thanks to Andy Kahan at the Free Library for inviting me to the event, as well as Mr. Pettit and Mr. Wolkow, who helped make it look like Price had employed the biggest, nerdiest bodyguards ever.

Update: Over at Phawker, Jeff Deeney serves up an excellent recap of last night's event.

Smoke 'Em If You Got 'Em

Over at the Clog, the City Paper's official blog, I have a little chat with illustrator Emily Flake, the author of These Things Ain't Gonna Smoke Themselves: A Love/Hate/Love/Hate/Love Letter to a Very Bad Habit (Bloomsbury USA). It's a fuckin' riot. I'm not a smoker; the one time in college I tried to fake it, just to ask a beautiful woman to borrow her lighter, I ended up getting so sick I puked on the back of my best friend on the ride back to campus. (God I wish I were making that up.) But reading about Flake's personal wrestling match with the world's least favorite vice (seriously... heroin addicts have it better than smokers these days) makes me want to pick up a two-pack-a-day habit, just to stick it to the man. And my lungs, I suppose. If you are a smoker, consider this required reading. If you're one of those sanctimonious people who gives smokers crap every chance they get, this book will be waiting for you in the waiting room of Hell.

Book Report

Book I'm Reading Now: Volk's Game by Brent Ghelfi (Henry Holt)

Book I Want to Read Next, but Might Save for Summer Vacation Because It's So Damn Cool: The Archer Files by Ross MacDonald (Crippen & Landru)

Two Books I've Just Read That Aren't Out Yet and I Really Dug: Patriot Acts by Greg Rucka (Bantam) and The Crime Writer by Gregg Hurwitz (Viking)

Three Books That Aren't Out Yet That I Desperately Want to Read: The Shotgun Rule by Charlie Huston (Ballantine), Crooked Little Vein by Warren Ellis (William Morrow), and The 47th Samurai by Stephen Hunter (Simon & Schuster)

Two Books That Are Out Today That I'm Very Much Looking Forward To: The Mark by Jason Pinter (Mira) and The Cleaner by Brett Battles (Bantam)

Two Books That I Just Recommended to Al Guthrie, and Want to Read Again Because I Mentioned Them: The Drive-In 1 & 2 by Joe R. Lansdale (Bantam)

One Reprint That I Liked Even More the Second Time Around: Miami Purity by Vicki Hendricks (Busted Flush Press)

Last Book Recommended to Me: Volk's Game by Brent Ghelfi

Last Nonfiction Book I Read: Murder off the Rack: Critical Studies of Ten Paperback Masters, edited by Jon L. Breen and Martin H. Greenburg (Scarecrow Press)

Book I Already Own That I Want to Reread Because of Clive Owen and Frank Miller: Trouble is My Business by Raymond Chandler (Vintage)

How about you?

Required Reading, Vol. 4: Say Everything

It's been a while since I read a piece that split me down the middle. Such was the case with Emily Nussbaum's "Say Everything," in this week's New York magazine. Nussbaum details what she calls the new generation gap: kids, teenagers and 20somethings who think nothing of baring it all online (sometimes literally), and their horrified elders who think armies of anonymous perverts are ready to pounce. This gap, Nussbaum writes, may have been years in the making:

It’s hard to pinpoint when the change began. Was it 1992, the first season of The Real World? (Or maybe the third season, when cast members began to play to the cameras? Or the seventh, at which point the seven strangers were so media-savvy there was little difference between their being totally self-conscious and utterly unself-conscious?) Or you could peg the true beginning as that primal national drama of the Paris Hilton sex tape, those strange weeks in 2004 when what initially struck me as a genuine and indelible humiliation—the kind of thing that lost former Miss America Vanessa Williams her crown twenty years earlier—transformed, in a matter of days, from a shocker into no big deal, and then into just another piece of publicity, and then into a kind of power.

I'm torn because on one hand, I keep a blog. Thus, baring part of myself to the three (maybe four, if you count Brian Hickey) people who read this blog. And I read a lot of blogs, mostly to get to know other people. I'll never forget the strange sensation at Bouchercon '05 when I sat in the hotel bar, surrounded by people I knew well but had never actually met. And just last week, Daniel Hatadi launched the very cool Crimespace, meant as an online meeting place of people who dig crime and mystery. It's like a Bouchercon without the airfare.

In other words: I think the internets is cool.

On the other hand, as a parent, I can understand the whole "horrified" thing. I never post photos of my son Parker or daughter Sarah online. I rarely discuss my family or day job here (at least, in any real detail). In fact, it's a pretty narrow focus here at Secret Dead Blog: books, writing, and other assorted geekery. There is a photo of me in the upper left-hand corner. And if you check my profile page, you know my age, astrological sign, gender, and weird affinity for RoboCop. But that's it. Only a tiny sliver of ol' Swierczy. Sharing anything more feels... well, weird.

So there you have it. I'm straddling the new generation gap like a drunk Philly cop on a Sybian.

What about you guys? Which side of the gap do you fall?

Required Reading, Vol. 3: Whatever It Takes

I'm a huge fan of 24, but after reading Jane Mayer's New Yorker piece on the show's creator, Joel Surnow, some part of me is saying, "Damnit!"

Laura Ingraham, the talk-radio host, has cited [24's] popularity as proof that Americans favor brutality. “They love Jack Bauer,” she noted on Fox News. “In my mind, that’s as close to a national referendum that it’s O.K. to use tough tactics against high-level Al Qaeda operatives as we’re going to get.”

Another interesting fact: 24 show runner Howard Gordon and Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff often socialize together. According to the piece, Chertoff says that, "Frankly, [24] reflects real life."

So the daughters of anti-terrorism agents often run up against mountain cats? The world is scarier than I thought.

Required Reading, Vol. 2: Life As We Know It

This isn't new--in fact, I'm fairly sure it's been on the web for quite a few years. But I recently stumbled across author Lewis Shiner's online autobiography, and if it isn't the best online essay on the ups and downs of being a novelist, then you need to show me what is. I first read Shiner's work in a collection of his detective stories, along with some co-written by Joe Lansdale, called Private Eye Action As You Like It. (And I just picked up a used paperback copy of his second novel, Deserted Cities of the Heart, originally released in 1988.) And like his fiction, this essay, titled "Life As We Know It," Shiner doesn't pull any punches, revealing a relentless cycle of dashed dreams and newfound hope:

There were times when the frustrations were overwhelming—insulting rejection letters, manuscripts lost, manuscripts left at the bottom of a slush pile and sent back unread when the market closed, manuscripts mutilated by the post office or stained with spilled coffee. Once a magazine returned a story—after it had been completely copy-edited for publication in green-felt tip pen—with a form rejection slip saying it "duplicates material already in our files" and no other explanation.

Yet at the same time I was slowly dragging myself up by my bootstraps, first wearing my influences like coats of bright red paint, then gradually internalizing them, then finally making my first tentative steps toward originality. I remember getting a tax refund and shelling out two hundred dollars for a reconditioned IBM Selectric. It was a profound and nearly religious experience for me to suddenly be able to produce such physically beautiful manuscripts. I loved the sound of the print ball, the smell of the ribbons, the wide "o" of the Courier font. I was determined to write something worthy of the typewriter and began a story called "Kings of the Afternoon."

If you're a writer, aspiring or otherwise, you really should read this.

Required Reading, Vol. 1: Hookers and Blow

If you're a regular visitor to Secret Dead Blog, you're probably a fan of crime fiction. Well, this week's City Paper cover story provides a double-barrel blast of the real thing. In "The Transaction," writer (and former addict) Jeff Deeney takes us on a midnight tour of Philly's sexed-up and drug-ridden underbelly, detailing a scheme that even local narc cops call "brilliant." It's also a raw, wild read. Enjoy! (Note: There's, um, a little nudity when you follow the link. Not exactly NSFW, but don't read it with your three-year-old sitting in your lap.)