Noir at the New Hope Bar

From left: Wallace Stroby, William Hastings, Dennis Tafoya, Scott Adlerberg

Noir at the Bar made a convivial, entertaining, informative return on Thursday evening to the state where it was born. The place was John and Peter's in New Hope, Pa., the literary midwife was Farley's Bookshop, and the author/readers were Wallace Stroby, William Hastings, Dennis Tafoya, Scott Adlerberg, and Don Lafferty.

Highlights included Stroby on why he called his upcoming novel Shoot the Woman First, Tafoya with a stunningly good bit of post-violence emotional confrontation from a novel that should see the light of day next year, and three guys who were either new to me or who I had not known were writers in addition to their accomplishments in other fields.

I may post more after a good night's sleep, but for now, I was pleased with the happy medium we achieved between my original one- or two-author Noirs at the Bar (I started the concept in 2008), with a question-and-answer session with each writer; and the high-spirited literary mosh pits that Jedidiah Ayres and Scott Phillips made of their events in St. Louis. (Noir at the Bar has since spread to New York, Los Angeles, Austin, I believe San Diego, and, in an unprecedented harmonic Noir at the Bar convergence, Denver, where a Noir at the Bar also took place last night.)

Each  of the five authors here in New Hope read from his work, I threw out a question, and the questions turned into discussions, with all the writers eventually gathering on stage to take matters largely into their own hands.  I'd like to do this again, and I think we will. The original Noir at the Bar lives.

© Peter Rozovsky 2013

Noir at the Bar brings it all back home this Thursday

If you're in Pennsylvania, New York, or New Jersey, or if you can get there by 9 p.m. Thursday, come on out to John & Peter's at 96 South Main St. in New Hope, Pennsylvania, for the return of the original Noir at the Bar.

Dennis Tafoya and Wallace Stroby, both of whom I've written about here, will read from new work, and Scott Adlerberg, previously unknown to me, will join them. Tafoya, a reader in the original Noir at the Bar series, becomes the first two-time guest in the state where Noir at the Bar was born.

I started Noir at the Bar in 2008 and good people and talented writers in St. Louis, Los Angeles, New York, Austin, Denver, and elsewhere took the idea, ran with it, and staged Noirs at the Bar of their own. So, thanks to Scott Phillips, Jed Ayres, Eric Beetner, Scott at Mystery People, Todd Robinson, and anyone else who ever threw a Noir at the Bar. Drop me a line here, and I'll give you a plug Thursday night.

And thanks to the hardworking, crime-loving folks at Farley's Bookshop for putting this thing together.

© Peter Rozovsky 2013

Noir at the Bar comes back home

Philco 90 cathedral-style radio, 1931

Noir at the Bar is a quintessential Philadelphia phenomenon: It started here before other people took it elsewhere and made it bigger and better. But, while Philadelphia is no likelier to resume its status as the U.S. capital any time soon than Philco is to start making radios again, Noir at the Bar is coming back home.

The date is Thursday, May 23, the time is 9 p.m., the bar is John & Peter's at 96 South Main St. in New Hope, PA, and the noir is courtesy of Wallace Stroby and Dennis Tafoya, plus a special guest or two. Sponsors are the good folks at the excellent Farley's Bookshop, purveyors of fine reading material at Noircon since 2010.

Noir at the Bar has become an international phenomenon since I started it in June 2008, first guest Philadelphia's own Duane Swierczynski. Los Angeles has a Noir at the Bar series. There's one in New York. Austin, Texas, has staged a Noir at the Bar. Declan Burke and John McFetridge came to Philadelphia for a special international Noir at the Bar, and I hosted an evening with Sean Chercover and Howard Shrier in Toronto a few years ago. But the kings of neo-Noir at the Bar are Jedidiah Ayres and Scott Phillips, whose St. Louis Noirs at the Bar have spawned not one, but two collections of short fiction.   Jed and Scott: Make it to New Hope, and I'll buy you a drink.

And the rest of you are invited, too. Long live the New Original Noir at the Bar!

© Peter Rozovsky 2013

What I got at Noircon

Here's what I bought, won, otherwise acquired, got hold of in preparation for, or added to my list after hearing about it at Noircon. Thanks are due to the discerning and opinionated folks from Farley's Bookshop, purveyor of fine books to Noircon since 2010.

• Like a Sniper Lining Up His Shot, adapted by Jacques Tardi from the novel The Prone Gunman by Jean-Patrick Manchette
• 23 Shades of Black by Kenneth Wishnia
• The Fifth Servant by Kenneth Wishnia
• Dirty Work by Larry Brown
• Dark Ride by Kent Harrington
• The Rat Machine by Kent Harrington
• Charles Jessold, Considered as a Murderer by Wesley Stace
• The Heartbreak Lounge by Wallace Stroby
• Bad Juju & Other Tales of Madness and Mayhem by Jonathan Woods
• Hell by Robert Olen Butler
• Line of Sight by David Whish-Wilson
• Time to Murder and Create by Lawrence Block
• Afterthoughts by Lawrence Block
• Crime Factory: Hard Labour

© Peter Rozovsky 2012

In the tweet of the night

Wallace Stroby ‏Just realized this is the first presidential election night since 1986 I haven't spent in a newsroom. Miss it. Sort of.

DBeyondBorders @wallacestroby Nah, who needs all that congealed pizza?

Wallace Stroby @DBeyondBorders: Stale newsroom pizza = the smell of democracy in action.

DBeyondBorders @wallacestroby: Hunks of that democracy rancidifying in the pit of my digestive system now. You coming to Noircon? I can save you a slice.

Wallace Stroby @DBeyondBorders I'll be there. Enjoy that pizza. It's what makes America great.

© Peter Rozovsky 2012

Thuglit at the Bar

I discovered this week that some folks had staged a Noir at the Bar in New York, adding to a list of Noir at the Bar cities that includes L.A., Austin, Toronto, St. Louis, and the place where it started, right here in Philadelphia.

The New Yorkers brought in some good people to read, including Wallace Stroby, but the big find for me was Todd Robinson, because he's the Thuglit Web zine guy. I'd never read Thuglit even though it published authors like Stuart Neville and Hilary Davidson. But I'm a fan now, based on "Rags to Riches" by Joe Clifford and "Five Kilos" by Mike Wilkerson, both in Issue #38, and I've bought Robinson's own collection of stories, Dirty Words, plus Blood, Guts, and Whiskey (Thuglit Presents), a collection stories, most of which appeared first in the Web zine.

The blog post where I learned about the New York event properly credits Jed Ayres and Scott Phillips for what they've done with Noir at the Bar in St. Louis. But Ayres and Phillips, those generous gents, know how to acknowledge their inspirations.

© Peter Rozovsky 2012

A school of crime?

Several crime novels I've read recently share certain features: yearning emotion, stories  at least as wistful as they are tragic, and empathy with characters whatever their orientation on the legal or even moral compass. Some of the books enhance the effect by alternating point of view among several characters.

Most notable to me has been that the emotion suffuses not just the characters but the social and physical landscapes as well. The books are The Wolves of Fairmount Park, by Dennis Tafoya (Philadelphia); Done for a Dime by David Corbett (San Francisco Bay Area); and Cold Shot to the Heart by Wallace Stroby, whose heister heroine ranges fairly widely.

Domenic Stansberry's The Big Booom (San Francisco) may belong on the list as well. Same with John McFetridge's novels (Toronto, Montreal, and those American cities just over the border from them).

Several of these books have publishers, editors, or both in common. So, how many crime writers does it take to make a school, anyhow?

© Peter Rozovsky 2011

What does literary "influence" mean?

Larry McMurtry's introduction to the NYRB edition of Georges Simenon's Monsieur Monde Vanishes is all about the urge to disappear and start a new life, but it does not mention the Flitcraft parable from The Maltese Falcon.

The omission is odd because McMurtry does cite other literary parallels. I don't necessarily suggest that Hammett influenced Simenon, but I'd be curious about McMurtry's reason for the omission. (The Maltese Falcon predates Simenon's novel by sixteen years, in case you're wondering.)

***

The estimable Brian Lindenmuth said of Wallace Stroby's novel Cold Shot to the Heart: "Imagine a Parker novel if Parker was a woman," and I won my copy in a contest on the Violent World of Parker Web site. Indeed, Stroby inscribed the book: "To Peter, who really knows his Richard Stark [the pen name under which Donald Westlake wrote the Parker novels]."

The novel opens mid-heist, as do the middle-period Parker novels, and some of its middle chapters open in mid-action ("When ...), like the early Parkers.  Thing is, the book doesn't feel much like a Parker.

Its heister-on-the-run plot feels more like a tale of doomed lovers on the run (though protagonist Chrissa's lover is in prison, she doesn't mean to leave him there), and the story tugs at the heartstrings in ways Stark never did.  And it is to Stroby's considerable credit that the two biggest heartstring-tuggers work nicely as plot elements, one of them especially so. The book may yank at your heart, but it won't insult your mind.

Stroby has undoubtedly read his Richard Stark, but his novel, for all its surface similarities, feels very different from Stark's books. And that leads to today's question: What do you mean when you say, "Author or Book A influenced Author or Book B"? In what ways does one author or book influence another?

© Peter Rozovsky 2011

Deadlier than the mail: A list of books received

I'm suffering a surfeit of newly acquired books. They've come new, and they've come secondhand. They've come from bookshops in New York, Philadelphia, and Montreal, and by mail from authors, publishers and publicists. Today I found a crime novel on the window sill at my local bakery with a sign that said: "Take me. I'm free."

I enter a contest to win a book, my correct answer is not the one drawn, but the author sends me the book anyway as a consolation prize.

They're comics and they're traditional books, and they're by Garry Disher, Georges Simenon, Jason Aaron, Greg Rucka, and the authors I wrote about here. And it all leaves me with a vertigo of indecision over what to read next.

Some notes from my browsing:

• Bang-up openings to new novels from Wallace Stroby and Rebecca Cantrell.

• The latest trade paperback collection of Scalped is blessedly free of the behind-the-scenes gimmicks that bulk up the size and price of special, ultimate, mega, super, premium, prestige, deluxe, and definitive editions of many comics. The reader gets nothing but hard-hitting story.

• Queen and Country: The Definitive Edition, Volume 4 is not so blessedly free, but it's a fine book anyway, with exciting back stories for key characters and, as always in this series, settings recent enough to lend a frisson of immediacy. Espionage fiction exists after the Cold War.
  

But the following, from Crash by J.G. Ballard, may be my favorite of the lot:

"He thought of the crashes of honeymoon couples, seated together after their impacts with the rear suspension units of runaway sugar-tankers."

Now, off on dinner break — with four books.

© Peter Rozovsky 2011

A dose of Stark reality

A contest entry this week turned into a busman's holiday for me with Donald Westlake, writing with his Richard Stark hat on. Here are some of the highlights:

"In a world gone mad, self-interest approached the level of a sacrament, so it was with a will that Baron launched himself into his new found vocation: Looking Out for Number One."

The Handle

"Littlefield leaned closer to him. `You're a young man, you can still learn. Pay attention to this. You can steal in this country, you can rape and murder, you can bribe public officials, you can pollute the morals of the young, you can burn your place of business down for the insurance money, you can do almost anything you want, and if you act with just a little caution and common sense you'll never even be indicted. But if you don't pay your income tax, Grofield, you will go to jail."

The Score

"Casey went, reluctantly, and all the way he kept trying to explain to Grofield that Grofield didn’t have to do any of this. Grofield took him around into the darkness beside the dormitory and hit him with the pistol butt and Casey lay down on the ground and stopped explaining things."

The Handle

"`You’re all right, Parker.’ Scofe raised his head and smiled. He was filthy, and his eyes were covered by a white film, and his teeth were brown. When he smiled, he looked like a parody of something unspeakable. `You’re all right,’ he said again. `You don’t mean all those things you say to me.’"

The Score

***

Trent Reynolds hosts the contest, and Wallace Stroby supplies the prize. The question involves Stark and Dashiell Hammett. That's good, because, as Parker will tell you, any job that requires more than four or five men is no good.

Visit Reynolds' Violent World of Parker site to enter.

© Peter Rozovsky 2011