DJ-Anonyme@webtv.net wrote:
>
> November and December are Lawrence Block months here
at Rara-Avis.
> And I'm honored to introduce him, not that he needs
an introduction here
> (and not that I'm a particular authority on him, but
I have been a long
> time fan). So I thought I'd offer a brief summary of
his career as a
> starting point for discussion.
>
In a similar spirit here's a short article I wrote about
Block for GQ a decade or so back. It's pretty general as I
couldn't assume the readership would know much about him.
There are some interesting outtakes which I'll dig out over
the next month.
John
Laurence Block looks like a villain. Not a real villain, not
a dodgy shell-suited geezer with a shooter, but a movie
supervillain. With his egg-head, luxuriant moustache and
soft, faintly sinister voice, Block would make an ideal
criminal mastermind.
Which is appropriate enough, really. After all Block is a man
who has written a series of bestselling novels about a
lovable burglar, and is currently toying with a book of
stories about a man named Keller, who he describes as 'a
wistful hitman'.
Laurence Block is a survivor of the golden age of pulp
fiction. He published his first story back in 1957, when he
was still in college, and spent the next ten years pumping
out a whole slew of novels under assorted names - "A lot of
spicy novels" he recalls, talking over a plate of curried
vegetables in a west London tandoori palace, "But mostly
crime fiction of one sort or another."
Over the years that 'one sort or another' has gradually
boiled down to two of the most enduringly popular series in
American crime. First came the Matt Scudder novels, dark,
troubled detective novels of an alcoholic ex-cop, a man whose
cases are all lost causes, the forgotten murders of the Naked
City. Then came the Burglar novels - warm-hearted capers
featuring second-hand bookseller and thief Bernie Rhodenbarr,
the Raffles of Greenwich Village.
So how does one man write two such dissimilar series? "I
don't find it surprising that I can write such different
kinds of books, both light and dark," he replies, "I find it
surprising that everyone else doesn't. Most people have more
than one side to them."
The new Matt Scudder novel, _Even The Wicked_, the twisting
tale of an unusually public-spirited psychopath, is the
thirteenth in the series. Twenty years on from his first
appearance Matt Scudder is a changed man. Back in the
seventies he was an alcoholic ex-cop, seperated for his
family and living out of a midtown hotel. Now he's a sober
and successful P.I. in a steady relationship. It's a
transformation that has its parallels in his creator's own
life.
"Yes," says Block,"When I started writing those novels I was
living on that block in New York (that Scudder lived on) and
I was recently seperated from my then wife and family. So
that was a parallel, though Scudder is not by any means me.
As for my own drinking. I can't too much talk about it, but I
can say that I used to drink rather like Scudder and I don't
drink at all these days. At first I thought hard drinking
would be a part of Scudder's character, I never had any idea
there would be a time he would stop drinking. But in the
fourth book it becomes clear that he has a problem and the
fifth book is about that problem, inasmuch as it's about
anything."
Since then the Scudder novels have often been as much
concerned with Scudder's battle to stay sober as with his
crimebusting exploits. I wondered if he'd been influenced in
this respect by James Lee Burke's Robicheaux novels, works
likewise preoccupied with the need to take life one day at a
time: "No, the books are so different, the only common tie is
that both detective are alcoholics who are sober now." he
says, before laughing and observing that "It's getting
difficult these days to find an American detective who isn't
in some 12 step program or other."
One fictional protagonist who isn't is Block's burglar,
Bernie Rhodenbarr, a man whose only addiction is to breaking
into other people's apartments. Block explains that Bernie
wasn't so much conceived as an antidote to the darkness of
the Scudder books, but as a direct product of them: "I'd
started a novel where Scudder's client was a burglar, but
that didn't work out. Then I though I'd try it without
Scudder, and with the burglar himself as the protagonist. And
I had no idea in advance that I was going to make it light
and funny. The character simply appeared on the page that
way.".
Another way Block didn't anticipate the character appearing
was the way he did in the one movie made from the series.
"Bernie was played by Whoopi Goldberg!" laughs Block, still
incredulous years after the event,
"I can only assume that I didn't describe Bernie fully enough
and they made a natural mistake!" he goes on, tongue firmly
in cheek. "I'm just grateful that my efforts have been in
print rather than screenwriting."
Hollywood, however, has not yet given up on Laurence Block.
There are assorted movie and TV projects in the offing, but
Block is content to sit back and let others worry about that
while he carries on with what he does best - and as well as
any writer alive - which is to write classic popular fiction
that always respects his readers' desire to be entertained
but never insults their intelligence.
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 01 Nov 2007 EDT