Crucial Minutiae

Reviews make me jumpy. You pour your heart and soul into a book. You grapple with demons, you soar with angels, you challenge, you push, you pull. Sometimes you enjoy it, sometimes you don’t. The gratification of seeing that finished product all wrapped up between covers with a price label is, for me, unequalled. Reviewers underscore the reality that people may just not like it. Might not even have anything to do with the book. You always hear stories of great writers getting trashed by reviewers—John Updike and William Faulkner among them. Authors taught in schools have been called irrelevant in their lifetimes.
So far, I’ve been lucky enough to get some favorable nods from the grim judgment of reviewers. Knock wood.
Here is a review from the #1 reviewer on Amazon, Harriet Klausner, and Publisher’s Weekly:
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Click on Theo Gangi above for last week’s episode.

We have done this a couple of times: we go into the bathroom and pretend to be from the Youth Squad, I take the kid outside while Eddy talks the guy into giving him money, to avoid being arrested. Eddy has been making money like that all over the west side of Lower Manhattan for years. His biggest moneymaker is this kid. This is the first time I am working with the kid.
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So here’s part two of Eddie May. If you missed last week, click my name to read the beginning.

I step back and the TV disappears in darkness, the glass opaque now, with my reflection on its surface. I look bummy. I like to dress a bit better, clean shaven, cuff links now and then, how my wife likes me. She’s Puerto Rican, likes a little shine, some cologne. But Eddy told me how to dress like a detective, so I’m dressed like a detective.
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Some great books have been written and published in segments, such as Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities and Dasheill Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon. In the spirit of American episodic pulp, I thought I’d put up a story in installments. This one’s called Eddie May.

Eddy tells me we can make money together. Eddy is the best police impersonator there is. He hangs out in police bars. He goes into police stations and talks to cops in perfect jargon. He goes down to court and gets search warrants and arrest forms and types them up. Eddy fed himself in the seventies by sending little kids into bathrooms to solicit pedophiles. Then he would go in like a cop and shake them down.

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I’m going to need another day.

Cheney owes Richard Nixon a sincere debt of gratitude. How else would he know how to screw the country and not to get caught?

1. Don’t wait until the US Attorneys investigate you to fire them. Fire them before they can get the chance.
2. Don’t have illegal wiretaps. Legalize illegal wiretaps.
3. Don’t draft the unwilling public into your unpopular war. Just fight it undermanned and lose—if there’s no draft, no one will notice.
4. Use pardons to avoid snitching.
5. Don’t even be president—find a knucklehead who’s easy to manipulate.
6. Never, under any circumstances portray a tragic self-awareness, or any such humanizing behavior.

Hip-hop died last week from shock when it realized people actually took what it said seriously.

The death of hip-hop, as announced most recently by Nas, (his last album titled “Hip-hop is Dead”) became real for me this past week. Foxy Brown, after having discovered her new man was a pimp, broke up with him. As pimps are never ones to take female independence lightly, a few days later he had his girls f*** Foxy up. They ripped out her weave and stole her hearing aide. Yes, her hearing aide. Hell hath no fury like a man who controls violent women scorned.

I don’t mean to make light of Foxy’s situation, I wish the best for her. But can an art form really be considered cutting edge when its artists are having their hearing aides forcibly taken? More to the point, this seemingly trivial incident says a lot about hip-hop’s long burdened paradox. You can’t talk gangster s**t and not get treated like a gangster.

Foxy was stunned her boyfriend was a real pimp. Has she listened to a rap song in the last ten years? Or even her own lyrics? So who the playa? I still keep you in the illest gators. How long could hip-hop get away with promoting pimps, whores, gangsters and cocaine while trying to be mainstream?

There will still be some great and catchy songs. Pop music will absorb the beats. Dance clubs will play the music, beside their reggae set and disco set and eighties set. But as far as the active creation of the art form, I’m sad to say it’s all over but the crying.

Joe Torre’s Yankees were finally pronounced dead this week from blood loss due to massive head trauma, which has been slowly bleeding since 2004.

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In a recent article in New York magazine, Emily Nussbaun suggests that like Dr. Melfi and her talk therapy, the addicted viewing public became Tony’s enablers.

Given Tony Soprano’s routine violation of common decency, it is striking to see a presidential candidate play him in a skit, no matter how much of a joke it was. No matter what Tony does, he’s forgiven. He can murder his best friend, make a pass at his cousin’s wife then have her killed, and make infidelity a hobby, and never undermine his iconic status.

Hillary seems to be vying for the same kind of free pass Tony gets.
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After my post last Friday about the passing of Jerry Falwell, it occurred to me that many people do not know about a fundamental Evangelical belief—the Second Coming. While many people are familiar with terms like the Anti-Christ, Rapture, and 666, the prophecy itself seems largely unknown by those who do not believe it will occur.

In a nutshell, first there will be world peace. The Anti-Christ will unify all countries, make one currency (careful of the Euro), squash all beef and be loved as a hero. He will bear the mark of the beast (666). Then he will flip and begin the worst holocaust the world has ever known. Then all who embrace Jesus will simultaneously ascend to heaven, while the rest of us are Anti-Christ kindling.

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I’ve developed an odd habit of running into Philip Roth around the Upper West Side. On one occasion, he was with my old mentor from grad school, so I was introduced. I recently ran into Roth again, and wound up telling him about my upcoming debut novel. As soon as the words ‘Urban Thriller’ came out of my mouth, I froze.

I don’t believe there are many people who could have had that effect on me. Roth has a secure spot in my top five favorite authors. I went through growing pains with Portnoy, and marvel at his recent resurgence and prodigious work ethic. Somehow, uttering the word ‘thriller’ to him felt silly. I immediately wanted to follow it up with ‘But it’s good.’

I didn’t. We joked around a bit (he called me a ‘big shot’. Does that count as a blurb?) I made it through the conversation without falling over myself to tell him he’s one of my top five. And three are dead.

Here’s my five– feel free to post your own.

William Faulkner
Elmore Leonard
Philip Roth
Dashiell Hammett
Jack Kerouac

Barak Obama recently became the first presidential candidate to request the Secret Service for protection.

Thank god.

Seemingly arriving from nowhere (Krypton?), Obama’s meteoric rise has been remarkable. Faster than a speeding Edwards, able to leap tall Clintons in a single bound, the man of community organization has seemed invulnerable to attack. Meanwhile, Hillary has a bit of Lois Lane/Jimmy Olsen—always the target of the enemy. Hillary is already a well-worn punch line, yet Conservatives are hesitant to throw frivolous dirt at Obama.

A whole mess of parking tickets?
Aww, he’s one of us.

Says ya’ll just because he’s in the south?
Well, we can’t tell a black man not to say ya’ll, can we? So what if he’s from Hawaii.

Has a provocative, hate spewing family preacher?
Wait, should we say he’s an angry Christian or angry Muslim?

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