Into The Noir
I'm bound for Chicago shortly to promote the now-officially-existing Chicago Noir. Kevin Guilfoile and I will be reading on Wednesday night at Barbara's Bookstore, 1218 S. Halsted. When I last received mail in Chicago, that was still part of the old Maxwell Street District. The irony isn't lost on me (most irony isn't) that I'll be promoting a book about a vanishing city on top of the bones of that city's most emblematic lost neighborhood. Anyway, get there at 7 PM. The crowd will be extraordinary. And read Kevin's Chicago Noir story, which was excerpted in this week's Chicago Reader.
I must now hand over books 37 and 38. One is Wrecking Crew, the world's first and best punk-rock baseball book. This is a nonfiction story of a bunch of junkies, musicians, and unemployed actors who decide to form an amateur baseball team on the East Side of Los Angeles. If that description alone doesn't make you want to buy the book, I don't know what will. At last, a contemporary baseball book that lives outside the moronic "Moneyball" debate.
I'm also reading Tough Jews, by Rich Cohen. The book has been around for a while now, but one can never read enough about Jewish gangster life in the first half of the 20th Century.
There is sad news to report. Fletcher Farrington, a Savannah, Georgia civil-rights attorney, has passed away. I mention this because Fletcher was a student in my first online satire-writing class. He brought wit and perspective to the proceedings, and was a good friend and mentor to some of the younger students. Fletcher was a perfect gentleman, and he will be missed.