Jerry Stahl, Author
July 12, 2007, 8:26 a.m.
Jerry Stahl, author of the critically lauded Permanent Midnight and I, Fatty,
Jerry Stahl, author of the critically lauded Permanent Midnight
In Love Without, you write about a young boy having a sexual encounter with an older woman. Did you have any similar encounters growing up?
I wish. Though if I had, she'd now be in a rest home. Everybody deserves a little fun.
Elsewhere in Love Without, a man runs away from his life, leaving behind his career as a dentist, his family, and all of his possessions. Is this something you can personally relate to?
I took off a few times as a young misery-guts. When I was sixteen I hitched across country, to the West Coast. Hopped a freight train in Lovelock Nevada. Which makes me sound like Boxcar Willie or something. You can't do that kind of shit today. Your head would end up in a KFC bag. These days, when the shit hits, I just hide in the odd elevator shaft.
What are some projects that you're currently involved in or contemplating? Any chances of any of your other novels being adapted to film?
I'm in the middle of a novel. Working on a couple of movies. Some HBO stuff. But it's always the fiction, you know? Johnny Depp optioned I, Fatty. Stranger things have happened.
What's the most common thing said to you or asked of you during your readings?
I hear "Really?" a lot.
And what do you like to do after a reading?
Disappear.
When you were writing I, Fatty, did you find it difficult to channel Fatty Arbuckle's mental perspective while simultaneously maintaining your own every day personal life?
On a good day, Fatty's mental perspective actually was my personal life... But inventing - and occupying a character's psyche isn't some kind of stretch. For a writer, it's sort of like a vacation from your own head. There are worse ways to spend an evening.
Was it difficult to give up that perspective once the book was complete?
After a while, it's just another talking moose head on the wall.
What's one of your strangest "only in New York" moments?
About 900 years ago I had a 'bachelor' apartment on the top floor of a fifth floor walk up on 108th. It was so bachelor I shared a bathroom with the other no-money types in three other apartments. One of them was a very serious Puerto Rican drag queen who was obsessed with Jackie Kennedy. In those days I had some chemical issues, and I can't tell you the number of times, crawling down the hall to the really clean and inviting shared toilet, the bathroom door would swing open and there, putting on an eyelash and scowling, stood the classiest First Lady this nation has ever had- with an anchor tattooed on her left bicep.
Actually, that's not very strange. It probably happens once a week in Sandusky, Ohio. But at the time - I was around 22 - it felt very New York.
Which New Yorker do you most admire?
I'm gonna go with Poe. Even if people associate him with Baltimore. He lived off Washington Square. Today, I'd imagine him standing in a Gap dressing room, sobbing.
Given the opportunity, how would you change New York?
Cut rents. Evict Times Square.
What's your idea of a perfect day of recreation in New York?
I heard about these skater geeks on Coney Island who go on "rat safaris." I have no idea if it's true – or what happens on a 'rat safari- ' but it sounds as interesting as anything in the Arts and Leisure section. If that's not happening - I'll go with passing out on the subway, then waking up in my own bed and realizing it was some kind of heinous flashback. That's some high-end New York recreating.
Jerry Stahl will be reading at Barnes and Noble at 33 E 17th St on Thursday July 12th at 7 PM and at the KGB Bar at 85 E. 4th St on Sunday, July 15th at 7 PM.