Jim Fusilli

Q&A

June 25, 2003

In this interview conducted on June 25, 2003, Jim Fusilli discusses his latest novel TRIBECA BLUES, the third installment in the Terry Orr series. He talks about some of the key players in the story, the origin of the title, and why he felt slightly uncomfortable writing one particular scene in the book.


Q: You've made some changes to the series, haven't you?

JF: I don't think so. Well, maybe. But what happens is a natural progression of the Terry Orr story. I mean, what Terry discovers is shocking; in fact, several things he discovers are shocking. And he's forced to confront himself as he hasn't done before. But there's nothing here that isn't foreshadowed in CLOSING TIME or A WELL-KNOWN SECRET. Anyone who's read those books might guess what happens in TRIBECA BLUES.

Not that you've had to read those earlier books. TRIBECA BLUES stands on its own as a crime story, a detective story. It's self-contained. Everyone's motivations are clear.

Q: You kill off a major character in the first few pages of TRIBECA BLUES. Is that prudent?

JF: Well, in this case, it's a character who had lost the will to live. I think Terry says this character concocted a scheme to commit slow suicide.

I'm not sure I agree he was a major character. He was a presence, a sort of a touchstone, and I liked him. But he wasn't very active. I don't think he'll vanish from the series. Remember, some of the principle characters in the series are dead: Terry's wife Marina and their son Davy, for example. And until TRIBECA BLUES, we never actually saw Raymond Montgomery Weisz and he's always been a major character.

Q: Is Weisz based on anyone you know?

JF: No. I've known a lot of musicians who were deeply troubled. I saw Jaco Pastorius at his worst, I think. I spent some time with Peter Green. As a journalist, I'm sort of drawn to the stories of people like Syd Barrett, Skip Spence and others, people with a level of talent who lack, or did lack, a certain stability. I don't know why.

But Weisz isn't based on anyone. You see people on the streets of New York who could be Weisz, and you wonder how they came to fall so far. When I see these people, I always wonder if there was a particular event that triggered a profound psychotic episode that's now extended for an indefinite period or if the psychosis slowly developed over decades. In Weisz's case, both things are true.

Q: He emerges as a sympathetic figure.

JF: I don't want to say a lot about Weisz because it reveals too much about what happens in TRIBECA BLUES, which won't be available until October. But we must remember that virtually everything we know about Weisz, we've learned from Terry, who may not be a reliable source. I mean, you can't expect a man to have a balanced, unbiased view about the person he's convinced killed his wife and son.

Q: Weisz's mother seems horrible.

JF: She's a type, someone who's blinded by ambition, by a need for status, which is a manifestation of a vile kind of self-loathing. I loved writing her because, when you have a type like that, the challenge is to give her depth and make her real, even vaguely sympathetic. You run the risk of taking the reader out of the story a bit with so much bio-data and detail, but I think it's worth it in the end, particularly if that character has had an influence on other characters in the story. Readers can understand, or even anticipate, what a character may do because they know his or her history.

Q: The scene in Woodlawn Cemetery is frightening. Did you go there?

JF: Yeah, but during the day. The same thing with Bronx Zoo, where a major sequence takes place. But not in the middle of the night in either place. Are you kidding? Trust me, Terry did that on his own.

But Woodlawn's a great place to visit if, you know, you find yourself in the Bronx. Duke Ellington is buried there, Miles Davis, King Oliver, W.C. Handy. Damon Runyan and Nellie Bly. Herman Melville. It's great. Very tranquil. I spent some time there researching Bella's book. Thomas Nast is buried there, and so is Jay Gould, and they're both in her novel.

Q: So you are actually writing the book that Bella is writing in the series? How's that going?

JF: I've got a pretty good version of it now. It's called MORDECAI FOXX AND THE FOURTH MAN and it's a crime story that takes place in New York in the 1870s. I like it. It's like one of those old serials --- a cliffhanger now and then, damsels in distress, evildoers, the whole deal. My agent said it's like a cowboy story, a Western, except it takes place in Manhattan in the era immediately after Boss Tweed was taken down. Mordecai Foxx is a vivid character, very distinct. He's an "unassigned detective." And there's a little girl, Sofie, who's in grave danger. You can see how Bella chose this story to write, can't you?

In the Terry Orr series, Terry's agent has the manuscript and is trying to place it. Bella acts like she doesn't care --- she's 15 years old and she's got a good handle on that teenage insouciance thing --- but we know Bella's weakness is money. If Terry's agent manages to get a good deal… Who knows what will happen?

Q: TRIBECA BLUES marks the first time in the series that Terry leaves New York City.

JF:When Terry played basketball for St. John's, he used to travel all the time. And when Marina was showing her paintings, he accompanied her to Europe and to big cities in the U.S. He falls right back into it pretty easily --- though Bella's arranged for a caravan to tag along. But he behaves just as he does in New York City. That's been my experience traveling in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Europe. Just stick to the routine.

Q: Will Terry be working on cases outside of New York in the future?

JF: I think so. In the book that will be out in 2004, which is tentatively titled THE JUDAS COINS, he spends a lot of time in the upper middle-class communities along the Atlantic coast in New Jersey. I have it in my mind to have him in Italy in the sixth book, back in Marina's birthplace. That could be very interesting.

Q: How did you come up with the title TRIBECA BLUES?

JF: I had about 10 minutes to come up with a title, it seemed. We had a different one, one that was really perfect. And then we found out that two other mysteries were coming out with that title. About that time, I was writing an article for The Wall Street Journal on the state of the blues, and I was listening to nothing but blues for days. My editor at Putnam suggested we put something about New York in the title. So I was walking around the house going "Hmmm. Manhattan Blues. New York Blues. Downtown Blues. Riverside Park Blues," which sounded a bit like a Robert Johnson song. "Columbus Avenue Blues." Some awful stuff. Then I just said, "Tribeca Blues." Why not, right? Terry and Bella live there. Leo's bar is there, so Diddio's there all the time. Even Daniel Wu lives there.

Q: Daniel Wu is a terrific character.

JF: I love Daniel. Everybody who's read TRIBECA BLUES does, which is very gratifying. I'm going to have to do something special with him.

Q: You've written your first love scene in this book.

JF: Not first love scene --- CLOSING TIME had a lot of love scenes. I think you mean "first sex scene." Sex is a theme in TRIBECA BLUES --- covert sex, back-alley sex, the ramifications of that kind of thing. So there had to be a sex scene between two people who have genuine affection for each other. In the context of the story, I think it works. It's sensual but not salacious. It wasn't easy to write.

Q: Why not?

JF: I'm not sure. I felt a little squeamish. I don't know. I'm not a prude, but maybe I had too many years of Catholic school or something. You know, if you're going to write it, you have to write it well. You've got to feel it and make it real. You can't be saying "wee-wee" and "boobies" any more than you can say "throbbing member" or "heaving love mounds" or some bullshit like that. It's got to be as believable as when you've got him walking down the street.

Q: The story begins with a psychologist's report on Terry and it doesn't portray him in a flattering light. Why did you do that?

JF: Well, it goes back to getting the reader caught up. Terry comes across some disturbing information in TRIBECA BLUES, and I think the reader needs an idea why it's so, so devastating. I mean, maybe it's clear in the text, but I just wanted to add a little more. A little more depth.

I don't think it's really unflattering to Terry. To me, it sounds just like him: intellectually sophisticated, occasionally charming, contentious and aggressive. He is narcissistic. He is repressed.

Q: Is Terry based on anybody you know?

JF: Stop it.

Q: No, really.

JF: You mean, a particular narcissistic, repressed, contentious, aggressive person? You know, the narrator in a novel that uses the first person doesn't necessarily represent the writer or the writer's personality.

Q: Oh really?

JF: OK. Enough. Thanks.

© Copyright 2003, Jim Fusilli. All rights reserved.

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Q&A

October 3, 2002

Q: When did you decide to become a novelist?

JF: I loved books as a kid - my father used to bring me a Golden Book every evening when he came home from work, and my mother loved to read. It occurred to me one day that these books were created by people, so maybe I could do it too.

But writing a novel takes more discipline than I had at an early age, and I was distracted by journalism and music. I shouldn't say 'distracted' because it sounds negative and I'm very happy to be a music critic and a musician. But it took me a long time to understand that writing novels couldn't be a part-time thing. It had to be my primary passion.

Q: And why a mystery writer?

JF: I love a great mystery, a great crime drama, particularly when the focus is on the person who's trying to find out what's going on while he or she is struggling with personal demons and the realities of the world at large. As a writer, I think the genre offers unlimited possibilities. I mean, the tradition is strong but it isn't necessarily binding. On the surface, the genre is very simple: Something terrible has happened and the bad guys who did it have to be brought to justice. But then it can go anywhere, and it's not simple at all.

Q: Which authors have had the biggest influence on you?

JF: As a novelist or a person?

Q: As a novelist.

JF: My influences aren't only novelists. Dylan's lyrics, or Tom Waits', Joni Mitchell's, Marley's; David Mamet's plays, August Wilson's or Tom Stoppard's; Billy Wilder's films, Ernest Lehmann's screenplays, the Coen Brothers - their work really excited me, and still does. They give me a sort of rush, what Lou Reed calls "the wonderful fire," and they make me want to communicate my ideas in creative ways, in very specific ways. But never in the same way they do.

What I mean is, when I come across a Waits lyric like "I was stirring my brandy with a nail, boys," with that kind of imagery and economy of words, I'd like to see if I can do something like that in my novels. Or Paul Newman's reaction, and the way the air leaves the room, in "The Hustler," when George C. Scott says to Jackie Gleason, "Stick with this kid. He's a loser." If I could capture a moment like that in a novel, where a character is revealed in two terse sentences, I would be very pleased.

The novelists who've influenced me have done so in a less visceral and more cerebral way. I can feel the writer's ideas taking root down to the sub-conscious level. Reading a writer who is communicating something profound and personal is a life-changing experience. Writers like Philip Roth, Saul Bellow and Isaac Bashevis Singer, for example, allowed me to see a parallel universe, as did Ralph Ellison. F. Scott Fitzgerald also. Sinclair Lewis. Reading Sinclair Lewis as a teenager was an enormous revelation to me.

I can cite dozens of examples. There's a sentence in a Brian Moore novel that changed my life. But there's been a visceral impact too. The ending of Penelope Fitzgerald's The Bookshop - I can't shake it. Every time I iron a shirt I'm transported to the tense, somber mood in Howard Norman's The Museum Guard. And so on.

Q: What about mystery writers? Who are your favorites?

JF: I don't draw a distinction. But I think it's obvious what I found in Chandler - that sort of symbiosis of a man and a city, the dogged pursuit of justice for no other reason than it needs to be done, the eye for the odd, revealing detail. Robert Parker is someone whose work I admire - his Early Autumn is one of my favorite books. Walter Moseley is terrific, regardless of genre. I like the old guys a lot - Chester Himes, Jim Thompson, Vera Caspary, Goodis. Ross Macdonald, of course. John Franklin Bardin, though people don't talk about him much. James Cain.

Q: What about some of the newer mystery writers?

JF: When I started writing Closing Time, which was about 10 years ago, I decided I wasn't going to read any contemporary mystery writers because I didn't want to be influenced by what was already being done. So I have a lot of catching up to do. I've read a few of the new guys and I'm very impressed. They're very, very good, and the work stands up against any era's, I think.

Q: Would you care to mention anyone in particular?

JF: Lehane, Pelecanos, Michael Connelly. I shouldn't do this because I'm going to leave someone out. Coben. Tom Perry. I thought The Ritual Bath by Faye Kellerman was superb.

Q: If you had to choose one book to read again, what would it be?

JF: The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald. Or Chandler's Farewell, My Lovely.

Q: What led you to write Closing Time?

JF: I wanted to accomplish three things with my first novel: to have a mystery series set in New York City; to have the principal characters completely governed by their back stories, their personal histories - to be prisoners of their histories; and to write about social issues with resorting to polemics or proselytizing. I had a few other things in mind - I wanted the protagonist private investigator to be inexperienced and to have a family, and I wanted the characters to get older as the series progressed. But when I set out to sketch out the first outline, those first three things were in the most important.

The social issue in the first book is the importance of fathers - not just to a child or a family, but to the community and society. I wanted to show how the structure falls apart when fathers don't do their job for their children.

Q: Does that include your detective, Terry Orr?

JF: Well, Terry is a pretty good father in some ways and not at all good in other ways. It remains to be seen whether he is providing Bella what she needs.

Q: One of the crimes in Closing Time has to do with the art world. Why did you choose that instead of the music world?

JF: Terry is so despondent over the death of his wife and their young son that he's incapable of meaningful action. I thought the only thing that might shake him from his fog would be a crime within the New York downtown visual art's scene, where his late wife Marina Fiorentino was highly regarded as a painter, a crime that involved someone who was good to her. That would draw in Terry in an emotional, rather than intellectual, way. You know, for all the self-analysis Terry does, and for his obvious intelligence, he is someone who reacts on a gut level. For him, thought follows a visceral response.

As far as the music world goes, there's nothing interesting about it except the music. I'm sure I'll write my observations about the music business one day - there is a rock critic in the series, and in A WELL-KNOWN SECRET we met a musician who will be a reoccurring character, so there's a platform already to do it. But not now. Not yet.

Q: Music is an important part of your life. How did you become interested in music?

JF: What a question. It's like asking someone how he became interested in breathing.

My parents loved music. My father was a singer - he had a fine voice, in the Sinatra mold. With due respect to Jimmy Roselli, we used to say my father was the second-best vocalist from Hoboken. My mother, on the other hand, gave new meaning to the term "caterwauling." She could really bruise an ear, if you know what I mean.

Q: Were you a Sinatra fan?

JF: As a kid? No. He was my parents' thing, not mine. He was such a big, huge presence in Hoboken, especially in the Italian parts of town, that he was an annoyance, to be honest with you.

But I did admire him because he figured how to get out of Hoboken. I've written about this a few times. Even as a kid I recognized that. I'd ask older men in the neighborhood if they knew Sinatra and, invariably they'd say, 'Yeah, I used to beat the shit out of him.' All cocky like that. But there was Sinatra -- on top the world. I thought, 'Mmmm, maybe it'd be best to move on.'

Of course, I came to appreciate his artistry. But I owe him a big debt for paving a road out of Hoboken.

Q: You are Italian-American, aren't you?

JF: Yes, I am. I'm very proud to be of Italian descent, and I'm well aware of the struggle my grandparents endured to make it possible for me to succeed.

Q: Terry Orr seems to appreciate anything that has to do with Italy-

JF: The answer is yes.

Q: But he doesn't seem to draw distinctions about race and religion, for example. But he seems to think everything that's Italian is the best. Why is that?

JF: I suppose the short answer would be is that his wife was Italian. But it's more than that. There's a lot more to Terry Orr than there may seem to be.

Q: What about A WELL-KNOWN SECRET?

JF: It's two years after Closing Time and Terry is drawn into a case involving a missing person. Soon, he's looking into a 30-year-old murder and robbery of a diamond merchant, and he's drawn into a web of deceit than brings him into contact with a Hispanic civic leader, a Moroccan theater operator and what appears to be several crooked cops. People who read Closing Time will be familiar with two of the squirrelly guys - Tommy and Jimmy Mango.

And meanwhile Bella is growing up, and she and Terry, like so many people who live in downtown New York, are dealing with the aftermath of September 11.

Q: Was it difficult to write about September 11?

JF: Not, not really. The difficult part was spending time in TriBeCa, Chinatown, Little Italy and other places downtown and seeing how the people were suffering, and how frightened they were. I saw that they were victims too, and I wanted to memorialize what they were going through. It's just a small part of the book, but it was important to me. I wanted to pay tribute to the people who were keeping downtown alive. You know, lend my voice to the choir.

Q: But you write about what your characters went through on September 11.

JF: That was inevitable. Terry and Bella live less than a mile from the World Trade Center, and Terry jogs on West Street almost every day. But, more to the point, probably, is that September 11 changed them, just like it changed all of us.

I don't want to dwell on this because A WELL-KNOWN SECRET isn't about September 11. It's a crime novel, a mystery. It takes place in New York City, with a private investigator and cops, and bad guys… It's fiction.

Q: Okay. Your bio says you have a daughter. Did you base Bella on her?

JF: No, I don't think so. Bella is the character in the series I most strongly identify with. Fortunately, I never faced the kind of tragedy she has at a young age - the death of her mother and brother - but, like her, at some point in my life I just decided to block out the tumult around me, go my own way and carve out a way to do things that was my own.

I enjoy Terry and have great sympathy for him. But Bella is my favorite. I mean, she has a bit of a flaw and it's beginning to show in A WELL-KNOWN SECRET. So we'll see if she can stay as special as she is. But everybody likes Bella, with good reason, I think. Not everybody likes Terry.

Q: How do you deal with that?

JF: You mean having a protagonist that some people don't like? I suppose it's a good thing that he seems real enough that people have that kind of reaction. But I'll tell you a story. I did a lot of in-store appearances in 2001 to promote Closing Time and sat in a bunch of reading groups, and I met a lot of women who read the book. Men too, but more women, I'd said. Some of these women were very aggressive about Terry. They'd say, "He's not doing his job with Bella. He's too self-absorbed. Doesn't he realize he's got a child to care for?" Then other women would say, "If Terry had a good woman in his life, he'd be much better off." After awhile, I began to notice that the women who were angry at Terry were married and had kids, and the ones who wanted to care for him were single and didn't have kids. Not every time, but more or less.

My own wife doesn't like Terry. Isn't that something?

Q: To go back to an earlier point, we don't know very much about Terry, do we?

JF: Not yet, no. Terry's personal reflections rarely go back beyond when he met his wife. As long as the idea that he has to find Raymond Montgomery Weisz, the man he believes killed her and their son, dominates his thinking, he's really incapable of examining his life in total. And yet he does very little to find Weisz, and he nurtures his obsession, and cultivates the idea that his life began when he met Marina. Strange.

Q: Is Weisz real?

JF: In the world that Terry, Bella and the others inhabit? Oh yes. He's very real and his existence is a danger to Terry.

Q: Will we meet him?

JF: (no reply)

Q: Is that your answer? A smile?

JF: Yes. That's my answer.


© Copyright 2002, Jim Fusilli. All rights reserved.

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