Lawrence Block - Afterthoughts: Version 2.0

Afterthoughts 2.0

Lawrence Block

~

More by Lawrence Block

NON-FICTION

NOVELS

THE MATTHEW SCUDDER NOVELS

THE BERNIE RHODENBARR MYSTERIES

KELLERS GREATEST HITS

THE ADVENTURES OF EVAN TANNER

THE AFFAIRS OF CHIP HARRISON

COLLECTED SHORT STORIES

BOOKS FOR WRITERS

WRITTEN FOR PERFORMANCE

ANTHOLOGIES EDITED

~

Afterthoughts 2.0

Lawrence Block

Second Edition, Updated and Expanded

Copyright 2021, by Lawrence Block

All Rights Reserved. This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any meansspoken, written, photocopy, printed, electronic, mechanical, recording, or otherwise through any means not yet known or in usewithout prior written permission of the publisher, except for purposes of review.

Cover & Interior by JW Manus

A LAWRENCE BLOCK PRODUCTION

~

Contents

Midcentury Erotica
Sheldon Lord and Andrew Shaw

~

Introduction to the 2011 edition:

Sometime in the mid-1990s, I was in residence at Ragdale, a writers colony in Lake Forest, Illinois. I had a six-week stay booked, and upon arrival I went straight to work on what would eventually become The Burglar in the Library. I worked hard for perhaps three weeks, and got quite a bit written, but pulled up short when I realized the book had taken a serious wrong turn and I wasnt ready to straighten it out.

Well, these things happen. I had the sense to put the book aside and work on other things. I wrote two stories about Keller that became chapters in Hit Man, and I wrote an introduction to a hardcover edition of The Canceled Czech. And then, with a week to go, I started work on a memoir.

I hadnt been thinking of this, at least not consciously. But what I decided was that Id write a book about my early years as a writer, and the words flew out of me. I found I would be writing about something I hadnt thought about in years, and it would lead me to incidents Id totally forgotten, as various doors in my memory flew open one after another. I worked all day every day, and by the end of the week Id produced 50,000 words.

Then I went home to New York, where I spent a month surrendering to physical, mental, and emotional exhaustion of a sort Id never felt before. I had, as best I could figure it, about forty percent of the book written, and my then-agent incorporated that book into a four-book contract with my then-publisher.

A few years later, I bought back the memoir. It was clear to me I was never going to finish it.

I dont know why. Maybe I just wasnt willing to risk that sort of exhaustion again.

I did write a memoir some years later. Step by Step: A Pedestrian Memoir began as a record of a year in the life of an aging and unskilled racewalker, and wound up including more material about my early years than Id anticipated. When Id finished it I found myself thinking about A Writer Prepares. (Thats what Id been calling the earlier memoir, with a nod to Stanislavskis An Actor Prepares.) But I didnt even go so far as to read what Id done earlier.

Then, in 2010, I began writing afterwords to early works I was readying for new lives as e-books. It seemed to me this would be an easy way to add value to the new editions, and also to put them into perspective for todays reader. Looking back, I suspect there was more to it; I think I wanted to dip into the past, wanted indeed to write autobiographically about my early writing days. And, while I wasnt prepared to resume that memoir from fifteen years earlier, I could cover the same ground incrementally, a book at a time.

And thats what Ive done. If I have indeed written a memoir on the installment plan, why shouldnt I put all of those afterwords together into a single volume?

But how to organize the material? When all else fails, I tend to opt for alphabetical order, but thats no better than other notions that occurred to me. So Ive tried to group the books by type. But these pieces dont have to be read in any particular sequence. Youre certainly free to skip around.

Meanwhile, why shouldnt I add a few other introductions and afterwords written for other occasions? A few years ago I wrote introductions for new paperback editions of all eight Evan Tanner novels, so why not toss them in? The book can find room for them. Indeed, it can be readily expanded whenever circumstances warrant it. As I allow other old efforts to be made available again, and as I write new afterwords for each of them, my publishers can add the additional material to Afterthoughts. It will always be up to date, while never ceasing to be a work in progress.

Furthermore, because theres no getting around the fact that Afterthoughts is likely to lead some readers to sample other books of mine, Im able to think of it as a promotional vehicle for all my works. And this means that I can afford to price it very inexpensively indeed.