Lawrence Block - Manhattan Noir

The Akashic Books Noir Series, 2006

The City.

See, thats what we call it. The rest of the world calls it the Apple, or, more formally, the Big Apple, and we dont object to the term. We just dont use it very often. We call it the City and let it go at that.

And, while the official city of New York is composed of five boroughs, the City means Manhattan. Im going into the City tonight, says a resident of Brooklyn or the Bronx, Queens or Staten Island. Everybody knows what he means. Nobody asks him which city, or points out that hes already in the city. Because hes not. Hes in one of the Outer Boroughs. Manhattan is the City.

A few years ago I was in San Francisco on a book tour. In conversation with a local I said that I lived in the City. Oh, you call it that? he said. Thats what we call San Francisco. The City.

I reported the conversation later to my friend Donald Westlake, whose house is around the corner from mine. Thats cute, he said. Of course theyre wrong, but its cute.

The City. Its emblematic, I suppose, of a Manhattan arrogance, of which theres a fair amount going around. Yet its a curious sort of arrogance, because for the most part its not the pride of the native. Most of us, you see, are originally from Somewhere Else.

All of New York-all five boroughs-is very much a city of immigrants. Close to half its inhabitants were born in another country-and the percentage would be higher if you could count the illegals. The flood of new arrivals has always kept the city well supplied with energy and edge.

Manhattans rents are such that few of its neighborhoods are available these days to most immigrants (though it remains the first choice of those fortunate enough to arrive with abundant funds). But it too is a city of newcomers, not so much from other countries as from other parts of the United States, and even from the citys own suburbs and the outer boroughs as well. For a century or more, this is where those young people most supplied with brains and talent and energy and ambition have come to find their place in the world. Manhattan holds out the promise of opportunity-to succeed, certainly, and, at least as important, to be oneself.

I was born upstate, in Buffalo. In December of 1948, when I was ten-and-a-half years old, my father and I spent a weekend here. We got off the train at Grand Central and checked in next door at the Hotel Commodore, and in the next three or four days we went everywhere-to Liberty Island (Bedloes Island then) to see the statue, to the top of the Empire State Building, to a Broadway show (Wheres Charlie?), a live telecast (The Toast of the Town), and just about everywhere the subway and elevated railway could take us. I remember riding downtown on the Third Avenue El on Sunday morning, and even as my father was pointing out the skid row saloons on the Bowery, a man tore out of one of them, let out a bloodcurdling scream, turned around, and raced back inside again.

I think I became a New Yorker that weekend. As soon as I could, I moved here.

Why would I want to go anywhere? my friend Dave Van Ronk used to say. Im already here.

Manhattan Noir.

While I might argue Manhattans primacy (assuming I could find someone to take the other side), I wouldnt dream of holding that everything worthwhile originates here. Even as so many Manhattanites hail from somewhere else, so do many of our best ideas. And the idea for this book originated on the other side of the worlds most beautiful bridge, with a splendid story collection called Brooklyn Noir.

It was that books considerable success, both critical and commercial, that led Akashics Johnny Temple to seek to extend the Noir franchise, and it was Tim McLoughlins outstanding example as its editor that moved me to take the reins for the Manhattan volume.

I sat down and wrote out a wish list of writers Id love to have for the book, then e-mailed invitations to participate. The short story, I should point out, is perforce a labor of love in todays literary world; theres precious little economic incentive to write one, and the one I was in a position to offer was meager indeed. Even so, almost everyone I invited was quick to accept. That gladdened my heart, and they gladdened it again by delivering on time and delivering what I think youll agree is material of a rare quality.

My initial request wasnt all that specific. I asked for dark stories with a Manhattan setting, and thats what I got. Readers of Brooklyn Noir will recall that its contents were labeled by neighborhood-Bay Ridge, Canarsie, Greenpoint, etc. We have chosen the same principle here, and the books contents do a good job of covering the island, from C.J. Sullivans Inwood and John Lutzs Upper West Side, to Justin Scotts Chelsea and Carol Lea Benjamins Greenwich Village. The range in mood and literary style is at least as great; noir can be funny, it can stretch to include magic realism, it can be ample or stark, told in the past or present tense, and in the first or third person. I wouldnt presume to define noir-if we could define it, we wouldnt need to use a French word for it-but it seems to me that its more a way of looking at the world than what one sees.

Noir doesnt necessarily embody crime and violence, though thats what we tend to think of when we hear the word. Most but not all of these stories are crime stories, even as most but not all are the work of writers of crime fiction, but the exceptions take place in a world where crime and violence are always hanging around, if not on center stage.

Noir is very contemporary, but theres nothing necessarily new about it. In cinema, when we hear the word we think of the Warner Brothers B-movies of the 30s and 40s, but the noir sensibility goes back much further than that. When I was sending out invitations, one of the first went to Annette and Martin Meyers, who (as Maan Meyers) write a series of period novels set in old New York. Could Maan perhaps contribute a dark story from the citys past? They accepted, and in due course the same days mail brought Maans The Organ Grinder and a present-day story from Marty.

Every anthologist should have such problems. Both stories are here, both show the dark side of the same city, and both are far too fine to miss.

Most of our contributors live in New York, though not necessarily in Manhattan. (Its hard to afford the place, and it gets harder every year. New York is about real estate, and Justin Scotts The Most Beautiful Apartment in New York illustrates this fact brilliantly.) Jeffery Deaver lives in Virginia and John Lutz in St. Louis, yet I thought of both early on; they both set work in Manhattan, and reveal in that work a deep knowledge of the city, and, perhaps more important, a New Yorkers sensibility.

It seems to me that Ive nattered on too long already, so Ill bring this to a close. Youre here for the stories, and I trust youll like them. I know I do.

Lawrence Block

Greenwich Village

January 2006

Midtown

Rain battered the sidewalk and the storefronts. The wind played games with peoples umbrellas, teasing in under the ribs and then whipping them inside out and back again. One umbrella handle and shaft, discarded by its owner, skittered along the curb in an overflow from the gutter.