You’ve had a large, extended family with a lot of loud mouths at work and dirty dealings under cover. I had a small closed family where are mouths were expected to be buttoned up and there were no secrets under cover because everyone kept their secrets. Both dysfunctional, like all families.
How did I come to write about punk writers on South Street in Philly? I had no other choice. Every writer starts with an autobiographical novel, usually terrible and amateurish. I had one of my own, never finished. Because I couldn’t keep my actual life and family from creeping in. It was called Night Solo. But my father’s voice was in my ear. Everything in this family stays inside the family. Not a cult pronouncement, just an upright private Episcopalian one. So for my first major work I chose instead to invent an entire community. Estranged, lost, abandoned by everyone, just not as well educated as me. So I invented a technology that enabled them to fake it. Presto. Punk City.
More about this later. Fair warning. There’s so much to tell I’ll be telling you stuff I’m snippets. But hopefully, I can give you teasers. Fr example, once when I was living a Grant Street found a hidden canvas by my dad, who was not just a DuPont engineer but a talented portrait painter, and this particular portrait was a nude of his sister, painted obviously without her having sat for it. He hated her. Unless he didn’t. And it took me many years to realize that Susie’s and my lives were some kind of longlasting competition with, maybe even revenge against, Aunt Mary.
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