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Stink
When I was writing this thing twenty years ago, I told my friend Loren MacIver about it and she said, “I wouldn’t call it Stink if I were you because if you do, anyone who doesn’t like it will say it does just that.”
The title popped into my head one hot summer night in 1995 when a garbage truck came around a corner and dumped a load of foul-smelling trash beside me on the street. I was standing outside the gates of an old cemetery on East Second Street, and in that moment the barest idea for a story formed in my mind, one redolent of old neighborhoods in old cities where a certain amount of ruin and decrepitude made so much possible.
As I wrote it, all of my ideas came from wandering around town, just looking. Twenty years ago Manhattan still had lots of second hand bookstores and flea markets and there were cheap diners and funny nightspots where all kinds of imaginative things flourished without costing fortunes. The two big flea markets on Sixth Avenue brought endless ideas to bear every weekend. So did the donut shop on the corner of Eighth Avenue and Twenty-Third Street, where all the old ladies gathered to complain.
I wrote Stink as a little curio of a story just for the fun of writing it. Over the years I tweaked it some, but mostly it sat in the closet like a time capsule. Loren may very well have been right about the title, but only time will tell.
The title popped into my head one hot summer night in 1995 when a garbage truck came around a corner and dumped a load of foul-smelling trash beside me on the street. I was standing outside the gates of an old cemetery on East Second Street, and in that moment the barest idea for a story formed in my mind, one redolent of old neighborhoods in old cities where a certain amount of ruin and decrepitude made so much possible.
As I wrote it, all of my ideas came from wandering around town, just looking. Twenty years ago Manhattan still had lots of second hand bookstores and flea markets and there were cheap diners and funny nightspots where all kinds of imaginative things flourished without costing fortunes. The two big flea markets on Sixth Avenue brought endless ideas to bear every weekend. So did the donut shop on the corner of Eighth Avenue and Twenty-Third Street, where all the old ladies gathered to complain.
I wrote Stink as a little curio of a story just for the fun of writing it. Over the years I tweaked it some, but mostly it sat in the closet like a time capsule. Loren may very well have been right about the title, but only time will tell.
Unknown Binding
First published January 1, 2015
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January 9, 2018
I loved this book and read it several times over. The atmosphere is strong and rich, with wondrous and wonderful details. And I loved Adlai and Etty.
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