Lawrence Block steps out to discuss new book

So, it’s starting to feel like Lawrence Block week around here, but it isn’t every day that your favorite author stops in your area with a brand new book, so I think it’s justified.

Block appeared at the Out Loud! Author Series in Cedar Rapids last night, and drew about 60 people who came to hear him talk about his new book, Step by Step. He spoke about the book’s genesis, read a couple of passages and then spent about 40 minutes answering questions from the crowd.

He displayed his wit from the outset with this self-introduction: “I feel a lot like Madonna’s most recent boyfriend. I know what to do, but I’m not sure how to make it interesting for you.” He then went on to discuss Step by Step, recounting, as he does in the book, his first attempt at a memoir. Writing one flies in the face of his reasons for writing fiction: “to avoid telling the world who I was.” Still, he found both memoir writing experiences rewarding. He said the first attempt, which resulted in 50,000 words written in one week and then set aside, was “the most intense writing experience I’ve ever had.”

With Step by Step, he set out to write a book about one year in the life of an aging racewalker, and said, fittingly enough, that he “wandered far afield, much to my surprise.”

Before the Q&A session began, he answered a couple of questions that are always asked of him. No, he doesn’t know when the next Scudder, Rhodenbarr, Tanner or Keller book will be written, if ever. And he also declined to mention favorite living authors, because every time he does so those omitted become former friends. Instead, he listed three deceased authors — Ross Thomas, Evan Hunter and Donald Westlake — and said all any offended living authors needed to do to make the list was to die.

Asked about the impetus for John Keller, the hit man who starred in four of Block’s most recent books, the author shared that fellow novelist Peter Straub said Keller, in his interior monologues, is the Block character most like his creator. “Our vocational paths have been very different, I assure you,” Block quipped. “He’s not much of a writer.”

He spoke some about his earliest writing days, as he does in the book, discussing his decision to leave Antioch College after his junior year to take up writing full time. He said Antioch sent him a letter saying that given his academic performance, he would likely be happier elsewhere. “It didn’t occur to me to resent it. I just though how remarkably perspicacious of them to spot that.”

More about Block here and here.