People Tell Me Things: Stories by David Finkle

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Nthposition Press (October 4, 2011)

Authors, publishers, reporters, musicians, actors, and artists make up the fabric of the “scene” that is New York City.  David Finkle has been a part of this world for years as a critic and writer for newspapers and magazines—a line of work that requires active listening and a keenly, observant eye.   In his literary debut PEOPLE TELL ME THINGS —a collection of first-person narratives—Finkle draws on his own experiences to impart his characters’ mundane to outrageous escapades with a knowing wink, and a sharp comedic wit.

In PEOPLE TELL ME THINGS all of the stories feature the narrator who is the friend, lover, confidante, good listener, etc.  In his position he is often asked to lunch where he learns about the exploits of friends like Peter in the title story PEOPLE TELL ME THINGS.  Peter has been cheating on his wife and has been caught because a woman (he was not sleeping with) lost her earring in his pants.  And Bonnie, Peter’s wife, who discovered the earring, knew the real story of how it happened, but took the opportunity to leave him anyway.

When people aren’t availing themselves of their confidante’s empathy and discretion, he talks about some of his desires.  He wants to be represented as a character in a novel in HEY, THAT’S ME UP THERE ON THE PRINTED PAGE!.  An affair with a married man ironically is the action that gets him there.  In MEMORIAL he reads about Noah Goodman’s death in the obituaries.  He and Goodman were lovers for a considerable period of time.  The nature of their relationship, how they parted, and the memorial service at his passing is a bitter-sweet ending to the collection.

Finkle’s characters and their relationships are at once messy and glorious.  And the magic of Manhattan shines through–where everyday people mix with the famous and the infamous, sometimes for just a moment, with an impact that lasts a lifetime.    

“Finkle is that rare writer who achieves great effects without seeming to
try.” –Roger Ebert

“Lovely writing, smart and insightful. David Finkle’s stories have a wonderful sense of how media types talk and think, and the often unintended consequences of how they behave.”   —Avery Corman, author of Kramer vs. Kramer 

“In David Finkle’s exhilarating first-person stories, you hear the bittersweet hubbub of Manhattan: the clash of hilarity and envy, ambition and confusion, energy and terror, grandiosity and exhaustion, gay and straight, chatter and solitude. In his deft hands, `the isle of joy’ becomes the isle of irony. Finkle’s droll and knowing prose snaps, crackles, and pops with the high and low brow.”  —John Lahr, senior drama critic, The New Yorker 

“What a great pleasure it is to read Finkle’s candid stories. In a period when cynicism seems to have literature in a stranglehold, Finkle’s modest and pure voice soars.” —Daniel Klein, coauthor of Plato and a Platypus Walk  Into a Bar… Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes

About David Finkle

David Finkle has covered the arts for The New York Times, The New York Post, The Village Voice, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Nation, The New Yorker, New York, Time Out New York, Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar and The Huffington Post.  

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David Finkle’s TLC Book Tours TOUR STOPS:

Monday, November 7th:  Books Distilled

Wednesday, November 9th:  The Broke and the Bookish

Monday, November 14th:  Sara’s Organized Chaos

Tuesday, November 15th:  Life in Review

Friday, November 18th:  A Bookish Affair

Monday, November 21st:  Dolce Bellezza

Wednesday, November 23rd:  Take Me Away

Monday, November 28th:  Literature and a Lens

Wednesday, November 30th:  Unabridged Chick

Thursday, Dec. 1st:  Sarah Reads Too Much 

Paperback: 250 pages

Publisher: Tatra Press (October 16, 2010)

Muggings on Avenue C, punk bands at CBGB, youthful romance in Greenwich Village, parties in a nascent SoHo, dropping out from the famous Music & Art High School.  In this episodic, coming of age memoir, Josh Karlen chronicles growing up in New York’s Greenwich Village, East Village, and crime-ridden Alphabet City in the 70s and early 80s.  Lost Lustre recaptures a downtown Manhattan at a pivotal time of the city’s history, when New York was suffering its gravest financial crisis and soaring crime, yet also was home for a spectacular resurgence of the arts.  Karlen shares a fascinating personal history of the punk rock scene through a prism of The Lustres, a band that played venues such as CBGB a few years after its stage had held the Talking Heads, Patti Smith and the Ramones.  In the title chapter, Karlen poignantly pays homage ot the band’s charismatic and talented lead singer, whose life in many ways seemed to mirror his times in both its shining creativity and nihilistically destructive force.

“A window into a darker, grittier version of the city…[Karlen's] memories of living in the rough neighborhood known as Alphabet City are vibrant…”–Publishers Weekly

“Lost Lustre is a reverberant, strata-rich memoir, written with a relaxed and endearing fluency and modesty. I was engrossed.”–Edward Hoagland, author of NOTES FROM THE CENTURY BEFORE

Listen to basement tapes of The Lustres, circa 1980!

Eggshells

Running My Way

Take the Bus

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For more information about Lost Lustre, check out the publisher’s website, TatraPress.com.

About Josh Karlen:

Josh Karlen, a native New Yorker, grew up on the Lower East Side and in Greenwich Village.  A former journalist, he was a correspondent in the Baltics for United Press International, Radio Free Europe, and other news organizations.

Josh lives in New York City with his wife and two children and is a media relations specialist.

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Josh Karlen’s TLC Book Tours TOUR STOPS:

Monday, November 1st:  A Library of My Own

Wednesday, November 3rd:  Wormbook

Tuesday, November 9th:  Rundpinne

Wednesday, November 10th:  The Five Borough Book Review

Monday, November 15th:  Book, Line, and Sinker

Wednesday, November 17th:  Novel Whore

Thursday, November 18th:  Life in Review

Monday, November 23rd:  ‘Til We Read Again

Wednesday, November 24th: So Many Precious Books, So Little Time

Date TBD:  Life in the Thumb

Date TBD:  Books in the City

In the tradition of Sean Wilsey’s Oh The Glory of It All and Augusten Burrough’s Running With Scissors, the great-great-great-great granddaughter of Cornelius Vanderbilt gives readers a grand tour of the world of wealth and WASPish peculiarity, in her irreverent and darkly humorous memoir.

For generations the Burdens were one of the wealthiest families in New York, thanks to the inherited fortune of Cornelius “The Commodore” Vanderbilt. By 1955, the year of Wendy’s birth, the Burden’s had become a clan of overfunded, quirky and brainy, steadfastly chauvinistic, and ultimately doomed bluebloods on the verge of financial and moral decline-and were rarely seen not holding a drink. In Dead End Gene Pool, Wendy invites readers to meet her tragically flawed family, including an uncle with a fondness for Hitler, a grandfather who believes you can never have enough household staff, and a remarkably flatulent grandmother.

At the heart of the story is Wendy’s glamorous and aloof mother who, after her husband’s suicide, travels the world in search of the perfect sea and ski tan, leaving her three children in the care of a chain- smoking Scottish nanny, Fifth Avenue grandparents, and an assorted cast of long-suffering household servants (who Wendy and her brothers love to terrorize). Rife with humor, heartbreak, family intrigue, and booze, Dead End Gene Pool offers a glimpse into the fascinating world of old money and gives truth to an old maxim: The rich are different.

About Wendy

Wendy Burden is a confirmed New Yorker who, to her constant surprise, lives in Portland, Oregon.  She is the great-great-great-great granddaughter of Cornelius Vanderbilt, which qualifies her to comment freely on the downward spiral of the blue blood families.  She has worked as an illustrator, a zookeeper, and a taxidermist; and as an art director for a pornographic magazine from which she was fired for being too tasteful.  She was also the owner and chef of a small French restaurant, Chez Wendy.  She has yet to attend mortuary school, but is planning on it.

Wendy Burden’s TLC Book Tours TOUR STOPS:

Monday, April 19th:  Life in Pink

Thursday, April 22nd:  Simply Stacie

Friday, April 23rd:  A Bookshelf Monstrosity

Monday, April 26th:  Luxury Reading

Wednesday, April 28th:  Book’N Around

Thursday, April 29th:  Chaotic Compendiums

Friday, April 30th:  Rundpinne

Wednesday, May 5th:  Book Club Classics!

Thursday, May 6th:  One Person’s Journey Through a World of Books

Friday, May 7th:  The Brain Lair

Monday, May 10th:  The Serpentine Library

Tuesday, May 11th:  Books Are Like Candy Corn

Monday, May 17th:  Sophisticated Dorkiness

Tuesday, May 18th:  Starting Fresh

Date TBD:  A Sea of Books

Tuesday, May 18th:  Books on the Brain:  Reading Series Discussion