Philly Dame

NSFISWWRTITGNSAST (Not safe for Ikea Shoppers who would run to Ikea to get new shelves after seeing this.)

Anne Carson is reading tonight at the Penn Humanities Forum. Her awards and honors include the Lannan Award, the Pushcart Prize, the Griffin Trust Award for Excellence in Poetry, a Guggenheim fellowship, and the MacArthur “Genius” Award. Carson has published over 15 volumes of essays and poems. A poem from the New  Yorker; an interview with KCRW; a recording of Carson reading her own work.

2 December 2009 | 7:00–8:00pm
Auditorium, 2nd floor, ARCH Building, 3601 Locust Walk

Allan Iverson is coming back to the Sixers, so now’s probably a good time to mention that his favorite book is Green Eggs and Ham.

The Phanatic, meanwhile, muses “I love to check books out from the library that detail the history of baseball. It’s fun to read about how the game has changed since its inception. Players dressed in funny looking uniforms, shared baseball gloves and teams didn’t even have mascots!”

I think it’s worth noting that I have never seen the Philadelphia Phanatic in a library, though he does appear to be the published author of five books, including The Phillie Phanatic’s Moving Day, a poignant tale of his journey from Veteran’s Stadium, across the parking lot, and into Citizen’s Bank Park.

Then there’s this:

Based on the Eagles’ performance this past weekend, I’m pretty sure Andy Reid is holding their playbook.

A new feature continues today at Philly Dame. Based on the series One in Eight Million by the New York Times, 1.5 Million to One will profile a Philadelphian each Wednesday to ask some questions about our city’s past and future.

Zack Noyce is a library student at Drexel University, a part-time employee at the University of Pennsylvania Library, a proud resident of West Philadelphia, a Utah native, an avid Twitterer, and a former columnist for the Daily Pennsylvanian. Zack was kind enough to sit down and answer a few questions about his adopted city. Thanks Zack!

Who is your favorite Declaration of Independence signer?

I’ll go with Josiah Bartlett of New Hampshire. Signing the founding document of our great nation and then lurking in obscurity for more than two centuries before emerging as a critically-acclaimed two-term president is pretty darn impressive.

If you had unlimited money and resources to change one thing about Philly, what would you change?

I’d create about 300,000 more jobs that pay a living wage.

Who is your favorite Philly-based artist?

I think I’ve gotta go with Ryan Howard and the Phillies. It’s quite impressive the way they’ve painted the entire city red these past two years.

Who would win in a fight, Ben Franklin or Betsy Ross?

Ben Franklin or who? Oh yeah that lady who didn’t even know how to make six-pointed stars. I gotta go with the inventor of the glass armonica here.

Final question…what’s your favorite Philadelphia-area website?

It pains me to admit that my homepage is philly.com. It’s terrible, but it’s the only site with the resources to become what I want to be my favorite Philly web site. Someday, perhaps it become a tolerable site. I hope against hope and dream against dream that it becomes what it should be, but until then, I’ll have to leave 15 Philly blogs in my RSS aggregator. If I had to pick just one though, I’d probably go with Attyood.

George Anastasia has been writing about organized and disorganized crime for thirty-five years, covering casino gambling in Atlantic City, mob hits in Philadelphia and criminal prosecutions throughout the country. The Philadelphia Inquirer reporter is the author of five books, including The Last Gangster a New York Times bestseller that chronicles the demise of the Philadelphia mob.

His other books are Blood and Honor which Jimmy Breslin called it “the best gangster book ever written,” the New York Times bestseller The Summer Wind about the Thomas Capano-Anne Marie Fahey murder case; The Goodfella Tapes, and Mobfiles: Mobsters, Molls, and Murder.

His work has appeared in Penthouse, Playboy and The Village Voice. He also has been featured on several network television news magazine reports about organized crime and has worked as a consultant on projects for ABC, the Discovery Channel, the History Channel and National Geographic. George was kind enough to answer a series of questions about his writing. Thank you, George!

You’ve covered the mob for over 25 years for the Philadelphia Inquirer and written four books on the mafia. What draws you to the subject?

(George Anastasia) I think Americans have always been fascinated with the outlaw – Jessie James, Billy the Kid, Bonnie and Clyde – and that the fascination with the Mafia is an extension of that. As an Italian-American I look at the Mafia – or in America actually it’s Cosa Nostra – as the dark side of the Italian-American experience. Cosa Nostra took the positive values of my heritage, things like honor, respect and a fierce sense of family loyalty, and bastardized them to justifiy a code of conduct that is outside the law, corrupt and treacherous.

As a reporter I have always found the topic rich. The stories and the people are fascinating. For all those reasons, I suppose, I was pulled toward writing about the wiseguys. I also benefited from the fact that as a new reporter at the Inquirer in 1976 I was assigned to cover the dawn of casino gambling in Atlantic City. Part of the debate back then was would legalized gaming bring the mob. In fact, the mob already was in Atlantic City. It became part of the story I was covering and then after Angelo Bruno was killed in 1980, things careened out of control and I started to write more and more about the mob and carved out a beat that I’m still working.

I say again and again, as a writer, you can’t make this stuff up any better than it is.

How has your reporting — and coverage of the mafia in general — changed in the past 25 years? Were you ever nervous that what you were writing could provoke violence or cause your sources to stop talking to you?

(George Anastasia) Over the years I’ve gotten better sources and more people know me. In the beginning I would cover trials, arrests, criminal events and try to build off of those things. But sources – both in law enforcement and in the underworld – add another dimension. Stories are still built around those classic questions, who, what, where and when. But I think the question that gets you to the better stories is WHY. In the beginning I could ask that question, but it was very seldom answered. Now, at least some time, I can get an answer.

The only time I had a problem was when John Stanfa was the boss. He was born and raised in Sicily and there they kill prosecutors, investigators, reporters, whoever. He put a hit out on me because he didn’t like some of the things I was writing. But nothing ever came of it, thankfully. And now he’s serving five consecutive life terms. I think that was an aberration and goes back to his origins. Nicky Scarfo never liked me, but he knew that doing anything to a reporter creates more problems than it solves. In the last go around, Joey Merlino and the young guys around him seemed to enjoy the attention. They had adopted that John Gotti celebrity gangster syndrome. What’s the point of being a mobster if nobody knows who you are? It was the antithesis of Angelo Bruno. Bruno’s philosophy was make money, not headlines. Stay in the shadows. Merlino and those guys seemed to crave attention. They were accessible. I had cell phone numbers. I had lunch and dinner with them on occasion. It was a unique situation that I don’t think will ever exist again. But it helped be flesh out and frame stories in ways that I could never do before.

You grew up in South Philadelphia. Did you frequent the library? What books did you like to read when you were younger?

(George Anastasia) I was born in South Philadelphia, but my family moved to South Jersey when I was four. We were part of that great migration to the suburbs. But I had relatives in South Philadelphia and I always had a feel for it. I read a lot of action/adventure stuff when I was young. I think I read all of the James Bond books by Ian Fleming. Then I got into Hemingway. I also read the swashbuckler stories. One of the greatest opening lines of all time was in “Scaramouche” by Rafael Sabatini: “He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.”

What a great lead! How could you not want to know who the hell this guy was and what he was up to?

Why do you think so many authors draw on the mafia as a source of inspiration for their own fictional work?

(George Anastasia) I was once asked to write a piece about the Sopranos for an anthology. It was Italian-American writers and their take on the show, its popularity and what it said about us and about America. One of the things I said in the piece was that if Shakespeare were alive today, he’d be writing for the Sopranos. Think about it. Whenever Shakespeare wanted to write about passion and humor and people who were a little over the top and who grabbed life with both hands and squeezed as hard as they could, he set his plays in Italy. When he was going for the morose, we got England or Scotland.

I think what Shakespeare found with Italy, many authors today find with the Mafia.

That’s not to say that the Mafia defines Italians. I get into this debate a lot with other Italian-Americans and Italian-American groups who argue that my writing about the Mafia reinforces the stereo-type and that shows like the Sopranos made all Americans think that all Italians are gangsters.

I don’t believe that for a minute. My standard response is that any ethnic group that could give America Antonin Scalia and Camille Paglia in the same generation doesn’t have to worry about Tony Soprano being its poster boy.

If you had to pick one book aside from your own for people to learn about the mafia, what book would you choose?

(George Anastasia) “The Leopard” by Giuseppe Lampedusa. It’s an historic novel about Sicily. And you can’t understand the Mafia unless you understand Sicily.

What are your favorite books to read that are not crime-related?

(George Anastasia) I love all the novels by Jorge Amado, the great Brazilian writer. I like Mario Vargas Llosa’s novels. I just read a novel “City of Thieves” by David Benioff that I thought was great.  “Corelli’s Mandolin” is another favorite. I like some of Richard Russo’s stuff, but not the more recent books. “Straight Man” are the two that I like best.

And finally…you’re stuck with one of Ben Franklin, Betsy Ross, or Thomas Jefferson on a remote island. Who do you pick to spend eternity with, and how do you both get off the island?

(George Anastasia) I pick Ben Franklin. I spent some time in France and I think we’d have a lot to talk about. Also, he’d be smart enough to invent something that would get us off the island.

Thank you so much George. Once again, George is the author the author of five books, including The Last Gangster a New York Times bestseller that chronicles the demise of the Philadelphia mob.

His other books are Blood and Honor which Jimmy Breslin called it “the best gangster book ever written,” the New York Times bestseller The Summer Wind about the Thomas Capano-Anne Marie Fahey murder case; The Goodfella Tapes, and Mobfiles: Mobsters, Molls, and Murder.

Kelly Simmons is a former journalist and advertising creative director who specializes in marketing to women.   She started writing fiction a decade ago, after studying at Temple University and the University of Pennsylvania.  Although she was born in Chicago and has lived everywhere from California to Washington, D.C., she makes her home outside of Philadelphia with her husband and three daughters.  Her first novel, Standing Still, was published by Simon & Schuster in February 2008, and was hailed by Publishers Weekly as “an exhilarating debut.” in their starred review.  Her next novel, The Bird House, comes out in 2010.

Your first novel, Standing Still, is about a woman, Claire, who takes the place of her daughter during a home invasion kidnapping. I’m wondering how you came up with the idea for this and what your process for writing it was like.

I had just come from a disastrous meeting in New York with my (now former) agent– who rejected a book I’d been slaving over, a book that she’d seen and approved along the way.   She chided me to write something “closer to my life experience” and I was furious at her for that simplistic advice.  I thought “I’ll show her, dammit . . .I’ll come up with a better plot, a more personal plot, before my train even arrives back in Philadelphia!”  So I basically forced myself, on that train ride, to think of a plot that had more personal resonance, and I decided on a character who, like me and my mom and my sister, suffered from panic disorder.  Then I put her in a situation where she is forced to be brave, to overcome her panic.   (And the fact that Tom Wolfe came and sat next to me in the Amtrak holding area was a sign of some kind.  He was all dressed in white, including spats, in the middle of a snow storm, so I think he was an angel!)

I wrote the first draft, quickly, in about five months, with a real fire and fury, the kind that comes from being truly pissed off, and a little too competitive for my own good.

Your descriptions of Claire’s panic disorder are extremely realistic. What sources did you use to create that realism in your novel?

I suffered from panic attacks for many years, as did my sister and my mother.  Claire’s reactions are based partly on my experiences and partly on those of my mother, who was truly paralyzed by the disorder, and became agoraphobic for many years because of it.  The cognitive therapy techniques Claire employs came from  my own therapy at The Beck Institute, which was life-changing.  I did a little bit of traditional research about the prevalence of panic disorder and the use of drug treatments.

You’re based here in the Philadelphia region. If you were trapped on SEPTA with only 5 books to tide you over for a major delay, what would they be and why?

Why, SEPTA is never delayed!  However, in the rare instance it would be — today, right this instant, I would grab The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitgerald, A Prayer for Owen Meany, by John Irving,  The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold,  The Time Traveler’s Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger,  and The Lovely Bones, by Jonathan Tropper.   Gatsby is one of my all-time favorites, and the others are my favorites from the last decade or so.  (If you’re going to be trapped, you may as well re-read a sure thing.)   And if anyone hasn’t heard of Tropper’s book — don’t delay.  It’s tender and almost unbearably hilarious.

You’re also a member of the Liar’s Club, a Philadelphia-based collective of authors who travel the region and support each other and independent booksellers. Can you tell me a little about your involvement in the group and where you’re going next?

We all pitch in to promote our books but also to support bookstores, libraries and reading at all levels.  For the last year, we’ve been throwing parties at independent bookstores on our own dime — free food, book giveaways, trivia games about the bookstore etc — to help shine a spotlight on the great work they do in their communities.  We’ll be at Wellington Square Books in Exton this Saturday the 5th from 12-2, and at Farley’s and Canterbury Tales in New Hope all day December 12th.   And autographed books make great gifts, hint hint.

What are you working on now?

I just finished The Bird House for Simon & Schuster, which is coming out either next fall or Spring the following year.  It’s about a grandmother and granddaughter who do a class project on the family history — and all the family secrets rise to the surface.

And lastly, you’re on a desert island with either Ben Franklin, Betsy Ross, Edgar Allan Poe, Walt Whitman or Thomas Jefferson. Which one would you pick and how would the two of you get off the island?

Wow . . . much as I’d enjoy the company of Whitman or Poe . . .and although Betsy Ross could certainly construct a large flag that could be seen by a plane . . . .I have a feeling Ben Franklin would be able to invent some getaway contraption with scraps of things lying around.  He’s more MacGyver-y.

Thank you so much Kelly!

You can purchase Kelly Simmons’ novel Standing Still online through your your local independent bookstore through Indiebound.com, Amazon, or Barnes & Noble.