06/05/2007: "Back!"

Hi All,

Well, back from my sundry trips abroad. Met lots of cool people, ate a shitload of good food---and some really cruddy nachos in Toronto, but of that no matter---drank some wine, ate oysters, l'agostine, Irish stew at 1 o'clock in the morning at a NY bar while being served by a bartender with an Irish brogue so pronounced I could barely understand him, took two over-the-counter sleeping pills my first night in Paris trying to overcome jetlag and all I did was make my fingers and toes go numb for a few hours, sat out on sidewalk cafes writing---which I've always thought was completely pretentious, and should've been even more so in Paris, where really that whole mindset came from, but it's like two negatives equalling a positive because I was able to sit out there, scribbling away, sipping an espresso (or a Belgian beer, which they served with a bowl of olives: why don't North American bars do this?) and not feeling at all like a ponce, which I totally would've felt were you to have switched my location to a Tim Horton's. Weird. Met a lot of cool people, stayed up waaaaaaaay past my bedtime, drank pear brandy in a huge mansion overlooking the sea. On two separate occassions thought about hassling Martin Amis, who was at this festival and who I twice saw sitting, alone, in a hotel bar but anyway did not, met Ken Bruen, a great crime writer who told the audience at our panel he'd had an incensed reader come up to him at a reading in Dublin and break his jaw with a baseball bat---whoa!---came to hate Air Canada, bar none the worst airline in the world, darkened the door of several friends' houses, all of whom treated me well, slept on a grand total of seven different beds during my time away, one of them inflatable, always alone, and also caught kips where I could sprawled out on train and airplane seats.

All in all a damn good time. Exhausting as all hell, but good.

Big shout outs (that's my new thing: shout outs) to Francis Geffard for having me over, Anne-Emmanuelle, publicist extraordinaire, Anne Wicke, my translator---who I was supposed to meet up with in NY but a plane fiasco derailed my arrival time by 7 hours making it impossible (sorry, Anne!)---Jocelyne and Helene, who translated for me in my panels, Mathieu who opened his house to me and Charles D'Ambrosio for a wonderful dinner, to Charles and David Treuer who were great fun to travel around with and muck around on panels with. In Toronto: thanks to Neil and Kirsten for having me, Matt and Ryan for coming out. In NY: Katie, Sarah, Ailen, Laura, and everyone else I met at the BEA, including Ellen Datlow, who I've known of many years but never met until then. Oh, and I met up with Jonathan Ames, my boxing opponent, who's a cool guy and I look forward to knocking heads with him. got to hit the training extra hard now that I'm back.

I don't have a lot else, specifically, to say. I could blabber on, but why?

I'll post the PW review for THE FIGHTER---pretty dismal---and the beginning of the Kirkus reviews one, which, even unfinished, is completely chilling. It's a little like finding a half-unearthed corpse in the ground and having to imagine what the rest of it looks like. Foul!

PW review:

Two young men heading in opposite directions find their destinies linked by violence in Davidson's dripping-with-testosterone debut novel (following story collection Rust and Bone). After he gets beat up at a bar, Paul Harris questions his coddled, trouble-free life and embraces obsessive workout routines and steroids before finding boxing, the perfect outlet for his newfound rage. Meanwhile, 16-year-old Rob Tully is a boxing star in training on the path to a Golden Gloves tournament. Paul seeks to embrace his new self through the grandeur and punishment of boxing, while Rob struggles to find himself by escaping from that very same world. Their paths cross when Paul fights Rob's uncle in an underground match, and odds-on loser Paul wins, at a big price. Davidson's writing is terse, coarse and fluid in descriptions of exposed viscera, splattered blood and broken bones. There's an unmistakable Palahniuk influence at work. (July)

KIRKUS: (ye gods, this one is a terror. If anyone has the full review, or one from the other pre-pub mags, Booklist or Library Journal, send them along to me, no matter how grisly. For now, only this smile

"Wilted from a ho-hum night with a joyless date, Paul Harris gets jumped by trailer trash in a tapas bar. Davidson (Rust and Bone, 2005) isn't kidding; for him, such obviousness constitutes class struggle. Across town, Robbie Tully, third-generation ..."

Aeiiiiiiii! That is the start of one UGLY-ASS review, pardners!

All best, Craig.