Series: Akashic Noir | Publication Date: October 1, 2005
Brand new stories by: Domenic Stansberry, Barry Gifford, Eddie Muller, Robert Mailer Anderson, Michelle Tea, Peter Plate, Kate Braverman, David Corbett, Alejandro Murguía, Sin Soracco, Alvin Lu, Jon Longhi, Will Christopher Baer, Jim Nesbit, and David Henry Sterry.
San Francisco Noir lashes out with hard-biting, all-original tales exploring the shadowy nether regions of scenic "Baghdad by the Bay." Virtuosos of the genre meet up with the best of S.F.'s literary fiction community to chart a unique psycho-geography for a dark landscape.
From inner city boroughs to the outlands, each contributor offers an original story based in a distinct neighborhood. At times brutal, darkly humorous, and revelatory--the stories speak of a hidden San Francisco, a town where the fog is but a prelude to darker realities lingering beneath.
“The protagonists of noir fiction have their own agendas, but for readers much of the pleasure is unraveling the mystery and deciphering the clues that constitute a city, and if there is a love story in noir writing it’s the passion of writers, readers, and protagonists for the gritty geographical details. As the bodies drop in the strong stories here, steep, fog-wrapped, fratricidal San Francisco comes alive: here are old neighborhoods, bars, bookstores, the famous and then forgotten landlord arson at 16th and Valencia, buried streams, streetcars, parks, a lost city and the new city haunting almost every page of this gorgeous anthology of San Francisco noir.” —Rebecca Solnit
“I was wondering about the city’s shadowside that the guides didn’t show. These top writers are of the ‘As bad as it gets’ brand, and then worse. If you like puke, fear & loathing caused by stray bullets, happenstance getting the hero who is an anti-hero really, a male corpse rotting in the bathtub while the woman poops in the garden, the Reverend Christmas shot in the ear by the PO-lice, then this is your good read for a murky, maybe even gritty, weekend.” —Janwillem van de Wetering
“San Francisco has long been a city of back alleys and black figures; this is its romantic map.” —Michael Ray, Editor, Zoetrope All-Story
David Henry Sterry is an author, performer, educator, activist, and muckraker. David is the author of 13 books, the first of which was published in 2001. Prior to becoming an author, David was a professional actor and screenwriter.
The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published (Workman, 20100. This soup-to-nuts guide will educate and entertain as it tells you everything you need to know about how to get successfully published in this crazy new cyber-intensive world of publishing.
Satchel Sez; The Wit, Wisdom & World of Leroy Satchel Paige (Crown, 2001). Picked by the ALA as one of the best books of the year for teens.
Chicken: Self-Portrait of a Young Man for Rent (ReganBooks, 2002). A San Francisco Chronicle bestseller. Sold into nine countries. Under option by Showtime for a TV series. "Sterry writes with comic brio... [he] honed a vibrant outrageous writing style and turned out this studiously wild souvenir of a checkered past."--Janet Maslin, The New York Times "Stunning... Sterry's prose fizzes like fireworks. Every page crackles... Very easy and exciting to read--as laconic as Dashiell Hammett, as viscerally hallucinogenic as Hunter S Thompson. Sex, violence, drugs, love, hate, and great writing all within a single wrapper. What more could you possibly ask for?" -The Irish Times
Putting Your Passion into Print (Workman, 2005). Based on the Stanford Workshop created by himself and his wife, former agent and author, Arielle Eckstut. "Before you write your own book, read this one first. Arielle Eckstut and David Sterry understand the process of publishing. Their advice will help you envision and frame your work so that publishers will be more likely to perceive its value." -Jonathan Karp, Publisher, 12 Books "This book demystifies the process of getting published and is a must-have for every aspiring writer with a dream to see his or her passion in print. With input from agents, editors, and writers, this book is thorough, forthright, and importantly, also quite entertaining."--Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner
Travis & Freddy's Adventures in Vegas (Dutton, 2006). Written under the pseudonym Henry Johnson. "This is a winner."-- Library Journal
LittleMissMatched's Pajama Party in a Box (Workman, 2007) LittleMissMatched's Fabulous Marvelous Me (Workman, 2007) LittleMissMatched's The Writer in Me (Workman, 2008) LittleMissMatched's The Artist in Me (Workman, 2008) LittleMissMatched is a company dedicated to inspiring creativity and self-expression in girls of all ages. These books, created with David's wife, Arielle Eckstut, have been sold everywhere from FAO Schwarz to Toys R Us to Disneyland.
Master of Ceremonies: A True Story of Love, Murder, Rollerskates and Chippendales (Canongate/Grove-Atlantic). "Master of Ceremonies is dizzying, tender, and... resplendent with seedy glamour, hilarious backstage madness, and unflinching honesty."--Library Journal
Hos, Hookers, Call Girls and Rent-Boys: Professionals writing on Life, Love, Money & Sex (Soft Skull, 2009). Now in its fifth printing. "Eye-opening, astonishing, brutally honest and frequently funny... unpretentious and riveting -- but also graphic, politically incorrect and mostly unquotable in this newspaper."--The New York Times Sunday Book Review (front page review)
The Glorious World Cup: A Balls-Out Guide (Dutton, to be published in April, 2010).
Confessions of a Sex Maniac (Kismet, 2011)
David is unique as an author in that he brings together his love for the written word with his love for performance. In his life as an actor, he performed with everyone from Milton Berle to Will Smith to Michael Caine to Zippy the Chimp. He performed in over 750 commercials, including 4 Clio winners, starred in HBO's Emmy Award-winning Encyclopedia, and emceed at Chippendale's in New York City. As a screenwriter, he wrote for Disney, Fox and Nickelodeon. After his memoir, Chicken, was published, David put his performance and playwriting skills to work and wrote and performed a one-man show based on the book. After a highly praised debut in San Francisco (the chief theater critic for the San Francisco Chronicle said, "Richly entertaining and thought-provoking... Speaks cleverly and provocatively to anyone who's ever been or had a child."), David took his one-man show to Edinburgh's Fringe Festival where it was named the #1 play in the UK by The Independent week after week.
For each and every book David publishes, he puts together a unique and robust publicity and marketing plan which utilizes his performance skills. Examples include: A 6-hour workshop on how to get published at Stanford University A high concept event like "The Art of the Memoir" which he's done everywhere from City Lights to the Strand to the 92nd St Y A cutting-edge reading series like "Sex Worker Literati", which has become a sold-out monthly event at Happy Ending Lounge in NYC
David also makes sure to stay in the public eye between book publications through blogging for the Huffington Post, writing for other people's anthologies (his story in San Francisco Noir was a finalist for the Henry Miller Award), and writing for publications such as The London Times, The San Francisco Chronicle and Penthouse.
Due to his PR efforts, David has been featured in dozens and dozens of media outlets including: The New York Times, The London Times, The LA Times, The Washington Post, New York Magazine, Details Magazine, BBC, NPR's Morning and Weekend Edition and Talk of the Nation.
David has taught at Stanford University, University of New Orleans, Reed College, UCLA, SF State, and the US Department of Justice. He's assisted lawyers, models, architects, and writers to present themselves and their ideas with clarity and passion. He's also helped many amateur writers become professional authors. He's worked as a chicken, a chicken fryer, a master of ceremonies, a soda jerk, a cherry picker, a poet, a building inspector, a telephone solicitationist, a limo driver, a barker, an industrial sex technician, and a marriage counselor. He graduated from Reed College, and loves his cat, his girls, and any sport involving a ball.
This review is from: San Francisco Noir (Akashic Noir) (Paperback)
To anyone who has ever traveled to San Francisco-even once-it becomes abundantly clear that this city is unlike any other on earth despite how many comparisons are made. It appears caught within its own time warp, neither here nor there, neither now nor coming, cosmopolitan and upscale, yet strangely beatnik still. Its mystery is that it has a reputable personality that's nearly indescribable-and mythical. Born into the gold rush and immense and violent corruption in the 1800s, burned to the ground by earthquake in 1906, and in modern years home to a large and proud population of gays, San Francisco remains enchanting and unforgettable, from its must-see fog to its legendary minute by minute weather.
It is easy to see then why Akashic Books, in a seemingly single-handed effort to corner the market on noir anthologies has begun a series of books set in and around various U.S. cities. San Francisco, after two Brooklyn Noir books and a Chicago Noir anthology, may seem like an unlikely place for modern day gun molls, double dealings gone hideously wrong, hidden atrocities, and otherwise down and out denizens hard on their luck who walk the thin but blurred line between anti-hero and flat-out villain. And yet, here they are spread out over fifteen stories that take place all over San Francisco, from The Haight to Bernal Heights to the Mission and the Castro.
While not all of the stories are good in San Francisco Noir, in particular Sin Sorracco's wandering Double Espresso, Kate Braverman's tepid The Neutral Zone, and Alvin Lu's rather heavy-handed Le Rouge et Le Noir, many hit the target with unwavering talent. It is as if Sorracco, Braverman and Lu did not get the memo on what this collection was truly about and decided to wander off-literally speaking.
David Corbett's It Can Happen displays the author's talent to write like a boxer fights, weaving and bobbing with words, entrancing the reader in a steadily building climax that only fails by the obviousness of the story's last paragraph. And speaking of boxing, Robert Mailer Anderson's Briley Boy is unapologetic in its violence and dark characters, excellently written from beginning to stunning and profound end. Jim Nisbet's Weight Less Than Shadow is the type of story that you'd just as soon find in the The New Yorker or Rolling Stone, and is so well-written the reader may feel compelled to devour Nisbett's witty tongue in cheek narrative twice in a row.
Peter Plate's Genesis to Revelation is a confection of sorts, but seems to lose it by the last sentence, and Barry Gifford's After Hours at La Chinita plays well in theory as it begins with a promising start and gets entangled by its own cleverness in the end, while Jon Longhi's Fixed seemed like a punishment. It is singularly Alejandro Murguia's The Other Barrio that stands out as the anthology's most dedicated work, with a tough-talking protagonist, hard language ("I want you to be my puta."), a femme fatale, an evil and ominous villain, a few thugs, and more than one unfortunate death. Murguia has written this story as if it were a movie, and it plays like that as one reads through it, right up until its predictable but necessary noir ending.
Editor Peter Maravelis has done well in assembling what appears to be writers who are in love with the city of San Francisco. No matter the quality of the work, the emotion and knowledge of the city shines through each tale and makes this book something to consider and recommend. Just be careful of the conversation you have with the trigger-happy moll from the South of Market. It could be your last.
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This review is from: San Francisco Noir (Akashic Noir) (Paperback)
I agree with the succinct comments of the previous reviewers. So far I've read the great Akashic-published Noir anthologies set in New Orleans, Washington D.C. (the best two so far, I think), Los Angeles, Manhattan, Brooklyn, Baltimore, and Dublin, and they are all four- and five-star collections. I was going to give this one three stars as the other reviewers did but then I really had to be honest with myself and Amazon readers. From the lackluster introduction and apparent lack of editorial guidance and selection, there are three or four mediocre stories in this book -- the rest are just plain bad, and as another reviewer said, most of the authors "just don't get it" about noir. San Francisco deserves better than this with its rich heritage a fertile ground. The first story, set in the post-WWII bay area, and "It Can Happen", at least have decent noir elements such as plot. Others don't seem to have a plot and don't go amywhere at all. See for yourself. As I said, the rest of the series I have read so far is great, as is the series concept by Tim McCloughlin, and I plan to continue reading my way through the rest of it, including the other foreign-based titles on my list. It's a darn shame this book didn't turn out better. As I noted in my "New Orleans Noir" review, why didn't they ask Julie Smith to contribute to this, as one of her good mystery series is set there, and she was an ace new reporter for the daily Chronicle before returning to New Orleans (where she achieved greater literary fame) and edited N.O. Noir. Can't win 'em all, I guess.
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This review is from: San Francisco Noir (Akashic Noir) (Paperback)
Good, bad, and ugly. Connection to noir and the City's diverse neighborhoods sometimes tenuous. Provides talent capsules of local literaries, some to pursue, others to avoid. "Deception of the Thrush" by Will Christopher Baer... Dark, riveting, twisted; fast and fluid, seamless episodic shifts, dangling plot. "Fixed" by Jon Longhi... Hilarious, rips PC illusions off the City's celebrated drug culture; charts mindset/path of serial substance abusers. "Larry's Place" by Michelle Tea... Laugh out loud depressing, richly descriptive without the froth; progressive vice; letdown ending. "It Can Happen" by David Corbett. Smooth story line comes crashing down, not one likeable character -- that's its charm. "Confessions of a Sex Maniac" by David Henry Sterry. Has its moments, but tries too hard to be funny; no fan of gonzo. "Le Rouge et le Noir" by Alvin Lu. Noir?? Final impression -- so what. "Double Expresso" by Sin Soracco. Angry/resentful undercurrent; inane dialog; plodding. "The Neutral Zone" by Kate Braverman. Pretentious/overwrought/unreadable; only story I couldn't finish.
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