13 questions: ian spielgelman

Public Mag - Volume 04, Summer, 2006

People talk. Doesn't matter what kinda brow they furrow - high, middle, low, no - they talk. We're The Chattering Class, whether we dig it or not.

There's gossip, of course, what we say that makes the day go 'round. And there's gossip - the big and booming business of making our everyday go away.

With so much talk it’s little wonder that someone keen’s come along to put it all to word. We’re talk ing ‘bout Ian Spiegelman and his wily wordsling Welcome to Yesterday (Miramax), a work that turns the blather of chatter inside and out.

PUBLIC slipped the former Page Six-staffer some q’s to a, and like all keen hepcats, he had very much to say.

1. Winchell or Runyon?
Definitely Runyon. He told great stories in a truly unique voice, and he was a real journalist. Winchell was a pathetic bully and a bit of a psychopath in the end. I don’t have any warm feelings toward him or his legacy. When people compare Welcome to Sweet Smell of Success, I trust they realize that Winchell’s character was the slimy bad guy.

2. Chandler or Hammett?
Hammett. I love them both, but if I have to choose, Hammett is funnier and he was such an intriguing person. Who serves in two world wars and doesn’t write about it? He also gets props for coming first.

3. Cain or Spillane?
Cain. I haven’t read any of Spillane’s books, but I can’t imagine he’s equal to Cain, who is very much Ameri ca’s Camus. In fact, Camus admitted that The Stranger was modeled after The Postman Always Rings Twice. Cain wrote about criminal psychology in a way that FBI profilers didn’t catch up with for thirty years.

4. Hemingway or Fitzgerald?
Hemingway. Fitzgerald has one almost perfect novel to his credit, but Hemingway produced the most important, influential body of work in American literature since Mark Twain. Sure, people giggle over the awk ward lines in For Whom the Bell Tolls, and take potshots at his obsession with gender, but I don’t con sider anyone his equal when he was at his best. And he was at his best for a long, long time.

5. Thompson or Ellroy?
You mean Jim Thompson, right? He’s was as far ahead of his time as Cain, one of those writers who make you think they lived just on the edge of some personal horror that informs their work and makes it almost too dark to read. I’ve never read Ellroy. In col lege, I saw a “60 Minutes” piece on him where he was doing his barking schtick and acting famous, so I nev er got interested. then I saw the movie LA Confidential, and became even less interested. He’s one of these writers that a small fry like me wishes he could get a jacket blurb out of, but whose work we don’t actually care about. For contemporary “crime” writers, I vote for Vachss and Mosely.

6. 4% Famous or The Devil Wears Prada?
4% because Deb Schoeneman is a friend of mine and I know the characters personally. Also, Lauren W. seems like a total schmuck--making a whole career out of six months’ experience. Though I do hate Anna Wintour as much as any decent person should.

7. Fame: Ain’t it a Bitch? or Dish: The Inside Story on the World of Gossip?
Dish. Jeanette Walls tells some great tales about historic celebs, and she’s funny. Why anyone would want to read about AJ Benza’s sex life is as far be yond me as the dark side of the moon. His boast ing, his swagger... It stinks of Drakkar Noir, cheap leather jackets, and a very, very old I-Roc Z.

8. Ace in the Hole or
Sweet Smell of Success?
I’ve never seen either movie. I only know the plot of The Sweet Smell of Success because so many peo ple told me about it over six years in gossip. Noth ing made me want to see it. That’s why it’s funny to me that people assume Welcome has anything to do with that movie--I could not quote you one line of dialogue. It’s just that the Post, during most of my tenure, was a throw back to the old days: bottles in the desk drawer, cursing out publicists who lied, padding expense accounts. I really feel like I was privy to the final days of America’s last old fashioned newspaper. It’s all corporate now, practically run by computers.

9. Paul Thomas or Wes (Anderson)?
Wes. He made three of my favorite movies in a row-Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, and The Royal Tannen baums. Whenever I feel depressed, which is often, I put on one of them and just kind of let either Wilson brother make me feel better. There are people I stopped being friends with because they didn’t
love Wes’s movies.

10. Wilder or Wyler?
Neither. Like Ellroy, these are American icons that I just don’t really care about. They both made many fine movies, but my heart is with Halloween, Star Wars, Silence of the Lambs, The Good the Bad and the Ugly, Goodfellas... I was born in ‘74 and I am very much a boy of my generation, even if my books seem to harken from an earlier time. But that’s only because my line of influence, as a novel ist, ends 20 years ago, at least. I don’t think Ameri can Lit has made any worthwhile progress in that time. Foster Wallace, Dellilo. The New Yorker-bred memoirs... None of this has been good for us, none of this is important. If Iowa would stop teaching it and the NY’er would stop publishing it. we might once again have a viable voice in the world. But as long as they keep it a rich kid’s party--which is all NY’er fiction is--then we have to give up and slink away. This country will never be represented by that crowd of moneyed dilettantes.

11. What are you reading now?
The Queen of the South, by Arturo Perez-Reverte.

12. What are you watching now?
Mostly reruns of “Curb Your Enthusiam,” “Aqua Teen Hunger Force,” “Buffy,” and VH1’s “Super group.”

13. What are you writing now?
I’m finishing a ghost writing job. After that, I’ll be doing a screenplay and plotting out the next novel at the same time.