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May 9, 2016

Seven days in the book world with Chris Pavone

This week Edgar and Anthony award winner Chris Pavone. Chris is a native New Yorker, he attended Cornell. From there he went into publishing, spending two decades at several publishing houses where some of his more intriguing job titles included crossword puzzle assistant and ghostwriter. He also specialized in editing cookbooks at Clarkson Potter. Chris, who loves to cook, is married with two sons; his novels, The Expats, The Accident and  The Travelers have all hit the bestseller lists and Expats and Travelers have been optioned by movie studios so we may yet see both on the big screen.

Here is Chris's week in his own words.

Monday
Start the week by finishing Tuesday Nights in 1980, a debut novel by Molly Prentiss set in the NYC downtown art scene. I think it’s at turns terrific—evocative, insightful, poetic—and disappointing. I’ve rarely felt so conflicted about a book, but I’m glad to have read it. I also read large chunks of the New York Times every day, plus a piece of two from The New Yorker or The New Yorker Today.

Tuesday
I try to alternate reading books that I myself choose with those that are thrust upon me for the purposes of potential blurbs. I write thrillers, so people send me crime novels of every sort; there are always stacks of bound galleys or manuscripts sitting around, in a queue. First I read the pitch from the editor, which in today’s instance is someone with whom I used to work. (This isn’t unusual; I myself was an editor for a while.) I plod through 50 or so pages of this police procedural: damaged cops hunting for a predatory psychopath, an all-too-common combination of tropes that I’m tired of. Although there’s nothing especially objectionable about this book, I’m not enjoying it, and I’m not going to blurb it, so I won’t push on. Life is short and my piles are high.

Wednesday to Friday
For more than half of my short life, I’ve been a fan of Don DeLillo. I went to see him speak Monday night at the 92nd Street Y, in conversation with Dana Spiotta (who I thought was wonderful on stage, so I bought her Innocents and Others, for later). DeLillo’s new one, Zero K, is the perfect antidote to the unsatisfying bound galley: careful, incisive, original, thought-provoking. Though when a barista asks me, “What’s it about?” I have a hard time formulating a cogent answer. Reading all the crime fiction that I do, and of course writing it too, I’m in the habit of answering that question with a one-sentence plot summary. This doesn’t work for a DeLillo novel.

Thursday
I’m going to a party tonight at Restaurant Daniel for Saveur magazine, whose editor-in-chief is a close friend, so today I read most of the May issue, about France. After Daniel we head downtown to a party at Barbuto, celebrating chef Jonathan Waxman’s recent James Beard Award, where mostly I catch up with Aaron Sanchez. This is a guy who’s probably best known these days for appearing on TV cooking shows, but I worked with Aaron fifteen years ago, sitting around his restaurant drinking beer, figuring out how to make a book about Mexican comfort food. Thursday night is like a six-hour flashback to my old life as a cookbook editor, which was a good sort of life. I’m glad I’ve had the opportunity to have more than one career.

Saturday to Sunday
Saturday morning at 7:15, I need to leave for a Little League game. I finished the DeLillo last night, so I need new reading material to bring for the slow parts of the game. (Which for some people might mean the entire game. Not me. I love watching my kids play baseball.) The newspaper hasn’t been delivered yet, and at this hour I don’t have the time/patience to try to figure out which bound manuscript to tackle next, even though that’s what I’m supposed to do. But it’s my own damn rule and I can break it, so I bring along Laura Lippman’s brand-new Wilde Lake, which I picked up Wednesday at the Mysterious Bookshop, where I’d attended the launch of the anthology Unloaded: Crime Writers Writing Without Guns and dinner with some of the contributors. Laura’s After I’m Gone was one of my favorites of last year, and I fall quickly into the grip of this terrific new one. By Sunday night, I’m three-quarters finished. Tomorrow, I’ll start another bound galley.

Chris's week in a nutshell

Tuesday Nights in 1980 (2016)
Zero K (2016)
Wilde Lake (2016)

The Travelers is available now 9780385348485  

More at http://www.chrispavone.com/       

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