Rose, Joel 1948–

PERSONAL:

Born March 1, 1948, in Los Angeles, CA; son of Milton (a waiter) and Edna (a homemaker) Rose; married Catherine Texier (a writer; divorced, c. 1997); married Karen Rinaldi (a publisher); children: (first marriage) two daughters; (second marriage) two sons. Education: Hobart College, B.A., 1970; attended Western Washington State University, 1970-71; Columbia University, M.F.A., 1973.

ADDRESSES:

Home and office—New York, NY. Agent—Kim Witherspoon, InkWell Management 521 5th Ave., 26th Fl., New York, NY 10175. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Freelance writer, 1973—. Publisher and coeditor of Between C and D: Lower East Side Fiction, New York, NY, 1983—; writer of television scripts for Kojak, Miami Vice, and other television shows.

MEMBER:

Poets and Writers (Coordinating Committee of Literary Magazines).

AWARDS, HONORS:

Fellowships from National Endowment for the Arts, 1986; New York State Foundation for the Arts, 1986, and 1989.

WRITINGS:

Kill the Poor (novel), Atlantic Monthly Press (New York, NY), 1988.

(Editor, with wife, Catherine Texier) Between C and D: New Writing from the Lower East Side Fiction Magazine, Penguin (New York, NY), 1988.

(Editor, with Catherine Texier) Love Is Strange: Stories of Postmodern Romance, Norton (New York, NY), 1993.

(With Amos Poe) La Pacifica (with art by Tayyar Ozkan), Paradox Press (New York, NY), 1994.

The Big Book of Thugs, Paradox Press (New York, NY), 1996.

Dead Weekend (screenplay), Showtime Network, Inc., 1996.

Kill Kill Faster Faster (novel), Crown (New York, NY), 1997.

New York Sawed in Half: An Urban Historical, Bloomsbury (New York, NY), 2001.

The Blackest Bird: A Novel of Murder in Nineteenth-Century New York, W.W. Norton & Co. (New York, NY), 2007.

The Blackest Bird has been translated into twelve languages.

ADAPTATIONS:

Both Kill the Poor and Kill Kill Faster Faster have been adapted for film.

SIDELIGHTS:

Joel Rose, a native New Yorker, has helped to disseminate literature about Manhattan's tough Lower East Side. Through anthologies of short stories by other writers, the periodical Between C and D: Lower East Side Fiction, and his own fiction, Rose has introduced readers to the shocking levels of drug abuse, sexual vice, and criminal activity that have become part of the urban landscape. A former drug addict who has helped to bring authentic vernacular and plot points to television shows, Rose might echo the sentiments of one of his fictional characters, Joey One-Way, who declared: "I have a lot of violence and anger in me, and writing delivers me from that. I think if I wasn't writing, I would be dead."

Rose's first novel, Kill the Poor, tells the story of one group of Manhattan residents who try to upgrade a ghetto apartment building on the Lower East Side. As Gary Dretzka remarked in Tribune Books, the tenants "are poor, but some have put together enough money to rehabilitate the building, turning it into a sort of condo from Hell." Dretzka added that Kill the Poor "has many problems, but the book's undeniable charm and gritty rhythm help it dance over the rough spots." In the New York Times Book Review, Wendy Smith wrote: "Sharp, savage and extremely well written, this provocative first novel examines a politically troublesome and ethically troubling issue—the gentrification of impoverished urban neighborhoods—with the stylistic flair and easy nihilism characteristic of New York's downtown scene."

In the mid-1980s, Rose launched a successful small magazine, Between C and D, that published fiction and poetry by New York writers. He also began working as a scriptwriter and consultant for television shows, often in partnership with an ex-convict named Miquel Pinero. It was Rose and Pinero's job to give the criminals on such shows as Miami Vice and Kojak an authenticity in dialogue and action. The partnership also inspired Rose to write his novel Kill Kill Faster Faster.

With a title inspired by a well-known Russ Meyer exploitation film, Kill Kill Faster Faster tells the story of Joey One-Way, a convicted murderer who wins release from prison after writing a play about life behind bars. Hired by a television and movie producer to write scripts, Joey One-Way begins an affair with the producer's wife that ultimately ends in violence. "This quintessentially postmodern New York novel won't be everyone's cup of tea," noted Booklist contributor Thomas Gaughan. "Its milieu, characters and voice are down and dirty…. But it's also a compelling novel with flawed and fated characters worth coming to know." A Publishers Weekly reviewer characterized Kill Kill Faster Faster as "a satire of contemporary America, land of opportunity even for convicted murderers." The reviewer concluded: "Staccato rhythms and street vernacular give the narrative a genuine, manic music as it tells of Joey's life on New York's streets."

Rose's 2001 effort, New York Sawed in Half: An Urban Historical, is a fictional account of a legendary hoax that was played on the people of New York City in 1824. The publisher Bloomsbury used the book to launch its "Urban Historicals" series. According to the legend that Rose depicts in the book, John DeVoe and a man known as Lozier convinced the people of New York City that the island of Manhattan was overdeveloped and, as a result, would sink into the surrounding harbor. To resolve the problem, the two men proposed a massive project, in which workers would cut Manhattan in half and use boats to pull one end over so it could be attached to the mainland. Although seemingly farfetched, the idea was embraced by a multitude of people in the city, largely because many of them were out of work and needed jobs. On the day that DeVoe and Lozier said the project was to begin, thousands of people came out to lend a hand. "The men began to arrive early, as they had been instructed. Some were carrying tools. Shovels, axes, picks. Some pushed wheelbarrows. Some came with their wives and children," Rose writes in the book. After waiting all day for something to happen, the people began to realize the whole project was a hoax. "Gradually it dawned on more and more of them that they had been ‘handsomely sold,’" Rose writes.

Rose explains to the reader, however, that the entire story may have been a hoax itself. In his old age, DeVoe told the story to a nephew, who happened to be an amateur historian. Rose feels there is a good chance DeVoe may have fabricated the story, although many people, including his nephew, believed it to be true. In fact, early in the book, Rose describes the work as "an entertainment, a reimagining of a piece of the past that may well have been imagined in the first place." Despite that feeling, Rose thinks the story is still important. "The hoax may never have occurred, and therefore deserved no further notice," he writes in the book. "But … it became evident that the hoax's authenticity no longer mattered. The story was part of the fabric of the city's history."

Several literary critics lauded New York Sawed in Half, including Margaret Flanagan contributor to Booklist, who felt it would "appeal to popular culture buffs." Nathan Ward, who reviewed the book for Library Journal, called it "a charming, atmospheric portrait of old New York."

The Blackest Bird: A Novel of Murder in Nineteenth-Century New York is based upon the infamous unsolved murder case of Mary Rogers, brutally killed in 1841 in New York City, which has been compared to the Jack the Ripper killings in London due to its sexual and violent nature. Jacob Hays is the high constable in charge of the case, and it is clear from the start that it is unlikely that he and his men will bring the situation to any satisfying conclusion due to the rampant levels of corruption and incompetence in the constabulary. Despite this, Hays manages to find two other crimes that seem suspiciously similar to the Rogers killing, and may be linked.

The true point of the novel, however, is to offer readers a portrayal of gothic writer Edgar Allan Poe, who appears as a character and is intent on solving the murder himself. Poe begins to emerge as a possible suspect though, on the strength of his dark personality and spotty reputation. A contributor for Kirkus Reviews remarked that "prodigious detail and period speech overwhelm this slow-moving tale, while the constant shifting between present and past tense is disconcerting." However, Joanne Wilkinson, in a review for Booklist, dubbed the novel "part history, part mystery, and thoroughly entertaining." A reviewer for Publishers Weekly noted that the solving of the mystery itself appears abrupt and without sufficient clues, but nevertheless praised the book as "a convincing portrait of the New York literary world of the day."

Rose once told CA: "I believe in the confrontational aspect of my writing, the ability of the printed word to reach out and grab the reader and not let go. I am an emotional writer, and in this sense I felt Kill the Poor was given to me. By happenstance, I moved to the very block in New York City where my grandmother had come when she first arrived in America from Hungary as a little girl in 1903. My mother was born here and I remember the neighborhood vividly from when I was a boy. It was important that I somehow translate and juxtapose the feelings of then and now, to sit down with my grandmother (who is ninety-six years old), to listen, and to weave a story that might reflect the conflict of the inner city.

"In the same respect the literary journal Between C and D gives a forum to a wide array of new voices and writing whose connection was originally the Lower East Side of Manhattan but now has grown to include the urban centers of the United States and Europe. Between C and D publishes writers with an edge. Their work may be gritty, shocking, ironic, moody, violent, sexual. We see them as urban archeologists, playing with form, but not at the expense of narration."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, March 1, 1997, Thomas Gaughan, review of Kill Kill Faster Faster, p. 1112; April 15, 2001, Margaret Flanagan, review of New York Sawed in Half: An Urban Historical, p. 1528; December 15, 2006, Joanne Wilkinson, review of The Blackest Bird: A Novel of Murder in Nineteenth-Century New York, p. 28.

Kirkus Reviews, January 15, 2007, review of The Blackest Bird, p. 47.

Library Journal, April 1, 2001, Nathan Ward, review of New York Sawed in Half, p. 112.

New York Times Book Review, March 5, 1988, Wendy Smith, review of Kill the Poor, p. 22.

Publishers Weekly, March 3, 1997, review of Kill Kill Faster Faster, p. 64; January 29, 2007, review of The Blackest Bird, p. 42.

Tribune Books (Chicago, IL), October 16, 1988, Gary Dretzka, review of Kill the Poor, p. 8.