Last Night At The Shade Bar - 241 Sullivan Street.
Noir at the Bar is a group of writers of the noir genre who get together for readings every few months. It is held at the Shade Bar on the corner of West Third Street & Sullivan Street in Greenwich village. It is a short walk from the A train, which my character Sam Cochran takes home to Pops in Queens, therefore our transport via subway to the bar was well known to me. Sunday, December 8th was pre-Hanukkah, and the middle of the pre-Chrismas shopping season, so the subway was full of characters at 5 p.m. I love riding the subway, because I can populate my novels with its inhabitants. Of course, it is just my imagination as to their personalities, but the people start the wheels turning. Similar to a farmer harvesting crops. The subways grow character like weeds in your organic vegetable garden.
The bar itself is about fifty feet by thirty feet, with two walls facing the street - I did say it was on a corner - large windows allow viewing of the passing parade of pedestrians. However, even with the street light fully on, the room is darker than a vampire's lair at midnight. The wattage used to illuminate the joint, can't run more than a nickel a night on the electric bill. Or maybe they have four squirrels running on wheels to generate the power. The brown time ceiling made of molded press pattern squares is a left over from when speak-easies existed. The walls are unfinished wood and each has at least one mirror on it. The plain wood tables rock when you lean on them and the kitchen is behind a red curtain, which I did not try to peek behind. In a place like this, never look where they cook the food you eat. What you don't know probably won't kill you, but what you do know, will steal away your appetite. That is my general rule, and I have no idea if it applies to Shade bar, however, the people next to me were having enchilada like food and it looked good. You never know.
The actual bar seats about ten people and takes a right turn to run parallel to the short wall of the room. Behind the patrons seated at the short leg of the bar is one of the two windows. The long leg of the bar runs about fifteen feet, and behind it is a glass lit four-tiered set of shelves with assorted whiskeys. Some of the bottles glow because of the lighting from underneath the shelving is transmitted by their contents. They look like glow-worms in the darkened room. Think Fernando's hideaway and if you are old enough to remember that song, you are in my age group. The corner of the bar has several taps, but none of them sprout stouts or any dark beer, so they are worthless to me. Would not even make the bar tender, who sports two nasal piercing, waste the energy to push a handle to receive a glass of the amber stuff that passes for beer. (My wife compared her to Gilda Radner cause of her two pig-tail hair style.) Guinness in a bottle? Not worth the effort to pull the cap, I can wait to get home for some real bottled dark brew or even some Port. Life has taught me patience. I'll wait the three to four hours to get home before I would ruin my taste buds on the watery bubbles that pass for IPA beer. My beer is as twilight in a cave.
Hey if I'm at a noir author's reading, where's the dark stuff?
The room gradually filled with people - authors, friends, acquaintances, and rabble. I fit into the last category, but having brought my wife, thereby I was upgraded to respectable. We took the last two seats at a table. Timing is everything in life, and we hit the schedule just right.
As the readings were about to start, they darkened the bar. How? Maybe two of the four squirrels on the treadmill stopped running. The little bar was packed with people standing in the aisle. It was so packed that the bar tender could not traverse the ten feet from the bar to my table to ask for the fifth time if I wanted a drink. No stout, no drink. That is my firm policy. The stranger sitting across from me was drinking water with lemon. He asked for a refill and said, "put it on my tab." So I am not sure the bar was doing that well, even with the crowd, but on Sunday without television (no football games), maybe this was better than being empty.
As I said, the room was so tightly packed, I was looking for the label to see if we were sardines in oil or tuna packed in water. It turned out we were neither as exotic as sardines, nor as tedious as tuna. We were just a group of friends/compatriots, newly found or long time known, here to enjoy a spectrum of authors reading their noir and bizarre works.
What I learned from the reading. When a noir writer is too lazy to actually show or tell what his character is thinking he uses a four letter word, which is so non-descript as to let the reader construct/imagine the mood/emotion/action of the character. Don't show, and don't tell, just write some "excrement" on the paper and it'll do. I'm no expert but ... what the hell?
I wanted to announce that they have published a thesaurus, which could provide you with a smorgasbord of words that could approximate quite accurately the meaning and attitude the author wanted to engender in his character. However, my ideas are surely not as substantial as an award winning writer having his or her character say the same four-letter word for the twelfths time in under three pages. That is good writing - remove tongue from cheek and smile in faux flattery.
Do they think this draws in the reader and involves them? No. Does it create character? Maybe, if it is used once or twice. However, repetition makes the "shock" value vanish and the word itself becomes boring. (All good writers try to vary their words, even if they have the same meaning. It is consistent tone for our characters that we strive for, not a limited vocabulary, unless that is the character's best attribute.) By the fifth time the character describes someone, something or some event with this word, it makes the character inarticulate and the writing a cliche and repetitive. How brave of an author to use a word that six year-old children use on the playground to diss one-another. How creative.
Several wonderful writers read and several writers about whom I wonder also read. Slander and liable laws will not allow me to enumerate further. However, I did learn by listening.
I learned that selecting the right word and making your scene and prose accessible without being trite, commonplace and redundant always stands out in the crowd. That is a lesson I relearn every time I hear, or read a great writer. One writer accomplished that supremely and won my award for best writing of the night. The prestigious Sam Cochran award for writing excellence. The winner will go unrecorded and the two million dollars in Monopoly money will go unawarded.
The best writers make the common unique and the unique accessibly common. How wonderful for their readers. To live such a spectacular life with the ease of reading a flowing story.
Thanks Noir at the Bar for allowing me to learn that fact for the ?infinite-th? time.
Oh and P.S. I also met an old friend, Wallace Stroby, there. He did not read, but I already know he knows how to write. Picking up any of his novels will take you on a great Jersey journey.
Live long and prosper - L.A. Preschel for Sam Cochran P.I.
