The Trouble With Eden - Lawrence Block [187]
Some of the characters were based to one degree or another on some of the people I’d known in and around New Hope, and one at least recognized himself. He was an actor and a partner in the mall bookstore, and he did in fact greatly resemble Benjamin Franklin. “Larry put me in a book,” he told people. “But he’s made me bisexual, for God’s sake, and everybody knows I’m a plain and simple faggot. Do you think I could sue his publisher? Would I get anything, do you suppose? And would the publicity be good for the book? Because I wouldn’t want to do it if it would get Larry in any kind of trouble …”
Well, he didn’t sue, which was probably just as well. Would the publicity of a lawsuit have helped? I don’t think anything would have helped. Berkley had commissioned the book with the intention of making a big fat bestseller out of it, but they never put any muscle into it and didn’t sell many copies.
There’d been a big fat bestseller a few years earlier called The Devil in Bucks County, and I’m sure the Berkley folks were aware of it. They probably had it in mind when they made the deal. The title I suggested was The Trouble with Bucks County, and they used half of it. The Trouble with Eden—well, it’s not a bad title.
Reviewers overlooked it completely as far as I can tell, with a single curious exception. In a long article about books in Esquire, a reviewer whose name I’ve long since forgotten launched into a discussion of a book that he (or maybe she) had picked up a week ago without great expectations. It looked like trash but turned out to be far more gripping and involving than he or she anticipated. Well-wrought characters, interesting plot developments—really pretty good.
And then suddenly the review hung a U-turn, and its author said that further on the book turned out to be trash after all and, on balance, a big disappointment. I’ll tell you, it was as though the reviewer read half the book, wrote half the review, ate something that turned his stomach, finished the book, and went on to finish the review. I can’t say I minded—it was, as they say at the Oscars, victory enough merely to be nominated—and I can’t say I disagreed with its conclusion. But it was damn strange.
Ah well. It’s probably not a good book, but I have a warm spot for Eden. Like the curate’s egg, I think parts of it are very good indeed.
—Lawrence Block
Greenwich Village
Lawrence Block (lawbloc@gmail.com) welcomes your email responses; he reads them all, and replies when he can.
A BIOGRAPHY OF LAWRENCE BLOCK
Lawrence Block (b. 1938) is the recipient of a Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America and an internationally renowned bestselling author. His prolific career spans over one hundred books, including four bestselling series as well as dozens of short stories, articles, and books on writing. He has won four Edgar and Shamus Awards, two Falcon Awards from the Maltese Falcon Society of Japan, the Nero and Philip Marlowe Awards, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Private Eye Writers of America, and the Cartier Diamond Dagger from the Crime Writers Association of the United Kingdom. In France, he has been awarded the title Grand Maitre du Roman Noir and has twice received the Societe 813 trophy.
Born in Buffalo, New York, Block attended Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. Leaving school before graduation, he moved to New