Hunting Buffalo with Bent Nails

by Lawrence Block

Overview

While he is probably best known as a novelist and short-story writer, Lawrence Block has produced a rich trove of nonfiction over the course of a sixty-year career. His instructional books for writers are leaders in the field, and his self-described pedestrian  memoir, Step By Step, has found a loyal audience in the running and racewalking community.

Over the years, Block has written extensively for magazines and periodicals. Generally Speaking collects his philatelic columns from Linn's Stamp News, while his extensive observations of crime fiction, along with personal glimpses of some of its foremost practitioners, have won wide acclaim in book form as The Crime of Our Lives.

Hunting Buffalo With Bent Nails is what he's got left over.

The title piece, originally published in American Heritage, recounts the ongoing adventure Block and his wife undertook, criss-crossing  the United States and parts of Canada in their quixotic and exotic quest to find every "village, hamlet, and wide place in the road named Buffalo." Other travel tales share space with a remembrance of his mother, odes to New York, a disquisition on pen names and book tours, and, well, no end of bent nails not worth straightening. Where else will you find "Raymond Chandler and the Brasher Doubloon," an assessment of that compelling writer from a numismatic standpoint? Where else can you read about Block's collection of old subway cars?

Highly recommended.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940163564927
Publisher:	Lawrence Block
Publication date:	12/10/2019
Sold by:	Draft2Digital
Format:	eBook
Sales rank:	938,629
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Lawrence Block has been writing award-winning mystery and suspense fiction for half a century. His newest book, pitched by his Hollywood agent as “James M. Cain on Viagra,” is The Girl with the Deep Blue Eyes. His other recent novels include The Burglar Who Counted The Spoons, featuring Bernie Rhodenbarr; Hit Me, featuring philatelist and assassin Keller; and A Drop Of The Hard Stuff, featuring Matthew Scudder, brilliantly embodied by Liam Neeson in the new film, A Walk Among The Tombstones.  Several of his other books have also been filmed, although not terribly well.  He's well known for his books for writers, including the classic Telling Lies For Fun & Profit and Write For Your Life, and has just published a collection of his writings about the mystery genre and its practitioners, The Crime Of Our Lives.  In addition to prose works, he has written episodic television (Tilt!) And the Wong Kar-wai film, My Blueberry Nights.  He is a modest and humble fellow, although you would never guess as much from this biographical note.

Table of Contents

Foreword 9

Abridge This! 17

All My Best Eyes Are Private 23

Alone Too Long 29

Apocalypse in a Small Town 33

Back in the Day with DVR 37

The Ballad of the Pound 43

The Bumpy Road to Inspiration 45

Cheers for the Much-Maligned Motel 49

Collecting Old Subway Cars 55

Donald E. Westlake 69

East Side, West Side 83

Follow the Serendipity Road 89

Gangsters, Swindlers, Killers and Thieves 99

Getting Busted 107

Greenwich Village Through the Years 119

Ham for Breakfast 129

How to Be a Writer Without Writing Anything 139

How We've Changed 157

Hunting Buffalo 159

Introducing Manhattan: a Dark Duet 175

Listowel, a Special Place 187

The Magic of Minneapolis 191

The Mean Streets of Gotham 195

No Slings, No Arrows 199

A Pen Name? Really? After All These Years??? 201

A Rare and Radiant Mother 207

Raymond Chandler and the Brasher Doubloon 235

Travel by Number 243

The Whole World Is Listening 249

Writing My Name 253