Summary
"All my adult life there was something gestating there," says the author. His father's 1989 death planted the idea of a novel in his mind, but its cultivation would consume 18 years. "Life incessantly intrudes," [Allen Ruff] observes. Back then, he was working at Shakespeare's Books and driving cab. That work schedule, along with life's other incessant intrusions, slowed his progress. "I needed the space," he adds, a period of years to let the book settle in his imagination.
"I started writing in "98," he says. "It just began as memory sketches. I just started jotting down little aphorisms or things my dad said. My father had two things. He had this grab-bag of jokes, but he also had aphorisms." For instance: "My father used to say, 'What Great Depression? By the time of the Depression, we were well rehearsed." And: "When you're learning, it's a listening process. When you're talking, you're not listening.""I'm looking for an agent," he adds, in anticipation of optioning movie rights to his novel. He has already cast a couple of roles in his mind, including Danny DeWo in one role and Mickey Rourke in another - "if," Ruff says, "Mickey Rourke could do Jewish."See the full content of this document
Extract
A Different Kind of History
He is perhaps best known as a historian, the author of the 1997 volume We Called Each Other Comrade: Charles H. Kerr & Company, Radical Publishers and co-author of Forward! A History of Dane: The Capital ...
See the full content of this document
Sponsored links
