I did write scripts and stories, some of them beautifully bad, and I’m not-so-secretly glad that my inclination wasn’t journalistic-I liked the bombast, the invention angle, the power of ginning up a tale for greater impact. I spent a lot of my time holed up in the library, collecting information I thought I might use in my own script or book. At twelve, thirteen, I became pretty obsessed. I wasn’t interested in the serial killers, but I loved reading about outlaws and mobsters, and I was fascinated by the line between legend and reality. My favorite book was Jay Robert Nash’s Bloodletters and Badmen: A Narrative Encyclopedia of American Criminals from the Pilgrims to the Present. My library card got me the stories I didn’t know I needed. I memorized Goodfellas and The Godfather I and II. I was half-Italian but saddled with a Scottish handle that rhymed with too many words designed to make a punchline of me ( oil, foil, soil). I was fascinated both by the stories and by the names themselves the nicknames, the musical Italian surnames. Sammy “The Bull” Gravano was from Bensonhurst-that was a name people said a lot in the ’80s and ’90s.
Frank DeCicco was blown up in his Buick Electra on the corner of Bay Eighth and Eighty-sixth Street when I was eight (Casso, it was later discovered, was responsible). I heard the term connected here and there, followed by an old thumb of the nose. My grandfather told stories about him, said he was “a nice enough guy.” I heard other names from the Five Families: Bonanno, Gambino, Colombo, Genovese, and Lucchese. Gaspipe Casso was the previous resident of the apartment where my mother and I lived. I grew up on the border of Bensonhurst and Gravesend in Brooklyn, and the air was always heavy with mob tales. Urn:isbn:0446301523 Scandate 20110607063607 Scanner growing up hearing mob tales and names from the Five Families, William Boyle reflects on what drew him to the mob genre and inspired some of his projects, such as his newest novel A Friend Is a Gift You Give Yourself. OL1895739W Page-progression lr Page_number_confidence 97.11 Pages 422 Pdf_module_version 0.0.20 Ppi 643 Related-external-id urn:isbn:0446819786 Marincountyfreelibrary Edition Warner Books ed.
Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 23:37:26 Boxid IA134116 Camera Canon EOS 5D Mark II City New York Donor
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