Thursday, February 19, 2009

Daphne Uviller

From a Q & A with Daphne Uviller, author of Super in the City:

Q: Were you actually the super of a building?

A: For ten long years. In exchange for only paying maintenance (i.e. not market rate) on an apartment in the building my family co-owned, I was the super for the whole place.

Q: Was it worth it?

A: Definitely. I didn’t have to suffer a Mrs. Hannaham living downstairs, the way Zephyr does in my novel. My parents were pretty easy tenant/owners. I’m not saying I jumped for joy every time my mother called to say the heat wouldn’t go on or wouldn’t go off or was rattling the walls like a felon with a tin cup, but I accepted it as part of the job. And I got to live in the greatest apartment a 23-year-old government employee could ever hope to occupy.

Q: Any particularly bad experiences?

A: Once, coming home after doing some errands, I was carrying my college diploma, which I’d just had framed. But I was also carrying...[read on]
The Page 69 Test: Super in the City.

--Marshal Zeringue