David Hirshberg

David Hirshberg is the pseudonym for a biotech executive who prefers to keep his business activities separate from his writing endeavors. He adopted the first name of his father-in-law and the last name of his maternal grandfather as a tribute to their impact on his life.He is the author of two previous novels, My Mother's Son and Jacobo's Rainbow, each of which has won multiple awards. In addition, he has published four short stories and written the introduction for a nonfiction book. Hirshberg holds an undergraduate degree from Dartmouth College and a master's degree from the University of Pennsylvania. He lives with his wife and two dogs in Westchester County, New York.

Hirshberg's new novel is Crossing the Bronx.

My Q&A with the author:

How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?

Crossing the Bronx was the fourth title chosen, and as soon as it was adopted, the reaction of the cover designer and the copy editor could be characterized as, “Now that’s what it should have been from the beginning!”

It’s obvious that the action takes place in The Bronx, the northernmost part of New York City. And crossing is a double entendre, meaning both spanning the borough (the Cross Bronx Expressway bifurcates The Bronx connecting the George Washington Bridge to the west and the New England Thruway to the east alongside Long Island Sound) and implying a double-cross, as evidenced by the scheme cooked up by city officials and the mobbed-up construction company to route the roadway in such a manner as to make huge profits, some of which are funneled back into campaign contributions…the local community be damned in the process.

What's in a name?

The best example of the origin of a character’s name is related to the father of the protagonist. Here is a short paragraph in which Jay deVenezia, the narrator, gives both a brief history of his father and how he got his nickname.

My father was a dago-Jew, more Italian than Heeb. deVenezia, from the original ghetto. Orphaned, which may explain his lust for acceptance by those in power and his rage when he beat the shit out of me. Or maybe not. Let’s face it, I’m not the shrink. He was the only Jew in the orphanage with a hundred Catholic kids, and it was his good fortune that he had the physical characteristics to stand up for himself. At twelve, he pried a crucifix off one of the walls and used it to pound the daylights out of a kid four years older who’d taunted him in front of the others on account of his circumcised dick. That night, so he said, he got rid of Isaac and became Ike—the self-described Ike the Kike. How’s that for balls?

In general, I tried to give distinct names to characters that would allow the readers to both visualize the person and make it easy for readers to recall when they reappear later in the novel.

As another example, here is the description of how one of the soldatos (a soldier in the crime family) got his name, from a conversation between Jay deVenezia and his court-appointed shrink.

Around four o’clock the back door opened, and a guy I could swear was Bobby “Bootsie” Albanese, one of 2-Cig’s soldatos came in. He was part of a crew that came to Ike’s fortieth birthday party. They’d tapped a keg in the backyard, and it was the first time I had beer. I remember I threw up. That was a scene.

“Bootsie?” she said.

“Yeah, Bootsie. He supposedly got his name from his penchant for wearing engineer boots to weddings, baptisms, and even funerals. Yet, it was equally likely that he got this nickname because after he whacked some guy, he’d invariably bend down to make sure he wasn’t breathing and then would barf all over him.”

How surprised would your teenage reader self be by your novel?

In a word: very. As a teenager, I read mostly classic novels (such as For Whom the Bell Tolls, A Farewell to Arms, The Great Gatsby, 1919) none of which explored the depths of an America that was changing dramatically by urbanization and the impact of immigration. Frankly, I didn’t think in those terms. I have vivid recall of reading The Catcher in the Rye under the bed covers with a flashlight (my boarding school had a strict lights-out policy at 10:30 pm) and I imagined that I was one of Holden Caulfield’s classmates at Pencey Prep. In English class, we all thought of ourselves as JD Salinger wannabees, writing short stories about thinly disguised peers and school settings. I didn’t think about writing seriously until I was 70; the teenage me wouldn’t be shocked by the contents and styles of the three novels I’ve written, but would be stunned that I was the one who wrote them.

Do you find it harder to write beginnings or endings? Which do you change more?

I can’t start a novel until I complete the opening line. Full stop. Once I create it, I never change it, as the rest of the novel flows organically from it. My debut novel—My Mother’s Son—opens with, “When you’re a kid, they don’t always tell you the truth.” I didn’t know how it would end, but once I had that opening, I knew what I wanted to say about how family stories don’t always reconcile with the truth, and how that impacts each member of the family.

Crossing the Bronx opens with,

It was reported in the New York Mirror that a City cop had stopped his car when he saw a woman trying to change a tire on the other side of the road, yelled over the top of the partially opened window that he was going to give her assistance, opened the door, swiveled his body out and then, well, was crushed by a car that sped by, ripping the door clear off the hinges and dragging him underneath; when I heard the news, I mouthed say good fucking farewell to Ike deVenezia.

When I showed the opening to my wife, her rapid fire reaction was, “Who’s telling this story, why doesn’t he care about some guy’s death, the New York Mirror folded in the early sixties, didn’t it, so he’s a cop being a Good Samaritan, yet the narrator revels in his death? Get back upstairs and finish the first chapter already!”

I could actually visualize the ending even as I wrote the opening. Although some of the ending words changed a bit, the substance stayed the same. Then the trick became how to go from Point A to Point B, which were known, but the terrain in between was unmapped. For me, that’s the fun of writing fiction.

Do you see much of yourself in your characters? Do they have any connection to your personality, or are they a world apart?

All my books are works of complete fiction. No characters or settings are remotely related to anything that deals with me, my family, friends, or acquaintances. To avoid any misconceptions, no fictional character is based on any real person.

To use your words, the characters are a world apart from me.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Three movies: Glengarry, Glen Ross by David Mamet had a profound impact on me, as it showed how people actually speak to one another. The Usual Suspects by Christopher McQuarrie not only had conversations representative of real life, but it had mis-directions that gave me insights into how I could set up Crossing the Bronx with feints, tension, and cliff-hangers. Pulp Fiction is a masterpiece of storytelling; Quentin Tarantino juggles many different plots, but drops none of the balls and brings them all together seamlessly. That was a blueprint for me. Kudos to all three of these extraordinarily accomplished writers.

Visit David Hirshberg's website.

The Page 69 Test: Crossing the Bronx.

My Book, The Movie: Crossing the Bronx.

--Marshal Zeringue