By Annette Hinkle
Long Island may be known for its fabulous beaches, beautiful scenery and endless summer days. But in “Long Island Noir,” a new anthology edited by Kaylie Jones, it’s often what happens after the sun sets that really tells the tale. And in this collection of short stories, it’s the seamier, not the sunnier, side of life which is front and center.
Revenge scenarios, greed, hate crimes, murder — both intentional and accidental —and kinky sex are all here for the reading … and often come with a twist.
Is it the endless cul de sacs or the stark realities of living where sand meets sea that makes people go off around here? Or is it just the dark side of human nature? In any case, Long Island has tales to tell, and 17 of them are shared in “Long Island Noir” from Great Neck and Long Beach in the west to Sag Harbor and Amagansett in the east — and all sorts of places in between.
“I think people might be upset, or offended. But to me this is the truth – it’s important,” says Jones of the stories. “They’re also funny, I think that’s the point of noir. Some of them are very blue collar – they have a sensibility like that. They are fabulous stories about people who feel entitled to more than they have.”
While the Long Island edition is just hitting shelves now, the Noir series, published by Brooklyn-based Akashic books, is already geographically well represented with dozens of domestic and international titles including “Baltimore Noir,” “New Orleans Noir,” “Las Vegas Noir” and “Istanbul Noir” (look for Venice, Kingston and Boston Noirs to be added in the months to come).
This Saturday, May 5, Jones (whose own story “Home Invasion” set in Wainscott is included under “Part I: Family Values”) will be at Canio’s Books in Sag Harbor to discuss the stories with contributors Jane Ciabattari (“Contents of House” – Sag Harbor), Sheila Kohler (“Terror” – Amagansett), and J.Z. Holden (“Summer Love” – Sagaponack).
Though Jones, daughter of the renowned late author James Jones, is a writer and teacher of writing herself, she was initially reluctant to take on the role of editor for the project.
“I was reticent. It’s not my field,” she concedes. “I read crime fiction like a maniac, but I’m not an expert in the genre.”
But Johnny Temple, the editor and chief of Akashic who started the series years ago, convinced her otherwise.
“He said, ‘It’s not crime in that sense, but the darker aspect of borderlines lost,’” recalls Jones. “I could think of a lot of people I knew on Long Island who had a lot to say — former students, friends — and the stories that came back were dark. I liked that.”
In the end, Jones was pleasantly surprised by the volume, quality and tonal quality of the stories that were submitted.
“That was a miracle to me – I didn’t know who was going to submit,” says Jones. “I started to get in touch with a lot of people and was thrilled by what came back.”
Among the offerings were some unsolicited stories by writers she didn’t know from up-island. Jones was so impressed with a couple of them that she fought hard to get them included in the book as well.
While having good literary instincts is vital to being a successful editor for a Noir title, the format also requires an intimate and multi-layered understanding of a place. Jones, who moved to Sagaponack from Paris with her parents in 1975, is well-qualified on that score.
“I've had a feeling for a long time about the haves and have nots,” she explains.
Jones began attending East Hampton High School at the age of 14, and though she was surrounded at home by her father’s literary circle, she came to know the local scene through her peers. Even into her college years, she continued to spend summers waiting tables on the East End and socializing with the working class kids.
“I was an outsider, but I had a pretty easy time fitting in here,” she recalls. “A lot of people I went to high school with were second generation locals in the trades. A lot of them got very rich very quickly after that period.”
Jones witnessed huge changes in the East End over the course of 20 years and it made her angry.
“I saw the land I really loved being turned into McMansion heaven, and Rennert’s place,” she says referring to the giant house on Daniel’s Lane in Sagaponack. “It was really appalling to see that go up in front of my eyes and nobody was able to really stop it.”
But one of the stories that most horrified Jones was a conversation she and a few friends had with a local tradesman they knew. After putting in a $150,000 brick patio for a client the previous year, the man’s new girlfriend decided she wanted to undo what the now ex-wife had done and asked him to put in a cedar deck. He threw out the astronomical sum of $250,000 for the work and she agreed. So he went looking for someone who needed a load of barely used bricks.
“It’s that sense of entitlement that’s upsetting,” says Jones. “I understand why they would capitalize on it. Money’s money, and to me that’s a reflection of everywhere. But out here its a microcosm of a much larger problem. The behavior’s not nice. You’re fighting to get into the best club, or in the grocery line, or your car’s not nice enough.”
That “other side of the tracks” mentality may be unknown to those who don’t spend a lot of time here, but the subtle and not so subtle class distinction that still define the area is ever present in “Long Island Noir.”
For example, Matthew McGevna‘s story “Gateway to the Stars” tells of a young man from Mastic Beach who is driving a battered car with a broken muffler over to tony Dune Road in Westhampton Beach one cold winter night to rescue his younger brother. He suspects the 16-year-old has hooked up with an older wealthy man via the Internet for an evening of free drugs and other illicit activities. But before he can cross the bridge to the barrier island, he is pulled over by a Westhampton Beach police officer who proceeds to treat him as if he’s the criminal for daring to go where he clearly doesn’t belong.
It’s a reality that persists for many on the East End. And unlike “Brooklyn Noir,” the first in the series which was edited by Tim McLoughlin, a former student of Jones and a contributor to “Long Island Noir” (“Seven Eleven” – Wantagh), the class distinctions on Long Island are not so much urban in nature, but rather geographically defined.
“The poor here are confronted by wealth and interact with the rich,” notes Jones. “In the city, that’s not the case. Here there’s built in resentment. They see what they don’t have.”
Also represented in this volume is the often silent population of the region. Bridgehampton’s Amani Scipio, for example, primarily writes poetry, but she has an offering in the book entitled “Jabo’s” which is a tale set on the Bridgehampton Turnpike.
“She had told me stories from childhood and I thought she could write a great one,” notes Jones. “Amani wrote this story about the Turnpike and the migrant population — it’s heartbreaking. She had this feeling that she’s not supposed to talk about it, but in fiction, you don’t have to make it journalistic or historical.”
Though there is some obvious real life front page fodder of East End murder and mayhem that would have been ripe for this anthology, as an editor, Jones is well aware that often her job is simply to step back and let writers do what they do best.
“I tried not to control the stories – no one was looking for an idea,” she says. “I teach writing at Stony Brook Southampton. So I know to get out of the way and let people do what they’re going to do.”
Canio’s “Long Island Noir” event is Saturday, May 5, 2012 at 5 p.m. (290 Main Street, Sag Harbor, 725-4926). Jones and several of the contributors will also be at Rogers Memorial Library (91 Cooper’s Farm Road, Southampton) on Wednesday, May 9 at noon. Register at www.myrml.org or call 283-0774 ext. 523.
