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Nick Tosches, the man in the leopard-skin loafers | page 1, 2
While we're waiting for our food, I thank Tosches for e-mailing a few links for some background information on his career. Of the 20,000 celebrity profiles to be found at biography.com, his is surely the only one thorough enough to include a future death date. It is 2022. "I didn't want to leave any loose ends," says Tosches. I ask if there's any significance to the year. "It's not an arbitrary date. It had secret meaning." I then ask if he believes, as some do, that we unknowingly celebrate the day of our death every year we remain alive. After a long pause, Tosches says, "No, but I believe we celebrate the season." Dino: Living High in the Dirty Business of Dreams By Nick Tosches
Hellfire: The Jerry Lee Lewis Story By Nick Tosches Grove Press
When discussing his early days writing for music magazines both known and unknown, I bring up the long litany of less than conventional jobs he held before the big publishing deals got him eating daily at Da Silvano. This leads to a story about Tosches' stint as a snake hunter in Florida sometime during the early '70s. "See, the thing is, I'm really afraid of snakes," he tells me. "That's what made it such an odd job for me. It was this odd situation. They only paid for poisonous snakes, because that's the only way they could produce anti-venom. That was the whole point of this thing: catch snakes for this guy, Dr. Haas of the Miami Serpentarium, to produce anti-venom (he was the only man to survive a bite of the blue krait)." As he continues, I'm convinced we're the only people to discuss Florida snake wrangling within New York city limits in a long, long time. "You'd smoke out rattlesnakes by pouring gasoline down their holes and the fumes would drive them out. I did not make it too far in that job. Part of the con was anyone who brought in a rattlesnake over 6 feet would get a thousand bucks and the thing is, there's never been a rattlesnake over 6 feet. It's a myth. It's just a fuckin' myth." While we chat about some of his other early exploits, I tell Tosches that I can't imagine him ever having gone the long- Later, as we share our mutual admiration of Jerry Lee Lewis, Tosches reveals that though the two have met on a few occasions, the topic of "Hellfire" was never raised. This brings to mind the relationship, if any, between the Lewis biography and the other major biographies Tosches has written, such as the wildly successful "Dino," that helped Dean Martin reenter the popular consciousness, and his forthcoming "The Devil and Sonny Liston." "Dean Martin was the last living person that I would ever be interested in writing about at length," Tosches says. "He was the one who held mystery for me. The lives in those books are as much about the forces at work beneath, beyond, and around. The Liston book, to a great extent, is about those forces more than it's about Sonny himself. I mean, Sonny's life is there in full, but there are other characters and other forces directly relating to various underworlds. It's probably the darkest book I've ever done." The pre-publication hype on "The Devil and Sonny Liston" includes mention of a film deal already inked with Ving Rhames as the lead. That Tosches has little to say about the adaptation of his work to film is not surprising. The film version of "Dino" that was to be directed by Martin Scorsese and feature Tom Hanks along with other Hollywood heavyweights is now all but dead (though it did earn a place in the recently published book, "The 50 Greatest Films Never Made"). Tosches comments, "The people in Hollywood that clean out the urinals know more about the movie status of my books than I do." Of Hollywood itself he adds, "You get trapped there; you get a disease worse than cancer." In truth, Tosches' indifference toward Hollywood might have more to do with the fact that he simply spends most of his time researching and writing instead of looking for his name in Variety. The commitment to his craft will go into overdrive on January 1 when he begins a yearlong hiatus from everything and everyone to work on his most ambitious project. "I'm keeping my dance card completely clean," he says succinctly. The entire year will be dedicated to his third novel which broadly concerns Dante and what Tosches refers to as his "deeper and long-standing passions." Since much of the medieval source material Tosches is working with has never been translated, he has decided to shoulder that responsibility himself and has been taking advanced Latin classes on the side. "I never thought I would turn 50 going to school on probation. I barely finished high school. I mean the whole thing is kind of endearing ... going to school ... doing my homework." Tosches mentions the great sense of gratitude he has for being able to indulge such interests and to get paid well to write about them. We discuss the current, perplexing state of the big money, and the increasingly unambitious publishing industry when he pauses and heeds, "That door we opened is just leading to a great, vast sea of negativity." I agree. Getting back on track, Tosches mentions there are more than a dozen books he wants, even needs, to write. I ask him if it is a hard-earned work ethic that fuels his increasingly productive pace. "Nah," he says, "I mean, I could say yes, because there's a lot of labor involved with what I do, but I'm also driven by greed." "Honestly?" I counter. "Oh yeah. If not, I would just be sitting here writing poetry and all the money I'd ever make couldn't pay for those leopard-skin shoes."
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