• Passion Nightmare

  • Collection of Classic Erotica - Book 29
  • By: Lawrence Block
  • Narrated by: Virtual Voice
  • Length: 5 hrs and 47 mins

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Passion Nightmare

By: Lawrence Block
Narrated by: Virtual Voice
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Publisher's summary

Lawrence Block on PASSION NIGHTMARE: “In July of 1959 I left Yellow Springs, Ohio, where I had just put in a third year at Antioch College. I’d spent one trimester editing the school’s weekly newspaper, with mixed results, and the other two largely neglecting some academic courses. “It did not go well. I’d dropped out of school a year previously, to keep and extend a summer job at a New York literary agency. By the time I got back to Antioch I’d written and sold a dozen stories and a couple of novels, and that’s what I was interested in, along with strong drink and illegal herbs. I drank, I smoked dope, I wrote stories for Trapped and Guilty and Manhunt and books for Midwood Tower, I had as much of a love life as I could, and all of these activities, alas, meant more to me than the courses I would need in order to secure an academic degree. “Spoiler alert: I never got one. “But in July, when I repaired to New York, I fully expected to return to college in a few months. Meanwhile I’d do some writing—and toward that end I took a room at a mostly residential hotel on West 47th Street, just a block and a half from the agency where I’d been employed. I had been a client as well as an employee, and I was still a client, and I’d be walking that block and a half frequently—to deliver manuscripts, to pick up checks, and to hang out with other members of my chosen profession. “It was an interesting place to live, as the opening pages of PASSION NIGHTMARE might suggest: # THEY USED TO call it Dream Street. That was a long time ago, and even then it was mostly a newspaper term. It’s not a street—just part of one, a single block of New York just north of Times Square. 47th Street, from Sixth Avenue to Seventh Avenue. Dream Street. What’s on it? Just about everything, actually. On the uptown side of the street you can find an office building, an Italian restaurant, a coin store, two beauty parlors, a Chinese restaurant, a folk music record company, two Philippine restaurants, a liquor store, a Greek restaurant, a chili house, a Spanish restaurant, a lunch counter, two or three bars, a German restaurant, a laundry, and four hotels. On the downtown side of the street there’s a jewelry store, a Mexican restaurant, a hat store, a haberdashery, an apartment house, a drugstore, a hot dog stand, an Armenian restaurant, and six hotels. If there is anything you are looking for and you are not sure where to look for it, this block is a good place to start. # “The German restaurant was the Blue Ribbon. The Greek place was Gus & Andy’s. One of the bars was the Casa Dario. Dishes at the Alamo Chili House could be ordered with or without beans, and if you omitted the beans, it cost you an extra fifteen cents. (I’m not making this up.) The places I listed were all there, along with others I left out. “My hotel, called the Pageant in the novel, was the Hotel Rio. It was family-owned and -operated, and as clean as it needed to be, and I think it cost me $20 a week. One of the first books I wrote there was CAMPUS TRAMP,my debut as Andrew Shaw. "A month or so later, Antioch’s Dean of Students wrote to suggest I might be happier elsewhere. I agreed and thought I’d be happiest right where I was, until a whiskey-laced evening and a well-deserved hangover led me to take a long look at myself. I saw that I had a problem, and decided quite reasonably that New York City was the problem, and moved back to my parent’s house in Buffalo. “And went on writing, even as life went on happening. As it does. I met a girl, I got married, we moved to New York. After our daughter was born, I needed an office. I rented a room at, yes, the Hotel Rio. I went there each morning and spent the day writing, and one of the books I wrote there was PASSION NIGHTMARE. “If you want to know more about those days, read my memoir, A WRITER PREPARES. If you want a fast-moving tale of life on Dream Street, read PASSION NIGHTMARE.”
  • Unabridged Audiobook
  • Categories: Erotica

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