"LOCAL STREETS ARE SETTING FOR NOVEL"

by Joe Ryan

     Jerry Pellicano knows there is more to life than the bars on Bailey Avenue.  The 23 year old dreams of getting out, landing a full-time job and finding meaning deeper than the six-ounce Buweisers he and his buddies slug every night.

     His ticket to the world is a subway token; the No. 1 train is his ride to Lincoln Center or SoHo to launch a film or art career.  But first he needs the guts to break away from the complacency and civil service jobs that mire him and his Kingsbridge Heights buddies.

     In his newest novel, From The Block, Steven Schindler follows Jerry's first awkward steps into adulthood after his parents move to Florida, leaving him to fend for himself in the Fort Independence Street apartment where he grew up.  It's set in the late '70s and begins with an idle quest for for sex, fun, and gainful employment.  But the story eventually elevates into a struggle for morality and individuality, as Jerry learns that the right choices are often difficult and alienating.

     While the book is not an autobiography, there are similarities between Jerry and the author's life.  Mr. Schindler hung out in the Broadway bars around the same time and grew up in a working class family in a Bailey Avenue apartment.

     "By the time you are 12 years old growing up in New York City, you see more than most people see in their entire lives," said Mr. Schindler who now lives in Los Angeles.

     Jerry is no exception and is accustomed to dark and dashing episodes.  When he was in grammar school playing basketball on the Visitation School courts near Review Place, his teammate habitually slugged a bottle of Southern Comfort on the sideline.

     Now that he's in his 20s, things are snowballing.  One of his friends is selling dope out of their apartment building, bringing junkies in the neighborhood. His parents soon move to Florida, realizing "every Bronx couple's dream," Mr. Schindler writes, after a New Year's Eve brawl that happens in the lobby of their building.

     Jerry's high school girlfriend- who hardly gave up a kiss in the 12th grade- is now a prostitute working on Park Avenue, and 50th Precinct detectives just found Charlie the Chinaman, one of Jerry's childhood mentors, hanging from a rope in his laundry shop.

     All the while, Jerry's friends lean on the bar at The Third Base tavern, watching life go by with Noel the barkeep from County Sligo.

     So Jerry pushes on, working his way from an underground video art studio off Houston Street to the cutthroat world television news, asking himself the whole time, "Am I selling out, or buying in?"

     From The Block is Mr. Schindler's second novel.  His first, Sewer Balls, tracked the lives of young teens growing up in Kingsbridge.

"The Coffeehouse Review of Books"-July 2001

A GRITTY NOVEL OF A GRITTY LIFE IN NEW YORK

     Life in New York is rarely easy. First, there's the weather. Then there's the city itself, and then there's the people on the subway.  For Jerry Pellicano, born and bred in a little Irish neighborhood in the Bronx, life is anything but a bowl of cherries.

     Schindler's second novel is the tale of a man's trying to cope in the maelstrom of his city and his own life.  It is a funny, dark, sad and grim look at things as disparate as the SoHo art scene, the aforementioned Bronx, the insane world of television news, trying to land the woman, and learning a lot in ten months from your gay co-workers. Early in the tale, Jerry's parents move out on him- they've had enough- and are off to Florida. Jerry is forced to get a life after years of being a neighborhood nebbish and tries to expand rapidly to fill the vacuum of his own existence and create a world for himself by yesterday. Along the way, he finds the familiar faces and sites he thought he knew were anything but good for him and begins to discover that life ain't what it was cracked up to be.

     Schindler tells a great tale that keeps the reader awake long into the night and turning pages.  The style never falters and the characters flow seamlessly into each other's realities- and out of them- without missing a beat.  In a few words, he paints vivid pictures of Jerry's neighborhood bar, Third Base, and its characters, throughout the book with images so vivid that it is easy to to picture the settings, people and incidents which add much to the story. One of those images is the dazzling Berta, a co-worker of Jerry's who works in the library.  She is every man's dream and way too much for our hero to handle. Nevertheless, he pursues on, up to the point when he realizes that when two desires conflict in life, one usually has to go.

     Along the way, Jerry meets and defeats some existential evil in the form of a couple of insane bosses and a former chum who deals drugs from his building. Like a frog sitting a warming kettle, he doesn't register the rising temperature without help and it is almost too late before he can do anything about it.  For some, aid does come too late and Jerry's inaction reflects on ours when he equivocates and does nothing out of feelings of powerlessness.  The suicide of a gentle soul is later discovered to be a murder, and while Jerry grieves impotently, the perpetrator only gains in wealth and power. It isn't until Jerry gets a crack in the head from from the villain that his lights begin to go on and he starts to sense his own direction.  Eventually he stumbles into his own and the bad guys feel the heat accordingly.

     I enjoyed the book in spite of a sense of dismay at the characters, none of whom seem to have much depth or sense of soul. In their defense it should be made clear that the place where they live stacks the deck against a sense of soul and the few that show traces of it are secondary characters living even more on the defensive than the norm.  Jerry, however, seems to come through the novel, with soul intact, at least, if not much else. But then, when you're from the block, that's saying a great deal.  Recommended.

"The Book Reader"- Summer/Spring 2001

"...a wonderful work of literature by a brilliant writer."

This is not just a slice of life, but a loaf.  Schindler's writing is rich with descriptions and characters and compelling dialogue.  Jerry Pellicano is a young man almost graduated from college flailing about in his Bronx neighborhood where he grew up. Looming over all the bar scenes and the police investigations and the old buddies from the old neighborhood is the suicide of "Charlie the Chinaman," only it's not a suicide and, in uncovering the truth, Jerry comes to a greater realization.  All of New York City is here, from the East Village to the crazy subways to ballgames and Second Avenue ("If you go fifty miles an hour, you're pretty much assured of getting six to ten lights green lights in a row.") There's an enormous attention to detail here, whether of [his girlfriend] Berta's hesitations or of the biographies of the neighborhood people- and there's a touching scene in front of Charlie's grave- "I instinctively knelt in the snow and made the sign of the cross." Jerry works at several jobs, trying to figure out his life, throwing up, crying, and just shooting the bull. The dialogue is very lively and often quite funny.  Schindler has a true sympathy with the characters.  There's Uncle Eugene, and Stubby and Noel and Merrill, and countless more.  Plus, Library of Congress cards and shooting videos and, all the while, somehow, coming of age.  This is a wonderful work of literature by a brilliant writer.

Brian McKernan/  A New York based journalist

A Voyage of Discovery

There's a 'twilight zone' in young lives that begins with college graduation and ends with one's first real job. For some people this transition is an easy one; for many others it is not, as they decide on careers at a time that can impact their entire lives. 'From the Block,' Steve Schindler's latest novel, chronicles such a transition in the life of young Jerry Pellicano, as he sheds the cocoon of adolescence and ventures beyond the familiarity of his Bronx neighborhood on a journey of self-discovery that comes full circle. Set in the same milieu as Schindler's earlier novel, 'Sewer Balls,' Pellicano's Bronx exists in the recent past of the late 1970's, as television, drugs, and alternative sexuality were forging their own subtle social transitions. All impact Pellicano's journey without essentially changing his nature, and it is this self-discovery process that gives 'From the Block' its compelling power and engrossing narrative. Schindler has a unique ability to transport the reader to environments so tangible they almost induce deja vu. His characters resonate with a familiarity that expands the mind's eye to widescreen cinematic proportions. Throughout it all is humor, wry observations on urban life, and a storyline that hooks the reader from first word to last. 'From the Block' is a literary triumph and proof that--like independent film--the best stories aren't coming from giant conglomerates, but from brilliant individuals with a passion to communicate and the tools to do so.

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