Photograph by Kevin A. Roberts
In John Rector’s short story “In the Kitchen with Rachael Ray,” the narrator imagines how his life would be different if instead of marrying his shrewish wife, he had married the woman of his dreams, Food Network celebrity Rachael Ray… And it ain’t exactly an episode of Pastor Greg.
Rector’s off-color tale appears in the forthcoming anthology Noir at the Bar, Volume 2, a written version of what happens live at Noir at the Bar events at University City’s Meshuggah Café every few months. Rowdy readings are staged courtesy of ringleaders Jed Ayres and Scott Phillips, who borrowed the idea from a Philadelphia crime author named Peter Rozovsky.
Ayres writes the blog Ransom Notes, about newly published mystery novels of note, for Barnes & Noble (bookclubs.barnesandnoble.com); runs a noir-o-phile blog called Hardboiled Wonderland (spaceythompson.blogspot.com); and has contributed to a passel of noir anthologies. Phillips’ breakthrough 2000 novel, The Ice Harvest, was lurid fun that offered a guffaw in every chapter. (You may recall the film version, starring John Cusack and Billy Bob Thornton.) Phillips’ subsequent efforts have not exactly wound up in church hymnals, either.
At Noir at the Bar, Phillips explains, “Jed and I get up and emcee, and we tell insulting stories about the reader, and then the reader gets up and reads something foul and hopefully interesting. We do that three or four times. And everybody’s drinking.”
Noir, Ayres says, is “short, choppy, visceral stuff that entertains and moves us… ‘Give us some kinda reaction’ is what we ask for.”
The first anthology, which doubled as a fundraiser for U. City’s Subterranean Books, included stories like Dan O’Shea’s “Thin Mints,” where three burnouts stake out a Girl Scout cookie stand with intent to rob it, only to see it all go woefully wrong. The anthology’s second volume, scheduled to print this month, includes tales by prolific St. Louis mystery writer Robert Randisi and acclaimed noir scribe Duane Swierczynski, as well as a graphic (as in comics) entry from gifted St. Louisan Tim Lane.
All this activity has not gone unnoticed by lovers of high-octane prose outside the metro area’s borders. St. Louis, it turns out, is considered by some to be noir central.
“Authors have come from Montana, Colorado, even South Africa to read at this,” says Phillips. “The crime-fiction community is a relatively small group, and you ask them about St. Louis and they’ll say this is the place to be.”
Indeed, the success of the event and the anthology has led to the formation of Noir at the Bar chapters in other cities.
“Since our book came out, Noir at the Bar chapters have sprung up around the country,” says Ayres, “in L.A., Austin, Baltimore, and New York. Denver is on the way, and maybe Detroit and Oxford, Miss., too. The idea is to get an affiliation with a bookstore in your city to make it work. We love bookstores, and they’re something that may not be around in 10 years the way they are now exactly. We want to celebrate the physical place with a physical book.”
Lovers of pulpy crime novels might be able to find plenty of gas for their tank in print and online, but there’s no substitute for a tribal gathering around a lone reader and a microphone. Though Noir at the Bar isn’t exactly a poetry reading.
“To me,” says Ayres, “it’s kind of like going to see a stand-up comedian. You can see a good stand-up comedian who’s going to be edgy, saying stuff you’ve thought about but never expressed, in a sort of moment of mass confession. You’ve got gutsy writers and readers sharing these moments at Noir at the Bar.”
Noir at the Bar, Volume 2 will be available through Subterranean Books, 6275 Delmar, 314-862-6100, subbooks.com. For more info on Noir at the Bar’s events, visit facebook.com/noir.bar.3.
