Dean Martin's great-great-uncle, Ebenezer Martin, who said to Eli Whitney, I see the cotton, but where's the gin? Never got a dinner!
My father had this mythological sense of the old New York, and he used to tell me stories about these old gangs, particularly the Forty Thieves in the Fourth Ward.
Growing up with three brothers and three sisters, I was the storyteller of the family... what my mother called 'The Liar.'
I come from a big family of storytellers and, growing up, I liked hearing about the years before I was born.
All writers - all people - have their stores of private and family legends which lie like a collection of half-forgotten, often violent toys on the floor of memory.
All cat stories start with this statement: "My mother, who was the first cat, told me this...
These were our bedtime stories. Tales that haunted our parents and made them laugh at the same time. We never understood them until we were fully grown and they became our sole inheritance.
My grandmother refused to concede that any member of the family died of natural causes. An uncle's cancer in middle age occurred because all the suitcases fell off the luggage rack onto him when he was in his teens, and so forth. Death was an acquired characteristic.
Stories in families are colossally important. Every family has stories: some funny, some proud, some embarrassing, some shameful. Knowing them is proof of belonging to the family.
With 'Hollow Circus,' I used a family story that haunted me as a kid, one of those anecdotes about a family member that would rarely be spoken of in front of the children.
