You don’t generally think of the Young Adult racks at your local library when Barry Gifford is the author in question, but Sad Stories of the Death of Kings, has indeed been chosen to, ah, shake up the kids a little.
Gifford – who’ll be in town next week to screen 1990’s Wild at Heart (based on his novel of the same name) – enters the YA market with a slim new collection of short stories weaving in and around the life of Roy, a young boy growing up in post-WWII Chicago.
“This is kind of an interesting thing for me,” says Gifford, by phone, “because when I first turned in the manuscript, my publisher said, ‘You know, if you change one sentence in this book, we can publish it in a simultaneous YA edition for use in middle and high schools.’ And in fact when I changed the sentence, it was better with the change, and so I said, ‘Why not?'”
Gifford, most famously the author of the febrile Sailor & Lula novels that inspired David Lynch’s Palm d’or-winning Wild at Heart (he also penned the screenplay for Lynch’s Lost Highway), admittedly hasn’t been anyone’s idea of a YA author, until now. His crisp, concise prose and trademark way with memorable regional dialects spoken, at length, by his equally memorable characters has lead to something of a cult following among fans of unclassifiable meta-noir, of which there are many. But, seriously, kids? That’s a shocker.
With the offending sentence summarily excised — ”a graphic depiction of a blowjob,” explains Gifford – the literary father of Perdita Durango, Bobby Peru, and other, eviler characters, is now safe (but hopefully not too safe) for teenage consumption.
“I don’t know what kids read these days,” say Gifford, “in the sense of, how racy can the material be? But the few times that I’ve appeared at middle or high schools, it’s been amazing. The kids are pretty hip. Obviously [Sad Stories of the Death of Kings] is an adult book with mature material in it, but the idea of publishing a YA version has been embraced with surprising thoroughness. I know that Sherman Alexie had some success with a YA book last year. It’s not something I’ve actively pursued, but now here it is. I’ve written a YA book that was never intended as such. And actually, you know, I think that’s fantastic.”
Seven Stories Press will publish Sad Stories of the Death of Kings on Nov. 1. Gifford will appear at the Alamo Drafthouse at the Ritz on Tuesday, Oct. 12 for a special screening of Wild at Heart.
This article appears in October 1 • 2010.