Colin wrote:
< I wonder how the fictional New England in O'Connell's
series - Box Nine etc, town of Quinsigamond relates to
Boston? >
And later:
< Jack O Connell, who I think is ace, futuristic
(reminds me of Blade Runner a little, but then all dystopian
cities get that) Quinsigamond - a run down New England
factory town. It works for me, is consistent, and, I suppose
vitally, allows O Connell to come up with all the noir
quarters
- racial and criminal
- - that anyone could desire. I like Box Nine and the most
recent Word Made Flesh (??). I wouldn't want to live in
Quinsigamond. >
Of O'Connell's four published novels, I've only read the
first, Box Nine (I was alerted to it by a Marilyn Stasio rave
in the New York Times Book Review). I quite liked it and
ought to read the rest. The template for Quinsigamond is
O'Connell's native Worcester, which is indeed an atmospheric
and depressing town (but a lot smaller than the city
O'Connell describes). I found some Internet references to the
relation between the real and the imagined cities:
http://www.worcesterphoenix.com/archive/books/99/08/27/WORD_MADE_FLESH.html
< It is well-known by now that Worcester, with its
looming, lifeless factory buildings and desolate dinosaur of
a train station serves as the blue print for the fictional
world of Quinsigamond. However, it is quite clear after
reading Word Made Flesh that its townies aren't fleeing to
Boston and Providence to find the action on a Saturday night.
"It's not so much that it's this exact translation from
Worcester into Quinsigamond," O'Connell says over coffee at
the Corner Lunch, which, naturally, overlooks Quinsigamond
Avenue. "It [the novel] sort of takes these building blocks
that are Worcester and then I just let my imagination run
roughshod over them," he laughs. If Quinsigamond is the
Worcester of Jack O'Connell's imagination, then maybe he
needs to run for City Council. >
http://www.crimetime.co.uk/bookreviews/skinpalace.html
< When Boston literally was the Hub of its world, the
small industrial cities of New England thrived. Now they are
in steep decline, and none more so than Jack O'Connell's
'Quinsigamond'. From geographic evidence, Quinsigamond is
Worcester, forty miles west of Boston. But internal evidence
suggests a much larger city, a fantastic creation of the
Decline of the Later American Empire, part New York and part
New Orleans during Mardi Gras. >
Here are links to a couple of fascinating interviews with
O'Connell that discuss his literary and genre influences. The
first interview is more straightforward, the second a little
more tongue-in-cheek:
http://www.crimetime.co.uk/interviews/jackoconnell.html
< I've lived my entire life within approximately two
square miles. I sometimes think it might be convenient to
carry business cards that read Worcester is not Quinsigamond.
Worcester is, however, the place I know better than any
other, with the exception of Quinsigmond. I spent uncountable
hours driving around this city with my father. Through my
eight-year-old eyes, this rustbelt mill town was a living
story. I'm not sure I can say it better than that. All those
half-destroyed factories, all those ethnic enclaves, all
those rail yards, and scrap lots, and the ruined train
station, all those streets that twisted and turned without
logic, they all seemed both frightening and enormously
intriguing. While to most of my boyhood friends, our town was
the definition of a dead end, to me it was the antithesis of
the mundane. Now, looking back, it was an amazingly elaborate
noir set waiting for a film crew that never arrived. Lots of
dark alleys and shadowy warehouses and decayed Victorian
manses. But I don't plug the nuts and bolts of my city into
my book. Instead, I let my imagination warp the city, enlarge
it. I pillage its DNA and radiate it until it glows neon.
>
This second interview covers 5 webpages, so you have to
follow the links:
http://www.disinfo.com/pages/article/id749/pg1/
< A lifelong resident of Worcester, Mass., O'Connell has
mutated that city into Quinisgamond, the setting for all his
books thus far. "Q-town," according to O'Connell, "is a
monstrous, teeming, surreal berg loaded with gangsters and
fanatics, pilgrims and killers, lunatics and mongrels,
deviants and visionaries. It's the last seat of the lost
American heart. And I say that with my tongue only slightly
in my cheek. It's the vault that holds all my nightmares.
Q-town is what the inside of my skull looks like." >
Mark R. Harris
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