Just finished Block's beatsploitation novel, A Diet of
Treacle. It kind of drags for the first 2/3s even if you dig
the whole beat scene of the Village of 1961. More authentic
than most I've read and I've read a couple others
lately--Epitaph for a Dead Beat and The Venetian Blonde. I
know Block hung with the Greenwich Village crowd then, so he
was probably very familiar with the dope dealers that hung on
the fringes.
On a humorous note . . . one of the beatniks reads a book
called A Sound of Distant Drums by James Blue. I guess Block
included his trademark so that the "in" crowd would know he
was Sheldon Lord. I think the original title
"Pads Are for Passion" didn't do it justice.
Jeff
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