Opinions on Andrew Vachss

by **steve vegas** » Fri Mar 03, 2006 5:27 am

This guy seems to have a sterling reputation, but, I've always gotten a weird vibe from him. I haven't read any of his work, only stuff off his website. I have a friend that swears by him. I kind of accept that he's the real thing and that he is sincere, but I still have this weird feeling. Any opinions?

by **sunny** » Fri Mar 03, 2006 11:02 am

I read a couple of his books years ago. His main character was a totally off the grid, un-traceable PI with a vicious dog who was always saving "baby pross" off the street and killing their depraved pimps. Desolate atmosphere and prose that was a cross between Hemingway and Hammet. Very well written, in my opinion, but too dark for my taste. I don't know anything about him personally,except that he wears an eye patch and was once on Oprah (early '90's?) talking about organized pedophile rings. Undoubtedly, a subject he is very familiar with.

by **sunny** » Fri Mar 03, 2006 1:12 pm

Steve, thanks for reminding me of Vachss! I googled him and I think I'll revisit his work, now that I'm older and a little more "hard-boiled" myself. Read this review of his book Two Trains Running.(Not a Burke book) It has a lot of info on the man himself. (pronounced "Vax" btw) <a href="http://www.newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/arts/books/12000/">www.newyorkmetro.com/nyme...oks/12000/</a> Author-investigator Andrew Vachss’s crusades on behalf of abused children—both in life and in fiction—have earned the native New Yorker a reputation that’s equal parts Curtis Sliwa and James Ellroy (with a little Charles Bronson thrown in). For decades, he’s been a triple threat against child exploitation: a lawyer-prosecutor representing victims, a controversial investigator of abuse, and a writer of potboilers in which a P.I. named Burke avenges said atrocities. But his new thriller, Two Trains Running (Pantheon; $25), is no Burke book. A sweeping fifties gangster novel with shadings of Dashiell Hammett, it’s not just a departure from Vachss’s lifelong fixation, it’s also his first real foray into serious literature. Vachss has called the early potboilers his “Trojan horse,” a hollow vessel for a single social issue. But Two Trains Running is more ambitious—although it also includes plenty of Da Vinci Code–style paranoiac apocrypha, like the notion that the FBI gave Al Capone syphilis. “This is my Sunday punch,” Vachss explains. “I worked years and years on this sucker. Everything else was laser shots, very hyperfocused. Here, I wanted to write a book that’s not just a real fast river but has a very strong undercurrent. If you don’t understand that, you’re just a passenger on a raft.” Vachss’s career has been a bit of a Sunday punch itself. Starting out as a federal investigator into venereal disease, Vachss soon set his sights on fighting child abuse and went solo, working cases out of a Chinese restaurant. Ten years later, he began writing about Burke—partly to finance his unusual job as a freelance prosecutor. Vachss’s vigilante anti-heroes take a rather visceral approach to the outrages they witness (one character made a meal of pedophiles’ blood), but the lawyer himself has been considerably more restrained—and more effective. His work led to Clinton’s landmark National Child Protection Act. edited to add another excerpt from: <a href="http://www.rambles.net/vachss_2trains05.html">www.rambles.net/vachss_2trains05.html</a> Andrew Vachss has always been an important novelist, and with Two Trains Running he becomes a major one. The advance word on this new stand-alone novel was that it was Vachss' take on Red Harvest, reimagining Hammett's concept of a small American city torn between several corrupt forces, with the protagonist acting as the fuse that sets the events in violent motion. The comparison is valid, but only a small part of the story. While Hammett's novel was a brilliant miniature of corruption in 1920s America, Vachss uses a far larger canvas and a wider palette of colors. His true subject is nothing less than how America came to be what it is today as a result of what happened in the pivotal year of 1959, when his story takes place. As rival gangland factions gather and clash over the future of Locke City, so do other larger, more entrenched and no less corrupt forces clash over the future of the country itself. In the center stands the protagonist, Walker Dett ("a debt walking," as Vachss calls him in recent interviews). Dett functions as a passenger on both "trains," the express running on the Locke City plotline, and the slower but more powerful engine bearing the country itself to a future formed as we watch. Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=sunny@rigorousintuition>sunny</A> at: 3/3/06 10:15 am

by **LoganSquare** » Fri Mar 03, 2006 1:22 pm

I know what you mean, Steve, about his vibe--but I get it from his Burke novels and not from his website which I have just now checked out. His Burke character is the consummate outsider, a ronin priest and a very entertaining character. I think the vibe is easily explained as coming from the incorporation of such a dark theme into a pop entertainment vehicle which makes him a lot of money. I recently listened to an interview with him here: <a href="http://trashotron.com/agony/news/2005/06-27-05.htm#063005">trashotron.com/agony/news...htm#063005</a> I don't get an weirdness from the interview or from his website. I think he is a sincere crusader although his artist's temperament is somewhat at odds with this.

by **Project Willow** » Fri Mar 03, 2006 9:55 pm

I've met Vachss (briefly) at a book signing several years ago. We exchanged a few emails about my artwork at that time. He was kind and complementary. I was a huge fan, and had read all of his books. His works were so cathartic and empowering. The vitriol his Burke character hurls at perps (he calls them freaks) was a great steam valve for me as a survivor. Then things changed. When I began to discover the other parts of my history, especially lab mc., Vachss became an issue. He had a blurb on his website that basically said people like me were nuts. I challenged him on it, requested that the least he could do was refrain from mentioning the subject, on the off chance he might be wrong, so as not to make it even harder for mc survivors. That round of email wasn't pretty and the question wasn't resolved. I was plenty pissed, as he had been a hero in my eyes. He drew his line of belief at gov. funded abuse/experimentation/mc, he couldn't go there. That was a few years ago, I don't know if he's changed his mind. What's striking is that if you read the Burke books, the main character often refers to having been a product of the government, or ex-government property. I assume it's supposed to be a reference to the foster care system, it's just the way he says it makes me wonder...

by **sunny** » Fri Mar 03, 2006 11:47 pm

PW, would that Vachss did take an interest! What an awesome advocate he could be, as well as the visibility he could bring to the subject of ra/mc.