Oh, word play. How clever.

And how perceptive of you to spot it. But let me move past the pleasantries, if that’s what they are, and get right to the news. Once that’s out of our way, I’ve another item that might make the headline a little more pertinent.

First, though, consider the following items, which I’ve numbered in an effort to provide the illusion of order in our disorderly universe:

1— It is now possible to preorder both the paperback and the ebook of The Autobiography of Matthew Scudder from Amazon. As the indispensable David Trevor reported in “The Scudder Capstone,” an internal glitch at Amazon hid the paperback listing, while the ebook was very much available for preorder. All is well now, as many of you have evidently discovered for yourselves. The paperback can also be preordered from Barnes & Noble; the ebook is widely available from online retailers.

2— If you want a signed paperback of TAOMS, there’s only one source; fortunately, you can lock down your autographed copy now at the $17.99 list price from The Mysterious Bookshop.

3— I haven’t done a store appearance in years, but I’ll be launching TAOMS on Thursday June 22, at The Mysterious Bookshop. I may read a bit of it, if only to prove that I still can, and I’ll probably talk some, and then I’ll write my own name over and over, and when there are no more books to sign we can all go home. The bookshop, as you may know, is located at 58 Warren Street in Lower Manhattan, and the evening is scheduled to get underway at 6pm.

4— The only other way to get a signed copy is to spring for Subterranean Press’s deluxe signed-and-numbered hardcover edition. It’s scheduled for publication in the fall, along with their premium edition of The Burglar Who Met Fredric Brown, and when we know more, David or I will fill you in.

5— Dreamscape’s TAOMS audiobook should be outstanding. It’s a joint venture of three voices, although almost all of the workload winds up on the capable shoulders of Peter Berkrot, whose task it is to give voice to the book’s narrator, Matthew Scudder. In an extended dialogue sequence, Romy Nordlinger supplies Elaine; I read the short opening section, and another couple of paragraphs later on—as, um, “Lawrence Block.” (I haven’t yet heard the audiobook, but know I can recommend it with confidence; Peter’s done quite a few books of mine, most recently Dead Girl Blues and A Writer Prepares.)

6— Most of you, I suspect, will be most comfortable with The Autobiography of Matthew Scudder, whether in hardcover or paperback or ebook or audio. But some of you may prefer Die Autobiographie von Matthew Scudder, while others might find L’Autobiografia di Matthew Scudder more accessible. It’s my pleasure to advise you that Sepp Leeb and Luigi Garlaschelli have supplied the German and Italian translations, and that we’ll have both on sale on June 24. (And, even as I type these lines, the German version has just become available for preorder.)

Hmm. I could swear there was something else. What was it?

You were going to explain the title, remember? “What’s a meta for?”

Oh, right. In The Scudder Capstone, David quoted a pair of very heartening reviews by James Reasoner and Dan Schwent. Since then, Vince Keenan has posted a generous review on his website, and David Morrell, a dear friend and the author of Murder as a Fine Art, supplied a blurb—and something more.

You can follow the link to Vince’s full review, but let me give you a taste of it:

“This latest book is exactly what the title promises: a fictional character telling you his life story. For devoted readers (like me), there’s an element of pure wish fulfillment at play. The book is essentially a chance to tug the sleeve of a character we’ve gotten to know quite well and offer to buy him another cup of coffee before he heads out, to hear an additional story or two and ask questions long wondered about. It’s an impressive trick that requires decades of work on the part of both writer and reader to carry off. You need to know Matt Scudder in order to appreciate this book, and if you know Matt Scudder you’ve already ordered it.”

David Morrell’s blurb will show up soon on the book’s online product pages, and it’s a honey, but here’s what he added separately, with a note inviting me to use it if I wanted:

“I always knew that Lawrence Block was among the most compelling and skillful of crime novelists. Now I discover that he’s also a brilliant meta novelist, in the tradition of John Barth and Jorge Luis Borges. In THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MATTHEW SCUDDER, Block’s popular private-investigator character tells us about the events (some of them poignant, others heartbreaking, and several of them violent) that inspired 17 novels, numerous short stories, and 2 movies about him.

“The suggestion is that Scudder is a real person who confided in Block and allowed Block to invent fictional versions of events in Scudder’s life. Now Scudder nudges Block aside, faces the keyboard, and tells the real story behind the stories about him. The first-person confessional tone is convincing, not to mention fascinating.

“But I couldn’t help thinking of THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MATTHEW SCUDDER as an example of how characters can become so real for a novelist that they assume control. I imagined Block approaching his desk each day and turning into Matthew Scudder yet again, channeling a character who occupied his imagination for 49 years and now perhaps for the last time. A valediction as much as a fictional autobiography. A fascinating example of how author and character become one. That meta layer in this terrific book made me admire it even more.”

In addition to having given Rambo to the world (and not incidentally to Sylvester Stallone), David earned the right to drop those names— he wrote a critical study of John Barth’s work and taught Borges in his Modern Fiction course at the University of Iowa. “When it comes to meta,” he confided, “I learned from the masters.”

Got it. You know, you could go a step further and quote Will Rogers. Remember? He said he never meta man he didn’t like.

I wouldn’t dream of it. In fact, it seems to me I’ve said enough. Be well, all of y’all, and enjoy the month of May. That’s what it’s there for.

Cheers,

PS: As always, please feel free to forward this to anyone you think might find it of interest. And, if you yourself have received the newsletter from a friend and would like your own subscription, that’s easily arranged; an email to lawbloc@gmail.com with LB’s Newsletter in the subject line will get the job done.

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