Today we welcome author Ron Felber to the comfy confines of
the Gazalapalooza Author Spotlight. Understandably, Felber’s been a busy man
since the recent release of his new thriller, A Man of Indeterminate Value.
We’re pleased our guest was able to carve out some time from his full schedule
to visit with us for a while and share some thoughts about his new book, and
writing generally.
Many of you recognize Felber’s name from his association
with the popular Fox television program, "The Mob Doctor." His 2004
nonfiction book, Il Dottore: The Double
Life of a Mafia Doctor, tells the story about a kid from the Bronx who grew
up to become a Mafia insider and physician to top New York Mafia dons such as
John Gotti, Carlo Gambino, Paul Castellano, and Joe Bonanno. Il Dottore was the inspiration for that
show.
Gelber’s follow-up to Il
Dottore was 2011’s The Hunt for Kuhn
Sa, the true story of American authorities’ battle against an international
heroin kingpin whose misanthropic reign at the end of the 20th century had the
U.S. State Department calling him "the most evil man in the world."
American law and drug enforcement needed to take down this drug lord, as much
to rid the world of his trade as because Kuhn Sa’s savage rise to power couldn’t
have happened without an assist from the CIA.
Felber brings the same hard-nosed research and meticulous
attention to detail that make Il Dottore
and The Hunt for Kuhn Sa enthralling
reads to his brand new novel. A Man of
Indeterminate Value is as much a gripping contemporary thriller as it is a
riveting exposé of brutal American corporate greed, corruption and myopia.
Felber draws on some of his own experiences as CEO of a U.S.
manufacturing company, a former deputy sheriff, and a competitive boxer, to
bring to life his new book’s main character, an anti-hero Jack Madson. Madson
learns the hard way that despite what he thought he knew, happiness and money
have little to do with one another, and quite often more of one inevitably
equals less of the other.
Now that our guest’s deep background has been laid bare for
your education and entertainment, it’s time to strap Felber tightly into the
Spotlight’s hard wooden chair, flare up our battery of unforgiving klieg
lights, and get this interview underway. Felber seems like a pretty tough guy.
He should come through this Spotlight with flying colors. Without further ado,
let’s rev this Spotlight up and see.
Gazala: In my
omnipotence, I've sentenced you to be stranded alone on a desert island for
offenses best left unnamed. In my beneficence, I've decided to allow you a
limited amount of reading material to make your stay a little less bleak than
it would otherwise be. I'll spot you your religious text of preference, and the
collected works of William Shakespeare. In addition to those, name the one
fiction book, and the one nonfiction book, you'd choose to take with you, and
why you choose them.
Felber: Tough
question, Richard. For fiction, I think it would be All the Pretty Horses, by Cormac McCarthy. For someone who's never
read the novel or is unfamiliar with McCarthy's writing, the title might be a
little off-putting, even prissy sounding. But make no mistake about it, this
book is as terse and gritty as anything you'll ever read, with prose that seeps
through your pores and into your soul. Also, I'm very fond of the themes that
he writes about—truly American themes that capture what it means to be an
American in its most ideal sense. The simple justice and intense honor of his
protagonist, John Grady, captures something very special about the American
experience, something I delve into deeply with Jack Madson, the main character
in A Man of Indeterminate Value.
So far as non-fiction, I'm very partial to Norman Mailer's
books, like Armies of the Night, and Of a Fire on the Moon. But I would go
with Mailer’s The Executioner's Song,
if forced to pick just one. Just as McCarthy shows us the American ideal in his
character, John Grady, Mailer in his novelistic non-fiction rendering of
murderer and death-row inmate Gary Gilmore, explores the American dream gone
awry. Like Frankenstein's monster, we see Gilmore’s dark rise and death, with
wires and shorted-out electrodes set sputtering out from the sides of his head.
Eerie and surreal, it's about as close as most of us will ever get to
understanding the mind of a killer and his interactions with the society we
live in.
Gazala: Your latest
book is an excellent and gripping novel titled A Man of Indeterminate Value,
featuring ex-cop Jack Madson, a disgraced Wall Street take-over artist and
target of a failed suicide scam that leaves him the "most wanted" man
in New Jersey.
I've read it. I enjoyed it immensely, and recommend it highly. Shockingly
enough, however, from time to time my bare recommendation doesn't always
motivate a book's potential reader to become a book's actual reader. Tell us
something about A Man of Indeterminate Value, and why its potential
reader should make the leap and become its actual reader.
Felber: Thanks for
the compliment. I'm glad you enjoyed A
Man of Indeterminate Value. For those who need a nudge to go out and read
it themselves, I'd say first, it's one of those novels you read in a sitting
and then are disappointed that you've finished and can't spend more time with
the characters you've gotten so close to. Jack Madson may not be the nicest
fellow you'll ever run into, but he may be the most captivating because once
you buddy-up with Jack, you're in for the ride of your life. Trapped in a
loveless marriage and in a job at a Wall Street "churn ‛n’ burn"
takeover house that guts American companies and spins them at huge profits to
Asian firms, all the while drowning in the debt his socialite wife is racking
up, Madson wants out. How to do it? Fake your own death in a Jersey Shore
boating accident. Let your wife and daughter collect the $4 million in life insurance
money. Then leave the east coast; you’re a dead man headed for Queretaro, Mexico,
where the Chin Chou Triad has stashed a cool $2.5 million in a bank account for
you in return for the intellectual property you've been stealing and secretly
selling to them for the past five years. A foolproof plan? Not if you've
attracted the interest of Martin Phials, the obsessive insurance investigator
who is convinced Jack Madson never really died! Murder, intense drama, and then
there’s also Jack's beautiful mistress, Tomi Fabri, from the Head2Toe escort
service…
Gazala: What are
books for?
Felber: Let me, if
I may, Richard, slightly re-phrase the question to, "What are good books
for?" I'll start with bad ones, anyway. If the author's intention is to
tell a story that is meaningful to readers, even if it's not as entertaining as
one would like, I give that author credit for trying. But writing, like
anything else—painting, music, soccer, for that matter—requires practice and
study in order to cultivate the skills necessary to write a "good" or
"great" book. A good or great book in my opinion is both entertaining
(riveting is even better!), and tells a story that is pertinent to the lives of
readers. By pertinent, I mean the story, or plights of the characters, provide
an insight into the way life operates and the consequences/rewards one might
expect in living a certain way. Also, I believe good books, fiction or
non-fiction, elevate the worth of being human. They inspire people to live a
considered life based on choices and a person's own philosophy about how this
time we have here on earth can best be lived. Books bring dignity and meaning
to us in a world where human dignity seems diminished daily.
Gazala: W. Somerset Maugham said, "There are three rules for
writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are." Do you
agree, or disagree, and why?
Felber: By the
way, if you asked me about my favorite short story, it would be "Rain,"
by Somerset Maugham. But since you asked about his statement on the three rules
of writing a novel, I'd say there are three rules or so. One, write for your
audience, not yourself. Two, know how to entertain your reader. Even in tribal
days, the tribe's story teller conjured tales that were captivating, not
boring. Three, have something to say that means something to your audience. A
writer needs to provide insight into the topic he or she has chosen to write
about. The work should be in some way instructive while entertaining at the
same time. One of the aspects of Rod Serling's work that I admired as a kid
growing up was that through his fascinating sci-fi teleplays, he told us
something about ourselves and the society we live in.
Gazala: A sketchy
Wall Street banker is slinking around my front door, and I best go see what
he's up to before something unpleasant happens. Ask yourself a question, and
answer it.
Felber: Q: Would I
be worried to find a sleazy Wall Street banker slinking around my house? A:
Yes, because as we have to lawyers, we have turned over to Wall Street the
power to destroy a person's wealth with a phone call or the push of a button.
Though I am in business myself and run a large manufacturing company, the
dependence of the individual on systematized global computer networks makes
anything Orwell envisioned in his novel 1984
appear child's play. Just recently, we learned that IRS audits were made on
groups unfriendly to the current administration in order to take them out of
operation during key moments of the last election. Of course, this harkens back
to the Nixon years; but the capabilities of governments domestic and foreign,
not to mention the mafia, for example, to wipe out an individual's wealth
and/or identity with the stroke of a computer key has never been more genuine
than today. The expression is "speed kills," but they got it wrong.
In the end, it is "greed" that kills entire civilizations.
Generally speaking, we concur with Felber that greed is
usually bad. At times, though, it’s not necessarily bad. For example, if your
greed is to get yourself a copy of Felber’s A
Man of Indeterminate Value from Amazon.com, we don’t think that’s bad
greed. As a matter of fact, we support that greed, by putting a link to help
you feed your greed right here. You're welcome.
