BY JOE ANTOL
Volume 22, Number 54 | The Newspaper of Lower Manhattan | May 21 – 27, 2010
‘American Subversive’ delves into domestic terrorism
David Goodwillie, author of the recently released “American Subversive” (Scribner Hardcover, $24.00, 320pp), lives in the mid-20s off 10th Avenue. He’s understandably reticent about revealing the exact location. His debut novel deals with domestic terrorism and charts the paths of Paige Roderick, a young, beautiful save-the-world activist who turns to violence and Aiden Cole, a failed journalist and celebrity blogger who cares about little save the next party or celebrity sighting.
“I’ve already gotten some crazy Tea-Bagger-type rants on the email account I set up for the book,” he said. “Some guy who obviously didn’t read it and thinks it’s a liberal screed.”
Goodwillie moved to Chelsea in 1999 living on 15th street between 7th and 8th Avenues for two years before moving to his current residence in West Chelsea.
“I absolutely love the area,” he remarked. “It’s open, close to the river and when I moved here – before the galleries — there was still a sense of wilderness.”
Two centuries ago, like most of Manhattan, it truly was wilderness. Goodwillie’s neighborhood, the Chelsea Historic District, is the birthplace of Clement Clarke Moore, author of “A Visit from St. Nicholas.” Moore developed the area, donating a full block to the General Theological Seminary. In the ensuing years, the district’s signature brownstones housed longshoremen and other laborers who worked at the nearby Chelsea Piers (this was before a ‘workout’ referred to a livelihood, not recreation). More recently, a series of apartment and office towers (most notably Frank Gehry’s curvaceous IAC headquarters along the West Side Highway, and the newly renovated High Line) have given the area a mix of progressive and classic.
“One of the things that inspires me is the architecture in the neighborhood,” Goodwillie said. “It’s a great mix of the old and new. Things change quickly here, but not too quickly.”
Indeed. Old school, family-owned bars such as Peter McManus still evoke a bit of old New York; and the Liberty Inn on 10th Avenue and 14th Street (one the hideouts used by “American Subversive” anti-heroes Paige and Aiden) still rents rooms by the hour.
I recently sat down for brunch with Goodwillie at the now-deceased Empire Diner. Tall and lanky with a graying mop of hair and large blue eyes, he exudes the relaxed and confident air of the ex-jock and successful author he is.
Thirty-eight, and a graduate of Kenyon College, he briefly played professional baseball — and, after moving to New York, worked as a private investigator; an investigative journalist; and Internet entrepreneur. He was threatened by the Mafia, slept with beautiful models and was no stranger to recreational pharmaceuticals. Like many of his generation, he stumbled from job to job, marginally successful at each until he found his calling.
After 9/11, while viewing the smoldering wreckage from atop the then unfinished High Line he took stock of his life and found it lacking. Having made enough scratch from his Internet venture he quit that job, moved to his current apartment and set out to write his memoir, “It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time.”
“It’s a book of early failure,” he said. “I was trying to find my way. Everyone I knew was struggling. I kept finding myself in one intriguing situation after another.”
With a writer’s eye for irony, if not cliché, he spent his days over the next two years sequestered in a room at the iconic Chelsea Hotel.
“Both of my parents are lawyers,” he said. “I’ve always had the attitude that you get up and go to work. I’m a nomadic writer. I’m not really comfortable working in my apartment. I need to go somewhere.”
Located on 23rd Street and spanning much of the south side of the block between 7th and 8th Avenues, The Chelsea opened in 1884 and was, at the time, the tallest building in New York City. Arthur C. Clarke wrote “2001: A Space Odyssey” within its walls. Dylan Thomas passed out from alcohol poisoning in one of its rooms (and later died). Sid killed Nancy and poets such as Allen Ginsberg graced the threshold. Stanley Bard managed the place for five decades until his ouster by the board of directors in 2007. He was rumored to accept art in lieu of rent from artists long on talent but short on cash — which does much to explain the eclectic collection in the lobby and hallways.
“It was a weird, spooky and wonderful place to create art,” Goodwillie said. “I would write during the day then hang out at Serena, the bar downstairs. The place seemed to be a warehouse for the last of the Warhol generation,” he continued. “It has the ghosts of famous people.”
With the success of “It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time,” Goodwillie set out, as many literary authors do, to write something that had not even the faintest aroma of his previous work. With “American Subversive.” he turned to fiction and explored contemporary generational issues.
“So many people live in a bubble. The rest of the world is much more involved in politics,” he said. “After the last eight years we should know better.”
When asked about his next project, Goodwillie is cagey — but quick to clarify it will be fictional and will have nothing to do with terrorism.
No longer needing the juju of The Chelsea, he now does much of his creative activity in and around the neighborhood and he “plans on staying as long as they’ll have me.”
“Another thing I like about Chelsea is the easy access to the L Train. Everyone seems to be moving to Brooklyn. Sometimes,” he continued, “I feel like the last writer left in Lower Manhattan.”
His haunts have included a space at Paragraph (a writers workspace on 14th and 6th). Occasionally, he’ll fall into a writers cliché and park his MacBook at the Cafe Grumpy coffee shop on West 20th or the Half King Bar on West 23rd.
As the waitress cleared our plates, I asked about the rest of his day. “I’m going to check out 192 Books across the street then go for a run along the river. A perfect Chelsea day.”
David Goodwillie will be reading from “American Subversive” at the Greenwich Village Barnes & Noble (396 Sixth Ave. at 8th St.) on May 27th and at Cake Shop (152 Ludlow St.) on June 16th.
