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The Mayor of Macdougal Street

Colorful, hilarious, engaging, and a vivid evocation of a fascinating time and place, the posthumous memoir of Dave Van Ronk, leader of the Greenwich Village folk revival of the '60s, will appeal to anyone interested in the music, politics, and spirit of a revolutionary period in American culture.

Annotation:
Singer, songwriter, folk revivalist, and masterly guitarist Dave Van Ronk's autobiography, THE MAYOR OF MACDOUGAL STREET, is a vivid letter from 1950s and early-'60s Greenwich Village. Here, in 1959, just before the young Bob Dylan's arrival on the scene (as described in Dylan's CHRONICLES), an apartment rents for $90 a month, and the cafes and clubs are alive with jazz, folk music, and political intrigue. But Van Ronk is no nostalgia freak: in his Village it's hard to earn enough to keep body and soul together. Beat poetry is on the rise, and folk musicians are often only employed to drive away overstaying audiences, which often consist of curious tourists there solely to see the beatniks. With no commercial ax to grind or legend to burnish, the perennially discovered Van Ronk is an impressive cultural historian. MACDOUGAL STREET would be a riveting memoir even if it didn't contain priceless nuggets on the formative years of music legends of the '50s and '60s like Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, and Bob Dylan. Van Ronk's recollections of the lesser-known but no less vital characters on the scene, as well as his decoding of the complexities of early-'60s Village musical, social, and political life, make it essential.

Praise

Kirkus
"Van Ronk bestrews his pages with sharp, intelligent asides.... A must for those with an interest in the music, and of great appeal as well for anyone who enjoys a roistering life story recounted in a lively narrative voice." 03/15/2005

Uncut
"[A] very readable last will and testament...." 6/30/2005

New York Times Book Review
"Van Ronk makes no secret of his curmudgeonly tendencies, and as a narrator he proves to be a most endearing and gregarious grouch....[A] genial and picaresque ramble." 07/03/2005

Booklist
"A richly evocative paean to a lost era." 05/15/2005

Author Bio

Lawrence Block is a highly respected mystery novel author. In addition, he has served as a fiction-writing instructor, leading a seminar and writing several books of advice and a steady column in Writer's Digest on the subject. He himself began writing at an early age, and, using a pseudonym, published his first book--a soft porn novel--while he was still a college student. In 1961, Block used his own name to write his first mystery novel, DEATH PULLS A DOUBLE CROSS. He is probably best known for three characters, each with his own series: the spy Evan Tanner, who can't sleep after an accident destroyed part of his brain, gentleman burglar/amateur sleuth Bernie Rhodenbarr, and troubled ex-cop Matt Scudder. He showed his darker side in a series of novels published under the name Paul Kavanaugh, and demonstrated his versatility with noir thrillers like SUCH MEN ARE DANGEROUS (1969). Block was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America, and is only the third American to have received a Cartier Diamond Dagger Award from the British Crime Writers' Association. In addition, he has won two Shamus Awards, two Edgar Awards, and a Nero Wolfe Award.