Passaro, Vince

PERSONAL:

Married Beth Stolz; separated; children: John, James, Paul. Education: Columbia College, graduated, 1979; Columbia University, M.F.A., 1988.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Corporation of Yaddo, 630 9th Ave., Ste. 701, New York, NY 10036. E-mail—vpassaro@yaddo.org.

CAREER:

Author. City University of New York, Baruch College, New York, NY, director of public relations; Corporation of Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, NY, and New York, NY, director of foundation and corporate relations.

WRITINGS:

Violence, Nudity, Adult Content: A Novel, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 2002.

Work represented in anthologies, including Best of the West, W.W. Norton (New York, NY), 1992; and Lust, Violence, Sin, Magic, Atlantic Monthly Press (New York, NY), 1993. Contributor to periodicals and Web sites, including Nation, New York Times Magazine, Harper's, New York, and Salon.com.

SIDELIGHTS:

"Vince Passaro's lacerating debut," entitled Violence, Nudity, Adult Content: A Novel, wrote New York Times contributor Janet Maslin, "… is about a New York lawyer named Will Riordan." Passaro, a widely published essayist and commentator, gives Will's story its own special New York edge: while the destruction of Will's modern marriage and his soul-staining job are relatively commonplace in modern literature, the novel gains power from the protagonist's tart observations about life and from the matter-of-fact violence that pursues Will in both his private life and at work. "While his family implodes," a Kirkus Reviews contributor stated, "Riordan broods about his life—a passage about his rage-filled alcoholic father and an entire generation of postwar dads is nothing short of brilliant—and about the city around him." Added to this is the fact that one of his clients, the victim of a gang rape, is also an avant-garde artist who deluges him with e-mails expressing her extremely personal views on the way her case is conducted. The novel, declared Christine Perkins in her Library Journal review, becomes a "scorching commentary on office politics and sexual mores." "On another level," Perkins continued, "it's about the dehumanizing effects of rape." The author "has a superb feeling for the city's beauty and banality—indeed, the ‘addictive swirl of money and subjugation’ that Will observes in a Manhattan strip club seems endemic to all five boroughs," declared New York Times Book Review contributor James Marcus. "Passaro is equally good at conveying the crazy compression of Manhattan life, where the verdict on people, places and things tends to be delivered instantaneously." "Throwing legal-thriller curve balls and narrating near cinematic personal struggles," concluded a Publishers Weekly reviewer, "Passaro imbues the novel with mesmerizing suspense, leading the reader through a labyrinth to an unexpectedly upbeat finale."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Book, January-February, 2002, Kevin Greenberg, review of Violence, Nudity, Adult Content: A Novel, p. 74.

Booklist, December 15, 2001, Connie Fletcher, review of Violence, Nudity, Adult Content, p. 707.

Kirkus Reviews, November 15, 2001, review of Violence, Nudity, Adult Content, p. 1572.

Library Journal, December, 2001, Christine Perkins, review of Violence, Nudity, Adult Content, p. 174.

New York Times, February 18, 2002, Janet Maslin, review of Violence, Nudity, Adult Content, p. B14.

New York Times Book Review, March 10, 2002, James Marcus, review of Violence, Nudity, Adult Content, p. 18.

Publishers Weekly, December 24, 2001, review of Violence, Nudity, Adult Content, p. 39.

ONLINE

Columbia College Today Online,http://www.college.columbia.edu/ (January, 2003), Justine Bleu, interview with Passaro.

Free Williamsburg,http://www.freewilliamsburg.com/ (April, 2002), J. Stefan Cole, review of Violence, Nudity, Adult Content.

Salon.com,http://www.salon.com/ (March 21, 2002), Andrew O'Hehir, review of Violence, Nudity, Adult Content.