Dan's Papers - August 8, 2008

A: The story captures the rebirth of South Beach in the '90s, from slum to brand name, from God's waiting room to America's Riviera, from a place where people went to die to a place where Paris Hilton goes to puke. My main character, Gabriel Tucker, a trust-fund wanderer, goes to South Beach to claim all that's left of his family's legacy - a derelict Deco apartment building called The Venus De Milo Arms. He also inherits an unlikely mix of tenants: Skip, a cynical gossip columnist; Pandora, a mute, lip-syncing transvestite; Marina, a stunning, rebellious performance artist; Miss Levy, a Holocaust survivor, bookie and fairy godmother; and Jesus, an impossibly handsome Cuban rafter who is discovered by a world-famous Italian designer and becomes a supermodel. In this crazy place and time, as the group bands together to save The Venus from the wrecking ball, Gabriel eventually discovers the long-buried secrets of his family, a soul he never imagined he had and a love he never dreamed he deserved.

Q: How did SBTN come about?

A: As a writer living in South Beach for the last two decades, I had no choice but to write this novel. All of the book happened before my eyes. You couldn't make this stuff up. My publisher would say, "You have to tone this scene down, no one would believe this could happen." I would reply, "I'm not touching it - I saw this happen twice last night." George Plimpton, who introduced me to the Hamptons, used to stay with me in South Beach all the time and would repeat over and over, "Sport, you have to write this down, you have to tell this South Beach story." I told him I wasn't writing another book. I know he was up there in heaven when The New York Times review came out, saying, "I told you so!"

Q: Jay McInerney said of SBTN: "Decadence has never seemed so sweet and innocent as it does in Brian Antoni's lost world of deco and disco in pre-millenial Miami." What makes this South Beach tale sweeter and more innocent than others?

A: In South Beach you had the old retirees, many of who were Holocaust survivors, and then you had a new wave of retirees - AIDS retirees. These were guys that sold off their insurance policies and came to South Beach to party until they died. All these strange families were forming in these little old Deco buildings that developers were trying to destroy to build high-rises, and you would have old people taking care of young people, and young people taking care of old people. In the midst of the formation of this nauseatingly hip hotspot, I saw such pure genuine compassion that it used to bring me to tears. I tried to write a love letter to this crazy place in South Beach.

Q: You spend time in the Hamptons. How does the South Fork scene compare to its Floridian counterpart?

A: Well, when I think of the Hamptons, I see beautiful shades of gray, the patina of aged shingles, fog rolling in over the water. When I think of South Beach, I see bright neon, pastel-colored buildings and blinding sunlight on the beach. Both are beach resorts and the same things go on in both of them. Both have suffered the growing pains of greed and over-development. But South Beach is in your face and the Hamptons is behind a hedge.

Q: Do you have a regular writing routine? Are you working on other projects?

A: I try to write one good sentence a day. I am very lazy. That is why my last book took 14 years to write. I am now writing South Beach into a script and a treatment for a television show. My dream is to see it as a series on Showtime or HBO. My next novel is going to be set in New Orleans. I like places in transition. I have been to New Orleans about a dozen times since Katrina. I stumble around and take notes just like I did in South Beach, so I am pretty sure a novel will come out of it.