I had answered a request in the summer of 2017 for “Italian-American extras” for Martin Scorsese’s Netflix production of The Irishman, a film based on the biography of Frank ‘The Irishman’ Sheeran’s I Heard You Paint Houses, written by Charles Brandt. My interest in the book and film centered on the accounts of Teamster president Jimmy Hoffa’s murder in 1975. I read the book after sending my picture and information to the agency. I wanted in.......

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I read Louise DeSalvo’s Vertigo for the second time last month. The first time was two years ago, when I read it at the suggestion of my colleague Edi Giunta.

“I’m writing a novel about Hoboken and my childhood there,” I’d told Edi.

“You should read Louise’s Vertigo,” she said. Simple.

It took me a while to get to the book, but eventually I did. I’d met Louise years before at one of Edi’s great parties. I spoke to her a bit, nothing that I recall beyond the usual

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