Novelist Walter Kirn to Discuss Chilling New Memoir at the Music Hall

WRITERS IN THE LOFT PRESENTS 

Up in the Air author

WALTER KIRN 

with his chilling memoir, 

BLOOD WILL OUT:
The True Story of a Murder, a Mystery
and a Masquerade 

A USA Today Top 10 Best Book of Winter 2014  

Wednesday, March 26, 7pm  
“A Hitchcockian psychological thriller and one of the most honest and affecting memoirs I've read. It is superbly written, each sentence a wonder, each page deepening my appreciation of Kirn’s precise observation of human nature.” 
— Amy Tan.

“…a masterful true crime narrative that is impossible to put down. The book deserves to become a classic.” 
— Publishers Weekly, Starred Review   

Ticket package includes book, bar beverage, 
and author meet-and-greet/signing 

Join a discussion of BLOOD WILL OUT with
The Music Hall Book Club on Tuesday, May 6, 7-8pm

Portsmouth, New Hampshire, February 12, 2014: The Music Hall’s Writers in the Loft series welcomes novelist and essayist Walter Kirn, author of Thumbsucker and Up in the Air, on Wednesday, March 26. Kirn will discuss his forthcoming memoir BLOOD WILL OUT: The True Story of a Murder, a Mystery and a Masquerade – already named a USA Today Top 10 Best Book of Winter 2014 – in which he writes about his unsuspecting ten-year friendship with the imposter and murderer who called himself Clark Rockefeller.

The 7pm event includes an author presentation and moderated Q+A, plus book signing and meet-and-greet. It will be held at the Music Hall Loft at 131 Congress Street, in downtown Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

An In Cold Blood for our time, BLOOD WILL OUT is the chilling, compulsive story of a writer unwittingly caught in the wake of a grifter-turned-murderer.  First serialized in The New Yorker, Walter Kirn’s one-of-a-kind story takes us on a bizarre and haunting journey from the posh private clubrooms of Manhattan to the hard-boiled courtrooms and prisons of Los Angeles.

Combining confessional memoir, true crime reporting, and cultural speculation, BLOOD WILL OUT is a Dreiser-esque tale of self-invention, upward mobility, and intellectual arrogance. It exposes the layers of longing and corruption, ambition and self-delusion beneath the Great American con.

“Kirn’s book is fascinating on so many levels. It’s irresistible, of course, to fans of psychological thrillers and true crime – but readers interested in memoir, psychology, and cultural critique will find it equally intriguing. Don’t miss hearing from the author himself as he discusses this chilling memoir and the experiences that led him to write it,” said Executive Producer Patricia Lynch, also Executive Director of The Music Hall.

BLOOD WILL OUT  has been selected for discussion by The Music Hall Book Club on Tuesday, May 6,  in the Loft. 

ABOUT THE BOOK
In the summer of 1998, Walter Kirn—then an aspiring novelist struggling with impending fatherhood and a dissolving marriage—set out on a peculiar, fateful errand: to personally deliver a crippled hunting dog from his home in Montana to the New York apartment of one Clark Rockefeller, a secretive young banker and art collector who had adopted the dog over the Internet. Thus began a fifteen-year relationship that drew Kirn deep into the fun-house world of an outlandish, eccentric son of privilege who ultimately would be unmasked as a brazen serial impostor, child kidnapper, and brutal murderer.

Kirn's one-of-a-kind story of being duped by a real-life Mr. Ripley takes us on a bizarre and haunting journey from the posh private clubrooms of Manhattan to the hard-boiled courtrooms and prisons of Los Angeles. As Kirn uncovers the truth about his friend, a psychopath masquerading as a gentleman, he also confronts hard truths about himself. Why, as a writer of fiction, was he susceptible to the deception of a sinister fantasist whose crimes, Kirn learns, were based on books and movies? What are the hidden psychological links between the artist and the con man? To answer these and other questions, Kirn attends his old friend’s murder trial and uses it as an occasion to reflect on both their tangled personal relationship and the surprising literary sources of Rockefeller's evil. This investigation of the past climaxes in a tense jailhouse reunion with a man whom Kirn realizes he barely knew—a predatory, sophisticated genius whose life, in some respects, parallels his own and who may have intended to take another victim during his years as a fugitive from justice: Kirn himself.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
WALTER KIRN is the author of Thumbsucker and Up in the Air, both made into major films. His work has appeared in GQ, New York, Esquire, and the New York Times Magazine.

TICKETS
The ticket package for Writers in the Loft: Walter Kirn on Wednesday, March 26, at 7pm is $40. In addition to a reserved seat, the package includes a hardcover copy of  BLOOD WILL OUT ($25.95), a bar beverage, and book signing meet-and-greet. Packages can be purchased through The Music Hall Box Office, located at 28 Chestnut Street, Portsmouth, over the phone at 603-436-2400 or online at www.themusichall.org.                                                

WRITERS IN THE LOFT SERIES SPONSOR:  Citizens Bank

MUSIC HALL SEASON SPONSORS: River House Restaurant and Carey & Giampa Realtors 

About The Music Hall Book Club   

The Music Hall Book Club is a benefit for all members starting at the $150 level. This new life-of-the-mind series of book discussions connects our inner circle of members with the works of our celebrated authors in a lively way four times a year. Books selected for will come from various genres; the hour-long discussions will be held in the Loft 2-4 weeks after the author’s appearance in Writers on a New England Stage or Writers in the Loft.  Book discussions will be moderated by Patty Burke Hickey and Ralph Sneeden and by guest moderators selected by the duo. Patty is a long-time Music Hall member from New Castle, NH, avid supporter of the Writers on the New England Stage Series since its inception, and English instructor at Phillips Exeter Academy. Ralph, an accomplished poet and fiction writer, has taught in the English department at Phillips Exeter Academy for many years and leads writing workshops in the summer.   Tickets for each discussion event are $8 and include a beverage of choice and selection of gourmet cheeses, plus time for social gathering before and after each discussion.   For more information about upcoming authors and books for selected Music Hall Book Club discussions, please visit TheMusicHall.org.  If you would like to become a member at the $150 level or above, please contact the Membership Coordinator, Lorianne Saniuk, at LSaniuk@themusichall.org or (603) 766-2176.

 About Writers in the Loft
Akin to The Music Hall’s anchor author series, Writers on a New England Stage, Writers in the Loft features well-known authors but in a smaller, more intimate space. The series brings audiences today’s top authors, the best of fiction and nonfiction. The evening package includes a reserved seat and bar beverage, author presentation and Q+A, a copy of the book, and a meet-and-greet book signing with the featured writer.

 About The Music Hall
The Music Hall is a performing arts center featuring curated entertainment from around the world in two theaters in its downtown Portsmouth, New Hampshire campus - one, a landmark 1878 Victorian theater, the other the intimate Music Hall Loft around the corner, recently named "best performing arts venue" by Yankee Magazine and the recipient of the NH AIA award for design excellence. Acclaimed signature series bring top authors and artists to both stages, while HD broadcasts and independent film fill both screens. A radio show broadcast on NH Public Radio originates here. This dynamic arts center urges patrons to Explore + Learn via master classes, post film panel discussions, and matinees for children. An anchor cultural organization in this historic working seaport, The Music Hall is one of downtown Portsmouth’s biggest employers and largest contributors to the regional economy: The Music Hall and its patrons contribute $7 million annually to the local economy through show and visitor related spending. Innovative in its outlook, the organization is community oriented and committed to making the Seacoast flourish. The Music Hall is 501c3 nonprofit managed by a professional staff with the assistance of a volunteer board.  Though global in the scope of its artists and programs, The Music Hall operates independently with the support of 3,000 members, 300 business supporters and 40 community partners. Welcoming more than 100,000 patrons (including 20,000 children) each year from the tri-state area and beyond, The Music Hall is the region’s center for the performing arts, literature and education…easy to get to, impossible to forget. www.themusichall.org 

PRAISE for BLOOD WILL OUT  

"This stunning book dissects psychopathy, the perverse manners of the Internet generation, art, money, and the very nature of belief. At its core, it brilliantly portrays one man's journey through fraudulence to a point of stern resolve. It's tabloid tell-all journalism and Old Testament rebuke. It is of a piece with Roethke: it tells us that the abyss is just a step down the stair.”
— James Ellroy 

“In Blood Will Out Walter Kirn brilliantly and with remarkable eloquence dissects one of the great impostors—and along the way delves into the fraudulence within that made him so susceptible to the other man's lies. A gripping performance!”
— Edmund White 

“Though Blood Will Out is written with Walter Kirn's usual stylistic verve, insight, and imagination it is actually a disturbing account of a one-sided, naively misguided 'friendship' with a dangerous sociopath. Here is a memoir in the guise of a 'true crime story'—a double portrait of writer and subject in which the subject is partially erased even as the writer evokes the considerable tools of his imagination to reconstruct him and his own motive in the bizarre relationship.”
— Joyce Carol Oates 

“There is no finer guide to the American berserk than Walter Kirn.”
— Gary Shteyngart 

“The parallels with Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley are not lost on Kirn, who spends as much time trying to understand how he and others fell under Gerhartstreiter’s spell as he does relating the primary tale of the criminal himself. Kirn’s candor, ear for dialogue, and crisp prose make for a masterful true crime narrative that is impossible to put down. The book deserves to become a classic.”
— Publishers Weekly, Starred Review