Nick Tosches | Official Bio

Nick Tosches was born (1949) in Newark, New Jersey, and raised by wolves from the other side. Through nepotism he became a barroom porter at the age of fourteen. Casting this career to the wind in his quest for creative fulfillment, he became a paste-up artist for the Lovable Underwear Company in New York City. On January 12, 1972, he went to lunch and never came back, drifting south to Florida, where, among other things, he worked as a snake-hunter for the Miami Serpentarium. After being bit on the shin one morning, he decided to forsake all further employment, and thus became a writer of poetry and prose.

His first book of note, Hellfire (1982), was a biography of Jerry Lee Lewis steeped in William Faulkner, the Old Testament, and a singular dark and poetic style born of the ancient classics and of the street. Hellfire was hailed as "quite simply the best rock & roll biography ever written" (Rolling Stone),"a work of art" (The Boston Globe), "brilliant" (The New Statesman), "disturbing and important" (The Toronto Sun), and "a testament to the power of Tosches's writing" (The Arizona Republic). Greil Marcus wrote that, "sooner or later, Hellfire will be recognized as an American classic." A new edition of Hellfire was published, by Grove Press, in 1998.

With Power on Earth (1986), Tosches turned toward darker, deeper shadows--those surrounding Michele Sindona, the infamous Sicilian financier who was believed to occupy the throne at the heart of the world's evil, where the secret reaches of international finance, the Mafia, and the Vatican came together.

Cut Numbers (1988), his first novel, dealt with things closer to the street. Described by The Boston Globe as "a fine, profane performance" that "dramatizes completely and wryly the ways organized crime and everyday life rub shoulders," Cut Numbers was praised as "an auspicious first novel" by The Chicago Tribune, "tough, tender, knowing and tense" by The San Francisco Chronicle, and "illuminating" by The Los Angeles Times Book Review Upon its publication in England, The London Times wrote: "Tosches makes an extraordinarily compelling language out of expletive and insult. Through it, the seedy low-life becomes almost heroic."

Dino: Living High in the Dirty Business of Dreams (1992) told the story of the Italian-American century, with the character of Dean Martin, avatar of anti-art mob culture, a mystery even unto himself, as the central figure. Comparing Dino to Hellfire and describing its author as "approaching genius," The Buffalo Times wrote that, "for the second time in his writing life, Tosches has walked through the American cultural garbage dump and found a great subject that everyone else had thrown away." Reviewed as "brilliant, freewheeling, acid" (Publishers Weekly), "dazzling" (The Los Angeles Times Book Review), "brilliant and compelling" (The San Francisco Chronicle), Dino in 1993 was shortlisted for the Esquire-Waterstone Nonfiction Award and received the Italian-American Literary Achievement Award for Distinction in Literature, which Tosches shared that year with Gay Talese.

In praising Tosches and Dino, the writer and director David Hare has said: "There are, in fact, very few writers who have Nick Tosches' singular gift. Tosches can get hold of a bar-room entertainer like Dean Martin and, in a biography of sustained brilliance and first-rate research, reveal him as one of the great representative figures of his age."

The director Martin Scorsese is presently at work on the film version of Dino, which will begin production at Warner Bros.

Of his most recent novel, Trinities (1994), Tosches has said: "I wanted to tell a story of a battle beyond good and evil, a battle for evil." For Tosches, the mystery at the heart of Trinities, the question that it ponders, is whether morality, the sense of good and evil, existed in the heart and soul of humanity before man invented the gods. The Washington Post Book World declared Trinities a "masterpiece"; The Chicago Tribune, "amazing"; The St. Petersburg Times, "hypnotic, almost lyrical...brutal, stunning"; and The New York Times Book Review, calling it "a complete success," chose it as a Notable Book of the Year. Trinities has been translated into nine languages, including Chinese, and was produced in audiobook form as a tour-de-force dramatic reading by the actor Jerry Orbach.

Tosches has written for numerous periodicals, including Vanity Fair, of which he is a contributing editor. His poetry has appeared in Open City, Esquire, Contents, GQ, Smokes Like a Fish, Long Shot, and other publications.

A collection of his poetry, Chaldea, was published by Cuz Editions in the summer of 1999.

His book The Devil and Sonny Liston was published in the spring of 2000, by Little, Brown. The Nick Tosches Reader, an anthology spanning the first thirty years of his career, was published in April 2000 by Da Capo. On the horizon are the production of his screenplay, Spud Crazy, and further musical collaborations with Homer Henderson. Tosches lives in New York and is presently at work on what he foresees as his masterpiece, a novel entitled In the Hand of Dante.

Listen to Blue Eyes and Exit Wounds sample tracks.

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