In choosing a setting for his first novel, Thirty-Three Cecils, Everett De Morier turned to the place he knew best: Binghamton.
While De Morier spends his time these days in Delaware, he was born in the Parlor City and raised nearby. He went to college here, met his wife here, started a family here. And he spent a portion of his twenties living in an apartment at 1 Mather Street; the same apartment one of the protagonists of Thirty Three Cecils calls home.
“I could’ve put him in Utica, but I didn’t know those places and it didn’t seem real to me. By putting him in these places that I know, it becomes real. I think it had to be in Binghamton. Dutch is Binghamton. He was something once but now he’s not. He could be something again but it’s too damn hard. Growing up here, there’s a lot of us like that.”
He is speaking about Riley “Dutch” Dutcher, around whom half of the action in the novel takes place. Thirty-Three Cecils is presented as the overlapping journals of two seemingly unconnected men. There is Dutch, an alcoholic in his early 30s who decides to clean his life up after waking up one morning with a hangover and no recollection of how a $3000 Fezzari racing bike ended up in his kitchen; and Walker Roe, a disgraced comic artist-turned-con who is picking up the pieces after being busted for counterfeiting. Fate brings them together in Erie, Pennsylvania, (as fate is wont to do), and thus, we have the redemption tale that is Thirty-Three Cecils.
“I set the book in 1992. 1992 is an interesting year because it’s really before. Cell phones were sort of there, but the internet hadn’t really taken off yet. You’re still independent. There’s still mystery in the world in 1992. The world is really big in 1992.”
While the world may be big, the Binghamton presented in the novel is the same cozy, edge-of-the-rust-belt town that we all know and love. The places that Dutch goes are the places that De Morier once frequented, including Hank’s and Lane’s Deli. The Belmar Pub is of particular importance to the story, as it’s located directly across the street from imbibement-enthusiast Dutch’s home.
While Thirty-Three Cecils is a novel, many of the stories that unfold within have basis in real life.
“I don’t want to give too much of the plot away, but one thing that is real is Dutch’s birthday card memory. That was real. That happened. My parents threw me a party and I just didn’t want to go. So I said ‘uh, the snow in Binghamton is horrible, I can’t come through!’ But it wasn’t horrible. I just didn’t want to go. A while later, a friend of mine wrote me, ‘gosh, the snow in Binghamton must have been really hard.’”
A major plot point in the story involves a Bricklin SV-1, a mid-70s model sports car that was one of the big disappointments of the decade. Says De Morier, “There used to be a guy in Binghamton who had a white Bricklin. This was about ‘85, ‘87. I’d see it everywhere. I always saw the car. I never saw the guy. But you’d always see it in front of, like, Uncle Tony’s. These cool places. But you’d never see the guy.”
There is more to Thirty-Three Cecils than Binghamton, though. While the setting makes it easy to want to pick up the book, it is the story itself that keeps the pages turning. Wickedly funny and thoroughly entertaining, the realness of De Morier’s writing has much more to do with the characters themselves than the places they frequent. Dutch and Walker are trying to better themselves; they are trying to make up for past indiscretions. They are trying to rewire themselves. They are trying to avoid breaking the metaphorical seal that makes them do bad things. They are out for redemption.
“Oh god, you could talk about that forever,” says De Morier. “The seal is anything where once you take that drink, once you do whatever, that seal is broken. Everybody’s got that thing they won’t do. They won’t do it because they don’t want to break that seal. Some people can break it and go back and they’re fine. Some people, it’s more holy than that. I think the rewire is interesting because we think there is this person- us- this beautiful person, but then there’s that evil person that wants us to smoke cigarettes, you know? That evil person who wants us to eat cake. We think that person is out to destroy us, but that person is doing what we told it to do. We told it that hey, when you get stressed grab a cigarette, because it’s my job to keep you happy.”
He continues: “That’s where the wire is. We’ve wired it ‘oh, he’s stressed so I’m going to make him happy. I’m going to make him think he wants a cigarette because that will make him happy.’ You could rip that stuff up for miles and spend a lifetime figuring it out. Most of the destructive stuff we do, it’s because we told ourselves to do it to get these results. It’s wired that way.”
On this summer afternoon, as I sit on the deck of a local café interviewing De Morier, I can’t help but wonder how much of Thirty-Three Cecils is fiction. The author is here on a book tour, and he has spent the past several days visiting the places he once called home, places he hasn’t seen in years. Is he on his own path to redemption? Is this his rewire?
“I’ve never thought about it, but I’d say absolutely yes. It’s a way to come back and say ‘I remember you! You hated me! Did you see the cool book that I wrote?’”
That cool book is available locally at The Belmar Pub and RiverRead Books, or online at 543skills.com, amazon.com, or blydynsquarebooks.com.