From his gut-wrenching addiction memoir Permanent Midnight to his latest novel, Pain Killers, Jerry Stahl’s biting, fast-paced prose has always resisted compromise. He’s explored almost every genre, from TV scripts, memoirs, and short stories to historical and crime fiction, but it’s his refusal to hold anything back that makes him one of contemporary literature’s most dynamic authors (whether he likes it or not). Flavorwire caught up with the tenacious wordsmith via email for a mini tell-all, whereupon we get the dirt on Café Flesh, PERV: A Love Story, and the notorious Nazi physician, Josef Mengele — one of Stahl’s main characters in Pain Killers.
