London-born James Aylott worked as a Hollywood paparazzo in the 1990’s, hanging out by Malibu beach houses in hopes of snapping photos of a bikini-clad celebrity. He went on to work as photo editor for the supermarket tabloid Star and later ran his own celebrity-photo agency.
When his wife’s job led the pair to St. Louis, Aylott shifted gears and wrote his first novel — about the eccentric characters he’d met while living part-time in a South Florida apartment building — and he started taking notes for his second.
Ayott’s observations in the shadow of the Gateway Arch yielded “Tales of Whiskey Tango from Misery Towers,” inspired by his new neighbors in downtown apartment buildings Mansion House and Gentry’s Landing.
The novel follows 11 ordinary St. Louisans during eight days in the summer of 2019. A central love triangle turns on whether a native St. Louisan frustrated by hard times will head off to start a new life in Los Angeles.
St. Louis Public Radio’s Jeremy D. Goodwin spoke with Aylott about his turn from a member of the paparazzi to novelist, and the Midwestern transplant’s view of the city’s unique culture.
Jeremy D. Goodwin: As a paparazzi photographer, did you have a specialty?
James Aylott: It was almost like being a big game hunter. You would figure out who had the biggest price on their head. You would sit outside their house and just hope that you got someone doing something interesting, or being with someone they were not meant to be with. Beach beach bikini pitches are always good, if you followed someone to their beach house.
Goodwin: So basically a photo of Brad Pitt taking out the trash is going to earn someone more money than maybe a more interesting photo of a lesser celebrity.
Aylott: Brad Pitt was super hot. But he was the most boring celebrity you would ever work on because all he would do was drive from his house to the studio. So if you got him taking out his trash it was like finding a unicorn at the pool.
Goodwin: The cultural impression of the work paparazzi do is that they’re basically stalking celebrities and invading their privacy. Is that how you would describe it? Is that what you saw, and did?
Aylott: Stalking is a legal definition that we don’t go along with. It’s First Amendment [protected] newsgathering.
Goodwin: How about, tracking the movements of individuals and going to their private spaces?
Aylott: When you say private spaces — they go into the coffee shop, they're coming out of the gym, they go into the public beach, they're pushing the cart coming out of the supermarket in Malibu. I wouldn't really call that private spaces.
In the 90s, the magazines were craving for pictures of celebrities. So don't blame the photographers, blame the public.
Goodwin: How did you wind up in St. Louis?
Aylott: In 2016 we sold the paparazzi business. The business had changed. I was pretty much burnt out. With my wife, we were expecting our first child. Her job transferred from Hawaii to St. Louis. I'm like: Why don't we give it a go?
Goodwin: Where did you move to?
Aylott: We had a temporary apartment downtown with this incredible view of the Arch.
Goodwin: And that's where I met you, just want to be clear. We crossed paths at that apartment building.
Aylott: Correct. We met in the pool. And it's always dangerous talking to me, because you could end up in one of my books. And you were … I based … I had about 25 different characters. You could have been in the book, but I ran out of space.
Goodwin: Interesting.
Aylott: Yeah, well, when I meet people, I kind of get the inspiration from somebody, and then it's a bit like Frankenstein. I melt another 20 people into that character to make the final product. So you might not recognize yourself.
Goodwin: You and I have both been in the city for a similar amount of time. And I think hearing a transplant’s view can be very helpful to people who've been here a long time. But also, we have to be missing some of the nuance of what it's like to live here, right?
Aylott: I do feel like I would always be an imposter here. It'd be hard to crack the establishment here, that's for sure. But you know, some of that I give them credit for. There is a culture here that they are keeping and nurturing. And for better or worse, I gotta respect it.
When you're not from here, you become aware of things that are strange. You start noticing on the doors of buildings, the signs that say to keep your gun out of this building. Well, this is kind of weird!
And the high school thing here — well, this is kind of funky. Obviously people don't really care what high school you went to, they want to know your socioeconomic status.
Goodwin: That's a very interesting point. So you see the “Where did you go to high school?” question as a sort of classification process: How do I understand where you fit into this society?
Aylott: Yes. And, you know, are you the kind of person that is going to be my friend? Where did you grow up? What's your religion? Can I do business with you? Are you someone I'd like to marry my daughter off to? It sort of came across almost like a cult.
And then you drive around the city and you see things like the Delmar Divide. You have these robber baron mansions that in any other city probably would have been razed for apartment buildings. But three blocks away the city is broken, it’s crumbling. How do you have all that in such a short space?
So the more you explore the city and the more you dig into its history, the more interesting it becomes.
Goodwin: And when you talk about housing segregation, that of course was a policy choice by the real estate industry and local officials, enforced through redlining.
Aylott: When I wrote this book, I was actually working as a realtor. When you take your real estate class, one of the things they drum into you is the Fair Housing Act. And they go into great detail about what real estate agents did here with redlining and block busting.
Goodwin: This book has a lot of concern over its characters’ sexual attractiveness. I'm not sure there's a woman in the book whose breasts aren't carefully described. The biggest market for new fiction is erotica; were you trying to tap into that market a little?
Aylott: Not really. That probably goes from my British tabloid background where, up until a few years ago, we had “Page Three Girls,” which were basically topless ladies in the paper to greet you every morning. So that probably goes back to working at Star magazine and working in the tabloid business where there was a certain amount of sex sold. And maybe some of the humor is a little British and might be lost in translation.
Goodwin: What kind of response is the book getting so far?
Aylott: I checked in at the library yesterday and there are 70 holds on the book, with a 14-week backlog. So I think that's pretty good, man.
I would say it really is a love letter to St. Louis. It might be a tough love letter. I've had a couple of people say they couldn’t finish it because it was too downbeat on St. Louis. If you read the whole book, by the end it's a tale of redemption for St. Louis and I think it's positive.
