Dave Ermini is the author of the book News from the Tope, now available in an updated edition. Also an architect, he is based in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
Q: What inspired you to write News from the Tope?
A: As a young architect working in New York City, years ago, I became increasingly frustrated with the lack of imaginative and common sense, pragmatic solutions that were being applied to combating rampant crime and poverty in our low-income urban areas.
The book also grew out of a design studio course that I had taken while obtaining my Master of Architecture degree at UVA. As is documented in the book, that course focused on the idea of Utopia, and what this term has meant to architects and scholars throughout history.
So my book was really an attempt to write a modern-day utopian novel which posited solutions to endemic problems in our contemporary inner cities and the permanent underclass that has existed within them for most of my lifetime.
Q: Is the place you write about in the book real or fictional?
A: I’m not sure I really want to answer that. Let’s just say that the place I’ve written about “could” be real.
Q: Did you need to do any research to write the book, and if so, did you learn
anything that especially surprised you?
A: I did quite a lot of research. One of the things that really shocked me was finding out how much untapped potential there was in lower income U.S. communities.
There have been scores of studies that have documented large percentages of high performing students in lower income minority communities who either never go to college or else attend two-year community colleges at best.
These are children who should be steered into elite universities, and groomed to become doctors, lawyers, scientists, engineers, and business leaders, but who instead are falling through the cracks.
I was also shocked to find out about the staggeringly high rates of incarceration for minority populations and the types of prisons that exist in the U.S.
There are some states in the southern U.S. that are leasing out their inmates to large agricultural corporations to work in the fields and pick their crops. There’s even a term for it - a “penal farm” or colloquially a “plantation prison” and it’s just unbelievable to me that this is permitted in the U.S. today. Didn’t we fight a little war in the 1860s to stop that sort of thing?!?
Q: How have readers responded to the book, and what do you hope people take away from it?
A: I’ve gotten positive feedback from just about everyone who’s read it. What’s been interesting is that I’ve had people who are extremely conservative as well as those on the far left all tell me that what’s described in the book is what really needs to be done.
I’d like the book to become a catalyst for real change. We, as a nation, can’t afford to continue down this path of having a permanent minority underclass that feels helpless and continually aggrieved.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I’ve been working on a nonfiction book about my journey through the architectural profession starting as an unpaid intern to my present position as a senior associate. Architecture is a woefully misunderstood and overly glamorized profession. So I want to tell it as it really is for most of us, looking from the ground up.
On a lighter note, I recently listened to an audiobook by the comedian D.L. Hughley called Surrender White People, which is essentially a list of grievances and a satirical suggestion for a treaty to be signed between the two races, and it’s both hilarious and compelling.
I’ve started writing a rebuttal to it that’ll be called We Accept Your Terms D.L., With The Following Conditions. So if anybody out there can put me in touch with D.L. Hughley, I’d really appreciate it!
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: One of the most interesting things that I’ve done as a writer was to publish a Twitter novel. And yes, it’s a thing. For anyone who doesn’t know already, it’s written entirely on the Twitter (now X) platform. So, for nearly two years between 2020 and 2022, I tweeted out, once every morning, a small piece of the novel - 240 characters maximum at a time.
The novel was called The Assumption of Dijon Torino and it was an exploration of the relationship between quantum physics, religion, fine art, and mental illness. You can still find it on Twitter (now X) @DijonTorino. But it’s saved in reverse order so you’ll have to scroll all the way to the beginning if you want to read that one.
I also attempted to write a screenplay a while back that was loosely based upon my father’s career as a detective in the Yonkers Police Department and his eventual involvement with the Son of Sam case.
There’s a lot of things about that arrest which most people never heard about and which New York’s Finest would rather you didn’t know. So I’m looking for a producer for that one. I know. Good luck with that, Dave!
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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