tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-49820134216630582772024-02-02T07:52:16.390-08:00Karen the Small Press LibrarianKaren Lillishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04624398526912042847noreply@blogger.comBlogger167125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4982013421663058277.post-53198875088490409792021-08-31T23:25:00.020-07:002021-09-01T07:52:41.829-07:00Jude Vachon: Progressive Librarian (1964-2021)<p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdBMUQS2Xo6HNnUcd6npyVRJswEnEF3wzxZHJsMIzoeVF3nHpwjP2HN-w-qjQbaDqvEeBTKQeaARq3QQ_lB6v1GMWJyJXaqSnaBWTBQzeOusDAMlp0m4XWbJOm8yfNNa-YNklnPPf4-GME/s1280/Jude_Nine_Stories2+-+1.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="1280" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdBMUQS2Xo6HNnUcd6npyVRJswEnEF3wzxZHJsMIzoeVF3nHpwjP2HN-w-qjQbaDqvEeBTKQeaARq3QQ_lB6v1GMWJyJXaqSnaBWTBQzeOusDAMlp0m4XWbJOm8yfNNa-YNklnPPf4-GME/w400-h300/Jude_Nine_Stories2+-+1.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jude Vachon reading at Nine Stories Bookstore in Pittsburgh, 2018.</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I don’t know how to tell you that Jude Vachon is gone. Jude was often wildly happy and vibrant, often engaged in a new project or an ongoing effort, sometimes deeply pissed off or giggling, but she was always very much present. When you were around Jude, you never didn’t know that Jude was there. I wanted to write something to honor her “memory,” though it seems unbelievable and almost blasphemous to call her a “memory.” But I also wanted to write something to say that I’m thinking of you if you are thinking of Jude today. I know that so many of her friends, coworkers, and people in her communities are hurting over her loss. Or still just in shock. I know because even in this strange and empty pandemic landscape, it’s hard to go anywhere in Pittsburgh without running into someone who loved Jude and what she encouraged in us. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></p><p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEwYOLAQM4NhKE0Y_lLua1uHA0fhQ4_YZa96RKM03Wcz1X3Z_RsAZOhvmbpN2w-OVfUF8JWjQxV7ES_7rv2PuWmjFYbPgdlpOtioWPUgVmbXJJGCgwrsPw0aSfhxLOA49HAu4l0aQ6oZfF/s500/Progressive_Skillshare.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="375" data-original-width="500" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEwYOLAQM4NhKE0Y_lLua1uHA0fhQ4_YZa96RKM03Wcz1X3Z_RsAZOhvmbpN2w-OVfUF8JWjQxV7ES_7rv2PuWmjFYbPgdlpOtioWPUgVmbXJJGCgwrsPw0aSfhxLOA49HAu4l0aQ6oZfF/w400-h300/Progressive_Skillshare.jpg" title="Progressive Library Skillshare, Pittsburgh, 2007. Jude Vachon is third from the left. Sandy Berman and Jenna Freedman are on the far right." width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Progressive Library Skillshare, Pittsburgh, 2007. L to R: Justin Hargrave, [___?], Jude Vachon, Alina del Pino, Kelly Rotmund, <span>Vani Natarajan, </span>Jenna Freedman, and Sandy Berman. Front row, Veronica Liu and Tricia Burmeister. Photo courtesy Justin Hargrave.<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I first “met” Jude from afar when I attended the <b>Progressive Library Skillshare</b> event in the earliest days of my library school education. This was September 2007. A few Pittsburghers (including Jude) who could see the social justice potential of the library, created a weekend event and invited radical library giants <a href="https://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/93/9304/berman.html" target="_blank">Sanford “Sandy” Berman</a> & <a href="https://www.columbiaspectator.com/arts-and-entertainment/2019/10/02/what-exactly-is-a-zine-barnard-zine-librarian-jenna-freedman-answers/" target="_blank">Jenna Freedman</a> to speak. This event, these speakers, the democratic nature of the event structure, got me deeply excited about being a librarian. The weekend opened my eyes to the compassion involved in making information accessible, made me think about the politics of findability and information distribution, touched on the joys of socially-conscious cataloging, and made me aware of the role librarians can play in both reconnecting marginalized citizens to their communities, and contextualizing marginalized reading materials and information sources. (That weekend was a direct inspiration for this blog, which launched a few weeks later.)</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Throughout the weekend, Jude was one of the handful of people running around The Union Project in an event tee shirt, making the events happen. I say I “met” her that weekend because her face was so unforgettable. It was a face I would come to recognize over and over--that Jude face. Anyone who has worked with her on a library program or a zine fair or a craft fair or a <a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/radical-reference-collective" target="_blank">Radical Reference</a> action or an affordable healthcare mission will know what I’m talking about. Concentrated, animated, focused, engaged. Firmly in the trenches, firmly in her element, and never far from joy. Utterly present, utterly involved in the task at hand. And the task at hand is almost always connecting with people--through information or creativity, or a creative method of distributing information. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Jude’s face was also, at the risk of sounding trite, radiant. When she smiled there was a sudden electricity in the room, but even when she didn’t there was an effortless beauty emanating from her features. With her close cropped hair and her black Irish coloring, Jude’s face had a touch of 1940s glamour without trying. But of course once you knew Jude any amount, it always seemed like it was her radical heart that was radiating through her face. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOknMqYAN0exCR8LTSs3guzWg6s3MKO3j5oCxd4YGjgPTEvYz-9mu-JKPUCYVB7S0DvRjrP-wxFrscSs9lhk_nxA7Mj5xm50dG-KqU0OAm0hJr3_QIEZ5UDc0AlhB5fat8eHITyDvozgPO/s253/BE_WELL.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="253" data-original-width="199" height="253" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOknMqYAN0exCR8LTSs3guzWg6s3MKO3j5oCxd4YGjgPTEvYz-9mu-JKPUCYVB7S0DvRjrP-wxFrscSs9lhk_nxA7Mj5xm50dG-KqU0OAm0hJr3_QIEZ5UDc0AlhB5fat8eHITyDvozgPO/s0/BE_WELL.jpg" width="199" /></a></span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I always associated Jude with the ideals of the Progressive Library Skillshare event, and I wasn’t wrong. Jude never seemed to be far from her apparent life mission to leverage her education and her energy to help others access information that could improve their lives. One of her most widely known projects was a resource she created called <a href="https://bewellpgh.org/" target="_blank">Be Well! Pittsburgh</a>. It started out as a zine and later became a website, offering detailed lists of Pittsburgh-area healthcare practitioners and clinics available to the poor, the uninsured, and the underinsured. This is the kind of information source that we are tempted to take for granted in the wealthy democracy of America, in a city lousy with public libraries, in an era of online everything at our fingertips. But it is the kind of handy resource that in fact starts with a hardworking, big hearted, skilled information professional like Jude Vachon--Jude who recognized the absence of such a resource, knew the context of that absence, and then filled that absence. <br /></span><p></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Twice in recent years I was organizing a reading and invited Jude to be one of the featured readers. I loved Jude’s writing and storytelling, I loved talking to her before and after the reading, and I was also jazzed by her commitment to zines. To me zines meant Jude was interested in the stories she was telling as well as the act of reaching readers through “the people’s printing press” (what I call the xerox machine). To me this meant she was trying to tell her stories to people outside of the literary ghetto. When I named one of the readings “Stories and Other Ephemera” (The Big Idea, 2015), I wanted the event to bridge the gap between the zine scene and the literary scene. Jude embodied that bridge in my mind, because she was a talented writer who aimed for a democratic, pass-it-around distribution rather than a climb up the literary ladder. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGFPTWfghiU5b8n1gBz63Se6S-J6LimF9nh8cua2GFBBSGISKlVbEIEyXB9ljNtdcsqWRsULetGZ9uljfYopgXphLzZABEunz5nXjFnOGJ4EbO0kr-nWg8zHz95bjSlhXxkihb59gcTzDq/s2048/Big_Idea.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGFPTWfghiU5b8n1gBz63Se6S-J6LimF9nh8cua2GFBBSGISKlVbEIEyXB9ljNtdcsqWRsULetGZ9uljfYopgXphLzZABEunz5nXjFnOGJ4EbO0kr-nWg8zHz95bjSlhXxkihb59gcTzDq/s320/Big_Idea.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Stories and Other Ephemera reading at Pittsburgh's Big Idea Bookstore, 2015. L to R: Jude Vachon, Karen Lillis, Mike Faloon, Michael T. Fournier, Becky Tuch.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I knew her for a long time as Jude who worked reference on the first floor of the main public library. As Jude who had followed in Jenna Freedman’s footsteps and started a zine collection at the public library. As Jude who hosted outside-the-box events at the public library. I remember admiring her librarian life and hoping I would work there alongside her one day. I remember that one day she didn’t work there anymore. I remember worrying about her a little as she entered the gig economy and took on translation jobs for a living. I remember the colorful serenity of her spacious wood-floor apartment in Wilkinsburg, with piles of folded fabrics on a huge shelf in the living room. I remember her excitement at buying a house near the Allegheny River in the flats of Lawrenceville. I remember her sense of adventure as she traded it in for a “tiny house” she parked in Garfield.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If I tell you anything about Jude, I am bound to stress her conspicuous desire to help create a more equitable society. But I would like to add that I have known many advocates and activists, and Jude was not some of the ones you are thinking about. No person is a cliche, but many people operate as such. Jude was instead a wide human being, both consistently herself and surprising me with the reserves of energy and optimism she had for new conversations, new ideas, new projects. Jude was not the kind of activist who is angry 24/7. Nor was she the kind of activist who seems run ragged by giving away all her good will to others. The Jude I knew had a sense of self care, a sense of historical context, a sense of what needed to be done next, a sense of pleasing herself, a sense of wanting to make beauty, a sense of fun, and a sense of mischief. It feels accurate to say that every occasion on which I ran into Jude, she offered a mention of an injustice that outraged her, a story about something creative that excited her, and an infectious laugh.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It will be a while wrapping my mind around Jude Vachon’s absence, because my outstanding memory is of her earthy, expressive, provocative, fearless, vocal, stand-her-ground presence. </span></p>Karen Lillishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04624398526912042847noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4982013421663058277.post-27707698451091693072020-10-16T06:55:00.007-07:002020-10-16T10:03:24.757-07:00Pittsburgh Current Takes the Wideman Challenge with a Triple Feature<p>Pittsburgh's newest alternative weekly, <i>Pittsburgh Current</i>, has taken up the <a href="https://karenslibraryblog.blogspot.com/search/label/Wideman%20Challenge" target="_blank">Wideman Challenge</a> with three pieces on <a href="https://bookshop.org/lists/the-wideman-challenge-read-john-edgar-wideman" target="_blank">John Edgar Wideman</a> in one issue:</p><p>First, <i>Pittsburgh Current</i> staff writer and editor Jody DiPerna writes a bit about <a href="https://www.pittsburghcurrent.com/widemanchallenge-seeks-to-honor-and-share-the-works-of-author-john-edgar-wideman/" target="_blank">Wideman's legacy in books and in Pittsburgh</a>, and interviews Homewood librarian Denise Graham: <br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiO1xXm6CdO1Ft4FetlF7jeMkZrtThKlmGcGODX61Rug2d3FzXQm7d9WJy7_QCfxiIHmELH6pFAEIGED9rhEag1YwU39mLgOhIJdU9B1JCWUIwaBhiyN9mVYaM-CY9GKN1oFA7TzS7eVVuz/s800/Homewood_Library.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="501" data-original-width="800" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiO1xXm6CdO1Ft4FetlF7jeMkZrtThKlmGcGODX61Rug2d3FzXQm7d9WJy7_QCfxiIHmELH6pFAEIGED9rhEag1YwU39mLgOhIJdU9B1JCWUIwaBhiyN9mVYaM-CY9GKN1oFA7TzS7eVVuz/s320/Homewood_Library.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p></p><blockquote><span style="font-size: medium;">[Graham on <i>Writing to Save a Life</i>]: <span class="s1">“'The depth of the research he did to find out about
this man that nobody knows about....Everybody knows about [Emmett Till's]
mom taking that stand to make sure the casket was open. But nobody
knows about the sad and almost tragic life his dad had. I like the depth
of his research. He turned this forgotten person into a person.'" </span></span></blockquote><span class="s1"></span><p></p><p>PEN Prison Writing Award winner Eric Boyd <a href="https://www.pittsburghcurrent.com/widemanchallenge-new-content-offers-new-insights-into-brothers-and-keepers/" target="_blank">reviews <i>Brothers and Keepers</i></a>, including the new afterword by Robert Wideman: <br /></p><p><span class="s1"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZ3myIcPY7iO9n-HTMDpmlbDa88-gt9hLUHyYTzecJGcuXxx2bivrhMmBCkBS6bxnsBjeFoQ-O9sPMAFMk3TbYOy9e8NvAZ1hWkgrPMKYveJJwlU5TbIY3C-Sx2trMSmSqIZUKuQzYfYdL/s2048/BK_new_Cover.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1345" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZ3myIcPY7iO9n-HTMDpmlbDa88-gt9hLUHyYTzecJGcuXxx2bivrhMmBCkBS6bxnsBjeFoQ-O9sPMAFMk3TbYOy9e8NvAZ1hWkgrPMKYveJJwlU5TbIY3C-Sx2trMSmSqIZUKuQzYfYdL/s320/BK_new_Cover.jpg" /></a></div><p></p><p><span class="s1"></span></p><p><span class="s1"><br /></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span class="s1">"....throughout Brothers and Keepers, Wideman examines the power of language and the
ways it is lacking: the origins of the word jail, the impossibility of
making prisoners invisible from society, and the unstoppable force of
time itself...."</span></span></p><p><span class="s1"> </span></p><p><span class="s1"> </span></p><p><span class="s1"> </span></p><p><span class="s1">And Allegheny County Jail writing teacher Michael Bennett shares an <a href="https://www.pittsburghcurrent.com/widemanchallenge-the-homewood-books-tells-tales-that-reflect-a-neighborhoods-past-and-present/" target="_blank">essay on his students' reaction to reading <i>The Homewood Books</i></a> and getting a visit from Wideman himself:</span></p><p><span class="s1"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQyYharVZOP2uB3tuel_4lXyzI4shMv9tb2zUnFKa-hNYLTA6ZZ9xIdAH1LJGNipVXwLcGcrWmiLs3yQVOqC_oxdZ97NjOgN6sNIoDv-ilMXXXylYL6hZ7-CeMD3TZEPSosTHI7hVAbzKE/s1169/100_0061.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="844" data-original-width="1169" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQyYharVZOP2uB3tuel_4lXyzI4shMv9tb2zUnFKa-hNYLTA6ZZ9xIdAH1LJGNipVXwLcGcrWmiLs3yQVOqC_oxdZ97NjOgN6sNIoDv-ilMXXXylYL6hZ7-CeMD3TZEPSosTHI7hVAbzKE/s320/100_0061.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;">"In fiction, Tommy is never caught or sent to prison. He finds safe haven
behind the house of the old woman at the top of Brushton Hill who offers
him food in exchange for yard work and his company. The students could
easily identify — they all knew what it was like to run from police,
scared for their lives."</span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;">*****</span></p><p><span style="font-size: small;">Keep the conversation going! Take the <a href="https://karenslibraryblog.blogspot.com/search/label/Wideman%20Challenge" target="_blank">Wideman Challenge</a> as a reader, reviewer, editor, bookseller, librarian, or book club. Read <a href="https://bookshop.org/lists/the-wideman-challenge-read-john-edgar-wideman" target="_blank">John Edgar Wideman</a>, and stay tuned for more reviews.</span><br /></p>Karen Lillishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04624398526912042847noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4982013421663058277.post-1422849404641920782020-10-07T09:57:00.002-07:002020-10-07T10:03:56.414-07:00Week Two of The Wideman Challenge: Pub Day, Robby Wideman, and Pittsburgh Book Review on God's Gym <p style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiX3TiK3ddRp31lLpM-C_mW9XVKK_4uSzAT0Afo-mJcvVEm6RbFbC_Nd9jyxUoaFfhowjGSBzOhvIYGCvzoIAZLjOtKa5hWTN5qUW71ItvTh4aln1Erk4a5RkS-ouzumDPVe2YbCDs41PCk/s1080/1080x1080_Wideman_blackbackground.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1080" height="403" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiX3TiK3ddRp31lLpM-C_mW9XVKK_4uSzAT0Afo-mJcvVEm6RbFbC_Nd9jyxUoaFfhowjGSBzOhvIYGCvzoIAZLjOtKa5hWTN5qUW71ItvTh4aln1Erk4a5RkS-ouzumDPVe2YbCDs41PCk/w403-h403/1080x1080_Wideman_blackbackground.png" width="403" /></a></p><p></p><p>Yesterday was publication day for TWO books by <b>John Edgar Wideman</b> that are being reissued by Scribner. <a href="https://bookshop.org/a/12802/9781982148751" target="_blank">Brothers and Keepers</a>, a memoir (1984), and <a href="https://bookshop.org/a/12802/9781982148843" target="_blank">Philadelphia Fire</a>, a novel (1990). A Wideman Challenge review of Brothers and Keepers (the first one I assigned!) is set to come out next week, and there may be a review for Philadelphia Fire coming in the next month. With the <a href="https://karenslibraryblog.blogspot.com/search/label/Wideman%20Challenge" target="_blank">Wideman Challenge</a>, I am aiming to find at least one book reviewer for each book written by writer and Pittsburgh native John Edgar Wideman.<br /></p><p style="text-align: center;"><img alt="Image" class="css-9pa8cd" draggable="true" height="250" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EjbZnvzXcAIz44c?format=jpg&name=large" width="444" /></p><p>The new edition of <b>Brothers and Keepers</b> features an afterword by <b>Robert Wideman</b>. Robert ("Robby" in the book) is John's brother and his incarceration is the subject of the memoir. Robert was sentenced to life in prison without parole for his involvement in a botched robbery that resulted in a man's death. But after at least one major development in the case and 44 years in prison, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf commuted Robert's sentence in 2019. Robert Wideman gave a virtual talk last Friday at the <b>Pittsburgh Humanities Festival </b>about his experience: <span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-1qd0xha r-ad9z0x r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">“Life Sentences: The Amazing Journey of Walking Out of an American Prison.” Watch the talk <a href="https://youtu.be/U69Pz_t0yIQ" target="_blank">here on Youtube</a>.</span> <br /></p><p style="text-align: center;"><img alt="God's Gym: Stories: Wideman, John Edgar: 0046442711999: Amazon.com: Books" class="n3VNCb" data-noaft="1" height="289" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/71UJT5LPdLL.jpg" style="height: 243px; margin: 0px; width: 159.558px;" width="190" /> </p><p style="text-align: left;">Today at the <a href="https://pittsburghbookreview.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Pittsburgh Book Review</a>, poet and editor<b> Kristofer Collins</b> <a href="https://pittsburghbookreview.blogspot.com/2020/10/a-review-of-john-edgar-widemans-gods.html" target="_blank">reviews God's Gym</a>,
John Edgar Wideman's book of short stories from 2005. He writes, "All
families struggle with the stories that they don't want told. The
secrets and fears, the shames and sadnesses that once said, once given
flight by simple words, can soar back at us with cold talons, unsheathed
and razor sharp, cutting the flesh and rending the heart. These are the
hidden stories never to be uttered aloud. A writer in the family just
plays havoc with such things." Please enjoy <a href="https://pittsburghbookreview.blogspot.com/2020/10/a-review-of-john-edgar-widemans-gods.html" target="_blank">Kris' essay</a> and then pick up a Wideman book to Read, Reflect, and Review! <br /></p><p></p>Karen Lillishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04624398526912042847noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4982013421663058277.post-52016347071485806582020-09-28T05:33:00.001-07:002020-09-30T09:51:57.677-07:00The Wideman Challenge Starts Today: Guest Reviewer Becky Tuch on FEVER by John Edgar Wideman<p>Today I'm launching the <a href="https://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/tony-norman/2020/08/24/Karen-Lillis-John-Edgar-Wideman-Challenge-WidemanChallenge/stories/202008230034" target="_blank">Wideman Challenge</a>, in which I seek out one book reviewer for every book that <b>John Edgar Wideman</b> has written, and challenge readers everywhere to pick up a Wideman book. Have you heard of him? Wideman has been writing inventively, intensively, incisively, introspectively about Black America since 1967. In my experience as a bookseller, far too many people have not heard of him or his roster of over twenty titles of fiction and memoir, and I'm hoping to change that.</p><p>I'm thrilled to introduce <a href="https://www.beckytuch.com/" target="_blank">Becky Tuch</a> as the kick-off reviewer of the Wideman Challenge. I met Becky soon after she moved to Pittsburgh (where Wideman grew up and the site of many of his best books) several years ago. I loved hearing from her evocative novel in progress at a <a href="https://thebigideapgh.wordpress.com/about-us/" target="_blank">Big Idea</a> reading, hearing the curiosity in her voice when she talks about writing, and hearing her enthusiasm for teaching creative writing. She's been teaching with Boston's <a href="https://grubstreet.org/" target="_blank">Grub Street</a> for many years and since landing in Pittsburgh now also teaches with <a href="https://creativenonfiction.org/online-classes" target="_blank">Creative Nonfiction</a>. Please enjoy her review of Wideman's stories:<br /></p><p style="text-align: center;">*******</p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-1i6qFo8vMmhqZ3Ba7oCkys7FQSy28OyCK2wB0c0bRm1fJnGlPAYwLq9OWmnbQB2hvQfF_B7-kLDyvLJow6eIEQeazf5GirUwYLYqBDFscBPwRNEu-Si0XKxqPbLmOGKDI9xmqN6mkaVD/s1267/Fever_Wideman+-+1.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1267" data-original-width="833" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-1i6qFo8vMmhqZ3Ba7oCkys7FQSy28OyCK2wB0c0bRm1fJnGlPAYwLq9OWmnbQB2hvQfF_B7-kLDyvLJow6eIEQeazf5GirUwYLYqBDFscBPwRNEu-Si0XKxqPbLmOGKDI9xmqN6mkaVD/s320/Fever_Wideman+-+1.jpg" /></a></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>Fever: Twelve Storie</b>s, John Edgar Wideman. New York: Henry Holt, 1989. Short fiction. 161 pages. </span><br /><p></p><p>What is the role of point-of-view in fiction? Traditionally, the narrator occupies a consciousness, or several, through which the story’s universe is interpreted. The reader may experience the interpretive lens of one character or many, yet one maxim remains steadfast: At all times the reader must be grounded. A story will not succeed when a reader is not firmly rooted within a guiding consciousness. We need, above all things, to know who is perceiving and when. </p><p>Here, then, is John Edgar Wideman’s <a href="https://bookshop.org/a/12802/9780140143478" target="_blank"><i>Fever</i></a> (1989), a short story collection that tosses aside traditional notions of point-of-view, offering readers something disruptive, challenging, and wonderfully different. In these stories, narrative perspectives shift abruptly; dialect changes mid-page. Stories within stories unfold, occasionally containing their own backstories, with new characters emerging to take over the narrative. Expectations are overturned; norms are shattered. If Wideman asks one thing of his readers, it is that you pay attention. In life, as in <i>Fever</i>, you cannot know what is coming around the bend. </p><p> In “Doc’s Story,” the collection’s inaugural story, we encounter an unnamed narrator, grieving the departure of his lover who “left him in May, when the shadows and green of the park had started to deepen.” Consoling himself, he plays pick-up basketball, talks to the other players, “cools out on reefer…[and] collects the stories they tell.” One of these player’s stories is about Doc, an older man who began going blind. In learning about Doc, we are shifted suddenly into another narratorial voice: “But one Sunday the shit got stone serious. Sunday I’m telling youall about, the action was real nice. If you wasn’t ready, get back cause the brothers was cooking.” </p><p> “Doc’s Story” is perhaps the most autobiographical in the bunch. In <a href="https://bookshop.org/books/brothers-and-keepers-a-memoir/9781982148751?aid=12802" target="_blank"><i>Brothers and Keepers</i></a>, Wideman’s memoir published four years before <i>Fever</i>, the author follows the life trajectory of his brother, who is in prison. Wideman writes, “However numerous and comforting the similarities, we were different. The world had seized on the difference, allowed me room to thrive, while he’d been forced into a cage. Why did it work out that way? What was the nature of the difference? Why did it haunt me?” In “Doc’s Story,” where a narrator shifts among different perspectives, merging the language of the street seamlessly with formal speech, Wideman appears to have transformed all that haunts him into a buoyant and refreshing mode of story-telling. </p><p>In “The Statue of Liberty” Wideman’s shift in perspective takes the reader deep into delightful and wholly unexpected places. Here we begin with a narrator jogging in the countryside. The narrator describes the view and the people he passes along his route. One might expect a quaint story about jogging through rural landscape. Yet we learn, “Another way joggin pleasures me is how it lets me turn myself into another person in another place.” Moments later, the narrator says, “When the huge black man springs from the shadows I let him grapple me to the ground.” It takes a moment to understand that we have shifted from the point-of-view of the jogger to that of one of the farmers whose lives he is imagining himself into. What follows is a stunning erotic scene between the farmer and two joggers. The scene is sexually explicit, racially transgressive, packed with violent metaphors-- “The petals of my vagina are two knuckles spreading a fist stuck in your face,”--and fabulously engrossing. <br /><br /></p><p>If it takes the reader a moment to realize who now holds the reins of the story, that is a small price to pay for the gift of Wideman’s larger philosophical and political aims. Indeed, Wideman has made clear his intention to use abrupt and at times disorienting point-of-view shifts toward not only aesthetic but much-needed political ends. “Think of that blood leaving you and running up in somebody else’s arms, down into somebody’s fingers black or brown or ivory just like yours,” he writes in “When It’s Time to Go.” In “Fever:” “Each solitary heart contains all the world’s hearts...Fever descends when the waters that connect us are clogged with filth.” In “The Statue of Liberty:” “We must move past certain kinds of resistance, habits that are nothing more than habits. Get past or be locked like stupid braying animals in a closet forever.” </p><p>Perhaps unsurprisingly, blindness is also a theme woven throughout the collection. In “When It’s Time to Go,” we encounter a young boy losing his eyesight. The story begins from the perspective of a man relating the tale to his brother, then shifts to the boy, now grown-- “Yeah, they might could have saved my sight. Ain’t never gon forgive them that.”-- and finally to the perspective of a man in a bar talking about the blind musician-- “So that’s about all of it, my friends. Sambo could sure nuff play.” We encounter the blind musician again in “Concert” and “Presents,” the latter the most traditionally structured story in the collection. </p><p>In “Surfiction,” the collection’s most experimental story, an academic is taking notes on a writer for an upcoming presentation. We follow the narrator’s thoughts on his own remarks, as well as his own deconstructive tendencies toward his own notes. “We are put into the passive posture of readers or listeners (consumers) by the narrative unraveling of a reality which, because it is unfolding in time, slowly begins to take up our time…” Some of this is charmingly witty, as when he observes, “Without authors whose last names begin with B, surfiction might not exist...Which list further discloses a startling coincidence or perhaps the making of a scandal--one man working on both sides of the Atlantic as writer and critic explaining and praising his fiction as he creates it: Barth Barthes Barthelme.” </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhB1Aipf7UBIYug3rfsERF82gNC8XLyWrLJSt35SUKYqH8Zhrm0c2-608GJeNVwdTMZST_2TNWlk5KrIHNDzQp7DF099SGXupJRM5CZdCWopeI3IavOZhxE63CGiqiAtFWje5RlJw9MlK1w/s1280/Fever_Wideman_Author_Photo+-+1.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="887" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhB1Aipf7UBIYug3rfsERF82gNC8XLyWrLJSt35SUKYqH8Zhrm0c2-608GJeNVwdTMZST_2TNWlk5KrIHNDzQp7DF099SGXupJRM5CZdCWopeI3IavOZhxE63CGiqiAtFWje5RlJw9MlK1w/s320/Fever_Wideman_Author_Photo+-+1.jpg" /></a></div>Funnily enough, it is Wideman who is explaining his fiction as he creates it. In the final and titular story, “Fever,” Wideman rotates through multiple perspectives to explore the ravages of yellow fever on a town. A contemporary reader will find many devastating similarities here with the coronavirus pandemic and those who have been on the front lines of caretaking. Throughout the story, Allen, a Black doctor, relates “How the knife was plunged into our hearts, then cruelly twisted. We were proclaimed carriers of the fever and treated as pariahs, but when it became expedient to command our services to nurse the sick and bury the dead, the previous allegations were no longer mentioned...We were ordered to save the city.” Or, put another way by the modern narrator who arrives at the story's end: “Yeah, I nurse these old funky motherfuckers, all right.” <br /><p></p><p>It is in the conclusion of this story that we arrive at the summation of Wideman’s vision. It is here that we encounter the dissection of a body, the weight of a kidney, a liver, a spleen, a brain. Yet we are also lifted aloft into the metaphysical realm, the attempt to transcend one consciousness and seamlessly enter another at the core of all the stories in this collection. “Right next to the heart,” Wideman describes, “the miniature hand of a child, frozen in a grasping gesture, fingers like hard tongues of flame, still reaching or the marvel of the beating heart, fascinated still…” </p><p>The stories here, though published over three decades ago, have a potent urgency in our current world, particularly for writers and readers in search of new modes of storytelling. The rules, both aesthetic and political, are made to be broken. Let’s finally see one another, this collection cries out, and shred the norms that confine us. </p><p>Guest review by <b>Becky Tuch</b><br />Writer, editor, teacher <br />Founder of <a href="https://www.thereviewreview.net/" target="_blank">The Review Review</a><br />Find Becky on Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/BeckyLTuch" target="_blank">@BeckyLTuch</a><br />And on the web: <a href="https://www.beckytuch.com/">https://www.beckytuch.com/</a></p><p>*****</p><p>Find <a href="https://bookshop.org/books/fever-9780140143478/9780140143478?aid=12802" target="_blank"><i>Fever</i></a> and John Edgar Wideman's books <a href="https://bookshop.org/lists/john-edgar-wideman" target="_blank">here</a>. <br /></p><p>Follow the <b>Wideman Challenge</b> from now until the end of 2020. Check back at this blog or follow me, Karen, at Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/BookstoreMemoir/" target="_blank">@BookstoreMemoir</a></p>Karen Lillishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04624398526912042847noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4982013421663058277.post-72067106541801225622020-09-23T20:37:00.001-07:002020-09-23T20:37:55.421-07:00Coming Soon: A New Book Review Project<p>It's been a long time since I've posted here. I miss blogging, and I miss the slower-paced lifestyle that allowed me to maintain a blog. So in a bit of good news among the flaming shipwreck of 2020, I'll soon be bringing you some new content: Stay tuned and watch this space for new book reviews revolving around one particular author. <br /></p>Karen Lillishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04624398526912042847noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4982013421663058277.post-68211600485242008272015-07-15T04:59:00.001-07:002016-01-31T06:34:56.746-08:00Interview with Rami Shamir<br />
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Today I'm posting Part One of my interview with <b>Rami Shamir</b>, in the last 29 hours of a <a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1933396652/train-to-pokipse" target="_blank">Kickstarter campaign for his novel</a> TRAIN TO POKIPSE. This explosive and heartbreaking novel not only deserves your support <a href="http://www.brooklynrail.org/2012/06/books/drugs-and-other-loves" target="_blank">on its own merits</a>, but also stands out for a few other things. POKIPSE was the last editorial project of the infamous publisher <a href="http://www.printmag.com/publication-design/the-spirit-of-barney-rosset-lives-on-the-train-to-pokipse/" target="_blank">Barney Rosset</a> (Grove Press and Evergreen Review). The novel has been the heart of an extended experiment in independent publishing
and marketing by Rami and his co-conspirator <a href="http://adamvoid.com/index.php?/project/polaroids/" target="_blank">Adam Void</a>, who designed
the stunning cover. Rami and Adam published the book (as Underground Editions) in 2012 and engaged in guerilla marketing techniques, blanketing cities in wheatpasted ads and a sticker campaign. Rami went on a coast to coast reading tour in 2013 and in the process created a network of independent bookstores to support the book's distribution. You can find the Google map he created to share with other indie authors and publishers <a href="https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?ll=36.089621,-96.123057&spn=12.728464,44.337178&hl=en&t=m&oe=UTF8&msa=0&source=embed&ie=UTF8&mid=z4N5pUU687do.koKNDdYm4E5Y" target="_blank">here</a>. Rami has rejected Amazon completely in marketing TRAIN TO POKIPSE. You should also know that Rami was one of the early and long time Occupiers at Zuccotti Park.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgykbTM3HwoErNADRUGUrvU3c-ADwSu-3509CcjH8Z7176dsVg0u1CTD83sJ8zCmJOsds8pQ422lPVlnmdDhOiLq5ZqNTrI9AsxZzxjdVkZfsH6mktlU-E3AZI3edxE6uHQDQ1V6F92RgPx/s1600/11707329_10206225647054673_5983796171690034774_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgykbTM3HwoErNADRUGUrvU3c-ADwSu-3509CcjH8Z7176dsVg0u1CTD83sJ8zCmJOsds8pQ422lPVlnmdDhOiLq5ZqNTrI9AsxZzxjdVkZfsH6mktlU-E3AZI3edxE6uHQDQ1V6F92RgPx/s320/11707329_10206225647054673_5983796171690034774_n.jpg" width="179" /></a> <b>Karen: I understand that the first printing of TRAIN TO POKIPSE is sold out. Why are you doing a second edition of POKIPSE? What's different about this edition? </b>
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<b>Rami: </b> Yes, the first edition of TRAIN TO POKIPSE has been sold out for about six months now. I’m doing a second edition, because the demand to read the book remains high and because as both the book’s author and publisher it’s my responsibility to keep what is a very important work alive and well in the world. This second edition will have a new introduction from Micah White, the co-creator of Occupy Wall Street and the former Senior Editor at Adbusters magazine; it will be printed in a run of 1984 books—Why? Because the first edition was a run of 911 books, and as Adam Void, POKIPSE’s cover artist and my longtime artistic collaborator pointed out, “What follows 911? 1984.”; lastly, there will be an annotated e-book version, which depending on whether or not we reach our stretch goal of $19,000, will either be a simple digital annotation (if we don’t) or (if we do) something far more interesting: involving film footage of New York City nightlife from circa 2006 that I took before setting off to write POKIPSE, as well as documentary visuals, music, and multi-media discussions.
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<b>Karen: Barney Rosset, your friend and POKIPSE’s editor, was a big inspiration to you. And to so many of us. He was an undeniable force in creating a place for counter culture America, in cultivating an audience for--what do we call his authors?--the avant garde, for some of the most politically and culturally relevant literature of his time. His boldness and his marketing genius matched his passion for art and revolution, and he seemed to be able to transport “art” from obscure corners and deliver it to the street. He made household names out of writers who might today be published on University presses. There are a lot of different questions here. First, can you talk about how you see literature today? Do you see any publishers taking these kinds of risks? Are these risks there to take? Is there an equivalent literature today, reaching a broad cross section of readers? Is there an equivalent audience? Who are the living writers you admire who are carving out new cultural or literary territory? </b>
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<b>Rami: </b> Well, Barney Rosset was less of an influence on my life, than he was something akin to a fact; as much a fact as the rotation of Io or Europa around Jupiter are facts. When Barney allowed you into his life, you became part of a planetary system, the moon of a gas giant. As such, I enjoyed a privileged education and vantage point to understand American literature across a long span of time. I’ve thought about this a lot, and I’m beginning to believe that the first thing to go isn’t going to be the water or the air; the first thing we’re going to lose, in fact that we’re already losing, is our literature. It really takes a village to produce a literary work and book publishers in America, at least the ones that I’ve encountered, can’t produce that sort of village like Barney could: they won’t take the risks, they don’t have the financing, and they don’t have the will. That’s why I’m doing <a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1933396652/train-to-pokipse" target="_blank">the Kickstarter</a> to publish the second edition of TRAIN TO POKIPSE. As an author, I don’t have any faith left in American publishers; but I have a lot of faith in people: the world’s readers, not the world’s publishers, are who can and who will save literature.
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That’s not to say that there are no good publishers in America today; not at all. Semiotext(e) has just brought out <i>To Our Friends</i>, the sequel to The Invisible Committee's 2007 <i>The Coming Insurrection</i>—which along with Crimethinc.’s <i>Work</i>—could be cited as one of the paramount texts that infiltrated youth culture in America and helped incite the 2011 onset of Occupy Wall Street.
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But the fact remains that my personal experience with book publishers in America has not been that great. I was around a lot of publishers who feigned to have pretensions of being the spiritual descendants of Barney Rosset. Barney took TRAIN TO POKIPSE to two indie presses, one in New York and one in the Midwest. I mean these were two important indie publishers of the day that claimed to be students and apostles of the great Barney Rosset.
You'd have thought that they would have jumped on the opportunity; instead, they demanded ridiculous changes or dragged their feet. Eventually they both turned down the last book that their hero would edit and champion. I think there’s a lot about American book publishing in that parable. Nonetheless, I do believe in what my good friend Jack Doroshow has always told me; I do believe that minds are meant to change, and I’m more than open to my mind changing on this matter.
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjdyCvv7QaWLhel1RkeK0MJZbyIQAtXOWNrAj5hcrdUKQro1oERvS3nF0dvYDAA6iesgcGdNKXQ9IXUuTT36jdS8g3XNpPvdwk3yHPfHKIt04jwPVJ5V1UmMKoRxU3vMPjyrUR5FysIefd/s1600/pokipse_front_small.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjdyCvv7QaWLhel1RkeK0MJZbyIQAtXOWNrAj5hcrdUKQro1oERvS3nF0dvYDAA6iesgcGdNKXQ9IXUuTT36jdS8g3XNpPvdwk3yHPfHKIt04jwPVJ5V1UmMKoRxU3vMPjyrUR5FysIefd/s320/pokipse_front_small.jpg" width="244" /></a><b>Karen: Can you talk about the direct influence Barney’s publishing legacy, broad or specific, had on your outreach plan for POKIPSE? I know that your plans for POKIPSE evolved over time, and I also know there was a lot of DIY ethos in the air by the time you released your novel in 2012. So I’m curious what interactions with Barney (or Astrid) sparked different aspects of your handling POKIPSE? </b>
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<b>Rami: </b> Well, as I’ve mentioned before I’ve really had three great publishing influences in my life; David Nudo, who’s now the Book Sales Manager at the New York Times, Barney Rosset, and Adam Void, who was the co-publisher for POKIPSE’s first edition. Along with his partner, Chelsea Ragan—who’s been my main collaborator on POKIPSE’s Kickstarter campaign— Adam bears a lot of the credit for TRAIN TO POKIPSE’s continued existence in the world. Adam is rightly credited as being a seminal figure in the <a href="http://viralart.vandalog.com/read/chapter/adam-void-on-zines/" target="_blank">zine chapter of American publishing history</a>.
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POKIPSE was written during the advent of that North Brooklyn’s Print Renaissance. You know, Joe Ahearn’s Showpaper had a really big effect on a lot of people including me and Adam. Gabe Fowler of Desert Island started Smoke Signals after doing a few issues of Showpaper, and POKIPSE’s posters eventually modeled themselves after Showpaper as well. In fact, I think that Linco, the printer over in Queens that so many of us use, owes a lot of its business to the great influence that Joe Ahearn and Showpaper have exerted on so many people in their twenties and thirties.
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Of course, this is all an issue of the counterculture. There are many very intelligent and highly attuned people in the world who are neither aware of this information nor welcome it into their worldview when they become aware of it. That is how counter-culture works. The culture just can’t accept the dark matter of it all. Barney, of course was not one of those people. I brought copies of Showpaper and Smoke Signals to Barney; and when Occupy Wall Street hit, I brought Barney zines from a New World and Crimethinc. as well as issues of the Occupied Wall Street Journal, which very much impressed him. Now, Barney and I didn’t agree with each other completely all the time. Limiting POKIPSE’s first edition to 911 copies (a decision which of course was an off-shoot of the text, and as such, in this effort to bring forth a perfect first edition was non-negotiable) led Barney to claim that I was more difficult than Beckett. Of course, I took that as a compliment. “It wasn’t meant as compliment,” Barney had quickly replied. He was always so fast on his feet. Nonetheless, we never argued; we were involved in a discourse, a debate, and the mutual purpose shared by both parties was the most beneficial outcome for TRAIN TO POKIPSE.
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<b>Karen: I think that 9/11 affected us in as-yet-untold ways. Have you read any novelists (or other writers) writing about the fallout of 9/11, how it affected New Yorker’s lives?</b>
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<b>Rami: </b> Yeah, I’ve read a few. The ones that are most exciting are of course the ones that don’t scream so much about their being about 9/11. Gary Indiana’s <i>Do Everything in the Dark</i> is exemplary in that respect. Written after 9/11, the events of the book take place in the summer of 2001 and extend to just a few days before the events of September 11, 2001. I think Gary once told me the exact date, but I’m sorry I just can’t remember at the moment… something like September 09, 2001 is the last day in the book.
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I really understood 9/11 much more clearly after reading this book, because I saw how frightening America had become in the years before the attacks. So the response, which of course in many ways is examined in TRAIN TO POKIPSE, became more comprehensible to me. Gary’s books are really part of our great national treasure of literature, and it’s a crime that they’ve been allowed to go out of print for so many years. Fortunately, a few publishers have been slowly rectifying that. Among them are Christopher Stoddard’s Itna Press, which has just released a new edition of <i>Do Everything in the Dark</i>.
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo by <span class="fbPhotosPhotoCaption" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" id="fbPhotoSnowliftCaption" tabindex="0"><span class="hasCaption">Lydia White</span></span></td></tr>
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<b>Karen: It’s getting tough to pay the rent in America. Almost everyone I know in the “Post” Recession is either underemployed or overworked. Either of these can be challenging for artists, who need to both pay the bills and save some time for the often-unpaid second job of writing or creating. Maybe get a little health coverage in there. What’s your strategy for balancing out these needs? What kind of strategies do you see working among your creative acquaintances? And do you have health care coverage?</b>
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<b>Rami:</b> I mean this is a great question; one that I’m always discussing with people. You know, I’ve been a cliche of every writer in many ways. I travel the country, I sleep around, people house me, one day I’m in this city, the next day I’m in another city. I have different personas which sometimes even take on different names (few people know about this; it’s in tune with George Orwell’s “slumming” approach and has been coming out ever since Occupy, in large part as an investigation for the next book). I’m almost always broke, but I have amazing friends and people around me. Without them I couldn’t be who I’ve been, and the whole mission, this whole journey would never have happened. It’s fun and all, but it is also a very valid criticism that the unwavering conviction and integrity that I’ve had as a writer has caused havoc on my personal life. I totally want my own room, where I can find my stuff, with my own bed. I very much want to date people, which hasn’t been possible with this type of existence. While it’s exciting, it’s only because I’ve decided to view it that way. Viewed another way, I guess it’s indisputable that I’ve “suffered for my art.” You know, you do what you can do, and then you change it when you have to. I did this Kickstarter because I couldn’t do it like that anymore. I needed help from the public. I went to the public, and the public has responded beautifully. With less than 42 hours left in this campaign, 142 backers have brought us to 99% of our goal, and what can be more beautiful than that?
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<b>Editor’s note: </b>The campaign reached 100% of its goal by the time I was publishing this interview on Blogger, but Rami has a stretch goal of $19,000. Please check out the <a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1933396652/train-to-pokipse" target="_blank">Kickstarter funding campaign</a> for this terrific novel and fiercely independent literary spirit.<br />
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Stay tuned for Part Two of this interview, which will be published next week.<br />
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Read my previous post about Rami Shamir here:<br />
<a href="http://karenslibraryblog.blogspot.com/2013/08/must-read-indie-publishing-interview.html" target="_blank">Must-Read Indie Publishing Interview: Rami Shamir</a><br />
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<br />Karen Lillishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04624398526912042847noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4982013421663058277.post-17398155048342472122014-09-21T19:15:00.002-07:002014-09-21T19:35:16.113-07:00Writer on Writer: Sarah Shotland Interviews Colleen McKee<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Last week, <b>Colleen McKee</b> <a href="http://karenslibraryblog.blogspot.com/2014/09/writer-on-writer-colleen-mckee.html" target="_blank">interviewed <b>Sarah Shotland</b></a> about her new novel, <i>Junkette</i>. This week Sarah interviews Colleen about her 2013 book, <i>Nine Kinds of Wrong</i> (JK Publishing, St. Louis). Colleen's book defies publishing conventions by putting fiction, poetry, and memoir all between the same covers. The unifying factor instead becomes the author herself, and her restless journey between cities, lovers, friends.<br />
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<b>Sarah Shotland: Public transportation pops up again and again throughout <i>Nine Kinds of Wrong</i>. As someone who loves to write while riding public transportation, I'm curious if you also like to write while in transit? And what about public transportation inspires your work?</b>
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<b>Colleen McKee:</b> I’m blind in one eye. I have never driven a car in my life. That’s good because I spend every possible moment of my time that I am on public transit writing. Public transportation makes you get up close and personal with people you wouldn’t choose to know. In St. Louis, where I’m from, only the poor, disabled, and those with DUI’s ride the bus. Some of those buses are rip-roaring insane: people trying to sell you stolen socks, expired transfers, ripped-off movies, marijuana, Jesus Is Lord, candy bars…trying to get dates, trying to get you to be their 'ho…Lord have mercy, you name it. And all the while it stinks of piss. (I have a poem about the 70 Grand that appeared in my chapbook <i>A Partial List of Things I Have Done for Money.</i>)
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Here in the Bay Area, almost everyone rides the BART train (Bay Area Rapid Transit). It’s this fascinating cross-section of our society, which is made up of thousands of different international, sexual, political, and artistic subcultures (plus yuppies). Add to this the very wide availability of potent drugs. And the fact that there’s at least one festival happening every day, so the chances are high you’re going to see someone covered in feathers, glitter, and not a lot else. Any writer should be able to get at least one poem off the BART every day—as long as her eyes aren’t glued to her phone. My bag is always full of postcards with drafts of poems on it. Maybe one day I’ll become the Premier Poet Laureate of BART.
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<b>Sarah: Can you talk a little bit about why you decided to include fiction, memoir and poetry in your collection? </b>
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<b>Colleen</b>: After <i>Nine Kinds of Wrong</i> came out, a successful writer told me, it was a terrible mistake that I had put these three genres together, that it made the book unmarketable. He said bookstores wouldn’t know how to promote it. But other writers say to me, “Wow, you can do that? I didn’t know you could get away with that. You’re lucky.” Readers who aren’t writers don’t comment on this at all.
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I’ve always wanted my books to be fiction, poetry, and memoir mixed. My two chapbooks, <i>My Hot Little Tomato</i> and <i>A Partial List of Things I Have Done for Money</i>, were also a combination of poetry and prose. And within those books and chapbooks are a few stories that are hybrid forms, such as the poem “A Partial List of Things I Have Done for Money,” in which some of the lines are almost as long as paragraphs. It’s important to me to be able to mix these forms within a collection because I have some poems that I think of as sisters to certain works of memoir or fiction. For example, “What We Had Instead of History,” a poem, has much the same tone and topic as “How to Steal a Book.” They’re both sad, bratty pieces about being a juvenile delinquent. “How to Steal a Book” is a hybrid—it’s memoir with one stanza of a poem in the middle.
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<b>Sarah: How do you decide what material to present in a specific genre? </b>
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<b>Colleen</b>: It was more about atmosphere and intuition than genre. I knew it would be a grimy, sexy urban book, and that I would put in some more writing about Miko that hadn’t made it into my last chapbook, <i>A Partial List of Things I Have Done for Money</i>. (Miko was a close friend and old flame who killed himself in 2008.)
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<b>Sarah: What are the major differences you see between forms?</b>
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<b>Colleen</b>: For me there are no meaningful distinctions between these forms except, memoir should be true! In my work, line breaks are just a rhythmic device, like punctuation or a paragraph break.
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<b>Sarah: In "The 59 Cent Pad of Paper" you write (of a man in a mental institution): "What did he need from the paper? What could the paper give that man, who couldn't eat oatmeal without supervision? Each drug store pad of paper was a bird with sixty wings, all flapping at once. With each mark, he drew the wings closer to him, if only for a few scrawling seconds." I'm curious. What do you need from the paper? What does the paper give you?</b>
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<b>Colleen</b>: It is possibly a terrible, terrible weakness that I cannot understand the contents of my mind without a piece of paper to sort it all out. But often I am left with not understanding but only a sorrowful wonder. Or maybe just a feeling that whatever lonely wayward thing was gnawing at my heart has gone to sleep, at least for a while.
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My experience of my life is very fragmented. I moved around a lot. I’ve cared for drifters and fools and friends who died young. I want a way to remember.
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<b>Sarah: I'm interested in the fine art of "perhapsing" in memoir. In the essay, "The Devil's Fruit" you explore your parents meeting. This essay reminded me a lot of Sharon Olds' poetry, specifically the poem "I Go Back to May, 1946." How do you deal with writing about events that you couldn't witness and how they affect your life?</b>
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<b>Colleen</b>: I think the only two stories I’ve written that I called memoir or nonfiction that I didn’t witness were stories my mom told me, “The Devil’s Fruit” and “The 59 Cent Pad of Paper.” My mom is a wonderful storyteller. In “The Devil’s Fruit,” I thought I was being accurate, but then Mom told me, “I didn’t meet your dad at high school. I met him at the Hamburger Doodle.” Even when I wrote a memoir about something I had lived through, “The Unbreakable House,” I made a mistake. The essay was about this all-metal house I lived in when I was eighteen. I wrote that it was gray, and my sister corrected me: It was baby blue! I remembered it as gray because I was so depressed when I lived there. So our memory quite literally colors our perception. As Borges wrote, “My memory is porous and the rain gets in.”
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Yet I respect veracity, even if we can only approach it. The distinction between memoir and fiction is important to me: the author has an obligation to accuracy if she’s going to call it memoir. Ethically, she really has to try her best to be truthful. The only time I fudge is with dialogue because that is hard to remember verbatim, and memoirs that are light on dialogue can get dull. But even when I make up dialogue, I try to be close to what that person probably said. Maybe I write that my mom said, “Well now, I reckon she got a wild hair up her ass,” and what she really said was, “Oh Lord, what’s she hootin and hollerin about now?” Either way, it’s the sort of thing my mom would say, and they mean about the same. James Baldwin said, “I want to be an honest man and a good writer.” I’ve considered getting this tattooed on my arm.
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<b>Sarah: Your book swings between encounters with intimate lovers and intimate strangers. Where do you see the connection between these two kinds of encounters? </b>
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<b>Colleen</b>: Well, lovers can be strange, and strangers can certainly be intimate! Especially here in the Bay Area, where strangers can just let it all hang out. This is a place where newspapers are full of serious debates about whether it is permissible to be nude in a public plaza if you haven’t brought your own towel to sit on. But even more shocking to me, as a Midwesterner, are the things people will just tell you at a party, on the street. This is an endlessly fascinating place, to the point where it’s a little overwhelming. I have been writing a lot of poems lately about people on the train, on the street, parades, how the individual (including me) relates to the crowd or to intense strangers. Maybe my next book will be called <i>The Teeming Masses: Insects and People on the Street.</i> (I like insects, too. I write a lot about them.) It’s important for a writer to be willing to look closely at anyone with a gaze that is compassionate and curious—but also you have to watch your back. That’s a mixed urban feeling which is uncomfortable in life, but that tension can be interesting in writing.
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James Joyce said, “To be is to live in mystery, not in understanding.” Sometimes I have written about lovers in an attempt to understand them, but probably my better love poems are the ones that were written in appreciation of their mystery.
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<b>Sarah: If I had to pluck an overarching theme from your book, I would point to grieving and loss. In addition to the characters and people you explore in the book, your "Thanks" section includes four RIPs, and the dedication includes an RIP. In "Real as a Loaf of Rye" you write: "When did it stop feeling strange to be haunted?" How does your work commune with the ghosts in your life? Do you feel an obligation to write for those who cannot read your work? </b>
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<b>Colleen</b>: Yes, a lot of RIP’s! In the last six years, in addition to losing my grandparents, I lost five friends, four of whom died young. Miko died of suicide. Roger was just found dead in his office, and Ray had the date rape drug in his body. Roger was a junkie and Ray was gay. My suspicion is, therefore, the cops didn’t care about them.
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Do I have a responsibility to write for the dead? I don’t know. I believe we should remember the dead. That’s human. As a writer, I never feel I’ve fully engaged with a story or a memory until I’ve written it down. Do I have a responsibility to remember the dead the way they’d want to be remembered? If I only wrote about Miko in a way that I was one hundred percent certain he’d appreciate, I wouldn’t have written a word. He went in and out of the closet; he was moody; he drank; he was beautiful and sweet and my lover and my friend. I hope when I’m dead, people will remember me as I really am. I don’t want anyone to say, “Colleen was an angel.” I’d rather they said, “Colleen could really be a bitch. She could work your last nerve. But we had a lot of fun, and she wrote some good stories.”
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<b>Sarah: One of the most intimate portions of the book involves Miko. As readers, we meet him in the memoir section of the book, but we continue to explore your relationship in the following section of poetry. What was the process of writing about him? How do you revise and edit work that is so personal?</b>
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<b>Colleen</b>: What was the process of writing about Miko after his death? It was pure torture. But it was something I had to do. I wasn’t capable of distracting myself from the pain, so I wrote through it, every day. I was on a poetry postcard list—I sent a postcard every day to one of these people on a list. I was sending these depressing poems mostly to strangers! I can’t say if it was therapeutic. It was necessary. After Miko died, most people wanted to talk to me about it, a lot--for about two weeks! Then no one wanted to talk about it. There was a sense I was “dwelling” on it if I talked about him (or just burst out crying in public). But I needed to talk, and also, I needed to talk to him.
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I don’t know how I edited the work about him. I did something that felt too hard for me to do, and somehow I’m still here.<br />
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Find <b>Colleen McKee</b>'s book here: </div>
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<a href="http://ninekindsofwrong.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">http://ninekindsofwrong.blogspot.com/</a></div>
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Find <b>Sarah Shotland</b>'s novel here:<br />
<span style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://whitegorillapress.com/" target="_blank">http://whitegorillapress.com/</a></span></div>
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<b>Earlier in the Writer on Writer series:</b></div>
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Two experimental writers from the same anthology, <i>Wreckage of Reason Two</i>:</div>
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<a href="http://karenslibraryblog.blogspot.com/2014/04/writer-on-writer-lillian-ann-slugocki.html" target="_blank">Lillian Ann Slugocki Interviews E.C. Bachner</a><br />
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<a href="http://karenslibraryblog.blogspot.com/2014/04/writer-on-writer-ec-bachner-interviews.html" target="_blank">E.C Bachner Interviews Lillian Ann Slugocki</a></div>
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Two novels about suicide epidemics:</div>
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<a href="http://karenslibraryblog.blogspot.com/2014/02/writer-on-writer-daniel-mccloskey.html" target="_blank">Daniel McCloskey Interviews Bradley Spinelli (<i>Killing Williamsburg</i>)</a></div>
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<a href="http://karenslibraryblog.blogspot.com/2014/03/writer-on-writer-part-two-bradley.html" target="_blank">Bradley Spinelli Interviews Daniel McCloskey (<i>A Film About Billy</i>)</a></div>
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Two novels about adjunct professors:</div>
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<a href="http://karenslibraryblog.blogspot.com/2013/09/writer-on-writer-dave-newman-interviews.html" target="_blank">Dave Newman Interviews Alex Kudera (<i>Fight For Your Long Day</i>)</a></div>
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<a href="http://karenslibraryblog.blogspot.com/2013/09/writer-on-writer-part-two-alex-kudera.html" target="_blank">Alex Kudera Interviews Dave Newman (<i>Raymond Carver Will Not Raise Our Children</i>)</a></div>
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Karen Lillishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04624398526912042847noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4982013421663058277.post-85070598742178378532014-09-15T12:47:00.001-07:002014-09-15T12:56:22.507-07:00Writer on Writer: Colleen McKee Interviews Sarah Shotland<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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For the latest <b>Writer on Writer</b> interview, I paired <b>Colleen McKee</b> and her book <i>Nine Kinds of Wrong</i> (JK Publishing, 2013) with <b>Sarah Shotland</b> and her new novel <i>Junkette</i> (White Gorilla Press, 2014). Today Colleen interviews Sarah about <i>Junkette</i>. Set in hurricane-season New Orleans just before Hurricane Katrina, Sarah's poetic novel <i>Junkette</i> follows the day-to-day of post-college bartender Claire and her addict friends, whose lives seem already underwater. Come back next week when Sarah interviews Colleen about <i>Nine Kinds of Wrong</i>. Colleen's unique book bears witness, haunts dive bars, and remembers long-lost lovers or cities through a combination of fiction, poetry, and memoir.<br />
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<b>Colleen McKee: Writing a novel seems like a big and scary thing to do, especially a first novel. What compelled you to write this novel? How did this process start for you?</b>
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<b>Sarah Shotland:</b> I started writing <i>Junkette</i> in 2006, about a year after Hurricane Katrina. I was living in China and I didn’t know Mandarin well at all and I didn’t have many people to speak English with. One of the beautiful things about living in a place where I didn’t speak the language was that all the peripheral noise of advertisements, passing conversations, radio, television, billboards was silenced. I had the chance to really quiet the outside world and listen to what was happening in my own mind. And because I spent a lot of time alone, and in silence, I had a great need to communicate. So I wrote. And because I had a lot of time, I was able to write about 400 pages in the span of about nine months.
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<b>Colleen: People associate drugs with excitement and glamour. Claire is a sexy girl with a sexy job in a sexy town. Yet <i>Junkette</i> depicts some aspects of her life as being unglamorous: some passages are gross, and she complains at one point that the routines of being a junky are boring, that she’s hooked on rituals that are sometimes comforting but sometimes just dreary. How do you think about the poles of glamour/anti-glamour in this book?</b>
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<b>Sarah:</b> I think most of Claire’s life is unglamorous. From the very first page of the book, she’s trying to get out of town. She gets lice, she’s broke, at one point she vomits because she smells so bad. Addiction is an incredibly boring experience. It’s endless repetition. The chaos that surrounds addiction can sometimes be seen as excitement or adventure, but the realities of supporting an addiction are tedious, exhausting and demoralizing. I hope I didn’t glamorize any of that. But, I do think there are times when I romanticize or glamorize New Orleans. I was really missing New Orleans when I was writing the book, and I think that means there are times when I glossed over some of the city’s less glamorous realities.
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<b>Colleen: I had problems with drinking and coke in my youth, and like Claire, my circle of friends were bound together by drugs; most of these friends were men. It would be an understatement to say their intentions toward me were not always honorable. The same could be said of some male characters in <i>Junkette</i>, yet Claire doesn’t seem much to relate to the other women in her world. Would you like to say anything about the dynamics of power and gender in this novel? </b>
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<b>Sarah:</b> Claire’s surrounded by men. Part of my choice there was a reaction to <i>Junky</i>, by William S. Burroughs (and to a lot of drug literature). In the traditional drug narrative, a man is at the center of the story. Women are martyred wives and mothers whose lives are destroyed by the men who define them, or they’re temptresses and whores who lead men into self-destruction. I wanted to play with that dynamic and flip it a bit. I wanted Claire to be the center of the book’s universe without making the men into the same kind of flat characters women are sometimes turned into. I think Claire’s relationships with men are complicated. She can see that she’s giving away a lot of power, and yet she keeps engaging in these relationships. But she also makes really self-serving decisions. So men’s intentions towards Claire aren’t all honorable, but neither are hers.
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<b>Colleen: I like the title. It reminds me of Smurfette, in a sick funny way—just as Smurfette’s the only female in a world of men, Claire is somewhat isolated from other women as the main players in her life are male junkies. Of course the title also reminds me of Burroughs’ <i>Junky</i>. Would you like to say anything about the title? </b>
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<b>Sarah:</b> I love Smurfette, and I love thinking of Claire as a tiny blue creature! And yes, I was definitely playing on Burroughs with my title.
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<b>Colleen: Do you think addiction fiction or addiction novels are their own kind of genre or tradition? This could be a lens through which people read <i>Junkette</i>. How do you feel about that? </b>
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<b>Sarah:</b> Definitely, and I hope people who love reading addiction novels will find <i>Junkette</i>.
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<b>Colleen: New Orleans is in itself a powerful character in this novel. Why did you choose to set <i>Junkette</i> there? </b>
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<b>Sarah:</b> When I started writing the book, I’d just moved away from New Orleans. I don’t feel like it could be set anywhere else. I was also really frustrated with New Orleans constantly being defined by Katrina, so I wanted to write a book that was set pre-Katrina. I tried to include as many places that no longer exist post-Katrina, and really paint a picture of a particular time in the city.
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<b>Colleen: Many novels about young women are coming of age stories, and they follow the traditional narrative arc of the Bildungsroman (literally, “a novel of building character”). The Bildungsroman shows how the female character’s childhood affects her young adulthood, and after going through some crisis or challenge--which is resolved by the end of the book-- the character has passed through the frightening transition from girl to woman and she’s clearly reached the other side. But this novel is very focused on Claire’s present life and her immediate future. How did you make the decision to not include much about Claire’s upbringing, or even her recent past? </b>
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<b>Sarah:</b> Addiction is really complicated, and I think too often it’s presented as being caused by something. A traumatic childhood, a destructive relationship, poverty. I wasn’t that interested in exploring why Claire is an addict. I was just interested in how she experienced it. Because the book is written in first-person, I didn’t think Claire would reflect that much on her own past; she’s caught in a very present-moment experience that means she can only really respond to the immediate problem she’s facing. I felt having her reflect a lot would be inauthentic and move into some dangerous territory of trying to explain away her choices.
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<b>Colleen: <i>Junkette</i>’s structure also resists tradition. You use often very short sections, definitively broken with typographical symbols. To me, this results in an intriguing sense of time being fragmented, highlighting this moment, then this moment. Do you see it this way? How did you decide on this form? </b>
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<b>Sarah:</b> As I was writing <i>Junkette</i>, I read Mary Robison’s books <i>One D.O.A., One on the Way</i>; <i>Subtraction</i>; and <i>Why Did I Ever</i>. Robison uses really short sections—she says she writes her novels on individual index cards. I really fell in love with her work. As soon as I read her, I knew <i>Junkette</i> had to be written in tiny sections.
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<b>Colleen: Claire makes a lot of lists. Some are poetic, some funny, and they are interspersed throughout the book in an intriguing way. Would you like to say anything about the list form and how you use it in <i>Junkette</i>? </b>
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<b>Sarah:</b> I think Claire’s really seeking order. Her addiction is a way of ordering her life. Her lists are a way of ordering her life. I secretly want to be a poet, but sadly, I am very bad at writing poetry. Lists are about as close as I come.
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<b>Colleen: What moved you to co-found <a href="http://www.wordswithoutwalls.com/" target="_blank">Words without Walls</a> (which, to use your words, “brings creative writing classes to jails and rehab centers in Pittsburgh, PA”)? Would you like to say anything about these students? </b>
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<b>Sarah:</b> I’m motivated by a lot of factors in my work with Words Without Walls. We have a huge problem with locking people up in this country. I’m not a lawyer or a politician or a social worker. I would be very bad at all those things. I’m a writer, so I try to do things with writing that address problems in our society. My students in jail and prison are just like all my other writing students: some are incredible writers, some aren’t that great, some don’t care at all about publication, some want an audience. But I think the act of writing is useful for everyone. Writing allows for reflection, reimagining, empathy, self-expression, spiritual engagement, fantasy, escape from and engagement with your self and your circumstances. The feedback I get from my students in Words Without Walls ranges from <i>Writing changed my life and I’ll never be the same</i>, to <i>It was a relief to have a class every week that got me off the housing unit</i>. I consider both and everything in between to be a success. What is somewhat different from my other students is an inability to deal with writerly bullshit. They aren’t at all interested in the professionalization of creative writing and the nonsense that comes with it. That means I have to bring in only the very best writing I can find, the most necessary pieces, and that brings me a lot of joy.
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<b>Colleen: You also work with students in the MFA program at Chatham University. This seems like it could be a very different experience than working with students in jails and rehab centers. How would you compare working with these two sets of students? In what ways are they similar, and in what ways are they different? </b>
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<b>Sarah:</b> I really enjoy teaching in both environments. I also work with kids, which is another variation on teaching. I’d say working in a university, I really get to geek out on the minutia of writing. People can get a lot of pleasure and meaning out of an hour long discussion on point of view in an MFA class. With kids, I get to do a lot of creative, imaginative exercises and I get to see huge improvement in a really short amount of time. In all my classes, my favorite part of teaching is bringing in a story I love and seeing students discover it for the first time. I will never forget the teacher who introduced me to Margaret Atwood and Joan Didion. When I get to teach those writers, I feel really honored to be part of that ripple effect. With my students at jails and prisons, I get to remember why I started writing in the first place—to make sense of my self. I think the mixture of the environments is why I can stay enthusiastic about teaching. I get to meet lots of different people, and I feel really lucky that my jobs all entail reading and writing and talking about reading and writing. It’s a pretty wonderful thing to do for work.
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<b>Colleen: You’ve worked in theatre. Sometimes novelist/playwrights’ novels feel a lot like theatre—heavy on dialogue, light on introversion. <i>Junkette</i> doesn’t feel theatrical, though. Do you feel like writing plays has influenced your fiction writing and vice versa, or do they feel like two very different worlds? </b>
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<b>Sarah:</b> I think writing for the theater has helped me with plot. In the theater, everything is scene. If nothing happens, there’s no play. So that’s really helpful to me as I write fiction, because in prose, I naturally tend to write a lot of introspective reflection, which can end up moving very slowly. I love writing for the theater because playwrights really have to give their work away to other artists, and then we get to watch it become itself. In fiction, the writer ultimately has a lot more control of the final product. But I will say that I tend to write a lot of monologue in my plays, so first-person fiction isn’t too far a stretch from that.
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<b>Colleen: Who and/or what are your biggest literary influences? </b>
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<b>Sarah:</b> Here’s my literary dinner party: Joan Didion, Anne Sexton, Margaret Atwood, Toni Morrison, Maria Irene Fornes, Sarah Kane, Mary Robison, Kate Chopin, Jean Rhys, Lydia Davis, Claudia Rankine, bell hooks. I also love Kenneth Patchen, Etheridge Knight and Walt Whitman (I don’t want to leave out the dudes.) At our dinner party, we’d drink cheap beer and fancy whiskey and I’d make tacos.
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Don't miss the next installment, due approximately Monday, September 22: Sarah Shotland interviews Colleen McKee about <i>Nine Kinds of Wrong.</i><br />
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Find <i>Junkette</i> at White Gorilla Press here:<br />
<a href="http://whitegorillapress.com/" target="_blank">http://whitegorillapress.com/ </a><br />
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Find <i>Nine Kinds of Wrong</i> here:<br />
<a href="http://ninekindsofwrong.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">http://ninekindsofwrong.blogspot.com/</a><br />
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Click the <a href="http://karenslibraryblog.blogspot.com/search/label/Writer%20on%20Writer" target="_blank">Writer on Writer tag</a> to read past interviews in this series.<br />
<br />Karen Lillishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04624398526912042847noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4982013421663058277.post-4975108921825861392014-04-27T10:01:00.001-07:002014-04-27T10:05:09.726-07:00Writer on Writer: Lillian Ann Slugocki Interviews E.C. Bachner<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Wreckage of Reason Two (bottom left) & other Spuyten Duyvil and small press titles featured at Guide to Kulchur in Cleveland.</td></tr>
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Last week's <b>Writer on Writer</b> featured <a href="http://karenslibraryblog.blogspot.com/2014/04/writer-on-writer-ec-bachner-interviews.html" target="_blank">E.C. Bachner interviewing Lillian Ann Slugocki</a> about Slugocki's story, <i>Street Car Deconstructed.</i> Both writers are a part of <i><a href="http://www.spuytenduyvil.net/worii.html" target="_blank">Wreckage of Reason Two</a></i> (Spuyten Duyvil, 2014), an anthology of contemporary women writers experimenting with prose. Today <b>Lillian Ann Slugocki </b>interviews <b>E.C. (Elizabeth) Bachner</b>, about her anthology story, <i>How to Shake Hands with a Murderer</i>. Lillian had a chance to read the full-length version of Elizabeth's story (as-yet-unpublished in its entirety), two excerpts of which are included in <i>Wreckage of Reason Two</i>, while one section was excerpted in the original <i><a href="http://www.spuytenduyvil.net/wreckage-of-reason.html" target="_blank">Wreckage of Reason</a></i> (Spuyten Duyvil, 2008).<br />
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<b>Lillian: In an essay on Tennyson and Eliot, Sarah Eron writes, “Despite the general non-linearity of [Tennyson’s] <i>In Memoriam,</i> the poem does undergo a definite progression. Much of the progression derives from the poet's (or speaker's) ultimate personal reconciliation with Hallam's death.” So what drives the narrative progression in your piece, <i>How to Shake Hands with a Murderer</i>?
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<b>Elizabeth Bachner:</b> This piece is a katabasis, a hero's trip into the underworld (and maybe back?). The protagonist is a girl separated, heartbreakingly, from her love, her best friend--she's lost him to various literal and metaphoric deaths--he's become a rock star, or a junkie, he's far away and they can't find each other, he's died and been buried, they've both transformed in ways they can't understand, he was a boy and now he's trapped in her memory, or lost in the dark adult world. Any katabasis is also a story about the process of writing, about where you have to go, and what you have to do to yourself, to get the unspeakable into words. The descent into the underworld to find your lost love or your lost partner-in-crime or your lost self or your lost gods or your lost mother, child, sister, or friend is a crazy, dangerous, and definitely non-linear trip. You might die on that trip. You might transform into something you can't recognize or face.
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEis_DPVyKRSiJ_BtXhYoGf98JG2Z9iNZAZbzGNYtxEFa1l2eM240y3T5oO_qBofh1BRqWlkpuLoeGfBTwVNMMMF8ZYEZyH9h-cVgSxZiH7Z0OdIITAft6VUZD__PBseZXPWXpmdGWDchPnu/s1600/WOR2.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEis_DPVyKRSiJ_BtXhYoGf98JG2Z9iNZAZbzGNYtxEFa1l2eM240y3T5oO_qBofh1BRqWlkpuLoeGfBTwVNMMMF8ZYEZyH9h-cVgSxZiH7Z0OdIITAft6VUZD__PBseZXPWXpmdGWDchPnu/s1600/WOR2.jpeg" height="320" width="210" /></a><b>
Lillian: I’m really fascinated with your narrative structure. I’m kind of lit crit geek, and am in awe of this story. It reads like a mash-up of memoir and myth. In particular, the myth of Leda and the Swan is writ large through out it. I often use myth as subtext in my work, and wondered if you would talk about that process.</b>
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<b>Elizabeth:</b> Yes, I love myth!! And for me, getting closer to and more deeply inside of the myths I love is one of the most frightening and ecstatic things about writing. When I was working on this sequence, I was reading Roberto Calasso's <i>The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony</i>, and also rereading Ovid's <i>Metamorphosis</i>. I'm not sure why I find these themes so intense and electrifying--I guess it's the idea of boundaries between the imagined/imaginary world of art or poetry, and the "real" world of flesh-and-blood bodies being violently crossed or painfully corroded, which is how I experience the writing of lyric work. I like the idea of the genii, a kind of demonic energy that surges through a writer at the moment of inspiration, and can just as easily kill her or make her lose her mind as help her work...these myths about gods and humans erotically colliding, humans visiting the underworld (and maybe surviving), and humans transforming into inhuman things address those experiences--of living in a human body, of (dangerously) experiencing the creative process and the wider universe, things that violate the boundaries of your individual self, or maybe show how those boundaries were an illusion in the first place.
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I loved reading <a href="http://fictionaut.com/stories/lillian-ann-slugocki/leda-20--2" target="_blank">your piece on Leda</a>! I have a short one written pretty recently about Actaeon coming upon the virgin goddess Diana in the woods, naked, bathing with her nymphs. In Ovid's story, she turns him into a stag as punishment for seeing her like that, and I was interested in Diana's experience in that version. I've loved Greek and Roman myths since I was a little kid, and my characters and very influenced by those characters--the nymphs, the lovers, the questing heroes with their best buddies, the boy flying too close to the sun in the wings his father made, the jealous goddesses, the mortal girls who make the goddesses jealous, the girls who open the box or eat the pomegranate. The vast, expansive Hindu pantheon has always eluded me, but I find some of those stories coming up in the novel I'm working on now, probably because I'm recently back from a very trippy trip to Nepal. I'm also finding old Jewish folktales popping up in there.
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<b>Lillian: The idea of history, real and imagined, seems to travel though the story, and I thought, while I was reading it that the personal really is the political. Would you agree? </b>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbs79sQxlqAeZ4UFsfPTB99G1U8shVFLaTi73E2RRZbn14C2WtybJP_IxQaL-NQYSvy3sLPw_DJ_bR5dgEAwdgT2S_-8vqKvlJ7KCycOVNr5bq_GNyYAzvYiL_1-e2m1TUgQP1kuQymbCa/s1600/wreckage.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbs79sQxlqAeZ4UFsfPTB99G1U8shVFLaTi73E2RRZbn14C2WtybJP_IxQaL-NQYSvy3sLPw_DJ_bR5dgEAwdgT2S_-8vqKvlJ7KCycOVNr5bq_GNyYAzvYiL_1-e2m1TUgQP1kuQymbCa/s1600/wreckage.jpeg" height="320" width="222" /></a><b>Elizabeth:</b> I definitely agree! The protagonist in this piece is struggling with history--her own role in history and whether she'll be remembered, her manuscripts lost under the bed that might never be read by anybody, and also the broader problems of how history has unfolded. How we remember, commemorate, forget, or ignore the dark side of human history--the problems of genocide, rape, slavery, cruelty, and war.<br />
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When I write about history or the present, when in think about where I fit in, I try to keep in mind Primo Levi's poem <a href="http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/shema/" target="_blank"><i>Shema</i></a>. I try to keep in mind his challenge, his indictment, his wish that if I don't live consciously, if I don't keep in mind these dark, filthy things that have happened in the past, and these dark, filthy things that are happening right now (the people who are being tortured every morning at the same time as I'm brushing my teeth in my safe bathroom, the children who are being raped right now, and right now, and again right now, the asylum-seekers who have committed no real crime who are incarcerated near where I live, separated from their families) that if I, if we, live a life turning a blind eye to these things, we should be cursed. I try to keep this in mind when I'm working, but I'm not as effective as I wish in addressing it directly. This piece you've read (<i>How To Shake Hands with a Murderer</i>) is probably where I'm most overt about it, since my main character is struggling with this very problem. I like to use the personal--work that's apparently confessional and frilly--to lull readers, seduce and trick them, and then pull back the curtain and force them to look. I think any work, prose or poetry, that's truthful and true to itself--that's uncompromising--is politically effective, usually moreso than work that attempts to make a particular political or activist point. The form and process are as important as the content. Working and living as if I'm a real writer whose work matters, who exists in the history of the art form, whose work has an audience that will love it or hate it or reject it or think about it while they walk home at night, an audience who might read it a second time--and trying to keep the work truthful--is something that feels to me like a defiant act. In some parts of the world, truthful writers are still exiled, tortured, or killed for working...and in other parts of the world, the ways that truthful writers are censored, hobbled, or ignored are more subtle. I keep the <a href="http://www.vidaweb.org/the-count-2012/" target="_blank">VIDA statistics</a> in mind when I think about my work. <br />
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Lillian: I love the mix of high and low culture--Heidegger and blow jobs, Nicole Kidman and rock stars, Huck Finn and religion. In that sense, it reminds me very much of <i>The Wasteland</i>-- were you at all influenced by Eliot, and if not, who? </b>
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<b>Elizabeth:</b> When I was fifteen, I used to walk around with T.S. Eliot poems--mostly <i><a href="http://www.bartleby.com/198/1.html" target="_blank">The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock</a></i> and <i><a href="http://www.bartleby.com/198/3.html" target="_blank">Preludes</a></i>--running through my head like songs. He's the main influence in this sequence of work--not in the sense that I use his poetry as a conscious model for mine, but I just read him and read him and read him and I have his <i>Selected Poems</i> in my bones. I was finishing this piece when I was in my late twenties--ten years ago now. But first love and lost childhood were such central themes in the work that I think the poems and novels and songs and characters from history I loved most when I was fourteen or fifteen, falling madly in love with a boy and getting my heart broken, falling madly in love with poetry and getting my heart bruised, heavily influenced the work: Eliot and Pound, Edna St. Vincent Millay's <i>Prayer to Persephone</i>, Henry Miller and his wife, June, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Molly Bloom and Anna Livia Plurabelle, Anna Karenina and Turgenev's <i>Fathers and Sons</i>. When I was twenty-seven and first working on this, I got nostalgic for that wild, beautiful, sad as hell fifteen-year-old feeling. All that ragged love for boys and for poems.
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Lillian: There is a meta element to the story: A self-aware speaker who is both an organic part of the narrative, but who also paradoxically stands outside looking in. It’s an unique point of view, almost like watching a dream unspool. Can you talk about how you handled point of view?</b>
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<b>Elizabeth:</b> I'm obsessed with the problem of the protagonist versus the author. I write a lot of memoir that isn't really memoir, just fiction or poetry where I've used something about my body or my life or my self as a kind of medium to work with. Even in my nonfiction, the "me" voice is really a protagonist more than a version of me, the person. The novel I'm working on now is pretty much all about the problem of point of view. There's a line in this piece about how to write satire--in the Celtic tradition, a satire was a song that would curse and harm the person it was about. There is an element of satire or self-satire in all of my work, especially in how I create and characterize my protagonists. I think that writing fiction or poetry is an experience of being all-powerful, like a deity, while at the same time being completely powerless, at the same time having your whole life entirely at the mercy of your work. It's why a lot of the really interesting writers in history have suffered so much, and many haven't survived the process of making their work--or they haven't survived it in one piece. Here, my protagonist sees herself right in the middle of literature and history and her own life, but at the same time she's trapped outside of everything she wants, and her masterwork is just a daydream. In most of my work, I leave this problem of point of view naked and exposed. Most of my characters are also artists, so this problem comes up for them a lot too.
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Read Part I of this <b>Writer on Writer</b>: <a href="http://karenslibraryblog.blogspot.com/2014/04/writer-on-writer-ec-bachner-interviews.html" target="_blank">E.C. Bachner Interviews Lillian Ann Slugocki</a> about <i>Street Car Deconstructed</i><br />
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Check out past <a href="http://karenslibraryblog.blogspot.com/search/label/Writer%20on%20Writer" target="_blank">Writer on Writer</a> interviews, and stay tuned for more!<br />
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Two novels about suicide epidemics:<br />
<a href="http://karenslibraryblog.blogspot.com/2014/02/writer-on-writer-daniel-mccloskey.html" target="_blank">Daniel McCloskey Interviews Bradley Spinelli (Killing Williamsburg)</a><br />
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<a href="http://karenslibraryblog.blogspot.com/2014/03/writer-on-writer-part-two-bradley.html" target="_blank">Bradley Spinelli Interviews Daniel McCloskey (A Film About Billy)</a><br />
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Two novels about adjunct professors:<br />
<a href="http://karenslibraryblog.blogspot.com/2013/09/writer-on-writer-dave-newman-interviews.html" target="_blank">Dave Newman Interviews Alex Kudera (Fight For Your Long Day)</a><br />
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<a href="http://karenslibraryblog.blogspot.com/2013/09/writer-on-writer-part-two-alex-kudera.html" target="_blank">Alex Kudera Interviews Dave Newman (Raymond Carver Will Not Raise Our Children)</a><br />
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<br />Karen Lillishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04624398526912042847noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4982013421663058277.post-55575990941886567872014-04-20T18:08:00.001-07:002014-04-20T18:25:46.927-07:00Writer on Writer: E.C. Bachner Interviews Lillian Ann Slugocki<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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This installment in the <b>Writer on Writer</b> interview series has a twist: Instead of asking the participants to read a whole book, I asked two writers involved in the same anthology to read each other's anthology piece. The anthology in question is one I'm proud to be included in as well. <b><a href="http://www.spuytenduyvil.net/worii.html" target="_blank">Wreckage of Reason Two</a></b> (Spuyten Duyvil, 2014) is the sequel to <b><a href="http://www.spuytenduyvil.net/wreckage-of-reason.html" target="_blank">Wreckage of Reason</a></b> (Spuyten Duyvil, 2008), and both anthologies feature contemporary women writers experimenting with prose. This week's Writer on Writer features <b>E.C. Bachner</b> and <b>Lillian Ann Slugocki</b>, two New Yorkers whose bold narrative voices pop off the page. Today E.C. (Elizabeth) Bachner interviews Lillian Ann Slugocki about Lillian's story, <i>Streetcar Deconstructed</i>.<br />
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Stay tuned, as always, for the second part of the interview, when Lillian will ask Elizabeth about Elizabeth's story, <i>How to Shake Hands with a Murderer</i>.<br />
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Elizabeth Bachner: I'm obsessed with the idea of whether there are differences between a character and a person, an author and a self, and I love the brilliant and playful way your feminist deconstruction of <i>A Streetcar Named Desire</i> approaches these questions. What are your ways of thinking about autobiography versus fiction, "real" versus imaginary or invented? How do you use yourself in your work? How does your work change and shape your life?</b>
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<b>Lillian Ann Slugocki: </b> My life is like this scrapbook of stories, and people, and cities--and I look at it, dispassionately, as the raw material for my work. But having said that, there are many layers over and under the autobiography. I layer myth--my current obsessions are Leda, Orpheus, Eurydice and Leander--as well as narrative structure--e.g. a conflict and its resolution, as well as intertexuality. I use echoes of T. S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, Angela Carter, plus all the lit crit I studied at New York University: Judith Butler, Thelma Shinn, Gayle Green, Mircea Eliade, Luce Irigaray, Julie Kristeva, and Audre Lord. The result is that the I, first person, in my work is me, but not me--an amplified version. Stronger, wiser, certainly more flawed, and certainly more interesting.
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People who read my work are usually very quick to assume that it’s straight up autobiography, like when they read <i>The Blue Hours</i>, my novella about the sexual disintegration of a marriage. But real life can be very boring. I’m convinced that even memoirists are not unlike novelists--they use plot arcs, they deconstruct, compress, they add and subtract in similar ways--because it’s all in service of telling a story. And real life doesn’t contain those structural elements. There is an art to choosing where to begin a story, and where to end it, amongst all the hundreds of possibilities. The writer makes those choices, whether the genre is fiction or non-fiction. And I tend to write stories about the things that are of concern to me at any given moment. It could be identity, it could be sexuality or the female body, it could be history--and in writing them, I think I better understand the context of my own life.
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<b>Elizabeth: In your deconstruction of <i>Streetcar</i>..., there are so many different ways that you approach and confront Tennessee Williams as a writer, his characters, the fact of playwriting, the fact of theater, the canon. There's parody, lots of wit and fun and adventure, and definitely deconstruction--but primarily I'm left with a feeling of love for both works, yours and his. Could you say a little about your experience of this process?</b>
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<b>Lillian:</b> Oh God, I do love that play. I’ve seen so many versions of it-- theatrical and cinematic. Ivo van Hove directed it at <a href="http://www.nytw.org/a_streetcar_named_desire_info.asp" target="_blank">New York Theater Workshop</a>, and it was a stunning deconstruction. Life-changing. No sets, no scenery, no props, no costume changes--just a large claw-footed bathtub, stage left. Filled with water. And Blanche, played by Elizabeth Marvel, is naked in that bathtub, submerging and rising up, over and over, splashing water all over the stage and the audience--I got drenched! The spine of that production was the bathtub and the naked woman.
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This is the detail the director chose as his point of departure from Williams’ text. And I knew I was going to deconstruct it, too--but it took ten years. It wasn’t until I was reading all of the above-referenced lit crit, primarily in my own ongoing search to define and categorize and reinvent the female narrative, that I thought it was time to revision Blanche. And like van Hove chose the bathtub as the point of departure, I chose the white moth, which is a relatively small leitmotif in the play. But it gave me a point of entrance--it opened the door, if you will, to her revisioned character. In my version, Blanche has a Master’s Degree from NYU (like me), and has read all the same theory, and at that point, the piece practically wrote itself. And I am making fun of the canon, as well as academic culture, of which I am a proud member, but a culture nonetheless that deserves to be made fun of. The canon, as it stands, is ridiculously outdated.
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<b>Elizabeth: When you're working--and/or reading and thinking about your own work--how do you think about your readers, your audience? Do you often have readers in general, a particular type of reader, or a particular reader in mind as you work? </b>
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<b>Lillian: </b>Initially, I have a word or a phrase or an image in my head that won’t go away. Like the image of the white moth on a hot summer’s night. And at that point, I’m not at all concerned about my audience. I treat my first drafts as letters to myself. It’s not until I’m on the second re-write that I become concerned with issues like: what is the story I’m telling, what is the arc, where does it begin, and where does it end, what is the through-line, what are the sub-plots, is everything resolved by the end of the story. I think my readers are people like myself; intelligent, driven, transgressive, definitely subversive.
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<b>Elizabeth: I love the way that bodies and sexuality come into the work of yours that I've read. What inspires you to work with erotic themes? </b>
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<b>Lillian: </b>One way to answer that question is to say, I’m obsessed with the intersection between the sacred and the profane. Another way to answer that question, goes to back to my issue with today’s canon. I believe women have to create their own narratives, and female sexuality has been, with a few notable exceptions (Anais Nin, Colette), written through the male gaze. That just has to change, and it is changing--erotica written by women has exploded, some of it is badly written, some of it is really well written, Angela Carter comes to mind. But good or bad, it’s good to see it out there in the world. I think that means that eventually women can reclaim their own sexual identity. Right now, we don’t own it, we haven’t written that definition, or told that story yet. Even as the fourth wave of feminism rises up, female sexuality is still primarily a male trope. And that informs everything. It informs Anna Karenina, it informs Blanche DuBois, Eve, Lilith, Mary Magdalene, Cinderella. Images of women in even the most stable of texts are informed by this trope.
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So that’s what it is with me and erotica--it’s another way of reframing or renaming the female narrative. It’s like saying, <i>I've got control of this now, and the story is going to be very, very different from what you’re expecting</i>. And I’d like to think it’s honest and authentic, even if it might be a bit hard to swallow (pun definitely intended). I think a person’s sexual identity is the still point of our turning world. It is foundational, and I’m not even talking about how a person self-identifies--straight, gay, lesbian, bi, whatever--sexuality is a driving and undeniable force in our lives. And it is definitely political. The female body is still a wild and uncharted territory, but again, this is changing. I think of performance artists like Julie Atlas Muz, Deb Margolin, writers like Erin Cressida Wilson, and yourself, Elizabeth--female artists, who, in my opinion, write beyond the ending, who write beyond the white picket fence, beyond happily-ever-after.
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<b>Elizabeth: Another of the <i>Wreckage of Reason 2</i> contributors, Robin Martin, wrote that she was glad panelists discussing the anthology at AWP raised the question of what makes prose experimental. "I don’t think my work is clearly experimental," she wrote, "By that, I mean I feel my work is still very accessible. Perhaps I like the term <i>innovative writing</i> better. Innovative writing has a smaller audience in mind, no pre-determined formula, and exists outside of easily defined narrative conventions." I'm really interested in this question. Do you consider your work experimental? Innovative? Or do you like some other word? </b>
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<b>Lillian: </b>I like both words, I like experimental and innovative. Whether I’ve written for the page or the stage, my work definitely “exists outside of easily defined narrative convention.” I pitched a series once to the Director of Artistic Programming at NPR, and when he received the first episode, <i>Earth Sinking Into Water</i>, he said, “This shouldn’t work, but it does.” And even though I was working with an excellent dramaturge and director, Erica Gould, I didn’t understand why it worked, either, except that it did. It was non-linear, it was progressive, but still it packed a strong emotional punch at its conclusion. Now I understand that it worked because it was structured like a piece of music. And today when I’m considering a long form piece, the narrative borrows many elements from the hero’s journey, as in Joseph Campbell's call to adventure, or the refusal of the call, mentors and guides, demons and conflicts, crossing the first threshold, the supreme ordeal. Or the way back, but not the same anymore--transformed, perhaps bearing gifts. I can work with this--it makes organic sense to me.
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I just finished writing a novella, <i>How to Travel with Your Demons</i>, and the process began with a formal question: Could I tell a story about a protagonist traveling from Point A to Point B, and leave one central question unanswered which would create narrative tension? And I could. I did. And once I established that framework, then I could create the music around it, establish motifs, smaller conflicts that all circle around the central narrative. When an editor friend of mine read it, he called it "experimental structure with accessible prose." And I thought, yes. That’s exactly what I was aiming for. And I like breaking rules, too. The story is written in shifting points of view--first person, second person, third person. Time is fluid, non-linear, circular. I know the rules, and so I can break the rules, and still tell a story. So in that sense my work is experimental, but I can’t tell a story within the traditional confines of established narrative structure. It doesn’t make sense to me as a writer, it feels foreign and strange. I love it as a reader, but that’s not the same. And I love what you wrote [in our forthcoming interview], Elizabeth, that your <i>Wreckage of Reason Two</i> piece, <i>How to Shake Hands with a Murderer</i>, is “a katabasis, a hero's trip into the underworld (and maybe back?).” Using powerful ancient storytelling techniques in contemporary stories of transformation is something I love doing with my own work. This process is really exciting to me, and maybe the katabasis will be my next method in my own search for the female narrative. <br />
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Don't miss the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/229901673876395/" target="_blank">New York launch party</a> for <i>Wreckage of Reason Two</i>, at KGB Bar on Tuesday, April 22 from 7-9pm.</div>
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Ealier in the <b>Writer on Writer</b> series:<br />
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Two novels about suicide epidemics:<br />
<a href="http://karenslibraryblog.blogspot.com/2014/02/writer-on-writer-daniel-mccloskey.html" target="_blank">Daniel McCloskey Interviews Bradley Spinelli (Killing Williamsburg)</a><br />
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<a href="http://karenslibraryblog.blogspot.com/2014/03/writer-on-writer-part-two-bradley.html" target="_blank">Bradley Spinelli Interviews Daniel McCloskey (A Film About Billy)</a><br />
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Two novels about adjunct professors:<br />
<a href="http://karenslibraryblog.blogspot.com/2013/09/writer-on-writer-dave-newman-interviews.html" target="_blank">Dave Newman Interviews Alex Kudera (Fight For Your Long Day)</a><br />
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<a href="http://karenslibraryblog.blogspot.com/2013/09/writer-on-writer-part-two-alex-kudera.html" target="_blank">Alex Kudera Interviews Dave Newman (Raymond Carver Will Not Raise Our Children)</a><br />
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<br />Karen Lillishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04624398526912042847noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4982013421663058277.post-58163874179830862502014-03-14T12:07:00.002-07:002014-03-14T12:10:48.059-07:00Writer on Writer: Part Two, Bradley Spinelli Interviews Daniel McCloskey<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Following up on the last <a href="http://karenslibraryblog.blogspot.com/2014/02/writer-on-writer-daniel-mccloskey.html" target="_blank">Writer on Writer interview</a>, this week <b>Bradley Spinelli</b> interviews <b>Daniel McCloskey</b>. Bradley is author of <a href="http://killingwilliamsburg.com/" target="_blank">Killing Williamsburg</a> (Le Chat Noir) and Daniel wrote <a href="http://danielmccloskey.com/afab" target="_blank">A Film About Billy</a> (Six Gallery Press). Each 2013 novel follows a protagonist trying to outlive a suicide epidemic. At my suggestion, Bradley and Daniel read each other's books and came up with their own questions.<br />
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<b>Bradley Spinelli: I have to ask the obvious. Why a suicide epidemic? </b>
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<b>Daniel McCloskey:</b> At first it was in response to tragedy. I was 19. I heard, months after the fact, my friend had killed herself. She was the second friend of mine in two years to take their own life. Both did it before they turned 18. At the time I was dating someone that had been suicidal, and a number of people I knew had attempted or talked about it seriously. I wrote about a suicide epidemic because I thought there was one, and as it turns out there kind of is one. In Stephen Petranek’s TED talk,
<a href="http://www.ted.com/talks/stephen_petranek_counts_down_to_armageddon" target="_blank">10 Ways the World Could End Quickly</a>, a depression epidemic makes the cut.
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I also think apocalypse via suicide builds a dramatic image of the simple truth that we all die. While any apocalypse narrative has mass deaths, a suicide epidemic seemed to keep the focus on individuals and their deaths instead of the lava, the rain, the whatever that a protagonist might work against. The people that hurt you in a suicide epidemic are the victims, and they are already gone.
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<b>Bradley: I just read Malcolm Gladwell’s <i>The Tipping Point</i> last year. He talks about <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1983/03/06/us/micronesia-s-male-suicide-rate-defies-solution.html" target="_blank">the teen suicide epidemic in Micronesia</a> in the early ’80s. Did you know about that or did it have any influence? </b>
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<b>Daniel:</b> Yeah, I ran into <i>The Tipping Point</i> while I was studying abroad in Japan in 2007. That was also when I started putting comics into my book in earnest. Takashi Murakami’s Little Boy was a big deal for me at the time as well, the essays more than the art. I wasn’t sleeping a lot then--just walking around dark lonely Tokyo streets at night, and doing a lot of research in my University's English language library during the day.
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<b>Bradley: In your book the media pushes the epidemic, both in using the term “pandemic” to increase ratings and the very real idea that the media can spread the disease, that suicide can be just another meme. In writing <i>Killing Williamsburg</i>, I was taken by the fact that the <i>New York Times </i>doesn’t run stories on suicide. What’s your feeling? Should the media report suicides? </b>
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<b>Daniel:</b> I think what happens when a story about suicide is in the paper is that it opens up that possibility for people. It’s kind the opposite of, “If you can dream it you can be it.” It’s more like, “If you can’t imagine it you can’t do it.” So for someone who is predisposed towards suicide at the moment they see a suicide in the paper, suicide becomes an option in a concrete way. Yet suicide is no less the decision of the person who read about it in the paper than it is of the person written about in that article.
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I tend to think we need to respect people’s ability to make decisions, even if we as individuals don’t really know why we do things. Do you know what I mean? Have you ever been in an argument with someone who’s hungry, and you know their anger has almost nothing to do with whatever your talking and has everything to do with a lack of food? I feel like in that case you need to respect that person’s feelings because those feelings are real, but we also need to address the underlying issue: hunger.
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If suicides propagate every time a suicide is in the paper, I tend to believe that the problem isn’t the publicity but a deeper untreated depression issue that is illustrated by the fact that there are people walking around ready to off themselves once the thought occurs to them.
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In Mexico, for example, suicide is publicized all the time in graphic detail, often with photographs, and the suicide rate in Mexico is less than half of the USA’s rate.
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So, should the media report suicides? I don’t know.
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As an author trying to orchestrate a suicide epidemic in your fictional world it seems that it would make the most sense to have the media ignore it while it begins, allowing the problem to snowball on its own in a localized environment (like in your book), then have the media pick it up when the suicides are at their peak. Because I do think that an environment where suicide becomes the norm might make it difficult to imagine the possibility of not killing yourself, especially for the young and impressionable. New York would be a great location to begin an American epidemic because the residents are from all over and have emotional connections to so many communities. There’s probably someone who loves someone in NYC in every corner of the planet.
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<b>Bradley: You describe A Film About Billy as a “hybrid novel”—half novel, half graphic novel. Did you ever consider doing the entire book as a graphic novel? </b>
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<b>Daniel:</b> When I began <i>A Film About Billy</i> the story was partially in screenplay format, but that format ultimately didn’t work for what I wanted to do. I learned to draw comics in order to make this book work, but I’ve always thought of it as primarily a prose novel. I am working on a comic series right now, Top of the Line, a monster fighting comic about a kid growing into a hero and in the process a terrible bigot. I’m enjoying that immensely, but I plan on going back to the hybrid format. Prose does something really different than comics and vice versa. As a story teller and an artist I get excited about the sheer unexplored possibility in comic prose hybrid work. Hopefully I’ll be announcing a new hybrid project in the summer.
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<b>Bradley: The book is paced really well. At the beginning, the present story is written and the past, which was videotaped, is drawn. This evolves, so that other segments of the story are drawn as the plotlines begin to diversify. How carefully did you plan what would be drawn and what would be written? </b>
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<b>Daniel:</b> To start, I just knew I wanted to use comics for the video tape “flashbacks,” but there were a couple of rules that worked themselves out for me really quickly. First, I didn’t want too many comic pages. I thought it was important to feel that the comics were speeding up the pace of a novel, instead of having a lot of text bogging down a comic. The prose is first person, so anything that I wanted to include in the story that Collin couldn’t see had to be in comic format. I also liked the idea of having more comics near the end of the story to add speed and intensity to the climax, so I added a page or two that could have been prose based on the other rules. That’s it. Basically I wrote and drew it together, so other versions had different comics as well as different text.
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<b>Bradley: The book starts out very naturalistic and becomes increasingly strange. The first mention of “weirdness” is experienced by Billy when he’s on shrooms, so we’re encouraged to dismiss it. But as the story becomes more fantastic your drawings also dabble in more dreamlike imagery. (You also introduce a talking Mr. Coffee.) How much of this book is intended to work on a subconscious level? </b>
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<b>Daniel:</b> I think that’s the whole ticket in fiction. We synthesize information into an emotional language so that our old monkey brains can digest it. Jung would talk about it as more of a bridge between the conscious and the subconscious, but it’s the same general idea. I think a lot of good fiction operates on a subconscious level without any weirdness, but that weirdness is what makes me me. I like to talk about serious issues through goat-eyed tigers, fighting robots, and talking coffee pots. I love Richard Brautigan and Dragon Ball Z, what can I say?
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<b>Bradley: Early on, all the gore happens off-screen, starting with Billy’s suicide and the great line, “When we learned what a train actually does to a body.” Even as the epidemic spreads, we only see a few suicides actually happen. It’s interesting to me, since I went so up-close and graphic in my book. How/why did you make this decision? </b>
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<b>Daniel:</b> I think that Collin didn’t really like thinking about how his friend died, even though that’s all he ever thought about. There were a lot of things he didn’t like thinking or talking about directly throughout the story. I tend to agree with a certain brand of literary artist who believes that the most powerful parts of a story are the parts that are unsaid, and having the deaths occur largely off screen gave them a certain weight in my mind.
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<b>Bradley: Overall, your book is much more concerned with male relationships—fathers and sons, and the brotherhood of friendship—than it is with women. But there are also buried details that suggest Billy was gay or bisexual. Why didn’t you investigate that further? </b>
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<b>Daniel:</b> That again was an issue of Collin not wanting to think (let alone openly talk) about his dead friend’s sexuality. I think that Collin has a real (and maybe accurate) impression that the omnipresent homophobic language and attitudes hurt his friend and contributed in some part to his eventual demise. Also, as an author I don’t give up much information about Billy at all. He is always there, but never fleshed out as a character. He is a ghost.
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<b>Bradley: Early on, Dan brought Billy back to life, so to speak, through the video for his funeral, yet Collin starts over. It’s obvious that you, as a writer, wanted to bring someone back to life in writing this book. Do you think it’s possible? Or did it at least help your own process of mourning, paying tribute, and moving on? </b>
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<b>Daniel:</b> You can’t bring someone back to life. You can’t even keep anyone alive. Everyone you know will die, and you will die. Again, that is the basic truth revealed in a suicide apocalypse.
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Though I think there are certain truths humans will never stop needing to hear. We will die, love matters, greed kills, hubris makes and breaks our heroes, other people are whole other people, etc, etc. That’s why the one funeral in your book is so touching. You aren't burying “remains” when you bury your friend. You bury part of yourself. You’re giving your idea of them a place to go.
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<b>Bradley: The antagonists talk about gamma sync, and a cure for depression. I know gamma waves are often identified with mood and have also been discussed in relation to the binding problem. The theory that gamma waves can link information from all parts of the brain is a nice metaphor for the interconnectedness of the world that becomes a nightmare in your book. How invested were you in the science of the gamma profiling? </b>
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<b>Daniel:</b> I’m not very invested to be honest. Gamma sync was mostly a practical device for the sci-fi engine of the book, but I do think that mood and subtle mannerisms in our emotions may be the personhood that brings all our memories together. Even if you could download all the knowledge/memories in a brain you probably wouldn’t have that person without gluing a demeanor to it. I wanted these scientists to be working on something that they didn’t understand completely. The back story I constructed (but did not include) for the machine made gamma waves a plausible and potentially finicky element of the operation.
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<b>Bradley: The parallels between our books are downright eerie. Some stuff you just know, like that the National Guard would get involved. But in both our books the protagonist makes an appearance on TV—and don’t get me started on your book’s being titled after the character “Billy,” and mine after the neighborhood of Williamsburg, which is often called Billburg or Billyburg. (Shudder.) The part that made me jump up was when, after witnessing a suicide, Sarah tells Collin, “You’re not human.” I have virtually the same scene in my book when the protagonist is accosted by his girlfriend for being so cold. My wife likes to say that Benson is prepared for the suicide epidemic because he’s such an asshole, that thick skin is necessary in extreme conditions. What do you think? </b>
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<b>Daniel:</b> The TV thing is kind of a simple device to allow your character to give a speech, like right before battle in a war movie. It gives your character a moment to summarize the situation in their understanding, and show their true colors when the pressure’s on. I liked that part of your book. It was fun.
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Maybe if there was a suicide epidemic a lot of people would accuse each other of not being human, or maybe it was again a good way for us as authors to say to our respective audiences, “Our character is different. Our character is alienated from the mainstream,” which we needed to say to make our characters largely ineligible for suicide. I for one didn’t want my readers to be wondering whether Collin would kill himself or not the whole time. I just didn’t want the story to be about that.
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I had the same impression as your wife had about Benson. Collin isn’t as tough as Benson though. He’s alienated, and continues to alienate himself as a form of protection. He does his best not to get close to anyone in order to avoid being hurt by their eventual death. The problem, of course, is that Collin can’t help but care about his friends. That is why Mr. Coffee is so important. He’s the one friend Collin knows will never commit suicide. He’s a coffee pot, it’s just not possible for him to do anything, let alone kill himself.
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<b>Bradley: Both of our books feature a character telling another the simple answer: “Don’t kill yourself.” Do you think it’s really that simple? </b>
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<b>Daniel:</b> Well, no. I think suicide is really really complicated. But, at the same time I think that might be the right thing to say when you’re knee deep in a suicide epidemic. When Collin says something like that to Tyler in my book he’s empowering the kid who doesn’t feel like there are any options for him. To refer back to the question of publicizing suicide in the media--in a world where everyone is killing themselves a pre-teen with nobody left might not see any other options. Collin slapping Tyler on the back saying that he could make a point of being the last living person and stopping the epidemic hell or high water might just have been enough to save him. He could be the one, he could build tree forts on the top of the Empire State and howl at the moon. Ride horses through Disney Land... whatever. He’s just opening options in somebody else’s mind. I’m not saying, “If you can dream it, you can be it,” more like, “If you can’t even imagine it, you probably won’t find your way there.”
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On the other hand at the very end Collin is being kind of a dick. He’s not even trying to find a cure, and maybe he could. He feels attacked by those who have killed themselves, and after all he was just killed by these people asking him questions. Saying “don’t kill yourself” in that context is kind of saying “fuck you.”
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*****
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Find <i>A Film About Billy</i> <a href="http://www.birdcagebottombooks.com/shop/a-film-about-billy/" target="_blank">here</a><br />
<br />
Don't miss <b>Part One</b> of this <b>Writer on Writer</b>: <a href="http://karenslibraryblog.blogspot.com/2014/02/writer-on-writer-daniel-mccloskey.html" target="_blank">Daniel McCloskey Interviews Bradley Spinelli</a><br />
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Ealier in the <b>Writer on Writer</b> series:<br />
<br />
<a href="http://karenslibraryblog.blogspot.com/2013/09/writer-on-writer-dave-newman-interviews.html" target="_blank">Dave Newman Interviews Alex Kudera</a><br />
<br />
<a href="http://karenslibraryblog.blogspot.com/2013/09/writer-on-writer-part-two-alex-kudera.html" target="_blank">Alex Kudera Interviews Dave Newman</a><br />
<br />Karen Lillishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04624398526912042847noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4982013421663058277.post-42833782343739574132014-02-27T00:00:00.000-08:002014-02-26T21:21:41.514-08:00Writer on Writer: Daniel McCloskey Interviews Bradley Spinelli<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCEFM6nf8LZjhqSNVznxQ5vSS3yvtfjd2-OjQX6pEvqYflsQK29Z73UdAEc_hON2r49GMTFy7jwKTraAggugbhfvB-MuWHwgeDjwkJ9LXsTkjxVjcAAfpvbi8sylP9tF9m_PgWZgF1_Rvb/s1600/Killing_WIlliamsburg_COVER-740x1024.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCEFM6nf8LZjhqSNVznxQ5vSS3yvtfjd2-OjQX6pEvqYflsQK29Z73UdAEc_hON2r49GMTFy7jwKTraAggugbhfvB-MuWHwgeDjwkJ9LXsTkjxVjcAAfpvbi8sylP9tF9m_PgWZgF1_Rvb/s1600/Killing_WIlliamsburg_COVER-740x1024.jpeg" height="320" width="232" /></a><b>Writer on Writer</b> is a new interview series where I ask two small press writers to read each others' books and come up with interview questions for each other. In this second pairing of the series, I asked authors <b>Daniel McCloskey</b> (Pittsburgh) and <b>Bradley Spinelli</b> (Brooklyn) to participate. The latest novel by each author features a protagonist who finds himself enduring a suicide epidemic. McCloskey's novel, <i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15980763-a-film-about-billy" target="_blank">A Film About Billy</a></i> (Six Gallery Press, 2013) follows Collin, a 17-year old trying to make sense (and a documentary) of his late friend, Billy; Spinelli's <i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17905257-killing-williamsburg" target="_blank">Killing Williamsburg</a></i> (Le Chat Noir, 2013) is set in 1999 and narrated by a Gen-Xer, Benson, who has recently moved to newly-hip North Brooklyn.<br />
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As with the first pairing (<a href="http://karenslibraryblog.blogspot.com/2013/09/writer-on-writer-part-two-alex-kudera.html" target="_blank">Alex Kudera and Dave Newman</a>), I am posting the resulting interviews in two parts. Stay tuned for Part II: Bradley's interview of Daniel, which I hope to post within the week. Please enjoy Daniel McCloskey interviewing Bradley Spinelli about <i>Killing Williamsburg</i>.<br />
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<b>Daniel McCloskey: <i>Killing Williamsburg</i> is about New York in so many ways. You describe the ins and outs of Williamsburg, the character of surrounding neighborhoods, as well as the history of Hart’s Island and through it the city’s relationship with death. The narrator, Benson, mentions the difficulty in scraping out an identity in a place where it’s impossible to ignore that there are 6,000 people just like you, and in the beginning of the book many of those 6,000 are close at hand. He is surrounded by other struggling creatives who are relatively new to the neighborhood. His friends, his neighbors, the people he likes and dislikes that fill the many bars he occupies all share a particular demographic. By the end of this novel Benson’s community is a kind of cross-cultural sample of NYC. In order to clean up the mess left behind by the epidemic, Benson is working side by side with Poles and Mexicans, hipsters and yuppies, friends with working class or service industry backgrounds, and even a “suit” from the uppity offices of Manhattan. </b>
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<b>Is Benson living the myth of New York at the end of this book? The beautiful melting pot? Do glimpses into the empty apartments of all these different kinds of people make him feel closer to them or is this just a case of differences falling away in the face of adversity? Could you talk about the separation of different communities in your city? </b>
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<b>Bradley Spinelli: </b> In New York, communities are separate but also right on top of each other. I think “melting pot” is a little off—it’s more of a stew, because people retain their own cultural norms while getting seasoned by others. Fifteen years ago, Williamsburg was a very different neighborhood, and I learned a few words of Polish just so that the ladies at the bakery would be nicer to me. I think that the divisions are more based on class and finance than race or ethnic background, but even so, you always have the option of engaging with people in other worlds. There are so many people in such a small space, and any time you’re in public there is a chance for lines to cross. A lot of New Yorkers have changed careers, or lived in other places, so it’s surprisingly easy to find things in common with people who—at first blush—may seem very different from you. In Benson’s case, I would argue for differences fading in the face of adversity. It’s something we saw in New York on September 11th, and again with the blackout, Hurricanes Irene and Sandy. Differences do fade very quickly in emergency situations, and that’s an intense binary flip in New York considering our necessarily thick skins. You can’t be too sensitive to the people around you, day to day, when there are so many of them. We can be very distant in our own private worlds, but if, say, a subway line goes down, people will immediately share cabs with total strangers.
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<b>Daniel: One of the major turning points in your novel is when the deaths spread to Manhattan. A place where Benson escapes from his personal problems and drowns himself in work, sleeplessness, weed, and cocaine. Can you talk about why this was so hard for Benson? Is it because Manhattan became his personal sanctuary, or because the money and glamour that epitomizes a certain New York fantasy seemed to be enough to ensure the desire to live? Does it show the ultimate hopelessness of his current mission to stack paper and get ahead if the people that are “ahead” don’t seem to be any better off? </b>
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<b>Bradley:</b> Back in 1999, Williamsburg seemed very far away from Manhattan. Yellow cabs would routinely refuse to take me home—now you can hail a yellow cab in Billburg. Back then, a lot of my friends lived in Manhattan and would never “cross the bridge.” Remember what a big deal it was when the redhead on “Sex in the City” moved to Brooklyn? That was 2004. There was a much firmer division back then.
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For Benson, it was an escape to shift his focus to Manhattan, especially after so many of his local friends were gone. And he certainly got sucked into the Manhattan cult—money and status, sure, but also the device of sex and drugs as pure escapism. It was a hopeless mission, because the epidemic couldn’t be ignored. He felt it was chasing him.
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I don’t think Benson was ever really concerned about committing suicide himself. He fought his own demons, fought the effects of the epidemic, but… I was never worried about him. Not like that.
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<b>Daniel: In a way, your main character becomes the king of New York, or at least the top dog of Williamsburg. He becomes so known and respected that his identity is solidified. He is not one of 6,000, he is Benson the crew chief of Los Hombres--a somebody among somebodies. Do you think this is another one of the big New York dreams? Is this Benson’s reward for sticking it out? </b>
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<b>Bradley:</b> No question—the New York dream includes recognition. Having “juice”—the kind of power that comes from notoriety, a currency that’s better than money. Benson achieves a degree of this, but it would be a stretch to call it a reward. He suffers through some serious shit, and he’ll be forgotten soon enough. It’s noteworthy that he turns down more glamorous job offers in the “New” New York. He’s looking for normalcy, not glory.
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<b>Daniel: Picking a main character in a suicide epidemic is a tricky business. You want to build a character that can survive long enough to illustrate the larger narrative. You and I both seemed to have the epidemic in our books travel in a kind of social way, that is to say it wasn’t like <i>28 Days Later</i> where transfer of rage was via bite. Transfer of “the bug” was a little less obvious. Overwhelming sorrow, trauma, and the availability of an “exit” (like in real world suicides) seemed to be the triggers. Benson, I don’t think it’s rude to say, is a bit of a jag in the beginning of this story. Is his cold ass-holedom a kind of superpower which allows him to survive long enough to discover his talent for hard work and pragmatic thinking? Do you feel like the world needs some cold ass-holes out there? Were you concerned about alienating readers in the early chapters as you established this particular characteristic in your protagonist? </b>
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<b>Bradley:</b> Benson’s kind of an asshole. It’s true, and I make no bones about it. My wife says that Benson’s—er, harshness? coldness?—makes him not only capable of surviving the epidemic, but capable of doing the dirty work of cleaning up the town. Yes, the world needs some cold assholes. Take our military, and the kids who come back from the Middle East after being trained and hardened, and how difficult it is for them to integrate back into society. Benson becomes a soldier, and a good one, because he was predisposed to a kind of detachment that is generally considered a hindrance in polite society. I recently read a fascinating book, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/on-killing/oclc/778942315" target="_blank"><i>On Killing</i> by Dave Grossman</a>, about humans’ basic resistance to killing and how armies have developed methods to overcome it.<br />
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I didn’t worry so much about alienating readers—with the graphic violence, sex, and drugs in that book, there’s plenty to put people off. But I held tight to Benson’s character. I felt there was enough humor that some readers would enjoy his callousness, and some would be pulled along in spite of it, either because of the other characters, or because of the natural love-hate magnetism of assholes. It’s important to the story I wanted to tell—if he’s a nice guy at the beginning, where’s the catharsis?
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<b>Daniel: This novel is particularly good at describing work dynamics. Your character comes out of his shell amongst co-workers in a way he doesn’t for friends or lovers. Perhaps because he feels safe or invincible in the coked out semi-paradise of Manhattan. How do you think the value of work is integral to your character and his development? How do you construct work environments as an author? Do you draw off personal experience or do you grab a bunch of characters, put them all on the same team, and see what happens? </b>
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<b>Bradley:</b> The value of hard work, of rolling up his sleeves and getting dirty, is important to Benson. He doesn’t deal well with idleness. Thinking got him nowhere, work was a kind of salvation. Ultimately, he had to do something because doing nothing was torture. This is very different from someone with more altruistic motives. It starts with personal survival.
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I worked as a stagehand and lighting technician in New York. It was my introduction to a world where people easily spend 250 thousand dollars on a wedding or a bar mitzvah. I worked a bat mitzvah that cost over a million dollars, and that was almost ten years ago. The dancing girls and dancing boys in the novel—that’s a real thing. Young, good-looking men or women are hired to spice up the dance floor. It’s nuts. So I had a sense of the social dynamics in the techie world, and I liked the idea of using those kinds of skills to run a crew cleaning up dead bodies. It translates well: loading trucks, carrying heavy stuff. Not a lot of sleep. And then it’s wide open—you can recruit any kind of character you want.
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<b>Daniel: I know the release party was also an awareness event for World Suicide Prevention Day. Were there survivors of suicide at the release? How did you navigate the many graphic sections of this story in that social environment? Do you know anyone who has committed suicide? </b>
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<b>Bradley:</b> It was important to me to have the release party on World Suicide Prevention Day. The book has some very dark humor, but I wanted to go on the record as being anti-suicide. We got a lot of press because of DJ Questlove, and while I was concerned that people would find my “Suicide Set” idea morbid, I wanted to illustrate just how common suicide really is. Certainly I had some survivors at the event—both people who had lost loved ones and people who had attempted suicide themselves. I toasted to some people that I’ve lost. I lost a former scoutmaster, who became a friend and advisor when I was a teenager. And I lost two people in recent years who were in that gray area—drug abuse, and that questionable thing of was it on purpose or was it not. Which is not really much of a distinction. I quote this every chance I get: suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in the United States. <i>Homicide is sixteen.</i> (<a href="http://www.suicidology.org/c/document_library/get_file?folderId=262&name=DLFE-636.pdf" target="_blank">2010 data</a>.)<br />
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<b>Daniel: The point of view changes in three chapters of this book that really stand out due to technical authorial decisions: “Coney Island” p. 113 is a kind of unmarked flashback, the following chapter “Listless” is in 3rd person, and “Cold” p.142 is in 2nd person. The writing dork in me is curious about these decisions, especially the 3rd person section. Is “he” Benson, not himself, as close as he ever got to killing himself while in a past life daydream? </b>
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<b>Bradley:</b> In early drafts, I experimented with methods of documenting Benson’s struggles with alienation and self-loathing. Later, the book changed a lot through cuts and restructuring—like shuffling a deck. “Coney Island” was originally told in sequence, but I thought it worked better as flashback—a sun-streaked, summertime almost-dream-sequence. “Listless” and “Cold” are about how you talk to yourself, especially in times of duress. Sometimes you address yourself directly—the second person—and sometimes you feel like things are happening to you as a third-person character. You can almost see it happening to you at a great remove.
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In “Listless,” I like how the third person winds down the second section and bridges into the second half of the book, when everything gets really heavy. It gives the reader a chance to get out of Benson’s head and watch him wander into the post-apocalyptic landscape. I don’t know if that’s as close as Benson came to killing himself, but it’s certainly the farthest he ever got from himself. And that’s key. Once he gets completely out of himself, he’s able to pursue something bigger than himself. It’s almost like finding religion.<br />
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<b>Daniel: Where is the best place to buy <i>Killing Williamsburg</i>? </b><br />
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In New York, the best place is <a href="http://www.spoonbillbooks.com/" target="_blank">Spoonbill and Sugartown</a> on Bedford Avenue in the heart of Williamsburg. If you're outside of New York, check my website <a href="http://killingwilliamsburg.com/" target="_blank">http://killingwilliamsburg.com/</a>
for other options.
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<b> Daniel: What are you working on now? </b>
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<b>Bradley:</b> I'm working on a novel set half in Brooklyn and half in Bangkok. I've been to Thailand many times, and researched this book through two different month-long residencies in Bangkok. I've finally completed a first draft which means I have my work cut out for me. I'm also working on another screenplay—I've written several—that's been percolating for some time.
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<b> Daniel: Where will I find your new work on the internet?</b>
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<b>Bradley:</b> Recent stuff is an <a href="http://frontpsych.com/philip-seymour-hoffman-woody-allen-williiam-burroughs/" target="_blank">essay I wrote for Frontier Psychiatrist</a>, and I also have a piece coming out soon for <a href="http://www.mandyboles.com/" target="_blank">Mandy Boles</a>. She asked me to write about "my first favorite book," so for anyone who read <i>Killing Williamsburg</i>, this will be something different.
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*****<br />
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Stay tuned for "Part Two: Bradley Spinelli interviews Daniel McCloskey."<br />
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Find <i>Killing Williamsburg </i><a href="http://killingwilliamsburg.com/" target="_blank">here</a>.<br />
<br />
Ealier in the <b>Writer on Writer</b> series:<br />
<br />
<a href="http://karenslibraryblog.blogspot.com/2013/09/writer-on-writer-dave-newman-interviews.html" target="_blank">Dave Newman Interviews Alex Kudera</a><br />
<br />
<a href="http://karenslibraryblog.blogspot.com/2013/09/writer-on-writer-part-two-alex-kudera.html" target="_blank">Alex Kudera Interviews Dave Newman</a>Karen Lillishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04624398526912042847noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4982013421663058277.post-45844788650812748542014-01-25T14:47:00.000-08:002014-01-25T14:47:39.370-08:00Guest Review: Zarina Zabrisky by Polly Trope<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEho_Xpl6keamc0Cun7gZFuSbtxW-c_Fh0MNpZIsfwIGdGUCezfuWDysRPgIF6yCwy2DZ17Xpe-9ZmlOxB0EdHqVzAOCLXfK64DkyBOQTJ_eusVEKreZAL4dI4jVLA6X7SqRzxZItl4nExyq/s1600/1509997_10201573043994092_244053295_n.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEho_Xpl6keamc0Cun7gZFuSbtxW-c_Fh0MNpZIsfwIGdGUCezfuWDysRPgIF6yCwy2DZ17Xpe-9ZmlOxB0EdHqVzAOCLXfK64DkyBOQTJ_eusVEKreZAL4dI4jVLA6X7SqRzxZItl4nExyq/s1600/1509997_10201573043994092_244053295_n.jpeg" height="320" width="228" /></a></div>
Zarina Zabrisky, <i>We, Monsters</i>. San Rafael, Ca.: Numina Press, 2014. Novel. 316 pages. ISBN: 978-0-9842600-4-1
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<i>We, Monsters</i> offers reader entertainment with both light and heavy topics – there be dungeons and dominatrices, manicure studios, the emotional frustrations of a housewife in American suburbia, spies in Odessa hotels, Vogue-smoking women in stilettos, a broken childhood, and the dream of an ice cream van, just to name a few examples. As a novel, it ties together beautifully the very flighty feelings and observations of fugitive moments--a reflection in a glass here one moment and gone the next--with the heavier, less digestible feelings and memories that can plague someone for a lifetime. <br />
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"I couldn’t unglue my eyes from the puddle. It was quivering, and the eggshell walls of my living room jiggled. My wedding photo and the rainbow-hued vase trembled and blurred. This is how my lost time always started." <br />
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As a special extra, the hip meta-twist, this novel provides in fact not only itself, but also a comprehensive set of footnotes and comment apparatus in the voice of a psychologist putting name tags to all the feelings and behaviors that readers will be shown. As it happens, it’s also a conversation with a psychologist that forms the center point of the book, neatly parting the novel into two halves. Those two halves of the book are complementary to each other but actually very different, so that readers are getting almost a double bill. <br />
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In the first half, we see a young-ish woman – approaching middle age, but not quite there yet – in the suburbs of San Francisco. She’s a dedicated wife, mother, and domestic goddess, and she starts letting "us" into her life as she is toying with the idea of working as a dominatrix, at the starting point of writing a novel on the subject. She shares with her reader, then, her preparations: how she gets herself one sexy outfit, phones up for the job interview from a gas station payphone, drives off to her first job in a dungeon, works under a grotesque man-woman character of a madam and alongside meaty other ladies, etc. <br />
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"Fat caterpillar eyebrows crawled up. Beady eyes drilled through me. After a long moment, the mustached upper lip twitched into a grin. A long hair sticking out from the mole on the side of the hooked nose trembled, and Margaret said, in the hoarse bass of a retired sailor: 'Come on in, doll.' " <br />
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Then we move on to girls, clients, and the torture garden madness. All along, the narrative female voice strews little hints and shadows of her childhood and youth, chapters of her life that she has left behind her, in Odessa.
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In the second half of the novel, here we are at last, in Odessa with the seventeen-year-old self of that same now-mature woman who was just writing about dropping her children off at school in the suburbs of San Francisco. The Odessa part of the story moves backwards from the moment when the narrator’s beloved sister, Oksana, is turned into a prostitute by an army general, setting her up in a swanky apartment smack in the middle of town, covering her in diamonds and designer clothes. <br />
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"He fed her chicken Kiev and poured her sparkling sour champagne, and she never stopped laughing. In three weeks he rented a four-bedroom apartment for her—antique chairs with lion paws, crystal chandeliers and midnight-blue velvet curtains—right on Deribasovskaya. My grandmother marched there to claim Oksana, and I followed her, hiding behind taxicabs and chestnut trees. I would never forget her face on that day. Grandma Rosa never cried, not at her husband’s funeral, not at her daughter’s funeral (...)." <br />
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Like a sea receding at low tide, the story here (in between present tense scenes in the dungeon and suburbia) moves back and back, to more and more distant childhood memories, that are as painful to the narrator as they are narrated in crystal-clear detail, whilst, at the same time, they are presented in such a phosphorescent, glassy, iridescent light, that they elude grasp. <br />
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"When I was little, the world had colors. My past burst with the bloody red of cherries, the rainbow brightness of beach umbrellas. It was smudged with the jet black of Grandma’s pumps or Oksana’s mascara. It was 3-D (...)." <br />
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Here, the architectural design of the steps in Odessa, the famous stair built in such a way as to convey the optical illusion of infinity, becomes the vehicle of the wish to believe that the mother’s suicide at three years old was not real. Here, the adored older sister is seen selling pistachio ice cream on the beach, even if, as the close reader will observe, there was no pistachio ice cream in the Soviet Union. <br />
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The novel is rich in imagery and tropes, in particular those related to delicate colors, rainbows and iridescent patterns, which not only prettify the flow of the read and introduce a glittery sprinkle of magic in the style of the old Russian novels, ballets, and fairy tale cultural patrimony. These images looming in the background of the story also become symbolic dots that readers can connect in order to better understand the person telling the story, and to look inside the thinking and viewpoint of the narrator-character: this woman whose life is torn in half, whose new life is nothing like the old, and yet, is very much the same: all too much the same. <br />
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"I thought about Vickie, Vanessa’s sister, and imagined her climbing the railing, imagined being her: dizzy, out of breath, as if I were about to give a public speech—in English. Like Vickie, I lost myself." <br />
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In this sense, it’s as much a book about migration, about subjective space, symbolic times, and personal memory, as it’s a book about perverts ("monsters"), abusers, and the abused, and the circle of abuse--in San Francisco, in Odessa, or anywhere. <br />
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The things I’ve said here paint only a very schematic and subjective picture of a far more rich and complex, intricately structured novel full of interesting time lapses, one that shuffles nervously, yet gracefully, around a number of compelling spaces and characters, spinning out many extraordinary dreams. <i>We, Monsters</i> provides an utterly intense experience: a totally immersive reader-narrator fusion.
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Guest Review by <b>Polly Trope</b><br />
author of the novel <a href="http://www.paraphiliamagazine.com/oneirosbooks/cured-meat/" target="_blank">Cured Meat</a> (Oneiros Books, 2013)<br />
Read an interview with Polly Trope at <b>Soundsphere</b>:
<a href="http://www.soundspheremag.com/reviews/book/author-spotlight-polly-trope/" target="_blank">http://www.soundspheremag.com/reviews/book/author-spotlight-polly-trope/</a>Karen Lillishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04624398526912042847noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4982013421663058277.post-1913709963733033652013-09-26T15:57:00.001-07:002015-01-03T14:00:14.239-08:00Indie Bookstore of the Month: Guide to Kulchur<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEho_4kG93l_ORf4DOYfKfvYEoODJmo0gG6Y8PHKw_vMqJHllhP1cE-iXVeVQ7aN6dueKueG0jOR8btye5hMRSPgLZOAfcjqusBJWZUHZnFgvMXCbwuLtyP0quob9jbYEBKlDwFEy2s3Q9CQ/s1600/GTK_poster.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEho_4kG93l_ORf4DOYfKfvYEoODJmo0gG6Y8PHKw_vMqJHllhP1cE-iXVeVQ7aN6dueKueG0jOR8btye5hMRSPgLZOAfcjqusBJWZUHZnFgvMXCbwuLtyP0quob9jbYEBKlDwFEy2s3Q9CQ/s320/GTK_poster.jpeg" height="320" width="213" /></a>Have you noticed that the lovers, makers, and sellers of print culture refuse to give up on print and its continued relevance? In 2010 it was <b>Atomic Books</b> and <b>Quimby's</b> call for <a href="http://atomicbooksblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/revenge-of-print-2011.html" target="_blank">The Revenge of Print</a>. In recent months, it's been the thriving <a href="http://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20130725/bushwick/literary-event-mecca-emerges-from-bushwicks-bookstore-void" target="_blank">indie bookstores of Bushwick</a>, Brooklyn; the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/18/world/africa/in-a-faded-literary-capital-efforts-at-a-revival.html" target="_blank">used booksellers of </a><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/18/world/africa/in-a-faded-literary-capital-efforts-at-a-revival.html" target="_blank">Khartoum, Sudan</a> working to revive reading and restore the city to its former literary glory; <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/inpictures/2013/06/2013624105477515.html" target="_blank">The Taksim Square Book Club</a>; and reports from Mexico City's <b><a href="http://underthevolcanobooks.com/" target="_blank">Under the Volcano Books</a></b> that the paperback fiction business is booming, as their Mexican readers hunger for stories and become increasingly disenchanted with "Face" (their nickname for Facebook). Add to this list <b><a href="http://www.clevescene.com/scene-and-heard/archives/2013/06/10/heres-clevelands-new-independent-bookstore-in-gordon-square" target="_blank">Guide to Kulchur</a></b>, a Cleveland new and used bookstore that arrived on the scene in June 2013. A combination curated bookshop, zine-making co-op, meeting and reading space, small-press friendly store, and zine archive, Guide to Kulchur was invented by Riot Grrrl historian <b>Lyz Bly </b>and her husband,<b> </b>poet/DIY entrepreneur <b>RA Washington</b>, who want to put the means of production into the hands of one west-side rustbelt neighborhood while showcasing both the local and national zine and small press scenes. Here's what they told me:<br />
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<b>Karen the Small Press Librarian: In addition to selling books and zines, your shop (which opened in 2013) is aggressively promoting print culture, offering the means of production for zines and chapbooks. What do you have to say to the naysayers who tell us the e-book is the future, and print is dead?</b>
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<b>RA: </b> There will always be folks that want to read in the physical, the issue is whether we can get these printed materials into their hands, into their field of vision. I think that the e-book has seen its rebuttal, for more and more people are printing, looking for ways to print, to fine print. If you can make it something that new writers and readers covet, then we can have a communal success. Small press have advantage over the big ones, but only if folks like you build alternative media outlets to help them get the word out.
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<b>Karen: You and Lyz want to create a zine archive that will amass evidence of "resistance" in rust-belt Cleveland, and start a dialogue with other dire-straits cities whose zinesters have left a record of similar resistance. While some point to social media phenomena like "The Twitter Revolution" as proof that we've "moved on," what part do you think print culture still plays or can play in grassroots movements and politics of the people? Do you think Twitter and zines address people at different levels in the business of consciousness-raising? </b>
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<b>Lyz: </b> I would put a zine in their hands and then ask them to look at one online. It’s a completely different experience. Through my research for my dissertation and soon to be book (<i>Gender and Generation X: Riot Grrrls, Slackers, Sex, and Feminism</i>), I studied thousands of zines at the Sallie Bingham Collection at Duke, the Sophia Smith Archives at Smith College, and the Riot Grrrl Zine Collection at Fales/NYU Library. There is nothing quite like picking up a zine and having a bit of glitter land on your lap, or noticing coffee stains or yellowing paper from a particularly loved and read zine. Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been organizing the zine collection we’ve amassed thus far at Guide to Kulchur. The tactile experience of holding something that someone created out of love or desperation—whether it’s haphazardly stapled together or meticulously ordered—is not something that you can match digitally.
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<b>RA: </b> I do think that print that is designed well, written well will always be a tool of dissent. Twitter can be too, but its a sound bite tool. I think the speed [at which] it moves can be off-putting to folks. Progressive people just have to step our game up with trying to counteract these huge media selling tools. We just have to have better content and not be afraid to say it is better.
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<b>Karen: When you began inventing Guide to Kulchur, what made you want to open an indie bookstore in 2013? What audience did you imagine would embrace your shop? Or are you looking to create an audience that wasn't yet there? </b>
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<b>RA: </b> We wanted to create a curated reading culture, for us this meant making sure that the books were essential, that there was diversity in the offering and a strong small press presence. We also wanted to provide the public with a store that had a real good eye and was fairly priced. We give a bulk of the sales to all independent bookmakers, small presses and authors. We were making a statement with this obviously, but we wanted A. for people to value the work of the independent /D.I.Y. makers, and B. to say to other bookstores that there are business models that can be created where we do not have to take a huge cut out of the small pie. So we chose to stay away from the large distro vehicles. We chose to not have a credit account with the huge media sellers, mainly because folks can get those books cheaper on Amazon than we can sell them. This allows us to exist without having a debt relationship with the companies that won’t even consider distributing small presses because those presses don't print in higher quantities.<br />
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<b>Lyz: </b> The audience on the near west side in the Gordon Square Arts District needs to be cultivated. There are young people who were drawn to the up-and-coming neighborhood for its proximity to downtown and emerging restaurants, bars, and shops. And artists and thinkers are always early colonizers of neighborhoods that will become eventual bastions of hip (I remember when my friend, artist Terry Durst, moved from Kent State University to Tremont in the mid-1980s—most people had no idea where the neighborhood was or that it even existed). Yes, you need bars and restaurants, but you also need art and ideas in these emergent communities. Otherwise it’s just empty capitalism packaged as “cool.” We want something authentic. You don’t get to wear the Beauvoir or Baldwin t-shirt unless you’ve read their work.
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<b>Karen: There are some impressive indie bookstores in Cleveland: Visible Voice, Mac's Backs, Loganberry Books. How do you fit in with the Cleveland scene, and how do you differentiate yourself from the others? Is yours a neighborhood bookstore or a destination shop, or both? </b>
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<b>RA: </b> There are some awesome bookstores in Cleveland, and I think we work well together to service a very well-read city. We wanted to be a destination and a neighborhood store, because where we are located is situated west of Visible Voice and we carry stuff that is not in competition with them. So you could go to both in afternoon and have two totally different experiences. Also we do not take a cut of small press publications. We also service manual typewriters, have an extensive zine/chapbook library, and a co-op where you can make a zine, go get it printed and spend your money on printing as opposed to the tools you need to make the master product. Glue sticks, rotary presses, Sharpies, typewriters, collage materials and paper all cost money--so our thinking was if there was a place where we could share those costs, it would be easier to produce more zines. Eventually we will have letterpress machines, old etching presses and the like so you could try new methods to print.
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<b>Karen: Do you imagine Guide to Kulchur becoming a player in the national bookstore scene, like Quimby's or Atomic Books? Do you have favorite bookstores in other cities, or bookstores or cultural centers that influenced your concept for Guide to Kulchur? </b>
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<b>RA: </b> Yes, we already are starting that journey, but it’s not a goal. It’s happening because some of the best writers in the world are finding out about it through other writers, and getting plugged in. And I was not kidding when I say world--we want to make a place that has a worldview, that offers respect to our backyard by displaying all of the work together. We do not have a “local section,” we have an independent book makers section, and that distinction will go very far in terms of goodwill, and building a critical mass.
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<b>Lyz: </b> In August we took a delayed honeymoon in Europe. We spent a full week in Paris and we felt most at home at Shakespeare and Company Bookstore. We were enamored with the ethos of the place and with the design and the physical space, of course. But we were also so excited to read how the owner has written about books and feeling the physicality of the paper in one’s hands—the ways in which the characters in fiction texts are as real to him (and now his daughter who runs the Paris shop) as a person standing in front of him. We are not Shakespeare and Company by any means, but we embrace the same vision and—without knowing it—we used the same kind of language when writing about our goals for Guide to Kulchur.
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<b>Karen: Is Guide to Kulchur a non-profit, a side project, a literal co-op, or a business that pays employees (or owner/s) enough to live on? Do you think the kind of bookstore that employs several full-timers is a thing of the past? Are bookstores important enough for us to create and support them even if they aren't money-makers? </b>
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<b>RA: </b> Guide To Kulchur is not a 501(c)(3), it’s not a side project, it is not a cost share co-op in the traditional sense. The store exists strictly from the sales of the used/new books we find and sell. We have employees and we pay a living wage, but it is not enough to live on of course. How could it be? Lyz and I know that you have to hold down multiple jobs to do this work, so we do. It’s obvious to me that bookstores are important, and they should have our support as long as the business model allows for the bookstore to pay for itself. It is not a profit type of thing. you are not going to put together a huge savings, but if you follow a creative capitalist approach--if you keep in mind that the deck is stacked against all of us that are not extremely wealthy--then you can make a difference, and stay relevant and open for a long time.<br />
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<b>Karen: Guide to Kulchur, besides being the title of an Ezra Pound collection of essays, was a project you started a few years ago where people in different cities could print out each other's books and distribute them locally. How did this work, logistically—the book printing, the distro, or finding willing authors in other cities? And how did this work, as in how did it succeed? About how many writers or other people got involved, and how many books were distributed this way?</b>
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<b>RA: </b> Wow, how did you know about that? It's something we still want to do, and it worked on a small scale. I think most writers have this notion that some press is going to swoop down and offer them the Bukowski deal, and its not going to happen. The way you make it as a writer is you write, and you read, and you print, and you meet, and you collaborate and you distribute. It's work, and it's very rare that someone will do all of that for you, so you have to do it for yourself. If a press publishes you, you have to get out and help them sell the book. So many times you have writers who are not willing to hit the road, beat the pavement and get out and sell their work. It doesn't happen magically, but if you do that for long enough, if you honor your commitments, you can build a readership and you will die published. That's the only way. there is no shortcut. I don’t even know if I answered your question!
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<b>Karen: Tell us how many cities participated in Guide to Kulchur, the publishing/distro experiment.</b>
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<b>RA: </b>
We had sixteen cities across the world participate, and we were able to distro some limited edition broadsides and even did some group translation work where a poem in, say, French would be in Spanish, Russian, and English. Some really interesting new writers across the globe, so many that I'm trying to bring the program back. The counties involved outside the US included France, Belgium, Argentina, Mexico, South Africa, and Ireland. We lost money, all of us did, but for me it was an awesome project.
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<b>Karen: What's the significance of the Ezra Pound book or title for you?</b>
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<b>RA: </b> I love that book, I found a copy at Mac's Backs when I was 17, thinking I was a writer. It opened me up to so many aspects of literary thought/critical and how zany Pound is. The myth is he said that the book was a blueprint for writers looking to avoid the corporate college and that if you read it, you would have all you needed for a life in letters. I think it's true.
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<b>Karen: Are zines important to literature, to publishing, to information dissemination, or to culture at large? Does literature get created on a Trickle Up basis, but is perceived to work as Trickle Down? Or is that using someone else's terms to describe something more complex?</b>
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<b>RA: </b> I don’t know about the terms, but it makes sense, and it’s a good question.
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<b>Lyz: </b> In a democracy, all voices are important. There are some zines that may seem silly now—documenting your thrift store finds (as in the writers of the well-known zine Thrift Score once did) may seem superficial and about reifying consumption, but as a historian I can tell you that there’s something to glean about culture from any zine you pick up. And the U.S. has a history of self-publishing Alice Paul and Lucy Burns of the National Woman’s Party published a radical (for its time) newspaper on women’s rights while they were fighting for suffrage and even the Declaration of Independence was initially published as a Dunlap broadside and read widely before it became the document we know today.<br />
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Visit <b>Guide to Kulchur</b> on "Face":<br />
<a href="https://www.facebook.com/GuideToKulchurCleveland" target="_blank">https://www.facebook.com/GuideToKulchurCleveland</a>Karen Lillishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04624398526912042847noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4982013421663058277.post-86840979369589893172013-09-16T18:14:00.002-07:002013-09-16T19:01:38.468-07:00Writer on Writer: Part Two, Alex Kudera Interviews Dave Newman<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAk4WxkZQOqBOrTyWovezcohi_VA8FvBuLdUeagu7ckOeA9x1mr5TyFK55in2g6wJMyOqosvdj9GxExLP49-_zU3lCSUFaP50WARqETRqWH7i4ZL7cNf2vb9vPezN5LSEkuIEmw5jTbue8/s1600/url.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAk4WxkZQOqBOrTyWovezcohi_VA8FvBuLdUeagu7ckOeA9x1mr5TyFK55in2g6wJMyOqosvdj9GxExLP49-_zU3lCSUFaP50WARqETRqWH7i4ZL7cNf2vb9vPezN5LSEkuIEmw5jTbue8/s1600/url.jpeg" height="320" width="204" /></a>Following up on <a href="http://karenslibraryblog.blogspot.com/2013/09/writer-on-writer-dave-newman-interviews.html" target="_blank">last week's Writer on Writer interview</a>, this week <b>Alex Kudera</b> interviews <b>Dave Newman</b>. Alex is author of <i><a href="http://atticusbooksonline.com/books/2010-releases/fight-for-your-long-day/" target="_blank">Fight for Your Long Day</a></i> (Atticus Books, 2010) and Dave wrote <i><a href="http://writerstribebooks.com/?p=172" target="_blank">Raymond Carver Will Not Raise Our Children</a></i> (Writers Tribe Books, 2012). Each novel looks at the struggle of one writer trying to pay the bills by adjunct teaching. At my request, Alex and Dave read each other's books and came up with their own questions.<br />
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<b>Alex Kudera: Winning an award named after Andre Dubus is an amazing accomplishment. Are you a Dubus fan? I like almost all of his novellas, the story "Townies," and many more. Do you have any favorites among his writings? </b>
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<b>Dave Newman: </b>I love Andre Dubus. I’m a huge believer in the American small press, and I read all his books on Goodine, which was one of my favorite presses at the time. Dubus was one of the first writers I fell in love with, and his stories and novellas meant so much to me when I first started reading. I’m glad he’s so revered now, but I wish he would have had more success when he was alive. Both the movies based on his work, which I’m sure steered readers back to his books, came out after he died. My favorite Dubus’ books are actually his essay collections. Some of the best writing about being a writer—and the morals of being a writer—are in those collections. I love that he was committed to writing as a spiritual pursuit. I love that he was honest about writing and money and how those two mix. He knew that the important thing was to write the best book you could write and to have the book reach the world. It’s obvious that he cared deeply about his characters, and from things his son and last wife have said, it’s obvious that his love of writing sometimes distracted him from his familial obligations. I love his wife’s letter to Poets and Writers, where she says, basically, “Quit fucking saying I took Andre’s kids away from him.” I thought that was badass of her.
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<b>Alex: I also recently read his son's memoir <i>Townies</i>, and it was illuminating to get that side of Dubus as father. I didn't love the memoir in every way, but one tidbit I loved is how he tells his son it's okay to write about his parents, that he should do it if he is compelled to. To me, that's refreshing and quite writerly. From what I've read of your novel, it seems like you are very much in favor of this sort of honesty. Is that possibly the main trait we look for in writing? </b>
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<b>Dave:</b> I have <i>Townies</i> but haven’t read it yet. As I said above, Andre the Dad seemed like a difficult person but he was conscious of that, so it makes sense that he would encourage his son to pursue honesty in his own writing. I think honesty is the main trait we look for in writing, and I think that’s why we sometimes forgive writers who have stylistic lapses. I want to puke on the sentence people who feel like lines can be separated from characters and narrative. That’s a fashion show. It’s literature as pornography. It always pisses me off when people include Ray Carver and Barry Hannah in that discussion. Both Hannah and Carver wanted to tell stories, and they did so in a language that served their narratives. Carver wrote great poems and stories after he broke from his editor, Gordon Lish, who is a sentence asshole. When Hannah went too far with language, when he failed in storytelling, and when he was criticized for it, he admitted to fucking up and losing control with language. He wasn’t proud of it. He didn’t want to be someone who was known for writing sentences. He wanted to tell the truth about the world. So yeah, me too.
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<b>Alex: I am aware of the writer as bad father, and there are too many great writers to name in this regard, literary superstars with multiple wives and children, guys who walked off the job early and often. I see your awareness of this in your novel, and it sounds like you very much are intent on staying in one marriage, of making your family life a success. Is this something you were thinking about from a young age, or something you became more aware of once you became a husband or father? </b>
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<b>Dave:</b> I didn’t ever plan on marrying. I figured it was an either/or situation. You either wrote, which required hours of reading and writing, or you got married, which required hours of marriage stuff, whatever that was. Then I found myself in Vegas, getting married to a woman I barely knew, and I was unbelievably happy about it. My wife is awesome, and she’s a great writer, and we support each others’ writing in every way possible. It really speeds up the process to know you have someone in the other room who wants to read your writing, not is willing to, but wants to. We both have three published books now. We had a combined total of zero books before we were married. I think a lot of people perpetuate the myth that you have to be a shitty person to be a writer, or that you have to be a terrible spouse to be a writer, but as I got older I started to realize some of those myths were coming from shitty people who were also shitty spouses. My wife and I both want to be successful parents, more so than successful writers, but we’re both conscious that writing makes us better and happier people, which makes us better parents, so we strive for that balance. There’s a lot to give up, some hard and some not, if you want to be a parent / writer / decent person. Don’t watch junk TV. Don’t see terrible movies for the distraction. Don’t hang out with your neighbors just to be a good neighbor. Don’t hang out with anyone you don’t want to hang out with, unless it impacts your kids by not hanging out. Vacation exclusively for your children. Eat cheap. Go to elementary school open houses, smile a lot, and get the fuck out as fast as possible. I never go and see the same writer read from the same book twice. I never flew to New York to read to four people in a bar just to say I was on a book tour and read in New York. I try to be productive when I’m not being productive. When I drink beer, I will often spend the first hour cleaning the house with loud music playing, so I’m not just drinking but cleaning and catching up on tunes. Only watch sports you love. I only watch the Steelers now, and I usually fold clothes while the game is on. If my kids want to hang out, we hang out. If my kids want me to play with them and their friends, I politely decline. They can amuse themselves. I make time for my wife to write because she gets more easily swallowed into the world than I do. When I need to write, she puts the bubble around me and keeps the world away. I still do shitty things all the time, but they’re usually on accident, and I try to learn from my shittiness. One of my goals is to be less shitty, to help more people. That’s how I want to be in the world as a parent and husband and writer, all at once.
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<b>Alex: In <i>Raymond Carver Will Not Raise Our Children</i>, the narrator has a book out, and he wasn’t funded as a graduate student in creative writing. By chance, is it part of your autobiography that you were not funded as a graduate student in an MFA program? It must be a source of pride that you have had so much success, multiple publications, appointments to teach and judge prizes, etc. I like that kind of story, the underdog story within the program, but did it seem scary at the time? Did you find yourself wondering how some of the others got their stipends or fellowships, or did it ever seem like you were in over your head? </b>
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<b>Dave:</b> I definitely did not get funded in graduate school. The student loan people remind me every month and I guess they will until I die. I think I finished grad school in '95 or '96, which for me was pre-internet. As an undergraduate, I’d attended two community colleges and eventually graduated from a small branch campus. I planned on being a high school teacher, which took five years to get certified, but I fell in love with reading and writing, and my undergraduate teacher suggested I go to grad school. I asked her what someone did with a MFA degree and she said I could teach college, work in publishing, write for a magazine, all these wonderful things, no mention of working in a warehouse or driving a delivery truck or not getting a job, so I applied and went. I didn’t know what funding was until I arrived and realized other students were getting paid to be in the program and I was paying to be there. I applied for funding while I was there but I was passed over. I think the general consensus was that I was either stupid and / or a heroin addict and / or a terrible writer and /or a misogynist and / or straight and white and / or an alcoholic and / or the patriarchy and / or a narrative poet and / or a hater of Robert Lowell and, as far as I could understand, these were all horrible things. It was a bad experience and expensive, but it was worthwhile in that I saw how insular things were—the head of the writing department edited the university press poetry series and he published both the other poetry professors—so I knew I’d need to find a completely different way to succeed as a writer. The recommendations and appointments and job opportunities were going to happen for the students who were funded, who were being mentored by the tenured professors who were published by the tenured professor who ran the university press poetry series. I was being mentored by the library and Caliban Bookstore and <i>Wormwood Review</i> magazine and City Lights and Black Sparrow and New Directions, these great American independent presses. I was reading Nazim Hikmet, Lucille Clifton, Ed Field, Charles Bukowski, Etheridge Knights, and wondering why everyone thought I was so worthless. My first full-length book of poems just came out and even though I have a couple novels and another novel coming out in January and the reading world doesn’t care very much about poetry, the collection means a lot to me because it’s what I set out to do when I was 21 years old, and it was what I did, and it’s what I hope to do again. I love poetry, even if the poetry world did not love me back when I was in graduate school.
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<b>Alex: I must confess I’d like to continue teaching, and so although I do answer interview questions about working as an adjunct, each time, I face the same ambivalence. I want to help more people earn affordable college degrees and more teachers gain decent wages and health benefits if I can, and yet, I also feel a need to cover my own ass (more or less, the American way, family first, etc., something I am able to do somewhat, but it has always made me uncomfortable, how we are supposed to ignore what we may be doing to other people’s finances while trying to secure our own living). I sold cars for almost two years before retreating to a two-year creative-writing degree with a 9K-per-annum stipend plus tuition waver, and it felt like a huge relief to know, possibly, I wouldn’t be dealing cars for the rest of my life. Car-selling combines extremely long hours with all kinds of things that can make the salesperson feel bad. In general, I saw the wealthiest people get the best deals and the poorest people get the worst deals, and frankly, when you see how half of undergraduate America has to work a lot to pay their way through college, both during and after with loans, and then the other half is paid for by parents, it seems like higher education does the exact same thing except they dangle the carrot of career instead of delivering a car. Did you ever experience in the classroom that feeling like the kids staring back at you were getting ripped off as so much of the money gets funneled to technology, administrative overhead, elite research, etc.? What’s the dirtiest job you’ve had in capitalist America? </b>
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<b>Dave:</b> I know exactly what you’re saying about teaching. I loved teaching. I loved my best students, the ones who made the effort and read and wrote, sucky or great, it didn’t matter, as long as they tried. I loved the time off. I wrote my ass off every Christmas break. But yeah, the students are paying a fucking mint for a degree that will not necessarily be applicable in the working world. I explained this in every class I ever taught. I explained that literary writers do not make a living off their books. They teach. Then I explained that most teachers—college teachers, what students refer to as professor—make McDonalds-type wages. I discouraged going to graduate school unfunded. I encouraged writing a book and trying to publish a book and then going to graduate school if you wanted to teach, the opposite of what the previous generation had done. I encouraged people to minor in writing and major in something practical. It’s all very confusing. What a good liberal arts education offers—insights into the world, compassionate thinking, a way to engage people who are different from you—is useless when you can’t pay your bills. If your student loan bill is $600 a month and you make $12 an hour, you’re fucked. There’s no time for compassionate thought. There’s the electric bill. Universities could change this by lowering tuition rates, by linking majors to careers, and by paying their teachers a livable wage. Every time I see an op-ed on <i>The Rumpus</i> or <i>Salon</i> or <i>Vice</i> by a tenured or tenure-track professor raging about something, I want to say: stop, look in your own backyard; those men you are raging against in pop culture—the Kanye Wests and Robin Thickes—are also in your department and you should stand up to them and demand they hire more full-time teachers and lower tuition rates. Pop culture is shallow, no shit. University life is a fucking conservative / corporate joke run by a bunch of people who espouse liberal values, yet very few writers criticize it from within. America is losing its ability to be self-reflective, and it’s sad. There’s a college in Pittsburgh—Saxifrage—that is trying to balance practical training (i.e. a skill that will get you a decent job) with a liberal arts education (i.e. something that will enrich and deepen your life), and I hope they succeed. It could be a new model for other people to learn from.
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It’s funny you mentioned selling cars, that was always one of my great fears, that I would end up in a bad tie, trying to talk someone into buying a new-used car to better rook them. I think I am generally too ugly and I sweat too much for sales. I’ve usually done more grunt work. Loading and unloading boxes for RPS (and being their yard truck driver) was pretty rough. There was always a supervisor with a stopwatch standing at the end of your trailer, clocking your work, yelling that you should throw boxes faster. It was the only time in my life when I’ve been referred to as a clitoris, as in, “Pick it up, you fucking clit!” That always felt humiliating.
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<b>Alex: I suppose there is also ambivalence over the issues themselves, and yet, we live in this weird world where we accept that one set of teachers (K—12) should get fixed-income pensions, another set of teachers (tenured profs) should get good wages, money for conferences, reduced loads, etc.), full-time but non-tenure-track college teachers (lecturers, visiting writers, etc.) get benefits and a living wage, and then this other huge group (true pay-per-course adjuncts) get none of the above. From the adjunct perspective, the visiting writers have almost ideal conditions (teaching creative writing, reasonable course load, etc.). I like the way in <i>Raymond Carver</i>, you noted that the part-time couple would be drawn to look like mice if it were a movie or comic. Also, Richard, the officemate, who loses his full-time contract and is left with only part-time classes, sees his pay drop from $30,000 to $9,000. The actual cash difference seems a bit exaggerated although the point you are making with these numbers is clear. So, again, I’m rambling, sorry, but I’d love to hear your thoughts. </b>
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<b>Dave:</b> First, I think people hate public school teachers, which is sad.
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Second, what’s sad about my novel is that those numbers were pretty accurate at the time for an adjunct teacher in Pittsburgh. I think Duquesne pays $3500 per class now but that’s a recent increase from $2500. I think Robert Morris pays $1750 per class. Community colleges pay around $2200. It’s insane. You really could go from being a lecturer making 30 grand to teach a 3/3 load to teaching a 3/3 as an adjunct and making $12,000. It’s scary. Again, I can’t imagine anyone thinking this is acceptable, but the general consensus is: oh well; what did you expect, dummy; if you don’t like it, go to Wall Street; then they’ll accuse you of being a Wall Street scumbucket.
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Thank you for liking my mice image.
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<b>Alex: By e-mail, we’ve already communicated about growing up as Steelers fans, talking about Mike Webster’s sad fate among other things, and there are references to the late seventies Steelers in your <i>Raymond Carver Will Not Raise Our Children</i>. It occurs to me that football players often wind up in as bad financial shape as writers, with a huge percentage considering or declaring bankruptcy in retirement, although it seems like this is for a different set of reasons. Also, like writers, at least a few lucky writers, they get that exhilarating roar of the crowd at some point in their life (or at least a roar of their mother or spouse or best friend who isn’t insanely jealous that they got a single book out with a two-dollar advance) and then the sea of quiet sets in. I’ve seen novel-writing as a bit like playing piano or running marathons or boxing, in that it’s in part a personal endurance test. I hadn’t compared it much to football, but I’m wondering if you have? </b>
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<b>Dave:</b> I love the Steelers, and I’m glad you loved them growing up. I don’t think you could have written so well if you’d really liked Eagle’s quarterback Ron Jaworski. Maybe you loved Reggie White and that helped, but I think you love porn and Reggie hated porn. He used to do billboards that said: real men don’t use porn.
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I’m not sure about the financial connections between athletes and writers. I guess the odds are more in favor of writers succeeding (meaning publishing a book) than an athlete turning pro, but even a rookie making the minimum in the NFL has exceed the wages of almost every writer writing in America now. I suspect the kicker for the Steelers is bankrolling Jennifer Egan under the table, even if she’s getting movie rights and screenplay work.
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I do think novelists have to have some of the same qualities that athletes have, as far as training and endurance. I like the idea of a writing season. You kiss your spouse / partner / kids, tell the world to fuck off, write until your asshole aches from sitting, emerge with a manuscript, publish a book, then kiss everyone who allowed you to disappear. Thank you, lover. Thank you, Jesus. Go to Disneyland, which, for a writer in Pittsburgh, is Kennywood. Ride the Thunderbolt. Drink in the Brillo Box with Louie Ickes feeding you beers. Enjoy the offseason which, hopefully, includes lots of fucking and more drinking and stories about how you won the big one, meaning a fucking book. Go bananas, b-a-n-a-n-a-s for books! (that was me in a cheerleading skirt, looking hot).
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Alex: Did you teach any sports stars as an instructor? Did you, or do you, have any strong feelings for how the athletes are treated by colleges or college teachers? It seems pretty clear that these days college is a business, and adjuncts aren’t the only one considering questionable compensation for their contribution (winning programs generate revenue, etc.). I notice that big-time male athletes in my classes have excellent attendance and, on average, inferior writing skills although some of these kids were quite sharp, and except for a few knuckleheads, most have had excellent citizenship (polite, on time, etc.). Growing up in Philly, I remember hearing some negativity about student athletes from teaching peers although at Clemson, it has almost shocked me that right in the English department we have a whole bunch of die-hard football fans. In Philly, I always felt I had to lay low on sports talk when I was in my own department, and now that I’ve lost interest (or lost time for it), I hear it all over (or read football talk from feminists on Facebook). </b>
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<b>Dave: </b>
I don’t think I ever had any star athletes in my classes, but the athletes I did have were usually pretty nice. And if they were not nice, the system was set up with a bunch of checks-and-balances, people calling and emailing to make sure the athletes’ attendance was okay, that their work was average or above. The athletes were usually polite and disinterested. None of the athletes I taught (male-wise) were academic stars, but I never had any problems. A couple female athletes I had in class were good writers—maybe they weren’t as pampered as much as the male athletes because female sports don’t seem to bring in as much dough. I am generally supportive of college athletes. Maybe the universities should have higher academic standards, but those kids should have more freedom to make money. If someone wants to sell his/her jersey and sign a few autographs for money, I’m for that.
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I haven’t thought about Brian Dawkins in a long time (when it comes to safeties, I’m exclusively rooting for Donny Shelly to get in the Hall of Fame), but Levon was awesome. He didn’t play on great teams or he would be remembered better. I think he’s the Steelers all-time leading tacklers, which trumps Jack Lambert.
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Sports are a huge part of Pittsburgh culture and I love that. If you ever start feeling too literary, someone (i.e. poet Bob Pajich) will remind you that legendary Steelers announcer Myron Cope is still the best writer to ever come out of our city.
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Again, don't miss <a href="http://karenslibraryblog.blogspot.com/2013/09/writer-on-writer-dave-newman-interviews.html" target="_blank">Part One of this interview</a>, where Dave Newman interviews Alex Kudera about <i>Fight for Your Long Day</i>.
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Please check out the books:
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Alex Kudera, <i><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8612461-fight-for-your-long-day" target="_blank">Fight For Your Long Day</a></i>, Atticus Books, 2010.
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Dave Newman, <i><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15074553-raymond-carver-will-not-raise-our-children" target="_blank">Raymond Carver Will Not Raise Our Children</a></i>, Writers Tribe Books, 2012.
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I plan to do more double-interviews in this new series, <b>Writer on Writer</b>. My hope is that this series will introduce two writers to each other, and then expand on the fan base of each writer who is working with a similar theme or style. Stay tuned!
Karen Lillishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04624398526912042847noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4982013421663058277.post-62530918526121563832013-09-08T13:57:00.001-07:002013-09-16T19:04:31.530-07:00Writer on Writer: Dave Newman Interviews Alex Kudera<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2TYt8fQtHWdJHuJrLbvUjrzBWhiie5tAv4hd7ZLWzOAR_aDsnardhN9tNQRaEw_7Jbo03ZejAOgmLnQkU0pT23ROqFX3RBQsdbeNSYO8U8s6F88H0VXwY5MNYwhE302smZsl5n7CkV1t4/s1600/fightbookcover_full.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2TYt8fQtHWdJHuJrLbvUjrzBWhiie5tAv4hd7ZLWzOAR_aDsnardhN9tNQRaEw_7Jbo03ZejAOgmLnQkU0pT23ROqFX3RBQsdbeNSYO8U8s6F88H0VXwY5MNYwhE302smZsl5n7CkV1t4/s320/fightbookcover_full.jpeg" height="320" width="213" /></a>Several months ago, I asked small press authors <b>Alex Kudera</b> and <b>Dave Newman</b> if they would be willing to read each other's latest novels and interview each other about them. Each novel features a protagonist struggling to make ends meet (and keep a writing life) while working as an adjunct professor: Newman's novel, <i><a href="http://www.vol1brooklyn.com/2013/01/17/at-the-bottom-in-a-place-you-belong-a-review-of-dave-newmans-raymond-carver-will-not-raise-our-children/" target="_blank">Raymond Carver Will Not Raise Our Children</a></i> (Writers Tribe Books, 2012) follows instructor Dan Charles, a family man with one published novel under his belt; Kudera's <i><a href="http://atticusbooksonline.com/books/2010-releases/fight-for-your-long-day/" target="_blank">Fight For Your Long Day</a></i> (Atticus Books, 2010) is narrated by the unpublished Cyrus Duffleman.<br />
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I'm posting the resulting interviews in two parts. Stay tuned for Part II: Alex's interview of Dave, which I hope to post later this week. Without further ado, Dave Newman interviews Alex Kudera about <i>Fight For Your Long Day</i>.<br />
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<b>Dave Newman: How scary was it writing a book about a frustrated adjunct instructor while working in the academy?</b>
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<b>Alex Kudera:</b> Writing it wasn’t scary at all. It was thrilling and cathartic for the first summer when a whole draft came out, and then there was a lot of painstaking work to improve it, and the fear of failure is always lurking in the background, yes, and then toward the end, there was doubt, but I didn’t have actual fear until I was waiting for the reporter at <i>Inside Higher Ed</i> to call. My first interview was by telephone, and I had no idea what he would ask or how I would respond. Despite my own ten years of adjunct teaching, I was ignorant of many different aspects of the national situation. Publishing the book has gotten me in touch with a full range of concerned academics, struggling adjuncts and tenured professors, and I’ve learned a lot about higher ed since the book came out.
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It’s important to recognize that hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of indebted students and low-wage adjuncts and contract workers, folks just like us, families with children, are scared. Their legitimate fears are about how to put food on the table, how to afford utility bills, gas, and rent. Maybe the new healthcare laws will help in one important area; I hope so. But overall, if you think about it, the capitalist system can reward hard work, but it can also reward connections, ass-kissing, and greed, and the work, whether hard or “crafty,” is typically legal, but with occasional outright malfeasance, and sometimes the laws themselves can even be bought and changed to favor the wealthy or connected, and many folks who gravitate toward the top in order to save their own fiscal asses seem barely sentient enough to recognize the extent of the problems, never mind care enough to do something substantial. You look out and see what goes on, and you wonder how they ever came up with the idea of actually referring to us collectively as “humanity”; that’s one of the all-time great sales pitches, I’d say.
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So whether I write this book or another book or don’t write anything at all, I’m going to be scared sometimes—scared for my kid, scared for your kids, and scared for little ones throughout the country and around the world. But sometimes, we have to put aside our own fears to try to help others.
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<b>DN: Have there been any repercussions?</b>
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<b>AK:</b> I believe that there have been, and yet I’m uncertain I’d be able to prove it. Academia also offers a lot of opportunity for paranoia, both individual and collective, so it’s all hard to say. Overall, it seems some tenured professors have reacted quite favorably to <i>Fight for Your Long Day</i> (one assigns it to her graduate students in English education, and I know that at least two professors have assigned the novel; the other was for graduate students taking a course in ethics in higher education), and there are other academics, including adjuncts, who are somewhat uneasy with the novel, possibly its conflicted look at class and race, find it dull, or just aren’t able to read a book unless the main character is perfectly sympathetic in the most stereotypical ways. And, yes, I’m scared of “repercussions” too, and in academia, they are difficult to label as such because there so many factors that can be introduced as a reason why any hiring or other decision is made.
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<b>Dave: There are some big buzz phrases in the academy right now — community, literary citizenship, collegiality — but universities run on adjuncts and tuition doubles at twice the rate of inflation, and the machine keeps acting like a job is a gift. Can you talk about how (or if) the language of the academy — the Orwellian nature of it — fueled <i>Fight for Your Long Day</i>? Orwell would have loved your title, as I do.</b>
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<b>Alex:</b> Yeah, universities are full of “success centers” and slogans like “students first,” and we’ve come to call that all Orwellian and in some ways, it is. Did Orwell have much on nations jacking up the price of air and water? I suppose jacking up tuition every year and buying leather couches for top administration is not the same thing. In fact, I’ve never read <i>1984</i> although I’ve read <i>Animal Farm</i> and <i>Down and Out in Paris and London </i>and I enjoyed the latter very much. It’s a writer’s book, and I read when I was bussing my own dishes in Paris during a semester off from college.
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On the other hand, sometimes it seems like things are changing for the better though. They’ve kicked the private lenders to the curb, and for government loans, there are forgiveness programs that aren’t publicized as well as they should be but base repayment on a graduate’s earnings and even forgive them outright if payments are made on time for 20 years (or even just 10 for careers that qualify as “public service”). It’s a strange game we’re in, and, frankly, where I am right now, the students seem to love the college experience and they seem barely cognizant of some of the ideas broached in my novel. That makes it seem all the more bizarre, and yet it’s pleasant here. The students seem happy.
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True to my long-winded nature, for a long time, the working title was <i>Arise Adjunct Duffleman, and</i> <i>Fight for Your Long Day</i>. I didn’t snip off the front half until very late in the process. I think <i>FFYLD</i> was the title when I queried Atticus and a dozen others. That was a query several months after a failed round. In the Atticus round there was one other small press that seemed to be giving it serious consideration, and, well, as everyone knows, all you need is one “yes,” and that is usually all you get. I like a line from a Roberto Bolano story where he is describing Chilean exiles desperate for work in Europe, and he says the highest bidder was invariably the lowest one as well. It is tough out there.<br />
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<b>Dave: You said you don’t have a sequel to <i>FFYLD</i>. Just curious: why? Duffy is a great character. Do you think you’ll ever return to Duffy?</b>
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<b>Alex:</b> I have general ideas for two sequel novels, which possibly could be made into one book. But I already have other manuscripts in the works and I’ve put so much time into them I feel like I have to press on. Writing for me is incredibly challenging, particularly with all the teaching and parenting I do. I hope I get another novel out before I’m dead. If any small pubs out there want to help make that happen, please do get in touch.
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<b>Dave: After <i>FFYLD</i> came out, how did you feel and how did publication affect your creative process? Were you able to keep writing? I know some writers who have published one book then spend their days googling themselves.</b>
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<b>Alex:</b> I’m definitely one of those writers who googles himself way too much, checks Amazon, all the narcissistic baloney that isn’t writing and wastes time, and I’d assume the great prolific writers avoid this stuff. At the same time, having a book to google has made me much more enthusiastic about writing, and whereas as an adjunct for ten years you could say I was a “blocked” writer, or at least too overworked and tired to write, now I have this glimmer of hope, a past “success” that deludes me into thinking I’m not a total failure.
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I write something almost every day during the summer, often for sustained periods, and even with four classes going, I write some fiction or some random personal stuff (either my blog or pen-and-paper journaling) almost every day during the semesters. But that doesn’t stop me from obsessing about my Amazon ranking and the rest of that superficial crap.
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<b>Dave: Can you talk at all about either of the manuscripts you’re working on?</b>
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<b>Alex:</b> Their working titles are <i>Cartoon Bubbles from a City Underwater</i> and <i>Auggie’s Revenge</i>. The former is a surreal look at urban America during the early nineties recession—end of Bush Sr., beginning of Clinton—and it has a lot of focus on housing and race relations. The latter is a gritty crime novel with three main characters, one of whom is an adjunct, and it takes place in the twenty-first century.
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<b>Dave: Is there a favorite writer you’ve interviewed?</b>
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<b>Alex:</b> Dan Fante is the first published writer I ever contacted by e-mail, and I’d had brief exchanges with him for many years previous to the interview. I recognize that <i>Chump Change</i> isn’t <i>Lolita</i> or <i>A Fan’s Notes</i>, but I have a strong emotional attachment to it. Iain Levison is the first published novelist I’d ever interviewed, and he has been very encouraging as well. The guy has recently been on the bestsellers list in France, and to the best of my knowledge that crime novel still hasn’t found an English language publisher. It doesn’t make sense. Or, I should say that if you understand just how unfair and irrational the publishing world is, then it makes perfect sense. I admire Jean-Philippe Toussaint’s <i>Television</i> and several of his others quite a bit, and I’m very grateful to his English-language translator, John Lambert, for translating my bad written French back to English, even editing a couple questions to make them better, and to make me sound less ridiculous, and then helping Jean-Philippe complete the interview. I’m lucky to have that one.
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<b>Dave: Pretend James Baldwin is still alive. Pretend Duffy is a real person. The two get together in a bar in NY to talk about the academy, literature, and race in America. How does the night end?</b>
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<b>Alex:</b> My best guess is that no one gets laid, and in a worst case scenario, Baldwin could be muttering about Duffy, that crazy white boy, weeks after the meeting. Seriously, I’ve included Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues” almost every time I’ve taught a college literature class, but I wouldn’t call myself an expert on Baldwin. From that story, some of his essay writing, and some of his recorded words (much is available on Youtube), I get a strong sense at his moral indignation, his sense of a coherent vision of black suffering at the hands of white America. Alas, Duffy is a far more conflicted personality, an inconsistent person who does not have a similarly unified moral vision. He sees black suffering, but he is terrified of young blacks. If he has a friend, it is black and homeless Wawa Ed, but Duffy is too busy trudging through his work day for friendship, any clear moral understanding of the world, or much else. The novel is very much about moral ambiguity and uncertainty, and it casts doubt on how anyone participating in contemporary America who could see themselves on the side of some sort of absolute justice.
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<b>Dave: <i>FFYLD</i> is set over one day, and the limited time heightens the narrative tension but still allows you to capture the minutiae of the adjunct working day. Was the one-day structure something you set out to do or did it emerge as you were writing and revising? Were there any other books that influenced you structure-wise? Do you and Duffy feel the same about <i>A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich</i>?</b>
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<b>Alex:</b> The idea came to me, and I went with it. I had a free summer, ten weeks or so, and suddenly I was writing, and I had about forty rough pages down in Philly by the end of June, and then I went to Seoul, South Korea for eight weeks, and with relatively light teaching and tutoring responsibilities there, I managed to push out the whole draft. I love a lot of Russian literature, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Babel, and then writers less well known in America like Biely, Olesha, and Shalamov, but I’ve never read <i>A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich</i>. I have read Saul Bellow’s <i>Seize the Day</i>, and I knew about Solzhenitsyn’s book, so I knew there were day-in-the-life books.
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But I wasn’t even reading novels during most of my adjunct-overload days, and then the previous spring, 2003, I got into John Gardner’s <i>Mickelsson’s Ghosts</i>. I’ve had a full draft of <i>Cartoon Bubbles</i> since 1993 or so, with some interesting sentences that the “kill your darlings” crowd would probably crucify me for in a workshop. So I already had a 400-page novel and the experience of 12-hour writing days. First car sales for a couple years, then two years of a MA program where I didn’t accomplish much, and then ten years of adjunctry took me away from writing, but I’ve been able to trudge ahead slowly with these 4/4 loads at Clemson.
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<b>Dave: Today, class lines seem like they’ve never been clearer – between rich and poor, between people who work a lot for a little and people who work a little for a lot. Still, it seems like writers still under-write or under-utilize work or workers for material, and that working class literature is shoved aside in favor of work that plays with language, ideas, or trees. First, do you see yourself as writing in any sort of tradition? Second, are there any novels that deal with work that inspired <i>FFYLD</i>? Third, are there any contemporary writers who deal with work that you admire?</b>
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<b>Alex:</b> On the one hand, I completely agree about the class lines, and on the other hand, it seems like in our social and working lives, we’re crossing these boundaries all the time. Some of my friends and associates are affluent, or even rich, and then I know other folks, 30 to 50, moving back in with their parents, and I know a lot of 40-year-olds just beginning to save for retirement. But the stats seem to support what you describe, and I think the median household in this country is worth about 75 grand. That’s barely two years of tuition, room, and board at some state schools. Yes, it’s 75K, but that’s a household, and half of our families are worth less than that.
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And, yes, a lot of people read to escape. They know how shitty or banal their own life and job are, and they are looking for a magical story to take them away from it. And then, others are escaping in language, and you may be right that stories of work are under-utilized. I have noticed that in some of the “big books” of recent years, such as <i>The Corrections</i> by Jonathan Franzen or Richard Ford’s <i>Independence Day</i>, we are absolutely in the world of affluence or comfort, and the struggling academic in the former will still marry a wife with a good job at the end (sorry, spoiler), and in some ways these books, with their clever humor or beautiful sentences, offer a very limited representation of America, or at least the America they offer is one lived by only a small portion of Americans.
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On the other hand, I like all kinds of writing, and one of my closest writing friends is very much enthralled by language. I’m very much interested in ideas in stories, too, even when they dominate character or story.
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<b>Dave: Jonathan Frazen or Jennifer Egan? Is there a difference? Does it matter?</b>
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<b>Alex:</b> I like <i>The Corrections</i>, and, well, writers like those two are living on another planet, New York media attention, quality pay for their fiction (or so I presume), writing as the day job, expensive hi-tech toilets that ensure that their shit literally never stinks, and, well, I’ve never even read a paragraph of Jennifer Egan’s stuff but there’s a decent chance she’s been on my home public transportation, the 34 trolley through University City in West Philly, so I’ll take her if this question was a “hot or not” type of deal. I’m in the South, so I feel pressure to arrive at a heteronormative conclusion.
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<b>Dave: One of the things I love about Cyrus Duffleman, your main character, is that he’s complex. He’s not a walking-talking idea. In an otherwise great review in <i>The Chronicle of Higher Education</i>, the reviewer says this, “The sexual and digestive preoccupations of the protagonist seem like distractions from the larger message of the novel. One could argue that they relate to Maslow's hierarchy; in any case, they are revoltingly described, and Duffleman's sexual interest in students severely undermines any sympathy the reader might have for him as a representative of adjuncts… the sexual detours seem to cater more to the perceived demands of the book market than to the actual life of an adjunct.” I have so many problems with this section of the review. 1.) People should be allowed to fuck terribly 2.) If there was a “larger message of the novel” it would have ruined the novel 3.) Obviously, <i>FFYLD</i> was not written to market—how little do you have to know about literature to realize that a novel about an overweight man flirting with poverty is not the same as a mystery or romance novel? I don’t think I have an actual question here—mostly this section of the review just pissed me off—but I think it’s interesting that this reviewer, like people in America have always done, feels that poor people must somehow be morally-worthy if they expect to make a living. Why should Duffy—and adjuncts everywhere—be held to a moral standard relating to sex that politicians, musicians, religious leaders, and cafeteria workers are not? Also, have you ever wanted to punch a reviewer in the dick?</b>
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<b>Alex:</b> Thank you for expressing all of this. Yes, absolutely, “fucking badly” is essential to the entire human condition, and any serious writer would be an imbecile to avoid it. And, yes, I have gotten angry at a few reviews although sometimes the negative ones are so transparent you can see just how ignorant or biased a reviewer is that it is hard to take it too seriously.
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At the same time, William Pannapacker, the <i>Chronicle</i> reviewer, is trying to help adjuncts get better working conditions, and I suspect he was worried that Duffy’s character flaws or inconsistency could interfere with what he wants to do with his journalism, which is to stay “on message” and help improve the lives of part-time teachers. But someone will have to ask Pannapacker about that part of the review. It’s possible that he found some of Cyrus’s personal habits to be completely revolting, and so that’s what he wrote. Guilty of honesty, no more, no less.
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<b>Dave: How long did it take you to write <i>FFYLD</i>? Was it written while you were teaching? If so, how did your teaching load impact the writing? How did the writing impact your teaching?</b>
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<b>Alex:</b> It took seven years. The first draft, 280 pages, was written over ten weeks one summer, and then the editing and revising occurred very slowly over six years, but there were semesters, and even summers, where I accomplished nothing. Although I write almost every day, I have way too many projects at once, and I often make the mistake of drafting something new rather than facing down the old text and trying to improve it.
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<b>Dave: Who would play Duffy in a movie?</b>
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<b>Alex:</b> Philip Seymour Hoffman? Jason Alexander in heels? I don’t know, but it should be a film.
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<b>Dave: So we’re in a country where fast food workers and Wal-Mart workers protest or start to organize and the general public hates it. In the comment sections on Huffpost or wherever, people tell the strikers to go fuck themselves. Why do you think there is so little compassion for working people? Can literature change that?</b>
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<b>Alex:</b> I see a lot of comments on alternet.org and other sites that are very much in agreement with raising the minimum wage, helping workers, etc. Even in SC, you wind up meeting an awful lot of progressives. Philly.com has some racist weirdos in their comments section, but it feels, to me anyway, like right now, there are a lot of folks who understand how hard it can be in America for all of us. So maybe compassion is on the rise, and that would be a wonderful comeback story if literature can be part of it.
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<b>Dave: When I started reading, I imagined that literature could save the world. Now, I have to ask: can literature save literature?</b>
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<b>Alex:</b> I never felt that literature could save the world. I saw it more as offering some truths about the world which many people want to ignore.
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<b>Dave: You’ve been reading and blogging about Jack Kerouac, particularly <i>The Dharma Bums</i>. If you could make the same money working as a fire lookout on Desolation Peak as you do teaching, would you take the gig?</b>
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<b>Alex:</b> I hate to disappoint, but I’m afraid of heights, so I’m guessing I’d do the cowardly thing and keep teaching. Although I seemingly need a lot more quiet time than most people, I’m not sure I’d be able to handle the loneliness at the top, so to speak, either.
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<b>Dave: What’s your dream job?</b>
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<b>Alex:</b> At this point, I don’t even know. For me, maybe, it’s not the actual job, but being able to go to work not needing the paycheck. In other words, a dream would be to keep coming back only because I want to do whatever it is. I must say, with every job I’ve had, there were some things I liked more than others and some things I disliked entirely, and I’ve received some kind of W-2 every year since 1986 (the early ones for remarkably small totals), so as an experienced worker, I’ve come to not expect any ideal work situation. I’m a little scared of those people who look you in the eye and say, “I love what I do” as if they love every single aspect of it.
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<b>Dave: One of the great moments in the book is when Duffy is forced to deal with the students acting out in class and saying vulgar and racist things. First, did you ever imagine when you started teaching college that you would be dealing with things like classroom discipline? Secondly, what’s the worst thing a student has ever done to you?</b>
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<b>Alex:</b> In my first quarter teaching at a private university, a student said to me loud enough for everyone in the room to hear, “Fuck you.” This was during my third year of teaching, and I was raised by a public-school teacher, and well, I just assumed I had to make sure everyone understood that I was the teacher and that there would be consequences for inappropriate language, and as I recall, I’m pretty sure I asked her to leave the room. Anyway, it turned out the student had contacted my supervisor and asked to be placed in a different section because she was too embarrassed to return to my class. In the long discussion about this incident with my supervisor, I learned so much about the university. At the time, it seemed shocking that the person in charge would actually be taking the side of the student who used direct foul language (but “students first,” right?), and I began to make analytical points, and soon I was threatened with not getting classes for the next quarter. I’ve taught for seventeen years, and I’ve seen the same thing, where the administration sees it as in the best interests of the university to side with the student and cast doubt on the teacher’s ability to do his or her job, and I suppose that’s why they want even more contingent teachers, so people can be gotten rid of if they become problems.
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The system rewards grade inflation, not challenging students too much, and particularly not emotionally (and that can mean not daring to say anything interesting at all in the gen-ed classroom), and so irrational and subjective qualities about whether individuals “like” you seem to become central to whether or not you’ll survive in academia. My experience has been that the safest bet in most classrooms is to be funny and easy because if you start challenging the students and grading too rigorously, giving out Cs or worse, the complaints will pile in, and it will create even more work, handling them, etc., and there is already too much work to begin with. Now that the price of college is so outrageous and many campuses, with their enrollment-management and scheduling problems, even make it difficult for students to enroll in the right classes for their major, it is easy to see why students could use a laugh, a teacher in their corner, etc.
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<b>Dave: Duffy is very race-conscious, as most intelligent people are, yet most intelligent people pretend not to be race-conscious, as if that makes them racists. When Duffy is tutoring an older African-American woman, Linda Jones, there is this really deep connection he feels for her, especially in that they both dream of financial security. Could you talk about how difficult that scene was to write (if it was difficult) and how you balanced class and race throughout the book?</b>
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<b>Alex:</b> I think that many Americans are absolutely terrified of saying anything about race, and some of the folks who are willing to speak about race sound like obvious racists when they do speak. Folks don’t want to acknowledge their advantages based upon race or nationality (I like the line in the book where Cyrus recognizes the possibility that if we lived on global level playing fields he might not have any jobs at all), and others don’t want to acknowledge their disadvantages. People are desperate to believe that the terms of life are fair.
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The Linda Jones section was in the original draft, and in fact, that was right around when the book began to take off and almost write itself. But I’m glad you mention the scene because it seems like some folks give up on the book due to Duffy’s or the narrator’s strong sense of “seeing race” early on, when several of the more touching scenes surrounding race come in the second half of the book.
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I grew up on the edge of University City in Philly, right where it used to make a sudden switch from middle class to affluent and multicultural to working-class black with some blocks of utter abandonment. From my childhood apartment, you could walk less than two blocks to at least one real crack house, but it seemed as if almost no one from my neighborhood a block away ever walked west back then. The neighborhood has changed a lot, and on my current salary, it would be difficult to get by living there. But my mother would drive west every morning to teach urban public school, mainly at a middle school that had some of the poorest kids in the entire district, so I was highly aware of African American poverty, the sense of national neglect for issues surrounding it, the national culture of blaming the victim (the only time I didn’t vote for President was Clinton’s reelection, and my main issue was Welfare-to-Work and how harmful that would be to many of his own voters). When I visit Philly now, it seems like that there is a lot less segregation and many more neighborhoods that are quite diverse based upon race and income level.
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But the larger point is, concerning why Cyrus Duffleman has all these conflicting impulses, is that this is what people are actually like. For example, people have abstract sympathy for entire regions of the city, but never set foot in those places. In this regard, you’ll find some of the biggest phonies of all in academia, and with tenure.
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<b>Dave: A writing student tells you she wants to go to graduate school to become a professor. What do you say?</b>
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<b>Alex:</b> I don’t teach English majors, so this topic does not come up often, but in general I try to be enthusiastic for students’ future plans, and I write recommendations when I’m asked to. Because I teach general education, I’m often writing recommendations for programs that will lead to far greater financial success than most of us in creative writing will ever see, so sometimes it’s a little depressing, but, alas, with my students, I’m generally enthusiastic and happy to hear they are saving themselves, or trying to, from the life of the starving writer or just the starving anyone who can’t pay back their loans and spends their twenties living in their parents’ house (so, yeah, maybe they’re well fed if eating at home). But it’s not impossible to become a professor with a degree in the humanities, and right now, I think comp/rhet or one of the newer English PhD concentrations or programs with tech in the title, like “Digital Humanities” or “Text and Technology” is the best bet for landing at least a lectureship in higher ed.<br />
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Update: <b>Part Two is posted</b>: <a href="http://karenslibraryblog.blogspot.com/2013/09/writer-on-writer-part-two-alex-kudera.html" target="_blank">Alex Kudera interviews Dave Newman</a> about <i>Raymond Carver Will Not Raise Our Children.</i>Karen Lillishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04624398526912042847noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4982013421663058277.post-67201895872643468582013-08-07T10:22:00.001-07:002013-08-07T10:29:50.080-07:00Must-Read Indie Publishing Interview: Rami Shamir<br />
I’m thrilled that novelist and former Zuccotti Occupier <b>Rami Shamir </b>talks about what it means to be an independent author in <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lisa-chau/rami-shamir-interview_b_3710947.html" target="_blank">this terrific interview at The Huffington Post</a>. Self-publishing is not just about self-sufficiency: Shamir makes the distinction between the “self-publisher,” who in today’s digital/POD/Amazon/Kindle/Nook world is held hostage to corporations, and the independent author, who is someone seeking a literary community that can support our books outside of the corporate structure. What is an independent author but a writer, and what is a writer but someone whose voice is needed, now more than ever? "Now" is a time when corporations are pushing against humans baldly and with more impunity than we've seen in our lifetimes: pushing against human rights, against workers' rights, mowing down environmental safeties we'd like to take for granted. <a href="http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/local/washington/confidential-agreement-should-have-been-part-of-washington-county-marcellus-shale-case-record-697530/" target="_blank">Gag orders</a>, corporate buyouts and mergers of newspapers, and <a href="http://www.cpijournalism.org/2013/06/06/part-two-with-dan-denvir-shrinking-resources-accountability-watchdog-journalism-and-local-impacts/" target="_blank">shrinking outlets for paid investigative journalism</a> are all examples of the free market attack on free voices.We need writers who are free to speak.<br />
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Shamir challenges us as authors to boycott Amazon and Barnes & Noble—to pull our titles from those corporate predators. He considers independent bookstores to be “the new arsenals of American democracy,” fighting the good fight for the voices of authors and the visions of publishers they believe in, and the fight against Amazon’s ongoing late-stage-capitalist <a href="http://www.latimes.com/features/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-amazon-new-book-discounts-a-declaration-of-war-20130728,0,521761.story" target="_blank">war on brick and mortars</a>.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijl4Vz4lwHegKCkeMueGezSyJMOVrJOZ_z0h7yHjSA8JNdunMB8zFnt0IKlsi8_rbmMgEHKG1eMkQ7MZ_anxnSnkeAdqz53JjBcJH55i9F3uPZWUl9VHYI_Z1EvlxRQxX4Fkg42XK_Okkd/s1600/MCraig_RShamir_CopCom.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="226" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijl4Vz4lwHegKCkeMueGezSyJMOVrJOZ_z0h7yHjSA8JNdunMB8zFnt0IKlsi8_rbmMgEHKG1eMkQ7MZ_anxnSnkeAdqz53JjBcJH55i9F3uPZWUl9VHYI_Z1EvlxRQxX4Fkg42XK_Okkd/s400/MCraig_RShamir_CopCom.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">m. craig and Rami Shamir at Copacetic Comics, Pittsburgh (April 13, 2013)</td></tr>
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I had the pleasure of meeting and hosting Rami Shamir and <b>m.craig</b> when they came through Pittsburgh on their <b>Embracing the Accidental</b> reading and distro tour in April 2013. Craig is the author of <a href="http://narrowsthenovel.com/" target="_blank">The Narrows</a> and the founding editor at <a href="http://thepcpress.com/" target="_blank">Papercut Press</a> (Brooklyn). Together on tour, Shamir and Craig introduced their voices and their books to cities, booksellers, and writers across America, and established ties with 31 independent bookstores from coast to coast. They created a distro map of these stores for other independent authors to follow. Find it here:<br />
<iframe frameborder="0" height="350" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?hl=en&ie=UTF8&oe=UTF8&msa=0&msid=202386532855177242181.0004da9513d876be40bc3&t=m&ll=36.089621,-96.123057&spn=12.728464,44.337178&output=embed" width="425"></iframe><br />
<small>View <a href="https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?hl=en&ie=UTF8&oe=UTF8&msa=0&msid=202386532855177242181.0004da9513d876be40bc3&t=m&ll=36.089621,-96.123057&spn=12.728464,44.337178&source=embed" style="color: blue; text-align: left;">EMBRACING THE ACCIDENTAL: A Distro Map for Independently Published Authors</a> in a larger map</small><br />
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<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lisa-chau/rami-shamir-interview_b_3710947.html" target="_blank">Rami Shamir's interview</a> also talks about his editor and mentor <b>Barney Rossett</b>, about Wikileaks and Manning and Snowden, about Occupy and what it meant to his generation, and about his novel <a href="http://www.traintopokipse.com/" target="_blank">TRAIN TO POKIPSE</a>, which is a gorgeous piece of writing even more urgent and resounding than this interview.<br />
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"Interview With 2013 Acker Award Winner for Fiction, Rami Shamir"<br />
by Lisa Chau<br />
<i>Huffington Post</i><br />
August 6, 2013 <br />
<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lisa-chau/rami-shamir-interview_b_3710947.html" target="_blank">http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lisa-chau/rami-shamir-interview_b_3710947.html</a><br />
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Stay tuned: When Shamir and Craig were in Pittsburgh, we held a panel called "Having Our SAY and Eating It, Too: Independent Publishing in the Age of Amazon." There is a video of the panel discussion, which I will post when the final edits are made.Karen Lillishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04624398526912042847noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4982013421663058277.post-30437898998599792272013-05-27T09:40:00.004-07:002013-05-27T10:14:55.587-07:00Announcing the First Annual Acker Awards for Avant Garde Excellence<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYr-wlrZzRK0Zgc-pEZLQA7tG_15GgMJv-DCOSsYzz_06xw6IRpu34KUM2eT9mbPRt1IeHJhd0lVr3VCd0ZFs82jI31P_A4p_4sPSaYd9vN1CtoVQXMzyYgTcYW1uBZERwZjh4xJOQRauy/s1600/312205_10151378993826612_747247210_n.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYr-wlrZzRK0Zgc-pEZLQA7tG_15GgMJv-DCOSsYzz_06xw6IRpu34KUM2eT9mbPRt1IeHJhd0lVr3VCd0ZFs82jI31P_A4p_4sPSaYd9vN1CtoVQXMzyYgTcYW1uBZERwZjh4xJOQRauy/s400/312205_10151378993826612_747247210_n.jpeg" width="266" /></a></div>
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<b>The Acker Awards</b>, created in honor of the late, great writer <b>Kathy Acker</b>, is a new award ceremony honoring underground artists in various cities. From the Acker Awards website:
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"The Acker Awards is a tribute given to members of the avant garde arts community who have made outstanding contributions in their discipline in defiance of convention, or else served their fellow writers and artists in outstanding ways. The award is named after novelist Kathy Acker who in her life and work exemplified the risk-taking and uncompromising dedication that identifies the true avant garde artist." </blockquote>
This year the Awards will be presented to artists and writers in <a href="http://www.ackerawards.com/#!nyc-awards/canh" target="_blank">New York</a> and <a href="http://www.ackerawards.com/#!sf-awards/c13ps" target="_blank">San Francisco</a>, and soon it will branch out to more cities. The award is given to avant garde artists, by avant garde artists, and is concerned with offering recognition and fostering community rather than doling out academic prestige or money.
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Two ceremonies will be held simultaneously on Thursday, June 6, at 7:00pm on two coasts:<br />
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<b>San Francisco:</b> Viracocha, 998 Valencia, the Mission District<br />
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<b>New York: </b>Angel Orensanz Foundation, 172 Norfolk Street, Lower East Side<br />
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Admission is Free.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCuGZxbnnAN4F9mZT4-NqjKRglSR_35-Wt49Hy7EPRkSjZxS9lvfN1LRVIHgMTGAbgSkJvU3AIZcWVkvkEIqGagnyr8RdOeZEDV_HM1cYvoqFKdA_wwMz441F8LwV6W3Kz61ox82uXPJ3v/s1600/479750_10151373494166612_475017093_n.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCuGZxbnnAN4F9mZT4-NqjKRglSR_35-Wt49Hy7EPRkSjZxS9lvfN1LRVIHgMTGAbgSkJvU3AIZcWVkvkEIqGagnyr8RdOeZEDV_HM1cYvoqFKdA_wwMz441F8LwV6W3Kz61ox82uXPJ3v/s320/479750_10151373494166612_475017093_n.jpeg" width="213" /></a><br />
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The Acker Awards was created by and co-produced by <b>Alan Kaufman</b> (author of <i><a href="http://www.vivaeditions.com/book_page.php?book_id=27" target="_blank">Drunken Angel</a></i> and editor of <i><a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9781560252276-28" target="_blank">The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry</a></i>) and <b>Clayton Patterson</b> (co-editor of <i><a href="http://eastvillage.thelocal.nytimes.com/2011/09/14/clayton-patterson-on-his-epic-peoples-history-of-the-lower-east-side/" target="_blank">Jews: A People's History of the Lower East Side</a></i>, artist and photographer).<br />
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Please read more about The Acker Awards here: <a href="http://www.ackerawards.com/" target="_blank">http://www.ackerawards.com/</a><br />
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Facebook event page: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/167893743363096/" target="_blank">https://www.facebook.com/events/167893743363096/</a><br />
<br />Karen Lillishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04624398526912042847noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4982013421663058277.post-19255240811839421662013-04-03T20:31:00.000-07:002013-04-04T05:43:05.675-07:00Indie Bookstore of the Day: Bibliohead Bookstore<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Today I discovered a great, compact indie bookstore in the Hayes Valley neighborhood of San Francisco, <b>Bibliohead Bookstore</b>. I was not in good shape for a bookstore visit, being too whacked out from the plane ride, but the bookstore found me and I couldn't resist. I popped in with less than all of my faculties intact, and the store still managed to charm me and entice me to leave with three books I didn't know I needed.<br />
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I decided recently that there should be a Beat Generation <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concordance_(publishing)" target="_blank">Concordance</a>, or maybe a Beat Glossary or a Beat Thesaurus. I love the verbs (and slang vocabulary in general) of the Beat writers. Even though today's writers can't use too many of them because it's not today's language, I still find a value in listening to this subculture speak a parallel jargon--in hearing Kerouac and Ginsberg push so hard to trade mundane verbs for idioms, while never touching purple prose.<br />
<br />
So, since I'm here in Beat Generation Ground Zero, I thought I'd ask. "Did anyone ever put together a Beat Concordance?" The owner was delighted with the idea and we looked in Reference Books on language, and in the Beat section, which was mostly rare books. She looked around online and found the existence of <i><a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/beat-speak-an-illustrated-beat-glossary-circa-1956-1959/oclc/36674477" target="_blank">BEAT SPEAK</a>: An Illustrated Beat Glossary circa 1956-1959</i>, published by <a href="http://www.waterrowbooks.com/" target="_blank">Water Row Books</a> in 1996. I appreciated learning about both the book and the (Beat-centric) publisher. She told me I should look at <b>City Lights Bookstore</b> and also at <b>The Beat Museum</b>. Then she told me that if no one's put together the Beat Concordance, that probably means I should do it.<br />
<br />
(I know about <i><a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/straight-from-the-fridge-dad-a-dictionary-of-hipster-slang/oclc/46683541" target="_blank">Straight from the Fridge, Dad</a></i>, because it used to be on the reference shelf at <b>St Mark's Bookshop</b>, and it's probably time I bought a copy for myself. It's what I was thinking might turn up when I asked the bookstore owner for her Reference shelf. Instead I found a book that will probably end up being more useful to me, a book on slang from the 1990s.)<br />
<br />
I was reading Kerouac's <i>Subterraneans</i> on the plane today (a great dime store copy I bought at <a href="http://karenslibraryblog.blogspot.com/2011/01/eljays-used-books-to-leave-pittsburgh.html" target="_blank">Eljay's</a>), and I was enjoying the novel for itself, but another part of my mind kept wanting a list of all his verbs, all his adjectives. Maybe that's the way to start chipping away at a concordance--one major Beat work at a time.<br />
<br />
The <b>Bibliohead Bookstore</b> is open seven days a week and has been around for over eight years.<br />
<br />
334 Gough Street in San Francisco.<br />
<a href="http://www.bibliohead.com/" target="_blank">http://www.bibliohead.com/</a>Karen Lillishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04624398526912042847noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4982013421663058277.post-58651578411359674752013-03-08T16:17:00.002-08:002013-03-08T16:25:25.943-08:00The Art of the Book Review: Lavinia Ludlow<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnTvQkZasZWVedtsJqWbxEMbmGhW_5oNYDPq5pvzNaSUrlUQfJfESrWgose7XFcfEhxTnS7xk2pQf2jrhIvr-wpWPEmXOrPboe64BiCcI-jSsQ6mdiH3FyLU4XEEsepcSno_Uiz4AKf_7j/s1600/url.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnTvQkZasZWVedtsJqWbxEMbmGhW_5oNYDPq5pvzNaSUrlUQfJfESrWgose7XFcfEhxTnS7xk2pQf2jrhIvr-wpWPEmXOrPboe64BiCcI-jSsQ6mdiH3FyLU4XEEsepcSno_Uiz4AKf_7j/s320/url.gif" width="213" /></a>Today's post resumes the <a href="http://karenslibraryblog.blogspot.com/search/label/art%20of%20the%20book%20review" target="_blank">Art of the Book Review</a> interview series. <b>Lavinia Ludlow</b> is a prolific small press reviewer and talented fiction writer who made waves with her wry and original debut novel, <i>alt.punk: </i>In it, Ludlow gives us Hazel, an obsessive young neatnik with a weakness for punk boys who keep her busy with their messy lives. Lavinia reviews indie lit titles for publications like <i>American Book Review</i>, <i>The Nervous Breakdown</i>, <i>Small Press Reviews</i>, <i>Smalldoggies Magazine</i>, and <i>Plumb Blog</i>.<br />
<br />
<b>Karen the Small Press Librarian: What do you believe a book review should DO? What's its job?</b>
<br />
<br />
<b>Lavinia Ludlow: </b>Highlight an author’s writing style and content, and help market the book’s major dramatic focus. Many titles release every day in the mainstream and indie market, and a review gives readers a short summary and critical glimpse into the bones of the book.
<br />
<br />
<b>Karen: Do book reviews matter, and if so, to whom?
</b><br />
<br />
<b>Lavinia: </b>All stakeholders involved. Reviews are varying interpretations that can spark discussion points, controversy, and interest. They can also give authors and publishers constructive or blatant feedback.
<br />
<br />
<b>Karen: It seems like you are doing a great service to small press authors by reviewing so many of their books. Do you view it this way?</b><br />
<br />
<b>Lavinia: </b>I enjoy reading indie titles because I gain a sense of where the industry is heading. I’m also exposed to many different narrative voices, points of view, and content and writing styles I find impossible to find in the mainstream market. Reading indie books/manuscripts is not only enjoyable, but I feel as if I get to connect with writers near and far through their most intimate projects.
<br />
<br />
<b>Karen: Do you think that small press books get a fair shake in terms of getting reviewed (in terms of both quantity and quality of reviews)? Do you think that reviews are the best way to get the word out about new small press titles?
</b><br />
<br />
<b>Lavinia: </b>I definitely think there are great review sites out there that get a lot of foot traffic. <i>Small Press Reviews </i>by Marc Schuster is absolutely stellar. <i>The Nervous Breakdown</i> is another. <i>Pank Mag</i>. <i>Smalldoggies Mag</i>. Just to name a few. I feel it’s definitely harder for small press books to gain publicity merely because not every indie writer/press has the resources to market “big.” However, with enough research and networking, indie authors can definitely get their material reviewed in fair amounts.
<br />
<br />
<b>Karen: In <i>alt.punk</i>, your protagonist, Hazel, is a very neurotic character: a hypochondriac and extreme germaphobe who hangs around with sloppy-drunk punk boys who live in their own messes. I thought she was a really funny, interesting, original character—an alternative to all the jadedness that is usually associated with rock-and-roll memoirs or punk voices. But Hazel is not necessarily someone who readers are going to be comfortable identifying with (assuming many readers feel pressure to do so). Did you find this issue came up in reviews of your book? Did you find that reviewers were critiquing the character as much as the writing?
</b><br />
<br />
<b>Lavinia: </b>Some reviewers did strike down Hazel’s extreme persona, but most characters in <i>alt.punk</i> fell on extreme sides of the spectrum whether liberal, conservative, hypercritical, or just plain bizzaro. I wrote and edited the manuscript when my life was at its most chaotic and unsettled. The intensity in my head matched what I put down on the page, and alt.punk is a reflection of me (at the time) at my most honest. I wholly understand how intense the content and voice narration may seem to some readers.
<br />
<br />
I did find reviewers analyzed the characters a tad more than my writing style, but this goes back to my intentional attempt at extreme personas. All in all, I accepted the feedback, understood where reviewers were coming from, and have applied the lessons to my forthcoming projects.
<br />
<br />
And so, full steam ahead.
<br />
<br />
<b>Karen: Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to make you defend Hazel, either why you wrote her in the first place, or why you thought she would work in your novel. Instead, I'm wondering: Are we as female novelists actually expected to write fully-functioning feminist heroines for protagonists because of the age in which we're living? And if we respond to our critics by trying to "do better next time," isn't that a potentially problematic tendency to try and be appealing as women all over again, to attempt
to soothe the anxieties of others, in writing instead of in life?
</b><br />
<br />
<b>Lavinia: </b>I don't think we are, no. I believe if a male author wrote a similar POV with equal codependencies, phobias, and hangups, he would receive similar criticisms on content or story direction. My editor once told me that a writer should craft a scene/scenario and continue to move the plot forward so that the reader is "rooting" for the protagonist. We should want to see him/her succeed, against the odds.
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
*****</div>
<br />
Thanks to Lavinia for her participation in the series. Check out previous interviews about book reviews/reviewing with:<br />
<br />
*<a href="http://karenslibraryblog.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-art-of-book-review-djelloul-marbrook.html" target="_blank">Djelloul Marbrook</a> (September 10, 2012)<br />
*<a href="http://karenslibraryblog.blogspot.com/2012/08/art-of-book-review-lynn-alexander.html" target="_blank">Lynn Alexander</a> (August 20, 2012)<br />
*<a href="http://karenslibraryblog.blogspot.com/2012/07/the-art-of-book-review-barrett-warner.html" target="_blank">Barrett Warner</a> (July 25, 2012)<br />
*<a href="http://karenslibraryblog.blogspot.com/2012/07/the-art-of-book-review-spencer-dew.html" target="_blank">Spencer Dew</a> (July 18, 2012)<br />
<br />
and a digest:<br />
<br />
<a href="http://karenslibraryblog.blogspot.com/2012/09/book-reviews-debate-rages-on.html" target="_blank">Book Reviews Debate Rages On</a> (September 11, 2012)Karen Lillishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04624398526912042847noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4982013421663058277.post-20209846420164657442013-03-06T12:51:00.002-08:002013-03-08T10:51:10.119-08:00Book Launch for Spencer Dew<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjP2e5jWR_LyOPRu2j-J6ZgGQo1VAgLRXVjHVptNHMiIAHWxBiKUZG36jcFAuoYmeZd4VBHg1GcSvzOyMFHyC8sxe1SChIyju9ypUHneGcr_NS53IYGnf8QBMfIomnjaw-9ot6UMzhOsUAD/s1600/SpencerDew_March7_Flier_EDIT.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjP2e5jWR_LyOPRu2j-J6ZgGQo1VAgLRXVjHVptNHMiIAHWxBiKUZG36jcFAuoYmeZd4VBHg1GcSvzOyMFHyC8sxe1SChIyju9ypUHneGcr_NS53IYGnf8QBMfIomnjaw-9ot6UMzhOsUAD/s1600/SpencerDew_March7_Flier_EDIT.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
Congratulations to <b>Spencer Dew</b> and <b>Ampersand Books</b> for the release of <i>Here Is How It Happens</i>, Dew's debut novel. The book launch will take place in Pittsburgh tomorrow night at <b>Awesome Books</b>' downtown location. Awesome Books is the only literary bookstore in Pittsburgh's Cultural District and turned up as a "pop-up" store in December 2011. They've quickly gained a reputation for their savvy selection of new and used books (both classics and new indie lit titles), as well as their regular roster of book events that gather lively crowds of small press writers. Awesome's downtown presence has been a welcome surprise to tourists and Pittsburghers alike, and we hope it stays around for a long time.<br />
<br />
I'm honored to be involved in the book launch reading for Dew's novel, along with poet <b>Michael S. Begnal</b>, a <b>Salmon Poetry</b> author and former editor of Galway literary magazine, <b>The Burning Bush</b>.<br />
<br />
It was also an honor to be asked to write a blurb for the darkly comic <i>Here Is How It Happens. </i>Here's what I said:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Spencer Dew writes like a quiet maniac who sees the violence under the façade of everyday things, and the beauty under the violence. With X-ray vision and fine-tuned prose, Dew discovers insights and absurdities in the Americana of box stores, elite colleges, poetry students, buffet restaurants, historic plaques, alternative radio, conspiracy theorists, installation artists, and lug-headed drug experimentalists. Here is How it Happens explores the place where the heartland meets the rust belt meets the precarious bubble of academia, and finds redemption in the purity of longing and the shit coffee of an Amish country diner.” </blockquote>
<i></i><br />
Order the book from Ampersand Books here:<br />
<a href="http://ampersand-books.com/here-is-how-it-happens-by-spencer-dew/" target="_blank">http://ampersand-books.com/here-is-how-it-happens-by-spencer-dew/</a><br />
<br />
Read the first review of the novel at XenoFiles here:<br />
<a href="http://ljmoore.wordpress.com/2013/03/02/here-is-how-it-happens-spencer-dew-ampersand-books-march-2013/" target="_blank">http://ljmoore.wordpress.com/2013/03/02/here-is-how-it-happens-spencer-dew-ampersand-books-march-2013/ </a><br />
<i><br /></i>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>*****</i></div>
<i><br /></i>
Previously on this blog:<br />
<br />
<a href="http://karenslibraryblog.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-next-big-thing-blog-hop-spencer-dew.html" target="_blank">The Next Big Thing Blog Hop: Spencer Dew</a><br />
<br />
<a href="http://karenslibraryblog.blogspot.com/2012/07/the-art-of-book-review-spencer-dew.html" target="_blank">The Art of the Book Review: Spencer Dew</a><br />
<br />Karen Lillishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04624398526912042847noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4982013421663058277.post-14860852877048456132013-01-16T14:19:00.000-08:002013-01-17T05:49:55.179-08:00The Next Big Thing Blog Hop: Kristina Marie Darling<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="content"><i>The Traffic in Women</i> by Kristina Marie Darling (dancing girl press, 2006)</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Our next installment of <b>The Next Big Thing Blog Hop</b> features<b> </b>prolific poet and writer <a href="http://kristinamariedarling.com/" target="_blank"><b>Kristina Marie Darling</b></a>, tagged by writer <a href="http://karenslibraryblog.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-next-big-thing-blog-hop-spencer-dew.html" target="_blank"><b>Spencer Dew</b></a>. I'm looking forward to checking out her books, as Spencer speaks so highly of her writing.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
*****</div>
<br />
<br />
<b><b>The Next Big Thing: What is the working title of your book?</b> </b><br />
<br />
<b>Kristina Marie Darling: </b> The book is called <i>Petrarchan</i>. I chose this title because the project is basically an attempt to feminize the writings of Francesco Petrarca, a poet whose sonnets about unrequited love are frequently associated with the male gaze. Each chapter takes its title from one of Petrarch's books—including "Guide to the Holy Land," "My Secret Book," and "Triumphs"—but they tell the story of a female protagonist. At the end of the book, readers will find two appendices, which attempt to draw parallels between Petrarch's body of work and Sappho's fragments through an ongoing erasure of the former's pristine sonnets. <br />
<br />
<b>TNBT: Where did the idea come from for your book? </b><br />
<br />
<b>KMD: </b>You've probably guessed it: I was suffering from unrequited love. Around the same time, I read a poem by Linda Gregerson that sparked an interest in Petrarch. I wanted to find a way to reconcile my feminism with some of the more problematic aspects of Petrarch's sonnets (i.e., the male gaze, the silenced beloved, and the various master narratives about what love should or ought to be). <br />
<br />
<b>TNBT: What genre does your book fall under? </b><br />
<br />
<b>KMD: </b>When asked, I usually call my book an "unclassifiable text." While the last two sections appear as fragments of poems, much of the work is written in prose footnotes. <br />
<br />
<b>TNBT: Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition? </b><br />
<br />
<b>KMD:</b> I would play myself. Matt Damon would be the "beloved" to whom my poems are written. Enough said. <br />
<br />
<b>TNBT: What is the one sentence synopsis of your book? </b><br />
<br />
<b>KMD:</b> A woman wakes alone in a house by the sea. <br />
<br />
<b>TNBT: How long did it take for you to write the first draft of your manuscript? </b><br />
<br />
<b>KMD: </b>The first draft took approximately a month, but it was an intense month, filled with disappointment, unfulfilled desire, Diet Coke, and Ramen noodles. The manuscript was a kind of ledger, which helped me document some of the things I was feeling, and relate my emotional life to the various literary and theoretical texts I was reading at the time. <br />
<br />
<b>TNBT: What other books would you compare this story to within your genre? </b><br />
<br />
<b>KMD: </b> I'd have to say Aaron Kunin's <i>Folding Ruler Star</i>, Kathleen Peirce's <i>The Ardors</i>, and Ken Chen's <i>Juvenilia</i>. <br />
<br />
<b>TNBT: What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest? </b><br />
<br />
<i>Petrarchan</i> is filled with "faint music," "dangerous objects," and even "a cluster of minor stars." <br />
<br />
<b>Blog Hop: Here’s who Kristina Marie Darling tags and why: </b><br />
<br />
<b>KMD: <a href="http://portugueseauthors.weebly.com/carlo-matos.html" target="_blank">Carlo Matos</a></b>, because I enjoyed his first two books, and I'd love to hear more about his forthcoming poetry collection, <i>Big Bad Asterisk</i>. <br />
<br />
And <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/2857917.Joe_Hall" target="_blank"><b>Joe Hall</b></a>, because his third book will be published this year, and it's going to be stellar.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
*****</div>
<br />
Now up on Tumblr:<br />
<a href="http://oceancapewell.tumblr.com/post/40717528674/the-next-big-thing-blog-hop" target="_blank">Ocean Capewell's answers</a> to The Next Big Thing Blog Hop questions<br />
<br />
Previously:<br />
<br />
<a href="http://karenslibraryblog.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-next-big-thing-blog-hop-spencer-dew.html" target="_blank">The Next Big Thing Blog Hop: Spencer Dew</a><br />
<br />
<a href="http://karenslibraryblog.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-next-big-thing-blog-hop-eric-nelson.html" target="_blank">The Next Big Thing Blog Hop: Eric Nelson</a><br />
<br />
<a href="http://karenslibraryblog.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-next-big-thing-blog-hop.html" target="_blank">The Next Big Thing Blog Hop: Karen the Small Press Librarian </a><br />
<br />
Karen Lillishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04624398526912042847noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4982013421663058277.post-78488165228581111122013-01-09T07:47:00.000-08:002013-01-09T08:00:48.345-08:00The Next Big Thing Blog Hop: Eric Nelson<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Fiction writer Eric Nelson</i><b><br /></b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br />
Our next installment of <b>The Next Big Thing Blog Hop</b> features<b> </b>fiction writer <b>Eric Nelson</b>.<b> </b>I got to meet Eric when he came to Pittsburgh to read from his <b>Silk City Series</b>, a collection of short stories set in post-industrial northern New Jersey.<b> </b>Eric is a talented writer of place and class, and I'm excited to hear more about his forthcoming book:<b></b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>*****</b></div>
<br />
<b>The Next Big Thing: What is the working title of your book?</b><br />
<br />
<b>Eric Nelson: </b><i>The Walt Whitman House</i>. It’s being released by <a href="http://www.crumpledpress.org/" target="_blank">The Crumpled Press</a> this month. <br />
<br />
<b>TNBT: Where did the idea come from for your book?</b> <br />
<br />
<b>Eric: </b>This came from a few places. I started off where I wanted to write something about the 1991 Mischief Night Arsons down in Camden (New Jersey) but then it turned into something bigger where I wanted to write a direct critique on how artistic scenes are ghettos in the classic sense of the word. I personally revel in writing teenage characters, it’s a blast figuring out how they speak and react to situations. I would speak about the symbolism of the climax, but it would give too much away. <br />
<br />
<b>TNBT: What genre does your book fall under?</b> <br />
<br />
<b>Eric: </b>I guess literary fiction, but I hesitate to say that because it sounds exclusionary. <br />
<br />
<b>TNBT: Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition? </b><br />
<br />
<b>Eric: </b>I would pluck kids right off the street like Larry Clark did in “Kids” but for the role of the older brother I’d cast Chief Keef, the rapper, since he’d probably be more reliable to work with than DMX. Him or the late Patrice O’Neal. <br />
<br />
<b>TNBT: What is the one sentence synopsis of your book? </b><br />
<br />
<b>Eric: </b><i>The Walt Whitman House</i> is a fusion of youth, poverty<b>,</b> and urbanity reacting within the insolvency of early 90’s American culture and the state of contemporary American literature in 2012. Much thanks to my publisher for writing that.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjW_Z7vXhG9GNBtK1puLe5ErMi-QPmgrZgDynRpD9lzN68HwR2UEuuG44v-sXfxFbWbNqFTHOmnRLlJuFE0gCw2bpmzgVoO9GHKfA3VnQAdQCOGLf4gZbu-oGK9oB1p7yI_JrKwcFQcUY7R/s1600/ERIC_Nelson_WWH.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjW_Z7vXhG9GNBtK1puLe5ErMi-QPmgrZgDynRpD9lzN68HwR2UEuuG44v-sXfxFbWbNqFTHOmnRLlJuFE0gCw2bpmzgVoO9GHKfA3VnQAdQCOGLf4gZbu-oGK9oB1p7yI_JrKwcFQcUY7R/s320/ERIC_Nelson_WWH.jpg" width="246" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The Walt Whitman House</i> (The Crumpled Press, 2013)</td></tr>
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<b>TNBT: Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency? </b><br />
<br />
<b>Eric: </b><i>The Walt Whitman House</i> is being published by The Crumpled Press which is based out of Brooklyn. They do these gorgeous hand-bound books that aren’t relegated to just one genre and garnered some well-deserved press lately. Lauren Belski’s short story collection was published by them last year and I’m psyched to be working with them. <br />
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<b>TNBT: How long did it take for you to write the first draft of your manuscript? </b><br />
<br />
<b>Eric: </b>I did a few weeks of research in October of 2009, going through old newspaper articles about statistics, what happened on Mischief Night in 1991 and the subsequent aftermath. I didn’t actually start a first draft until 2 ½ years later and then I set it down after only a few pages. Spread out it took three years, but had it not been for that it would have been several months. Mind you the story is barely 4,500 words. <br />
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<b>TNBT: What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?</b> <br />
<br />
<b>Eric: </b>I guess Hubert Selby Jr.’s <i>Last Exit to Brooklyn</i>, or else Celine’s<i> Journey to the End of the Night</i>. That part where the character Robinson tries to kill the old widow with fireworks but blinds himself instead is amazing. Celine was also kind in writing children in that book. <br />
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<b>TNBT: What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?</b> <br />
<br />
<b>Eric: </b>Scott McClanahan, who is one of the absolute best fiction writers out there right now said I “write the type of dialogue you don’t see out there anymore,” which is super nice to hear, I’m grateful for that. The only other thing I could add is that the story itself isn’t a moral parable. Morality is good, but Eric Nelson is for the children. <br />
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<b>Blog Hop:
Eric Nelson tags writers for the next round of The Next Big Thing: </b><br />
<br />
<b>Maggie Craig</b> wrote and published <i>The Narrows</i> and runs <a href="http://thepcpress.com/#cd2/custom_plain" target="_blank">Papercut Press</a>, a small
press out of Brooklyn, New York.
<br />
<br />
<b>Chiwan Choi</b> is a Los Angeles poet whose book <i>Abductions</i> was published
in April 2012. He is editor-in-chief and publisher at <a href="http://writlargepress.com/shop" target="_blank">Writ Large Press</a>.<br />
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*****<br />
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If you're in New York, the release party for Eric's book is tomorrow night, Thursday January 10th, from <span class="fbPhotosPhotoCaption" id="fbPhotoSnowliftCaption" tabindex="0"><span class="hasCaption">6:00-8:00pm at Treasure & Bond, 350 W. Broadway in Manhattan.</span></span></div>
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<span class="fbPhotosPhotoCaption" id="fbPhotoSnowliftCaption" tabindex="0"><span class="hasCaption">Facebook event page: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/415420921860613/" target="_blank">https://www.facebook.com/events/415420921860613/</a></span></span> </div>
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<br />
Previously:<br />
<br />
<a href="http://karenslibraryblog.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-next-big-thing-blog-hop-spencer-dew.html" target="_blank">The Next Big Thing Blog Hop: Spencer Dew</a><br />
<br />
<a href="http://karenslibraryblog.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-next-big-thing-blog-hop.html" target="_blank">The Next Big Thing Blog Hop: Karen the Small Press Librarian </a><br />
<br />
<a href="http://karenslibraryblog.blogspot.com/2011/01/guest-review-johnny-ryan-reviewed-by.html" target="_blank">Guest Review: Johnny Ryan reviewed by Eric Nelson</a> <br />
<br />
<a href="http://karenslibraryblog.blogspot.com/2010/12/guest-review-julia-wertz-reviewed-by.html" target="_blank">Guest Review: Julia Wertz reviewed by Eric Nelson</a> Karen Lillishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04624398526912042847noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4982013421663058277.post-79996917044579231422013-01-09T07:02:00.000-08:002013-01-09T07:04:23.374-08:00The Next Big Thing Blog Hop: Spencer Dew<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfUU3_qW_FkQ4O2s59nYVJ7_tSBShQFzYlSWdbLe4zPX5WTqzIa83_HFulPJNGetIqkg-EnQRbdaYcYHSBx8XvC8noy3gUDN73Yj9ySetgQiU3GV2eGtN56UO7nqe6jGZJ3dZk15H_NfPI/s1600/SpencerDew_JPEG.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfUU3_qW_FkQ4O2s59nYVJ7_tSBShQFzYlSWdbLe4zPX5WTqzIa83_HFulPJNGetIqkg-EnQRbdaYcYHSBx8XvC8noy3gUDN73Yj9ySetgQiU3GV2eGtN56UO7nqe6jGZJ3dZk15H_NfPI/s1600/SpencerDew_JPEG.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
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<i>Spencer Dew at his desk</i><b><br /></b></div>
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<b>The Next Big Thing</b> is a weekly blog hop with a standard set of questions<b> </b>for writers to answer about their forthcoming book projects. Last week <a href="http://karenslibraryblog.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-next-big-thing-blog-hop.html" target="_blank">I answered questions about my bookstore memoir</a>, and as it turned out, two out of the three writers I tagged don't have their own blogs, so I'll be blogging their answers here today. This installment features novelist <b>Spencer Dew</b>.<b> </b> I had the pleasure of reading an advanced copy of Spencer's novel and I can't wait for it to come out in March on <a href="http://ampersand-books.com/" target="_blank">Ampersand Books</a>: it's smart and hilarious and has its finger on the pulse of something very American. I'll let him tell you more: <br />
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<b>***** </b></div>
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<b>The Next Big Thing: What is the working title of your book?</b><br />
<br />
<b>Spencer Dew:</b> <i>Here is How it Happens</i>. It is a novel about Northern Ohio in the 1990s, about a specific place and a specific time, plus those ways that place and time get turned to something in our memories—nostalgia, for instance, or the expectation of hindsight in the moment, if that makes sense. It’s a story about kids at a college in a small town, and they try to overthink things, strain to paste pretty words on their situations.<br />
<br />
<b><b>TNBT: </b>Where did the idea come from for your book?</b><br />
<br />
<b>Spencer: </b>The original idea came when I was in college myself. I wrote what I thought was a short story the second semester of my senior year, and before I dropped out of an MFA program I was told it wasn’t a short story but the start of a novel, so I wrote a novel, and then I rewrote it, a few dozen times.<br />
<br />
<b><b>TNBT: </b>What genre does your book fall under?</b><br />
<br />
<b>Spencer: </b>It is a novel. I don’t know all the marketing categories, but I guess it gets shelved in either “fiction” or “literature” or maybe “indie/small press,” unless you shelve it in a store or library in Northern Ohio, in which case maybe you’d call it “local,” though it wasn’t written in Ohio and I haven’t lived there since college.<br />
<br />
<b><b><b>TNBT: </b></b>Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition? </b><br />
<br />
Rick Gonzalez should be Eddie Yoder. That one’s for sure.<br />
<b><br /></b>
<b><b>TNBT: </b>What is the one sentence synopsis of your book?</b><br />
<br />
<b>Spencer: </b>Courtney and Martin have practiced their cynical in-jokes and nonchalant pose, but beneath this façade of self-satisfying ennui, these kids are staring down their futures and facing the traumas of their pasts.<br />
<br />
That one sentence sounds a bit serious, however. The kids are serious, or semi-serious, or their situations—those traumas of their past, as well as their dead-end but still-living relationships—are serious, a serious problem, but the novel itself is comic. I wrote it and all, but it cracks me up. Reading the galleys I laughed out loud. That, to me, was also the mark that the manuscript could finally be called “done,” that it could consistently make me laugh and keep reading.<br />
<br />
<b>TNBT: How long did it take for you to write the first draft of your manuscript?</b><br />
<br />
<b>Spencer: </b>I wrote the first draft as a student at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. It took me a couple of months. It was, shall we say, rough.<br />
<br />
<b>TNBT: What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?</b><br />
<br />
Shiela Heti’s <i>How Should a Person Be?</i> Kenneth Patchen’s<i> The Journal of Albion Moonlight</i>. I guess it depends on the point of the comparison, but I’d be curious what people make of either of those. Patchen is a presence throughout, as a product of Niles, Ohio. The kids are always quoting Patchen.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgo94iLYJ1Dhv8kWSFTB4hPmN8egtwR7hH82PGynGHD3KVSc2Z2wAA8Atvqlb8kMSRQB29FrV4830ahWhDQDwKgHbqvWK-JJWaGydwYyTRD84_INFOurOnAl07ekwUOBbaa0P_7_rGJeOPP/s1600/Songs_OF_Insurge.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgo94iLYJ1Dhv8kWSFTB4hPmN8egtwR7hH82PGynGHD3KVSc2Z2wAA8Atvqlb8kMSRQB29FrV4830ahWhDQDwKgHbqvWK-JJWaGydwYyTRD84_INFOurOnAl07ekwUOBbaa0P_7_rGJeOPP/s1600/Songs_OF_Insurge.jpg" height="320" width="213" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Songs of Insurgency</i> (Vagabond Press, 2008) </td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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<b>TNBT: What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?</b><br />
<br />
<b>Spencer: </b>In Boulder I knew a woman who collected used tampons from public toilets for an art project she had in mind. It was slow going, as you might imagine, and not without its own set of risks. So she bought some pigs’ blood, to make her own used tampons, in mass. She tried to microwave it. That is where I learned about what happens when you microwave blood, which figures in the book.<br />
<br />
Maybe that will only pique the interest of a certain sort of reader? The history of Ohio is important, and things like paper place-mats, all-night diners, youth in ill-considered and ill-aimed rebellion, kindness to animals, true love. Like I said: there’s Kenneth Patchen all over the place.<br />
<br />
<b>Blog Hop: Here’s who Spencer Dew tags and why:</b><br />
<br />
I know <b>Jill Summers</b> from Chicago, where she is a pillar of the performance scene with stories at once hilarious and heart wrenching. She made a puppet show about Dracula before that movie came out, and it was at the Chicago Cultural Center, which is profoundly badass. Her work has been featured on National Public Radio and tons of other places (Monkeybicycle, Make Magazine, Annalemma, etc.). Her website is <a href="http://dottysummers.com/" target="_blank">http://dottysummers.com/</a><br />
<br />
I have never met <b>Kristina Marie Darling</b>, but the three books of hers I’ve read have been astounding. She has an approach to literature which, as I imagine it, has been equally informed by close attention to visual art (the assemblages of Joseph Cornell, for instance) and to that stuff that gets lumped as “theory” (by which here I mean a spread that runs from the private letters of Sigmund Freud to the musings of Maurice Blanchot). Darling constructs meticulous texts from varied sources, with entrancing results. Her website is <a href="http://kristinamariedarling.com/" target="_blank">http://kristinamariedarling.com/</a><br />
<br />
These two are writers I’d recommend to anyone, and urge everyone to follow.<br />
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*****</div>
<br />
Thanks to <a href="http://www.spencerdew.com/" target="_blank"><b>Spencer Dew</b></a> for participating in <b>The Next Big Thing Blog Hop</b>, a franchise someone who isn't me invented<b> </b>and started spreading around the literary blogosphere many months ago.<br />
<br />
Stay tuned for <b>Eric Nelson</b>'s Next Big Thing answers later today and<b> Jill Summers</b>' next week. And I hope that <b>Ocean Capewell</b> will be blogging her answers <a href="http://agingriotgrrrl.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">on her blog</a> sometime this week. Karen Lillishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04624398526912042847noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4982013421663058277.post-64049153347392814292013-01-02T08:10:00.001-08:002013-01-02T14:13:02.297-08:00The Next Big Thing Blog Hop<br />
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<br />
I'm a big fan of <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/620591.Lori_Jakiela" target="_blank"><b>Lori Jakiela</b></a>'s writing (poetry and literary nonfiction)<b>, </b>so I was excited to read more details about her forthcoming book via <a href="http://stephenvramey.com/2012/12/26/the-next-best-thing-blog-hop-lori-jakiela/" target="_blank">The Next Big Thing Blog Hop</a>. Lori tagged me for the Blog Hop for this week, so I'll answer the Next Big Thing's standard questions about my next book project. (See which writers I tagged for next week's Blog Hop at the end.) <br />
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*****</div>
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<b>TNBT: What is the working title of your book?</b><br />
<br />
<b>Karen:</b><i> Bagging the Beats at Midnight: Confessions of a New York Bookstore Clerk</i><br />
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<b><b>TNBT: </b>Where did the idea come from for your book?</b><br />
<br />
<b>Karen: </b>I was in library school a few years ago, and the students around me were arguing that printed books were a thing of the past. Someone said that a PDF or a blog was the same as a book: Just "an information container." Others loved to say that video games and DVDs and books were the same thing, just equivalent forms of “content delivery.” These students were in the majority, and the book lovers among us were looked on as being an outdated generation, people who hadn't gotten the memo, and a hindrance to progress. But I knew that books and book culture had, at times, contained my whole life, and never more so than during the years I worked at <a href="https://www.stmarksbookshop.com/" target="_blank">St. Mark's Bookshop</a> (1997-2005). I decided to write an account of these years, telling the stories of books and bookstore life and the people with whom I shared books.<br />
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<b><b>TNBT: </b>What genre does your book fall under?</b><br />
<br />
<b>Karen: </b>Literary nonfiction/bookstore memoir<br />
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<b><b>TNBT: </b>Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?</b><br />
<br />
<b>Karen: </b>I'm going to need a film optioning fee before I discuss that.<br />
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<b><b>TNBT: </b>What is the one sentence synopsis of your book?</b><br />
<br />
<b>Karen: </b><i>Bagging the Beats at Midnight</i> is the bookstore memoir of a budding novelist in New York at the turn of the millennium: one part story of a great bookstore, one part story of a young writer and her adventures through the underground literary world of Downtown and Brooklyn.<br />
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<b><b>TNBT: </b>Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?</b><br />
<br />
<b>Karen: </b>No agent involved thus far. When I get finished or much closer to finished, I plan to approach my favorite literary presses.<br />
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<b><b>TNBT: </b>How long did it take for you to write the first draft of your manuscript?</b><br />
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<b>Karen: </b>I started the book as a monthly column for Tim Hall's <i>Undie Press</i> magazine, in Fall of 2010 (through the Summer of 2011). I'm still working on the book; no first draft yet.<br />
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<b><b>TNBT: </b>What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?</b><br />
<br />
<b>Karen: </b>I'm not sure I know another book that's doing quite the same thing. It's different from other bookstore memoirs in that it's a series of non-fiction pieces connected by the bookstore, but it's not trying to be a chronological account of my time at the bookstore. It also goes in and out of the bookstore, exploring other aspects of my life with book and print culture: I self-published a novel and went on a book tour by Greyhound, I worked on an anti-war and poetry newspaper after 9/11, I spent my days off at used bookstores, I dreamt of selling books on the street.<br />
<br />
I've been getting inspiration from a variety of books: The much talked-about <i>Gutenberg Elegies</i>; Eileen Myles' <i>Inferno: A Poet's Novel</i>; Chloe Caldwell's book of essays, <i>Legs Get Led Astray</i>; Mark Spitzer's bookstore memoir, <i>Writer in Residence</i>; the new oral history about Williamsburg, Brooklyn called <i>The Last Bohemia</i>; and books about customer service work in other fields: <i>Checkout</i> by Anna Sam, and <i>Hey, Waitress</i> by Alison Owings.<br />
<br />
<b><b>TNBT: </b>What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?</b><br />
<br />
<b>Karen: </b>Set at a bookstore which is central to the cultural life of an uniquely creative neighborhood (the East Village), <i>Bagging the Beats at Midnight</i> tells the story of an indie bookstore clerk navigating friendships and the small press lit scene at the height of print culture, just before the internet and social media dominated communication, publicity, and book sales.<br />
<br />
The latest excerpt can be found in <b>COMPOSITE ARTS MAGAZINE</b>, Issue 10:<br />
<a href="http://www.compositearts.com/composite_no10interact.pdf" target="_blank">http://www.compositearts.com/composite_no10interact.pdf</a>
<br />
This excerpt is one example of the way the story goes in and out of the bookstore. The chapter revolves around an East Village reading organized by a small press of Russian expats; St. Mark’s Bookshop is used as a lens or an organizing principle, a place where I was introduced to, and made sense of, the poets and small presses who mingled on the shelves and in (and out of) the store.<br />
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***** </div>
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<b>Blog Hop:</b> Now I get the pleasure of tagging three terrific writers–-<a href="http://agingriotgrrrl.wordpress.com/" target="_blank"><b>Ocean Capewell</b></a> writes the zine <i>High on Burning Photographs</i> and she has a novel and a manuscript-in-progress I hope she’ll tell us more about. <a href="http://www.spencerdew.com/" target="_blank"><b>Spencer Dew</b></a> is the author of <i>Songs of Insurgency</i> (Vagabond Press, 2008), <i>Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres</i> (Another New Calligraphy, 2010), and a forthcoming novel from Ampersand Books, <i>Here Is How It Happens</i>. <a href="http://nolastudiola.com/2012/12/26/interview-with-author-eric-nelson/" target="_blank"><b>Eric Nelson</b></a> wrote <i>The Silk City Series</i>, a zine that became a book (Knickerbocker Circus Publishing, 2010); he has a new book forthcoming from The Crumpled Press in January 2013.
Karen Lillishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04624398526912042847noreply@blogger.com2