It seems like an easy jab: those who can, do, those who can't, teach. It's also easy to fall into the mocked side of that dichotomy. How many writers take up a full-time teaching gig -- for whatever reason -- and maintain the same pace and quality they did before? Grading endless stories instead of writing your own clearly takes its toll. Unless you're John McNally.

Now, I'm sure John would be the first to say that he would rather be writing during the times that he is teaching or grading students' work, but he hasn't let his duties as a faculty member at Wake Forest University or other teaching stints dull his progress. He just issued his fifth book in the past decade, the satirical After the Workshop. In addition, he has edited six anthologies, taken a crack at screenplay writing and continues to write and place short stories.

Given that output and work ethic, it seems we can put to rest any supposition that McNally's characters are thinly veiled versions of their creator. After the Workshop's Jack Hercules Sheahan may share a bit of McNally's resume -- Iowa Writer's Workshop graduate and one-time media escort for traveling writers -- but unlike McNally, Sheahan has debilitating writer's block that has relegated his one-time debut novel in progress to a box tucked out of sight.

Sheahan is the latest McNally protagonist with more talent than ambition. These are working-class guys who have nothing handed to them... or if it is, it will probably just make things more difficult for them. But McNally renders these tales with considerable empathy and boatloads of sharp humor that allows him to tackle topics much deeper than he might otherwise be allowed.

McNally has been involved in academia for 27 years, either as a student or a teacher, and brings the lessons learned during that time to bear on his next project, his first non-fiction book, The Creative Writer's Survival Guide: Advice from an Unrepentant Novelist. That book, forthcoming this year from University of Iowa Press, will perhaps offer some insights that will allow readers to better understand how it is possible for McNally to continue to crank out such top-notch fiction while his attention is pulled in any number of directions.

Caveat: I met John when taking a course he taught at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival at the University of Iowa. I signed up for his class on short fiction after reading and loving Troublemakers. I was not disappointed; John was an insightful, funny and personable instructor, and it has been a pleasure to stay in touch with both John and his work since.

Note: McNally reads from After the Workshop at Prairie Lights Books in Iowa City on Tuesday, March 9 at 7 p.m. I am hosting the reading, and will lead a Q&A with John after he reads. Listen online here.

TIRBD: While many novels have been written about writers and writing, none that I know of take on writing programs in general, and specifically the Iowa Writers' Workshop, as directly as you do. That, coupled with the fact that you used real Iowa City institutions and geography made this really resonate. Was there ever a moment where you considered fictionalizing things more, and why did you decide instead to choose this path?

JM: When I was in the Workshop in the late ‘80s, I read a lot of books set in Iowa City, like John Irving’s The Water-Method Man and W.P. Kinsella’s The Iowa Baseball Confederacy, and I still remember that shock of recognition I experienced every time a real place appeared in one of the books. In my first novel, The Book of Ralph, I used a lot of real places as well, but I never named the city, except to say that it was on the southwest side of Chicago, and I’ve since regretted it. With this book, I didn’t want there to be any ambiguity about place.

There is a real love-hate relationship with the Workshop here, and you'll surely be asked how much of Jack is you given that your own time in the Workshop is so prominent in the promotion of the book. So, how much is you, how much is friends and acquaintances and how much is made up of whole cloth?

As with most of my fiction, my starting point is often autobiographical, but it tends to veer quickly away from that. I was a media escort in Iowa City; I graduated from the Workshop; I kicked around for a number of years before my first book was accepted. But I never experienced the writer’s block that Jack does, and I didn’t remain in Iowa City after graduating. (I moved back about seven or eight years later.) Jack is a slightly more pathetic version of who I was. But we shared the same fear that this whole thing – being a writer – wasn’t ever going to come to fruition, and there were many times, back when I was driving writers around as an author escort, that I questioned my reason for being, as Jack does. As for other people and places, I can say that some of the scenes grew out of conversations I was privy to, and some of the characters are composites of types of writers I’ve met, but that’s true of almost every book I’ve written. In The Book of Ralph, Ralph is a composite of three kids I knew, and yet everyone I grew up with thinks they know for sure who the real Ralph is. I’m suspect the same thing will happen with After the Workshop.

One significant way you differ from Jack is that you have published several books, with five novels and story collections of your own and several anthologies. Was there a point at which you were in Jack's shoes, unable to finish something and wondering if you ever would? If so, what pulled you out of that? Are you ever scared that could still happen?

I have rarely had writer’s block. I’ve had stretches of not being able to write because of situational things in my life, but it wasn’t because I didn’t have anything to write about. Unlike Jack, I was always able to finish the books I was working on, but I wrote two novels before my first book was published, and I’ve since written two novels that haven’t seen publication. So, my fear isn’t so much that I’ll be blocked as it is that I’ll write another book that won’t get published. In that regard, I could empathize with Jack’s wondering what the hell his life is amounting to and what, if anything, he can do about it.

You're becoming quite adept at poking institutions that don't welcome the provocation. First came the Bush Administration in America's Report Card (and, of course, ACT), and now the fabled Iowa Writers' Workshop. This makes for edgier fiction, to be sure, but are there repercussions that ever make you doubt the wisdom of that course?

My way of thinking (and, I’ll admit, it’s probably not sound) is that you’re only going to suffer repercussions if you have something to lose. I suppose the Workshop will never ask me to teach there as a Visiting Writer, but you know what? It’s not something I’ve pined for, and there’s a 99.99 percent chance it wasn’t going to happen anyway. I haven’t been waiting by the phone, in other words. Also, my intention in writing the novel wasn’t to take down the Workshop or the publishing industry. It was to write about a guy with a crappy job who’s questioning his purpose in life. In doing so, I hold up a few institutions and gently poke them, but I honestly don’t think I’ve poked fun at anything that can’t take it. Oh, and I’ve gotten pretty good at building bookcases these past few years, so if the whole writing thing dries up as a result of some serious miscalculation on my part, I’ve got a fallback plan.

Humor again plays a part in your work, deployed most effectively as a way to deflate some of the odd inner workings of the Workshop and the publishing world. As a graduate of the Workshop and someone dependent to an extent on the publishing world, did you worry about biting the hand that feeds, and did that lead you to temper things at any point? Did the humor let you get away with more than you might have otherwise?

Humor lets you get away with a lot. In both satiric novels – After the Workshop and America’s Report Card – I’ve had to trim back places where it seemed too rant-like. In After the Workshop, I tried to leave no stone unturned. I wanted it all in there. But what happens is that the first draft had passages that were too essay-like, passages that lacked humor and didn’t do anything to service the story or the characters, and so those had to go. As for biting the hand that feeds me…no, I’m not worried about that. I never tempered anything in the book for that reason.

You mentioned the last time we did one of these Q&As that your next book would be your Gravity's Rainbow. Is this that, or did this pop up in the middle? And to that end, when you start something, do you finish it or do you let the heat of inspiration pull you in a different direction when a new idea surfaces, no matter what it might interrupt?

I said that? Yeah; well…my problem is that I work on too many things at once. There’s a long, complicated novel that I’m working on, but when the idea for this novel was presented to me (I was having a conversation with my then-agent, telling her about my days as a media escort, and she said, “You should write that book.”), I sat down and wrote a few pages to see if there was anything there, but once I started writing, I didn’t stop until I was done. (Well, okay, I did stop to sleep and eat, but I kept knocking out a few pages a day.) With this book in the bag, I returned to the big novel again, but I’ve since had an idea for a short novel, so that’s what I’m working on right now. It’s unlike anything I’ve written, and I’m having a great time with it, so I want to keep going with it to see what happens.

Your next book is The Creative Writer's Survival Guide: Advice from an Unrepentant Novelist. You have taught writing for years. Was the act of writing down your thoughts and ideas illuminating at all? Did the process of organizing potentially disparate notions cause you to rethink any long-held beliefs?

What it illuminated was just how damned hard it is to write a nonfiction book. I walked away with an even greater respect for nonfiction writers, for whom I already had enormous respect. I’m not sure it made me rethink any long-held beliefs, though. It’s a highly opinionated book, and after spending 27 years in academia as either a student or a teacher, and almost as long writing and sending work to magazines while writing books, I’ve formed a lot of opinions. The book does come with this warning: “You may not agree with me.” At some point down the road, I’ll probably update the book, and I suspect some of my opinions will have changed in the interim, so I’m looking at it as an amorphous project, and I’m granting myself permission to disagree with myself when the time comes.

Labels: books, Monday Interview

After reading Steve Hamilton's first novel, A Cold Day in Paradise, it didn't take me long to zip through the rest of his seven Alex McKnight novels. The last time I was this captivated by an author and his main protagonist, Michael Connelly was hooking me with his Harry Bosch books.

There are a few similarities there: A police background, a loner who pushes people away and a keen mind that is adept at solving crimes. There are similarities in the writers, too, in that both write extremely well about characters yet don't let that get in the way of deftly plotted stories. Theirs are the kinds of books that reveal the whole "style over substance" argument as it relates to crime fiction a sham.

If Hamilton's new novel is any indication, he and Connelly are soon to share another trait: successful novelists who are able to weave together a career alternating between series books and top-notch stand-alones. Connelly has proven adept at the practice, and Hamilton, with The Lock Artist, proves he is more than up to the task.

Instead of McKnight, a former pro baseball player and cop who now lives in a cabin in the remote Upper Peninsula of Michigan, we get Michael, someone once know as "the miracle boy" who now is a talented lock picker and safecracker. He is unlucky enough to show off his skills in the wrong company, and now he is forced into a life of crime. Further complicating things is that that "miracle" event left him unable to speak, so the best way he can communicate is through his detailed, skillful drawings. (If you want more than that, look around the web. Hamilton plays with time here, so to give away much more is to give away too much).

With this book, Hamilton has stepped up his game. Though the McKnight books are awfully good, The Lock Artist is the best thing he has done, a cleverly plotted, sophisticated story full of rich, well-drawn characters that leap off of the page. It should be a career-defining book, sating the appetites of patient fans pining for the next McKnight book, and drawing in many more who have been oblivious to this top-flight talent.

TIRBD: From a reader's perspective, The Lock Artist is a book that clearly takes your writing to another level and is quite different in almost every aspect from the McKnight books. Does it feel that way from your perspective, and what signifies the differences for you?

SH: It does feel a lot different, yes. It’s a younger character, and the overall feeling in the book ties in a lot more closely to things I’ve felt in my own life. Not so much the lockpicking and safecracking, obviously, but the feeling of alienation and loneliness. With Michael, that feeling is a lot more dramatic, but otherwise the whole story could be like a strange dream version of my own teenage years.

You mention that writing Michael allowed you to write about alienation and loneliness. But Alex McKnight certainly deals with both of those things, too. How was this different?

I suppose you could do some psychoanalysis on me and find out why that's such a recurrent theme – but in this new book those feelings hit a lot closer to home for me. Alex has his own brand of solitude, of course, but he was a good 10 years older than me when I first started writing about him (funny how I seem to be catching up to him now), and he'd already been through a career as a cop, a divorce, and a lot of other things that I can only imagine. In Michael's case, he's 17 and his life hasn't even started yet. So, that's something I could definitely relate to, looking back at that same point in my own life.

The book is quite specific in its detail about how to pick locks and crack safes, and has the feel of being more than a recitation of research. Did you try your hand at these things to get a feel for them and better your descriptions of the act?

I was fortunate enough to work with a lock expert – somebody who knows a lot about lockpicking and even more so about opening those $5 combination locks you see on every gym locker. (Very easy to open, it turns out.) I also found a gentleman who happens to be one of the best safecrackers in the world. He was incredibly kind and generous in helping me to understand what it feels like to open a huge, 800-pound safe. (He’s not a criminal, by the way! He’s a legal safecracker and that’s the only thing he does, every single day.)

Is technology getting to the point where a book like this might one day be historical fiction because everything will be electronic and skills like these will be dated?

Apparently (and don’t quote me on this), the electronic safes are fairly easy to crack if you have a special computer that can transmit the different codes at a high speed. There’s something about a good old-fashioned metal combination dial that people just naturally trust. I don’t think that’ll change for quite a while.

I would imagine that the character of Mike evolved for you as layers were added: young kid who suffered a tragedy and can now pick locks and can't speak and is a great artist... did you worry at any point that you'd gone perhaps one step too far in giving Mike things to deal with, or did all of these seem vital from the start in terms of telling the story you wanted to tell?

It all started with the fascination with locks, and how that tied back to this thing that had happened to him. The muteness literally didn’t occur to me until I got to his first line of dialogue. Then it was just like, No, he’s not going to talk! That’s going to be the thing he has to deal with, every moment of every day. The talent with art followed after that, because without speaking he needs some way to impress a girl, right? Otherwise, it’s hopeless.

You set up an interesting premise that is fairly unique in crime and mystery fiction: the protagonist who is forced to use his skills in criminal pursuits. How does it change the dynamics of a crime story when there isn't the clear cut choice between doing right or wrong?

Mike does know it’s wrong, of course, but he does it anyway, because it’s essentially the best choice he has. Although the first time was clearly a mistake, letting himself get roped into this seemingly innocent thing, because he succumbs to the basic idea of finally being popular at school. Eventually, he’s on the edge of becoming a full-fledged criminal, but at that point it’s just about impossible to turn back. He does it for what he sees as a perfectly justifiable reason – to protect the one person he’s ever loved.

You mention on your web site that you're back at work on another McKnight book. Does that process feel different now that you've been away for two books? Do you bring anything to it this time out that you learned from writing those other books that you might not have otherwise?

That was the idea. Take some time away from the series, recharge my batteries, become a better writer. (And never, ever get to the point where you’re just mailing it in!) I didn’t plan on doing two books outside the series – this new one just sort of got in my head and wouldn’t leave – but I’m glad it all turned out that way. Now that I’m back to work on the next Alex McKnight book, it all feels new again.

Given the success of The Lock Artist, do you foresee a new schedule that finds you alternating between series and non-series books like Michael Connelly, Laura Lippman and many others now do?

Absolutely yes. I’ll keep doing new and different things, and I’ll keep going back. (As long as people are reading the books, anyway.)

What is the status of the various film projects associated with your McKnight books?

I’ve been working (and reworking and reworking) on the “Cold Day” screenplay with Nick Childs – the director I worked with on “The Shovel.” He hopes to get that off the ground this year. Actually, this new book might get adapted first! There’s been some real interest, and talks are ongoing, as they say. Just think about it – some young actor gets to be in every scene, without ever having a line of dialogue! Talk about a breakout role, eh?

Labels: books, crime fiction, Monday Interview

Former Iowa poet laureate Robert Dana died this weekend. The 80-year-old Dana had been battling pancreatic cancer. Still, he was writing up until the end. His most recent book, The Other, came out in 2009, and despite dealing with writer's block after its release, he was still working.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Dana at his Coralville home in early 2009 for an article about the release of that book. As I wrote, you can stand at the back window of Dana's home, look into the ravine that serves as his backyard, and see the subject matter of many of his poems.

“People are surprised — it’s all right there,” Dana told me. “The longer you live in a place, the more it feeds you. The more it shows you what’s there.”

He knew Iowa, and documented it as well as any other poet, of his generation or any other. His contributions to poetry, and to the state, were invaluable. He taught at Cornell College in Mount Vernon for 40 years, and resurrected the North American Review literary journal.

Thanks to his generosity, I have gathered a small library of his work, and enjoyed watching as he evolved late in life from formal verse to freer, more playful (and, frankly, incisive) forms. The next I'll acquire is New & Selected Poems: 1955 to 2010 from Anhinga Press. It's about time Dana's work has been collected, and it will serve as a fitting tribute to a poet who never stopped reaching.

“I don’t want to be a poet who repeats himself. It’s another reason I keep moving on, lighting out for the territory,” he said last year. “What do you do when you run out of territory?”

Labels: books, poetry

I first heard Franklin Bruno when I picked up an album from his band Nothing Painted Blue (ØPB). I'm not sure what led me to the purchase; perhaps a good review in a fanzine or simply the visual appeal of the album cover, but it was a fortuitous purchase. A Baby, A Blanket, a Packet of Seeds started what has been a 20-year streak of dependably outstanding releases.

My look back was precipitated by Bruno's own. He just released a collection of his solo odds and ends from 1992-98, dubbed Local Currency. Listening to all of these songs in one place rather than on the scattered pieces of vinyl or compilation albums, I'm struck not by the consistency, but rather by the variety. While there are plenty of pop gems like those Bruno has sprinkled throughout his career, I had forgotten the noisy, more obtuse experiments. Just when you think you have a guy pegged, he surprises you.

This trip down memory lane had me pulling out a lot of Bruno's back catalog, and I was glad for the excuse. Too long had elapsed since I had spun some of the earliest ØPB releases, and they deserve to be back in rotation. The band broke no new ground musically, but the territory it traversed it did very well, melding a very slight punk attitude (though more in the "let's make our own records" vein than anything sonically) with pop smarts and the most erudite lyrics around. Bruno cites the Go-Betweens as an influence, and I'd bet that Stephen Malkmus would cite Bruno and ØPB as one, too.

It has been difficult to keep up with Bruno's output, released as it has been on albums, 7" singles, cassettes (long live Shrimper!) and various compilations. Thankfully, Local Currency helps to fill in some gaps and makes listening to some of his less readily available work note quite so arduous. In addition to his work with ØPB and his solo recordings, he has worked with the Mountain Goats' John Darnielle as the Extra Glenns (whose lone disc, Martial Arts Weekend is superb) and with Jenny Toomey (of Tsunami, et al) on the disc Tempting. A new group, Human Hearts issued the disc Civics on Chicago's Tight Ship Records a couple of years back as well.

In addition to the music, Bruno is an accomplished academic and an insightful music critic. He has kept a handful of blogs, Nervous Unto Thirst being the latest (his recent look at Brad Paisley's "American Saturday Night" shows you how entertaining the reports from an enlightened critical ear can be). He has written for many publications, including the Believer, which in its November/December 2009 issue published a great interview Bruno conducted with musician/artist Peter Blegvad. He wrote a book on Elvis Costello's Armed Forces for Continuum's 33 1/3 series and, in the first thing I read that showed me his talents beyond music, he wrote a scathingly funny (and spot-on) review of the horrid indie rock novel Our Noise that ran in Matador Record's shortlived newsletter, Escandalo!

Bruno reports below that there is more in the works. So, catch up with Local Currency, then get ready to dive back in.

TIRBD: Any surprises or revelations when you heard all of the material gathered on Local Currency?

FB: I always had in my head that that group of songs -- especially the one on my first 3 7"s -- were a kind of album-by-other-means. (That's part of the reason there were four or five short songs per single/EP.) So I knew that they would hang together, somehow. That said, on going back to the original recordings, I was surprised that so many of them include some "experimental" element, whether it be low-rent sound collage or some kind of noisy intrusion (or alongside) these formally tidy little songs. I guess my ideas about recording were a little stranger than I realized at the time. Beyond that, I'm pleasantly surprised that some of my guitar playing still seems interesting, to me at least, and less happy to find that I could have taken more care over the vocals. I shouldn't apologize too much -- that diffident attitude towards getting certain things "right" could also be heard as a kind of immediacy. Either way, that approach was part and parcel of the '90s indie scene. Also, since I've been playing some of these songs live again for the first time in many years, I'm relieved that some of them stand up -- with a rhythm section, "Cat-Scratch Fever" (not a Nugent cover) has turned into a full-on Smiths pastiche.

Any thought of putting out more of your hard-to-find material on CD or digitally? Your Shrimper cassettes and the first Nothing Painted Blue LP in particular...

I'm more interested in my current projects (see your later question), so it isn't a priority. There are also practical problems: I've never been a good archivist, and there may not be "master" versions of the material from the Shrimper tapes, in particular, that would merit digital release without a lot of clean-up work. We still have the half-inch masters and multi-track tapes for the first ØPB album (all-analog as matter of necessity, not ideology), but that record was pretty under-realized owing to our lack of studio experience. It's a document of where we, and I, started, but I'm not sure I'd make people spend money to hear it. (The other side of this is that I don't object if that material is distributed, ahem, unofficially.) All that said, there's probably a CDs worth of post-Emotional Discipline ØPB singles/compilation tracks/unmixed songs dropped from other records that I wouldn't mind assembling at some point -- we were fairly prolific in out day, and there are some buried songs that (perhaps) deserve a wider hearing.

I've always found your music criticism and analysis fascinating but I wonder, does the penchant for thinking so deeply about music have an adverse effect on your ability to listen for pleasure? Can you turn it off?

I don't find that it's a matter of "turning it off." I don't experience myself as having any trouble marveling at the music that I love, whether that's realized in composition (songwriting) or performance or both, and I think it's possible that my analytical side opens me to an appreciation of craft and structure, which I think have as much aesthetic potential as, say, "intensity." (I suppose I'm often looking for the place where mere craft and skill transcend themselves, if that makes any sense.) Generally, I've never held with the idea that critical analysis "destroys" what's valuable in aesthetic experience. First of all, I'm not sure what the metaphor is supposed to convey. I mean, what's there is still there whether someone purports to account for it or not, so I don't see what's actually "destroyed." And also, if you truly believe that there's something genuinely ineffable or inexpressible about how a piece of music (or poetry or film or what have you) works, then all the language in the world won't touch that. (I'm sorry if this is the kind of "intellectual" sounding answer that people might expect from me, but there you go. Trust me, this answer could be longer.) On the other hand, having been around for a while does probably make it harder for me to be enthusiastic about some new bands -- a revival of some style (neo-psych-folk or angular dance-rock or whatever) is less exciting when you were around for what's being revived. (Though there are always individual remarkable exceptions.) None of that is a function of being a critic as such -- it's just a matter of age.

Do you put the same thought into your own music, or rather, do you become your own harshest critic? Does that ever limit what you are willing to release?

These are tough questions, John. Given some of what I've seen written about myself, I'm pretty sure I'm not my own harshest critic! And, while I'm certainly aware of the failures of craft or execution on just about everything I've released, I can't believe that most artists don't feel the same way, and what I find dissatisfying in my own work is probably not the same as what outside listeners, critically inclined or not, might find lacking. As for "thought," I do sometimes have critical or mildly theoretical ideas that guide a particular recording. For example, on the Human Hearts album I'm working on now, I've decided not to use any strings (even though I'm friends with some wonderful players and arrangers), as a kind of push-back against the tendency in indiedom to use "orchestral" instruments as a signal that something is to be taken more seriously than a "mere" rock band. (I find the implied hierarchy here a bit undemocratic, or undemotic -- even though I have this rep as "brainy" or "quirky" or whatever, I'm still much more interested in music that retains some tie to vernacular traditions.) I could go on (I'm more interested in horns), but it's just an example.

I do think that being a critic, or at least trying to be a widely-informed listener, does make it harder to be a "true believer" about one's own music. When you're, say, 20 and involved in a tight-knit local scene, as I was, it's easy to have the conviction that you and your friends have found the way, and to reject other possibilities out of hand. (Consider the asceticism of Fugazi, which wouldn't really be possible if they had been "open-minded.")

Lastly, while I certainly drop songs or recordings for various reasons (like, they suck, or they're too evidently derivative), I'm not a perfectionist -- no one working in any artistic medium who actually intends to put something into the world more than once a decade can afford to be. (Okay, I'm a perfectionist, or nearly so, about one thing -- though it works when the Minutemen or Stereolab do it, I mostly can't abide lyrics that violently distort the conventional syllabic stress of a word in order to fit a melody, and avoid this at all costs.)

Are the people in the academia side of your life aware of your musical career (and vice versa) and what is the reaction from those who are?

My sense is that the criticism and journalism puzzles academics more than the music does. And I suspect other musicians may not care one way or another what I do outside of that realm. But, ultimately, you'd have to ask them.

Your entry in Continuum's 33 1/3 series is on Elvis Costello's Armed Forces. Could you imagine a book-length look at one of your own releases, and if so, what might be the approach?

It would be flattering, but I'm too close to the records to imagine how (or why) someone would do this. What made it possible for me to do the EC book was my interest in connecting the record to the political context of its moment (Rock Against Racism, the National Front, the run-up to Thatcherism) and some of its deeper roots in earlier British fascist movements, and also as a way of working through - though not to any kind of final conclusion - some of the thorny issues around, well, rock and race, using the so-called "Columbus incident" and EC's subsequent career as a case study. I hope all that gives the book a richness that wouldn't be there if it were all just formal commentary on the song-structures and performances. It's not clear that any of my records could be convincingly tied to their social context in a similar way -- but then again, it's not clear that they couldn't. From my own perspective, the second Nothing Painted Blue album, Power Trips Down Lovers Lane, was very much affected by being in Southern California at the time of the uprising following the Rodney King case, and by reading Situationist polemic (especially Raoul Vaneigem on the earlier Watts riots -- he's quoted on the back of the "Swivelchair" sleeve) while watching the riots go down. (I recognize that it's perverse to filter all that through a musical vocabulary that rests more on the dB's and the Go-Betweens than on, say, Public Enemy.) And then those concerns were connected in vaguer ways to ideas about architecture, the suburbs, and my own experiences doing white-collar temp work. (And, yes, all of these things recur on later records.) But how someone should go about writing about these connections, or how they relate to their musical realizations, isn't for me to say.

What is the status of your various projects (Nothing Painted Blue, Extra Glenns, Human Hearts and your solo work)?

Nothing Painted Blue: We're all still friends, so there's never been an official breakup, but we're geographically dispersed, so there's nothing on the horizon. I've played with both Kyle and Peter separately in the last few months -- Peter is on the Human Hearts album-in-progress, and I played a duo show with Kyle in L.A. last November. Never say never.

The Human Hearts: I'm playing under this name around New York, usually with drummer Matt Houser, and whoever I can rope in for a few songs for a given show. (We've also gone to Boston and D.C.) I wouldn't mind finding a more permanent bass player, but it's intended to be more of a fluid "project" than a stable band. There will be a 7" on Fayettenam later this year, and I'm about halfway through recording a new album with various guests, which will be done when it's done. I'd say the next record after that is at least half-written already.

The Extra Glenns: John Darnielle and I have changed the name to The Extra Lens (for private reasons I won't go into), and we've finished a new album that should come out late 2010/2011. That will probably be the next thing to see the light of day. Pretty sure we'll tour a bit -- possibly just John, myself, and Peter Hughes (who's releasing his first solo record in years soon). I'm excited -- John and I sometimes manage to be more than the sum of our parts.

Solo -- Well, I still play under my own name when it's genuinely just me and a guitar, but I don't really plan to release new material "as" Franklin Bruno anymore. As much as I admire many artists who use "bandonyms" for their one-person projects, I've always felt uncomfortable with the practice, probably because I don't attempt to construct a performing persona distinct from the one I project in day-to-day life.

I should also mention two other projects: My partner/spousal equivalent/squeeze Bree Benton performs a cabaret/theater act as "Poor Baby Bree," doing vaudeville and parlor songs from the late 19th c. through the 30s, and I'm the pianist/arranger ("musical director," in theater parlance) for that. We just did our first shows with additional musicians, a fantastic violist and trombonist, and we should be doing more later in the year. Also, Jenny Toomey and I have just started talking about doing something new in the vein of Tempting -- that record had her covering some old and new songs of mine, but this one we'll probably co-write.

Labels: books, Monday Interview, music

For any number of reasons, I'm not a big fan of memoirs. Take your pick: too much information about childhood, too little insight to leaven the recounting of exploits or tales simply too tall to be true. In the case of Patti Smith, add in the flake factor, as well as my lack of knowledge (or, I'll admit, interest) in Robert Mapplethorpe and his work, and the result is a curious but reluctant reader.

All of this is by way of saying that Smith had a considerable barrier to scale when it came to winning over this reader. But win she did. Just Kids is a fantastic, fascinating book. While the hook for most will be the recounting of Smith's relationship with Mapplethorpe -- it began as a romance and then, after Mapplethorpe discovered he was gay, an intense friendship and artistic partnership -- the way she chronicles the creation, nearly from the ground up, of two of the late-20th century's most enduring artists, is the real draw.

Smith's fans likely know some of the story already, and anyone who watched the illuminating documentary Dream of Life, has seen Smith tell some of these stories. But the bulk of this was new to me, and it was conveyed in such a clear-eyed, detailed and passionate way that it inspired at the same time it informed. Smith and Mapplethorpe were ambitious kids who had the fortune to run into each other in 1967 New York, and the tenacity to hook up with and cultivate the right people to push their dreams forward. Each ended up somewhere they didn't expect -- Smith as a rock 'n' roll star and Mapplethorpe as a revered photographer -- and without each other, it's unlikely either would have been more than a footnote.

The reader has the value of hindsight, knowing that Smith would be a star, that Mapplethorpe would die before his time from AIDS, that some of those they rubbed shoulders with would soar and others would fade. Smith knows this too, of course, but it rarely intrudes on her story. It's clear that the William Burroughs in the book is the William Burroughs, for example, but elsewhere, casually mentioned acquaintances like Janis Joplin or Sam Shepherd are rendered contemporaneously, their eventual starpower not overshadowing their pre-stardom selves.

While the focus is on Mapplethorpe, a thread running through the book is how Smith aligns herself with men that help propel her forward. There is never the sense that she is an Eliza Doolittle with a series of Henry Higginses, but rather that each man teases out something within and sends her further along her journey. It begins with Mapplethorpe, but Shepherd, Blue Oyster Cult's Allen Lanier, Todd Rundgren and others each seem to give Smith a valuable nudge.

Speaking of the men in her life, it's fitting, given that Smith writes often in the book about his influence, that her's is the best book about the creation of art since Bob Dylan's Chronicles vol. 1. Writing about the debut of the Patti Smith Group with drummer Jay Dee Daugherty, she says of learning that Dylan was at the show, "It seemed for me a night of initiation, where I had to become fully myself in the presence of the one I had modeled myself after."

In the end, the book made me want to listen to all of Smith's music, read all of her poems, look at all of her sketches and watch ever frame of film taken of her. The same goes for others in the book. I long to read Burroughs and Gregory Corso, thumb through Mapplethorpe's work and even listen to Joplin. For what Smith has done with Just Kids is to make art come alive, to give it a pulse. Hers was a life lived immersed in art. Late in the book, she writes about Mapplethorpe on his deathbed, asking, "'Patti, did art get us?' I looked away, not wanting to think about it. 'I don't know, Robert. I don't know.' Perhaps it did, but no one could regret that. Only a fool would regret being had by art."

Labels: books, music

Joshua Ferris seemed poised to take up the mantle as the best of the country's young literary satirists. His debut novel, Then We Came to the End, was a critical hit and a National Book Award finalist. It was the rare modern novel that was funny and spot-on in its depictions of the workplace. It even took stylistic chances thanks to Ferris' use of a first person plural narrator (the book opens with the wonderful lines, “We were fractious and overpaid. Our mornings lacked promise.”).

Instead of following that path, however, Ferris has gone in a completely different direction. His new book, The Unnamed, is a much darker tale. It tells of Tim Farnsworth, a successful, hard-charging New York attorney, who suffers a peculiar affliction: He is compelled to walk, with no seeming provocation, until he can walk no more. He will get up from a hearing, excuse himself if his body is pointed in the right direction, and head out of the courtroom and onto the street, stopping only when his body is no longer able to carry him. He'll then drop and sleep, waking in any number of situations. A call placed to his wife, Jane, alerts her to his location, and she drives to retrieve him.

All of this has a predictably negative affect on everything in Tim's life: his career, his marriage, his relationship with his daughter and his health, both mental and physical. Ferris offers a fascinating look at that impact, but that evidence doesn't add up to a diagnosis. Ferris leaves much to the reader's interpretation. Is Tim suffering from a mental illness? Some unknown physical ailment? The jury is still out (and a look at the many reviews of the book reveal an emerging spirited discussion on the topic as well as about whether the book is an allegory for something else).

If nothing else, the Unnamed shows that there is much more to Ferris than a gift for satire. He mentions below that he has no interest in repeating himself, which, based on his first two books, means we're in for quite a ride. His third novel, he says, is well under way.

Ferris, who earned an undergrad degree from the University of Iowa and an MFA from the University of California at Irvine, reads from the Unnamed Tuesday at Prairie Lights Books in Iowa City. I'll be hosting the event, which will include ample time for a Q&A with the in-house audience. Ferris granted me the opportunity for a dry run below. To hear the reading live, Listen online at 7 p.m. CST.

TIRBD: There is a lot of speculation among reviewers and readers about whether Tim’s affliction is mental, physical or spiritual, and whether it is an allegory for something larger. Are you surprised by any interpretations, or has your own view of the work been altered by any of them?

JF: My view of the book hasn't changed. "Interpreting" it, I think, is a generous way of describing what some reviewers do (I had one review, for instance, which read in its entirety: "Joshua Ferris' WTF tale of a successful man who walks out on his wife, kid, and career." Not a lot of care there). I didn't write it as an allegory -- allegories don't interest me as a reader, far less as a writer. Speculation is certainly part of the book -- a mental disease? or physical? and what might answers to those questions imply for what it means to be human? Reviewers kind to the book -- those that have read it with sympathy and sophistication -- have touched upon them.

I have seen mention of Emily Dickinson poems, a Poe short story, John Cheever’s “The Swimmer,” Forrest Gump, White Noise and other works as being precedents/influences. Regardless of whether they’re right, it puts you in good company. Were you aware of similarities between these works and your own, and did that knowledge steer the story in any particular direction?

Never consciously aware. How what a writer reads and assimilates might affect what he or she writes is an alchemy no one will ever fully diagnose or understand. Cheever, Dickinson, DeLillo, Poe -- these writers have all been important to me at various times.

The direction of the story, however, was always in my hands.

Was there any actual shoe leather research done on the book so you could bring some verisimilitude to the sections where you describe what happens to Tim on his long walks?

Yes, with a couple of trusting and intelligent doctors, as well as some old-fashioned reading. My conversations with friend/doctors were particularly helpful. They have all the hard facts about the body, about sickness, about death -- and when I asked them to start dreaming, all that knowledge opened up into fantasy. It was a rewarding experience.

You were seen as daring with the publication is Then We Came to the End. Now, you’re seen as daring (or to some, foolhardy) for not following the path suggested by your debut. Was there a conscious decision on your part to not do the same thing twice?

No, not conscious, if you mean by conscious "calculating" or "shrewd" or "career-centric." I'm not nearly as interested in how my books are received as I am in writing them. I write what's next down a long line of preoccupations and obsessions. What might be seen as daring or foolhardy is a momentary referendum that quickly passes and luckily happens long after I've started on the next thing.

That said, I do think I'm constitutionally incapable of doing the same thing twice. Part of a writer's thrill -- and duty, too -- is to throw the gauntlet down every time, and give yourself no excuse for phoned-in, half-hearted measures.

The Unnamed is one of the first books on your editor’s new imprint, Reagan Arthur Books. Does this put an added burden on your shoulders?

Oh no, no burden. Only pride, happiness, and hope for the beginning of a successful imprint for a loving and important editor.

You sold film rights to the book well before you were finished, after just 120 pages. The book takes some curious turns after that point. Did you worry about delivering on what was promised in those earlier pages when writing the rest? Did you think about the book cinematically as you were writing given the knowledge that it was destined for the screen someday?

If I don't write for critics, or even those who might constitute a readership, I'm not going to write for a producer whose desire for how the book concludes is out of my grasp. If I had, I would have certainly written a more straightforward story, to increase the odds of production, which is always a long shot. In fact, it's part of the reason, that long shot, never to write with a film in mind.

You now have a young son, so I’ll ask a two part question: Are you at work on your third book, and has the writing life changed for you because of this new addition either in terms of your schedule or your worldview?

I'm at work, and -- with the exception of promoting The Unnamed -- pretty steadily, despite the little guy. The worldview changes, of course, but it'd take forever to describe all the ways. Perhaps it's sufficient to say he's lying on the bed right now making farting noises with his hand in his mouth. That's a lot of fun.

Labels: books, Joshua Ferris, Monday Interview

I started reading Ed Gorman because I felt I should; I keep reading him because his books are always entertaining and captivating, and I love his voice.

As an arts & entertainment writer for five years with the daily newspaper in Gorman's hometown of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, I somehow never read Gorman's work. I'm a mystery and crime fiction fan, but there was another guy on staff who was a Gorman fan who snapped up his books to review. Practicing the same snobbish conceit that I find so distasteful in others, I decided that someone from Cedar Rapids probably wasn't worth following, and dismissed the glowing reviews as little more than fealty to a local author.

I left that job for another a few years ago. Later, I helped to set up a (still pending) event in support of the Iowa City library featuring Gorman and fellow Iowa mystery writer Max Allan Collins of Muscatine. I'm slated to moderate a discussion between the two at some point, and figured that I had better familiarize myself with Gorman's work (I've already read a lot of Collins). That was 18 months ago. In the time since, I've read a dozen or so of Gorman's books, including a smattering of the Sam McCain novels and at least one each of his other series. A couple of his excellent stand-alones, including Cage of Night and The Midnight Room also made the list. I can't include Sleeping Dogs in that list of excellent stand-alones, because Gorman just announced that a follow-up to that political thriller, Stranglehold, is due in November.

The discovery of this new favorite author is bittersweet: While I now have dozens of books I know I'll like that I can pick up whenever I need a good mystery to read, I kick myself for ignoring what was under my nose for so long. If asked to describe what I like about Gorman's work, I might be hard-pressed. The closest I can come is that his books are always real. Even with the most fantastic of the stories he spins, I can imagine them unfolding in exactly the way he describes. These are no-nonsense tales with just the right mix of grit, intrigue and humor.

And he keeps getting better. While I found the first McCain book a bit precious thanks to its 1950s sock hop-era setting, the character was compelling enough to hook me. In the latest McCain novel, Ticket to Ride, we're now in the 1960s, and race relations (and their violent underpinnings at the time) drive much of the plot. McCain is a deeper, richer character thanks to the story that Gorman has developed over the books that bridge the gap, and Gorman's voice, always a key draw for me, is deeper and richer as well.

You can learn a little about Gorman and a lot about authors of mystery and western fiction on Gorman's blog. He's not only a chief purveyor of both genres, but something of an amateur historian as well. He does all of this while battling multiple myeloma, a cancer that, while treatable, is not curable. He is candid about that on the blog, occasionally taking a break to deal with treatments.

Some have reported that Ticket to Ride is the last McCain novel, but despite all that Gorman is dealing with, he assures us below that more will follow. That's good. While it will be years before I catch up with all of his output, it's nice to know that list will continue to grow.

TIRBD: From all indications, Ticket to Ride is the last Sam McCain novel. If true, did you set out to tell a story with this particular arc of books, or are there other reasons behind drawing things to a close?

EG: Originally, my first editor on the series wanted me to take McCain into the Seventies. I had some doubts about that, but one night at dinner with Max and Barb Collins Max came up with an idea for a final McCain. I liked it and told my current editor about it. Then the editor and I started kicking around ideas for a few more books to do before the final one. So there’ll be a few more.

You have written very candidly about your cancer and its treatment on your blog. Beyond the obvious affect on your energy and ability to spend time on it, how has it effected your writing?

The first time I was diagnosed with cancer I took it on as an experience.The prognosis was very good and I wasn't unduly afraid. People thought I was in denial, in fact. But the second time when the prognosis was a cancer that was treatable but incurable, that made me more insular and introspective than I've ever been. I'm not sure how this has effected my writing. I think the characters in my darker stories have always been fatalistic. I suppose they're more than way now.

Most of your books are set here in Eastern Iowa. Has that ever felt constraining? Do you ever feel as if your work is judged differently because of that setting?

Well, even though the McCains constitute my longest series, they’re a small part of my resume. I don’t find them constraining because I know that after I finish one I’ll do a very different kind of book. For instance in July a very dark thriller called The Midnight Room came out. Completely different from the McCains. As for the Iowa stigma, oh yeah it’s still operational. I once spoke to a very hoity-toity critic who said that he’d looked at a McCain but he just couldn’t imagine reading a book set in Iowa. It’s stupid snobbery but just part of the flyover country joke. And yes I'm sure there are readers who share his bias. Who the hell would want to read about Iowa?

Through your blog, your work with magazines and your general efforts to support the work of other writers, it seems safe to say you're among a handful of the most-beloved crime fiction writers out there. What is it about the genre that appeals to you so that makes you give so much toward nurturing and sustaining it?

Well, I don’t know how beloved I am but I have tried to help new writers because so many writers — especially Max Collins — helped me when I shifted from short stories to novels. I know a number of established writers who lend a hand when they feel there’s something they can actually do. But the New York publishing scene is in such disarray that even most established writers are scrambling so helping new writers gets more and more problematic.

In your conversations with other writers, do you mull over problems in stories, spitball ideas or collaborate informally on projects?

Not very often. If I do it’s usually with Max or our friend Bob Randisi or the agent all three of us share.

I know you have an incredible grasp on the history of crime fiction and Westerns. What are a few books that you wish you had written and why?

Wow. That would be a long, long list if I put any thought to it. Off the top of my head I'd say Axe by Donald Westlake, The Chill by Ross Macdonald, How Like An Angel by Margaret Millar (Ross' wife), A Key To The Suite by John D. MacDonald, just about any of Simenon's psychological suspense novels. As for westerns, True Grit by Charles Portis, Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry, Valdez is Coming by Elmore Leonard, A Partnership with Death by Clifton Adams and the short stories of H.R. De Rosso.

You came out of the advertising world when you began writing. At what point did you see yourself more as a novelist than an ad man? Did that experience give you anything that gave you a leg up as you transitioned to that new role?

I’ve been asked this many times. I worked for five agencies by the time I was done and I was a terrible employee at each. A champion slacker. I divided my time by trying to figure out how I could get out of anything that resembled work and working out plots for the downscale men’s magazines I was secretly selling to. I just sort of passed through without leaving anything behind or taking anything along.

Labels: books, crime fiction, Monday Interview

2009 was a very good year to be a Big Star fan. Rhino graced us with a boxed set that gathered up seemingly every stray sound recorded by the band, while a limited-edition two-CD version of Chris Bell's lone solo album (the posthumous I Am the Cosmos) rescued every scrap he laid down.

But, strangely enough, the best Big Star-related thing wasn't something you could listen to, but rather something you read. Bruce Eaton's entry in Continuum's excellent 33 1/3 book series dealt with Big Star's Radio City, the band's sophomore outing. In the book, Eaton offers not only the most complete history of Big Star during that period, but he actually gets the notoriously difficult Alex Chilton to talk about that era. He places the album in its proper context both in terms of the work of the musicians involved and its place on the music continuum in general. In doing so, he does what the best 33 1/3 books do: He gives new life to an album that rabid fans likely thought they had completely absorbed. I came away with a much better understanding and appreciation of a favorite album, hearing it in a completely different -- and superior -- way.

Eaton knows of what he writes. He backed Chilton on some concert dates in 1979, has promoted concerts and written about music. All of this experience is brought to bear on his subject. Any Big Star fan worthy of the name has or soon will acquire the boxed set and the Bell release. But to really appreciate what you're hearing, getting a copy of Eaton's book is essential.

By the way, that's Eaton in the photo above, performing with Chilton on June 23, 1979, at McVan's nightclub in Buffalo, N.Y. Eaton keeps a great blog where he writes about the book, the band and his other experiences in the world of music.

TIRBD: Why Radio City and not #1 Record or Third?

BE: A few reasons. It's the Big Star record I heard first and spent about six months absorbing it before I could track down a copy of #1 Record. Also, given that I could only write about one record, Radio City encompasses the range of Big Star the most of the three records. You can relate #1 Record to Radio City and Radio City to Third, but Third doesn't really connect to #1 Record unless you're familiar with Radio City. I thought it would provide the broadest platform for the living central members to discuss. It would be hard to write about #1 Record without Chris, and Third wouldn't include John Fry much, let alone Andy Hummel (or even promo man John King). So it was the best of the three to explore Big Star and tell a good tale in the process.

You spend a lot of time with John Fry, which was illuminating. Why do you think other analyses of Big Star's sound have given him short shrift, and how important is he to that sound?

John was everything to the classic power pop Big Star sound. He built the studio, chose the equipment, taught everyone how to use it, gave them the time and space to experiment, and laid down the standards for how things were recorded at Ardent. And he by all accounts was an exacting genius at recording and mixing. Listen to a Raspberries album back to back with Radio City. The difference is 99% Fry. And as Richard Rosebrough said, Radio City was his zenith.

I think John has been overlooked for a few reasons. First off, he retired from working behind the board fairly soon after Big Star so he didn't really build up a significant body of work over decades. A lot of what he did wasn't really high profile in terms of big credits on albums (Stax) or big hit records. You really have to read the fine print on albums to pull together his resume. It happened over a relatively short period of time over 35 years ago. Also, John doesn't fit the image of a rock and roll guy. He looks and dresses like an engineer working in the business world. He's a fascinating, down-to-earth guy. I thought his personal story was really fascinating. Those teens in the 50s doing all those grown-up things -- recording, broadcasting, setting up businesses, flying planes... really amazing. Getting to know him a bit was for me a major highlight in writing the book.

Listening to #1 Record, Radio City, Third and some early Chilton albums, I'm struck by how clear the evolutionary line of his sound is. Why is the common story that he radically changed, and why is Radio City seen as being of a piece with #1 Record when it's clearly a transitional record between chiming power pop and atmospheric oddity?

I think the main reason for this is the change in producer/engineer from Radio City to Third. I've sometimes tried to listen to Third imagining what it would have sounded like with Fry behind the board and doing the mix I think then that the three albums would have seemed more to be part of continuum rather than Third being a sharp left turn.

You got more out of Chilton than anyone else in a long time. Do you think you understand his motivations and goals for Radio City now in a way you perhaps didn't before?

Great question and, yes, I do see it all a bit differently. I think that Radio City represented at the time a natural progression for him. He had been in the Box Tops, a band over which he had little creative control, if any. He had fooled around with solo material and recordings but probably realized he had a way to go. He had joined Big Star as an already existing artistic platform and a step up from the Box Tops as they were a "real rock band" and he would be allowed to contribute freely. So when the suggestion was made to make another record (Radio City), my guess would be it seemed like a natural and easy progression. When he joined Big Star, he was a co-pilot to Chris's vision. Now he would be the pilot more or less and free to follow his muse in terms of experimenting with song structures and recording. I think he probably saw it as yet another way to grow as an artist within a band and environment that he felt comfortable with. He liked all the people involved, it's all right around the corner from where you live: why not give it another try?

I also think it was probably the last time he allowed himself to be optimistic about the commercial potential for a project in any serious way. After the failure of Radio City, I think he makes records as musical statements and moves on. I doubt he's ever looked at a copy of Billboard or any sales chart for any record he's made since then.

There have been a lot of bands over the past couple of decades that are compared to Big Star or cite the band as an influence. Is there anyone who really captures Big Star, either in sound, attitude, songwriting or in some other way?

I think there are bands who are reminiscent of Big Star (or obviously imitative) but, as with any great band or artist, there isn't anyone who really captures them because that's really close to impossible. Everyone has influences. But the great bands are able to transcend their influences and become something unique, usually fairly early in their careers. When someone tells me that a band sounds like "X meets Y with a little bit of Z" I'm not really that intrigued. I'm far more interested in bands that sound totally like themselves (if that makes any sense). Think of any number of great bands from the 60s or early 70s. Whether it's the Stooges or Santana (and you could spend all evening making a list), they started almost right off with a fully formed sound that transcended their influences. So while there are a number of really good bands that are influenced by Big Star that I can appreciate and who can even make for enjoyable listen or night out hearing live music, in the end I don't think anyone captures the band. And I think that's sort of the nature of the beast...

Labels: Big Star, books, Monday Interview, music

The folks at Algonquin Books generously provided me with three copies of Our Noise: The Story of Merge Records to give away to TIRBD readers. To enter, leave a comment on this post sharing your favorite Merge release and why you like it. Do so by midnight, Friday, Sept. 25 to be eligible. Three commenters selected at random will receive a copy of the book.

I finished my copy of Our Noise: The Story of Merge Records (Algonquin, $18.95, 294 p.) weeks ago, but haven't found a way to jump into a review. It's a massive book full of interesting information, surprises, fond reminiscences and a true indie rock vibe, and I kept waiting for divine inspiration. Barring that, I realized I just needed to dive in. That's fitting, I suppose. Mac McCaughan and Laura Ballance did just that 20 years ago when they started the label to put out 7" singles from their own and other bands.

The book, written by Gawker writer John Cook with McCaughan and Ballance, seemed at first blush like the kind of thing I would skim. I left Superchunk behind many albums ago, and never picked up the likes of Pipe, Breadwinner, Butterglory and the like. I was interested in how the label formed, how it grew and how it worked its way into what is without question the best indie label in the country. But did I need to know everything?

Turns out, I did. Casual flipping through the first chapter led to more intense reading of the next which led to my picking it up at every spare moment, sad when I finished. Credit goes to Cook, of course, for assembling a coherent narrative from the disparate bits of oral history gathered from nearly every major player in the label's history (only Neutral Milk Hotel's Jeff Magnum, unsurprisingly, declines to participate), but the real credit goes to the label and everyone behind it for creating such a compelling story over the past two decades.

The book can be read any number of ways. I found it to be several books in one: A Superchunk bio, a label history, a treatise on the state of indie rock and indie distribution as the 1990s gave way to the 2000s, and a collection of short profiles of Neutral Milk Hotel, Arcade Fire, Magnetic Fields, Spoon and Lambchop. Perhaps the best testament to Cook's skill is that I read chapters about acts I'd never heard a note of (Butterglory/Matt Suggs) or admire much more than I like (Lambchop, Magnetic Fields).

The book, the label's 20th anniversary and all of the attendant hoopla surrounding both make it a great time to be an indie music fan. Mac and Laura have done several interviews, and you can see them perform at some in store appearances, including here and here. Converse.com has some videos from the label's XX Merge 20th anniversary concert series. Lastly, Merge has a second book forthcoming, the Merge Companion, a limited-edition, 350-page book that features every album, CD, single and DVD cover released by the label over the past two decades.

The takeaway here is that the label survived because it put out music that it liked. Sometimes (often) that meant small sales or losses, but occasionally its tastes and that of the masses aligned and it ended up with something like Arcade Fire's Neon Bible, which debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard charts.

"Whatever the future holds for the music business, Mac and Laura aren't too occupied with trying to figure it out," Cook writes. "Merge didn't get where it is by planning for the future, or concocting growth strategies, or trying to get out ahead of its competitors. It simply tried to find music that Mac and Laura loved, and sell it to people who also loved it."

Labels: anniversaries, books, contests, Merge Records, music

For some reason, we seem to be suspect of the efforts of an artist that fall outside his chosen field. Actually, we do that with anyone. Remember Michael Jordan's attempt at baseball? But for artists, the judgment can be particularly harsh. You're a good writer? Then don't try to indulge your talents as a songwriter, Mr. Moody. Are you a cinema star? Then keep that novel on the shelf, Ethan.

Even for those with a lower profile, seeing a favorite artist move into another area can be nerve wracking. This new book doesn't mean we'll hear less music, does it? No fear of that, according to Joe Pernice, the latest artist to make the successful crossover from one discipline to the other. Though the success of It Feels So Good When I Stop will surely raise his profile as a fiction writer, he assures us that he plans to continue making music for a long time.

That's a good thing, for Pernice is one of the country's best songwriters. He began in a country vein with the Scud Mountain Boys. Seeming to chafe at the limitations of the genre, he left after three albums, forming the Pernice Brothers, a name under which he has issued five albums of intricately arranged pop songs.

It Feels So Good When I Stop is his first novel, but not his first book. He put his UMass MFA in poetry to work with his first, the 2001 poetry collection Two Blind Pigeons, and was among the first to pen a book in Continuum's 33 1/3 series about albums, with the 2003 novella related to the Smith's Meat is Murder. The success of the latter led to his contract for the new novel.

The book is set in Cape Cod in 1996, and follows the exploits (though that's really too strong a word) of the unnamed narrator, an unsuccessful musician/waiter who bolts from his day-old marriage and heads to the home his sister abandoned when she left her own marriage. There, he interacts with his strange brother-in-law, his two-year-old nephew and a handful of other colorful characters.

He agrees to take care of his nephew, Roy, and that coupled with his attempts to bring a bit of order to his life and the home (which has been stripped of anything of value by his brother-in-law), give him some perspective on his life and what he has done with it. Pernice has created a clutch of damaged, often off-putting characters, but writes them with such a deft touch that you still care about what happens to them. The wit and eye for detail found in his songs is here in spades, along with a real knack for drawing the reader in.

He recorded a soundtrack of sorts for the book that includes covers of songs mentioned in the book, including work from Plush, the Dream Syndicate, Sebadoh and Del Shannon. He also has a new Pernice Brothers album in the offing, which means it's an awfully good time to be a Pernice fan. The

TIRBD: You have an MFA in poetry, but beyond your song lyrics and the Two Blind Pigeons collection, you haven't published much poetry. Does it feel odd to have published a novella (Meat is Murder) and this new novel given what you trained for at school?

Not at all. It’s been over 10 years since I took my MFA, and in those years I have written very little poetry. (Songwriting was just too much fun and I was making a little bread.) Graduate school was a lot less about “training” than it was just affording me time and a small amount of money to do little else than write poetry. Once I stopped doing it (writing poetry all day) it kind of left my system. I got out of shape, so to speak.

Was there an aspect of confidence building from the success of Meat is Murder that played into your decision to write the novel?

Sure. After I wrote the novella, I had a much stronger belief that I could actually pull it (a novel) off. If I had in the past ever thought of writing a novel, the size of the endeavor scared me off.

Do you have a drawer full of other attempted novels, or was this your first?

This was my first.

Will there be others?


I hope so. I’m sure going to give it a go. I really loved writing this book, and I plan on starting another this fall.


Songwriting and novel writing are obviously two very different things. That said, do they intersect at all for you?

Not a lot. As you can imagine, the processes and the time it takes to do each are vary greatly. But momentary flashes of inspiration happen (hopefully) when I’m doing both things. So in that way they are similar. Songwriting has an almost immediate payoff because I respond positively to the sound of music. Holding an acoustic guitar and bashing out a G chord simply feels great. Tapping a computer keyboard does not.

For me, writing a book is to sustain a glow whereas writing a song is like watching a quick, hot-burning fire.

You recorded an album of covers to accompany the book, your first covers, if I recall correctly, since the Scud Mountain Boys' Pine Box. (Ed note: I did not recall correctly. Dance The Night Away does as well) Do you enjoy putting your stamp on the songs of others, and if so, why haven't you done more of that before now?

I do enjoy playing covers while sitting around at home. I never thought about doing a covers album because I always — right or wrong — looked at artists who did covers albums a bit negatively. Releasing a covers record always said to me, “Okay, I need some money and I’ve run out of ideas.” A silly assumption? Maybe yes, maybe no.

I do know that if I hadn’t written this novel, there’s no way this covers record would have come to light. Also, if I did not have a new album of original tunes just about finished, I never would have released a cover record. It’s like I’m smothering it (the cover record) with original work. Not saying that’s right or even healthy….



You left Sub Pop several years ago and have been releasing your own music for longer than you were associated with a label. I know you don't do it alone, but how is it different being more intimately familiar with and involved in the business side of things?

Well, even when I wasn’t involved in the business side of things (because Sub Pop did all the business), I wanted to be. It interested me. I wouldn’t say I’m a control freak, but I sure like to know how my stuff is being handled and sold. I also knew I wanted to make records for a long, long time. I knew doing that would require me to start a label and be intimately involved in its machinations.

I don’t think being a “record company guy” affects the art. I think I’m pretty good at separating the art from the commerce. If anything, owning my label has been liberating for me as an artist. When you sell records or license a song to a TV show or something, and you own your own publishing rights and your master recordings, putting that bread in your own bank account instead of some other label’s sure makes you feel good about your future as an artist. If you make eight-to-10 times as much per record sold, you feel that much more okay about your artistic freedom and smaller sales numbers.

Has becoming a family man had any affect on your songwriting?

It might actually be a bit darker, I’m afraid to say. Babies break much more easily than adult men.

I definitely have to be more disciplined with my time. And luckily I have been able to rise to the occasion. I think I’m actually doing more work than when I had zero responsibility and all the time in the world. There’s an expression: The goldfish grows to the size of the bowl.

Is it a coincidence that you've shifted into books, a vocation that requires much less time away from home?

It is a coincidence, but it’s a nice one. I’m certainly not quitting music, but I sure enjoyed being home every day. My wife and my son are my two favorite people, so…

Labels: books, Joe Pernice, Monday Interview, music

Ten years ago today, the June 21 & 28, 1999 issue of the New Yorker hit the mailbox (yes, we get it late out here in flyover country). It was the fiction issue, though this one came with a twist: It identified 20 writers who were dubbed "The Future of American Fiction."

The list: Sherman Alexie, Donald Antrim, Ethan Canin, Michael Chabon, Edwidge Danticat, Junot Diaz, Tony Earley, Nathan Englander, Jeffrey Eugenidies, Jonathan Franzen, Allegra Goodman, A.M. Homes, Matthew Klam, Jhumpa Lahiri, Chang-Rae Lee, Rick Moody, Antonya Nelson, George Saunders, William T. Vollmann and David Foster Wallace.

With 10 years of hindsight, how did they do? Pretty well. There is one bona fied star in Chabon, several winners of prestigious prizes who also have bestsellers to their names (Eugenidies, Diaz and Lahiri) and plenty of critically acclaimed authors like Moody and Saunders. The late Wallace seems to deserve his own place as someone who, at one time or another, fit all three of those categories.

What is most striking, however, are the names that at one time seemed to guarantee excitement but which today sent me to Wikipedia to determine when their last publication occurred. Could Klam really not have published anything since 2000's Sam the Cat? Whatever happened to Englander? Or Antrim?

My own biases/myopia/limited tastes play a part to be sure. I know Goodman is a big name, but have never read a word beyond the story included here. I'm completely unfamiliar with the work of Nelson or Danticat, but know each has legions of fans.

As with all such lists, the most interesting thing is to look at who made it and who didn't. In the opening Talk of the Town essay in the issue, "Reading Ahead," then Fiction Editor Bill Buford writes that the magazine "set out to answer the question, 'Who are the 20 best young fiction writers in America today?' Does best mean 'most promising' or 'most accomplished'? We settled on a definition that includes both senses, and tried to accommodate the obvious names and the not-so-obvious."

They did limit themselves by considering only American authors age 40 and under. Even at the outset there was hedging, or at least a healthy caveat that admits such lists are dubious exercises. Such a list in 1899, Buford writes, would not have included Willa Cather or Edith Warton or Theodore Dreiser or Jack London or... you get the point.

Anyone could make a compelling argument for or against nearly all of the picks on the list, though one omission did strike me as odd. Tellingly, there is an ad for Stewart O'Nan's Prayers for the Dying on the bio page that lists the 20 who made the cut. O'Nan's output since would certainly merit strong consideration, as would that of a couple dozen other authors who were not selected.

A close look at the list shows that the magazine wasn't exactly taking chances with its choices. By 1999, Chabon had already published Wonder Boys and was at work on The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay; Moody had penned three novels, incluing The Ice Storm and Purple America; and Vollmann had published nine works of fiction. Then again, Diaz had published just one story collection, and Lahiri's The Interpreter of Maladies, which went on to win the Pulitzer Prize, had just been published.

There was precedent, too. Granta published its own list of the Best Young American Novelists in 1996, with six overlapping with the New Yorker list (Alexie, Canin, Danticat, Earley, Eugenidies and Franzen). Some obvious omissions from the New Yorker list, including O'Nan and Lorrie Moore, are present here.

Hindsight offers some comedy. Buford writes about the novel being "Oprahed," something selectee Franzen would learn about firsthand more than a year later when his book, The Corrections was selected for the TV star's vaunted book club. He expressed misgivings, she rescinded the invitation, and the book club's relationship with modern literary fiction (and, it seems, the populace's view of it) was never the same.

It was clearly a different time. The Talk of the Town piece that follows Buford's looks at Karl Rove, already being called "Bush's Brain," and the machinations he had under way that seemed to point to a presidential bid by the then-Texas governor. The Internet was nowhere near the force it is now, (there are actual ads without URLs at the bottom) and publishers still paid large advances and sent their authors on long book tours.

A good story is a good story, regardless of the time or contest, and many here are are top notch, making the issue a very compelling read. The only vexing thing is that five authors' stories are only teased, and appeared in each of the next five issues of the magazine. Actually, that's not the only vexing thing. As is too often the case with the New Yorker, at least five of these so-called short stories are actually novel excepts (such as Chabon's "The Hofzinser Club") though not billed as such.

In the end, the issue provides an interesting lens through which to view the turn of the century literary fiction landscape, capturing, fairly effectively, the consensus critical picks for success. Not all of those selected would be included on a list that sought to gather the best writers of the past decade, but all 20 moved forward from this point with significant work. We can be disappointed that Franzen has yet to follow up his 2001 novel, or that Earley has managed just one post-Jim the Boy novel this decade, but prolific folks like Alexie and Chabon somewhat make up for it.

Summing up his Talk of the Town piece, Buford seems to foresee the divergent futures of the chosen ones. "What is the future of American fiction We can't know. But the Polaroid of this generation, snapped as the century turns, offers a satisfying picture of a highly accomplished group of writers robustly taking on the stories of their Americanness."

Below is a list of the included stories along with their eventual home under the author's name. Those listed as "uncollected" may have appeared in anthologies, but have not been issued in a book by the author to the best of my knowledge.

"I Can Speak!TM" George Saunders, In Persuasion Nation
"Asset," David Foster Wallace, uncollected
"The Toughest Indian in the World" by Sherman Alexie, The Toughest Indian in the World
"Hawaiian Night," Rick Moody, Demonology
"Raft in Water, Floating," A.M. Homes, Things You Should Know
"The Local Production of Cinderella," Allegra Goodman, uncollected
"The Saviors," William T. Vollmann, part of the novel Europe Central
"Party of One," Antonya Nelson, Nothing Right
"The Volunteers," Chang-Rae Lee, uncollected
"The Hofzinser Club," Michael Chabon, excerpt from The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
"Vins Fins," Ethan Canin, uncollected
"An Actor Prepares," Donald Antrim, uncollected
"The Wide Sea," Tony Early, excerpt from Jim the Boy
"The Oracular Vulva," Jeffrey Eugenidies, excerpt from Middlesex
"OtraVida, OtraVez," Junot Diaz, uncollected
"The Failure," Jonathan Franzen, excerpt from The Corrections
"The Book of the Dead," Edwidge Danticat, The Dew Breaker
"The Third and Final Continent," Jhumpa Lahiri, The Interpreter of Maladies
"Peep Show," Nathan Englander, uncollected
"Issues I Dealt With in Therapy," Matthew Klam, Sam the Cat

Labels: books, criticism, magazines