Riding with Jesus Part XI: a badbadbad tour blog

Editor’s Note: Jesús Ángel Garcia, author of Badbadbad, is blogging his book tour. This is his eleventh installment.

Lit Love from Lonesome Highway II

This week’s digital reading features excerpts from a handful of hot Indie Pittsburgh pick-ups—i, scorpion (Karen Lillis), Magenta’s Adventures Underground (Carol Lewis), A Zine About Billy (Danny Mac)—and The Dwarf (Pär Lagerkvist), a literary classic from the death metal hinterlands of Great White Europe. There’s a sophisticated feat of basement athleticism at the end of this installment. I challenge all y’all at the next arcade tournament along the tour route. Topeka? Boulder? Salt Lake City? You’re on.

Riding with Jesus Part X: a badbadbad tour blog

Editor’s Note: Jesús Ángel Garcia, author of Badbadbad, is blogging his book tour. This is his tenth installment.

 

To Read or Not To Read

To read or not to read is the existential drama of the 21st century author. Major publishers say book tours are like dumping a corpse in the East River. They’re a stinky, soggy enterprise, dead on arrival. You won’t sell nearly enough product to turn a profit, and multinational conglomerates need to feed the bottom line. They’ve got shareholder pockets to perfume. So literature in the megacorporate domain is rarely about bringing live nude words to the people. Natural selection forbids it. What does this mean for overworked, rarely-paid subterraneans like us? Read, dammit! Read out loud. It’s our responsibility as guerrilla artists. And make it fun. Or shut the fuck up.

Riding with Jesus Part IX: a badbadbad tour blog

Photo credit: Sue Miller

Editor’s Note: Jesús Ángel Garcia, author of Badbadbad, is blogging his book tour. This is his ninth installment.


Lit Touring’s Just Life

Most everyone I’ve met on the road thinks this two-month tour is something special. You drive thousands of miles, perform with world-class artists, experience the American Dream through the eyes of family, friends and strangers, and bring The Book to The People. The numbers are inarguably greater than usual. In the past few weeks I’ve logged more miles, more readings, more social events, and more book talk, press, and sales than in many months prior. But that’s just numbers. In truth, there’s nothing special here. Lit touring is no different from mundane life. You’re confronted with an ever-shifting succession of highs, lows, and inbetweens. You either roll with it or roll over and play dead.

Riding with Jesus Part VII: a badbadbad tour blog

Smooth operator.

Editor’s Note: Jesús Ángel Garcia, author of Badbadbad, is blogging his book tour. This is his seventh installment.

 

R-E-S-P-E-C-T in Baltimore & D.C.

“It’s about respect.” That’s the common refrain from writers I’ve met on this road trip. “I want to be respected by writers I respect.” An understandable position—no one wants to be disrespected (by anyone, I imagine)—but is this sound motivation for writing and publishing, i.e., living “The Literary Life”? To my mind, writing to publish to earn respect from other publishing writers feels like placing too much power in the hands of others, who all bring a host of personal issues to each of their reading/writing experiences. Do I need to measure the value of my work, and by association my self-worth(?), per the whims of other writers? No, I don’t. And yet of course I want mutual respect.

Thing is, it doesn’t have to come from fellow authors. If Mary Gaitskill doesn’t like my work, that’s OK. (I’m not saying she even knows my name. I’m just saying…) If Sally DeVinney does, that’s OK, too. People are people. There is no unfiltered hierarchy in the human family. We’re all beautiful. We all suck. Wanna read my book? You’re a beautiful person. You think it’s what? You suck. None and all of this is true. Que sera. Whatcha gonna do?

Riding with Jesus Part VI: a badbadbad tour blog

Editor’s Note: Jesús Ángel Garcia, author of badbadbad, is blogging his book tour. This is his sixth installment.

 

Arrested in Virginia Beach

Hell is Real. Billboards in the Dirty South tell us so. Jesus is hope. If you’re pregnant, we can help. I’m a baby, not a choice. Adult Superstore next exit.

Here’s our statement from a Virginia Beach jail:

It was a beautiful night. I expected to be in town for just a few hours en route to Baltimore. Leah’s an old friend from elementary school. We hadn’t seen each other since eighth grade. She suggested the boardwalk for freak-preaching from my badbadbad novel, a story about identity politics and hypocrisy. There’s this Reverend character who gives fiery sermons. The Word of God on sexual morality. I sometimes do these live performances with a bullhorn. We thought we’d entertain the tourists, maybe sell some books. DIY tours are expensive.

This Christian group was proselytizing on “works of the flesh” and eternal damnation. Hatred and anger were said to be no-no’s alongside sorcery, drunkenness and fornication. I like to drink bourbon and make love to Harry Potter audiobooks. One of the Christians handing out pamphlets said we were all sinners who would never get to heaven when we died unless we were born again in Jesus today. I tried to explain that the Kingdom of God, as I understand it, lies in the here and now. The Kingdom of God is helping the poor and the afflicted. It’s loving-kindness on Earth. Jesus was a Buddhist, I said. This made the Christian angry.

Riding with Jesus Part V: a badbadbad tour blog

Editor’s Note: Jesús Ángel Garcia, author of badbadbad, is blogging his book tour. This is his fifth installment.

 

Southern Hospitality & Redemption in the ATL

Big upside to the DIY tour is meeting online friends in flesh-and-blood realtime. You can’t know people until you see how they live, crash on their floor, soap up in their shower. Typing about sharing a virtual beer is not even close to toasting from a chipped coffee mug in an unfamiliar kitchen, storytelling on a cat-clawed sofa until the break of dawn. You can’t embrace zeroes and ones. Hugs not drugs, well, not too many drugs. I love glimpsing the 50,000 ways we each move through the world. Up-close camaraderie is palpable. After a less than satisfying performance in Nashville, I was hungry for redemption. I found it in Atlanta where Southern hospitality still rules.

Where Have All The Good Literary Feuds Gone?

The history of literature is littered with blood spatters and broken noses. Ben Jonson, Alexander Dumas and Marcel Proust fought duels. Alexander Pope slipped a pirate bookseller an emetic. The Earl of Rochester was suspected of hiring thugs to beat John Dryden.

But the sad truth, as I discovered researching Writers Gone Wild is that authors don’t get into nearly as much trouble as they used to.

It was a time when Ernest Hemingway traded punches with Wallace Stevens on a Key West dock after Wallace had humiliated Hemingway’s sister at a party. Not that Ernest needed an excuse to knock anyone down, but this was more ennobling than wrestling a critic on his editor’s desk at Scribner’s about a negative review.

Then there was the time Theodore Dreiser slapped a drunken Sinclair Lewis after Lewis called him a “son of a bitch who stole three thousand words from my wife’s book” at a literary dinner. That slap, fueled not only by alcohol, but Lewis’ suspicion that Dreiser had also slept with his wife, made national headlines.

And then there’s Norman Mailer. He would have filled a chapter in my book, but pressed for space, I resorted to reciting his record: against Bruce Jay Friedman (a victory against Friedman, a draw against Friedman’s Jaguar); songwriter Jerry Leiber (stopped by the restaurant owner); and Gore Vidal (two bouts, two KOs, but losing the rematch on points to Vidal’s verbal riposte: “Words fail Norman Mailer yet again.”).

When the most violent attack in recent years was Richard Ford goobering Colson Whitehead at a Poet & Writers party, the mystery is: why?

Riding with Jesus Part IV: a badbadbad tour blog

Editor’s Note: Jesús Ángel Garcia, author of badbadbad, is blogging his book tour. This is his fourth installment.

 

Blown off the Stage in Nashville

I’ve been hearing the word courage lately in conversation about doing live lit in a non-traditional way. Not sure it applies, though. As I understand it, courage is about facing down fear, real or imagined: turning a blind corner in Afghanistan, powering up for a job interview after too many months out of work, chatting up the six-foot Czech blond at the end of the bar. But why do we need courage? What is there to be afraid of? On a superficial level, it’s rejection, I guess. Writers are used to that. You know the refrain: submission, rejection, submission, rejection, submission, rejection, submission… acceptance! Rinse (drink), repeat. On the other end, what? Coming to terms with the possibility that death can take us when we least expect it? And?

Riding with Jesus Part II: a badbadbad tour blog

Editor’s Note: Jesús Ángel Garcia, author of “badbadbad,” is blogging his book tour. This is the second installment.

SKYLIGHT BOOKS (Los Angeles, CA)

Big upside to the SoCal summer is how even during the gray haze of “June gloom” many women strip down to sashay the streets in short shorts, short skirts, tanktops, bare midriff blouses, strapless dresses. In L.A., it’s often with the high heels too, leather straps snaking toward sweet sculpted calves. Bondage outerwear never goes out of style, not in the City of Fallen Angels. It’s sad, though, when the beautiful people nosedive on the pavement. That’s what I was thinking while unloading my gear outside Skylight Books where a mad homeless woman lay in the awning’s shade, tickling pretend piano keys on her blistered brown arm. If she couldn’t make her Hollywood dreams come true, what made me think I could?

In truth, I expected nothing from L.A. In fact, I expect nothing from this whole tour. I only plan to truck from town to town, do what I do, see what I see, and let what happens happen. It’s better that way: zero disappointment when you’re not attached to outcomes. More fun as well when you’re wide open to however your work is received.