How do people make it through Book Expo America? By escaping the Javits Center and heading to parties and after parties and after after parties all over the city. “Wolfhead 2013,” hosted by Greywolf Press and Riverhead Books in the Copper Room of the Brass Monkey, was the kind of party where people would interrupt themselves mid-sentence and say, “Is that David Schickler? I love that guy. Hold my drink, I’m going to say hello.”
L: Lydia Hirt at Riverhead, Cameron Ackeroyd at Random House, author Emma Straub & Maris Kreizman of Slaughterhouse 90210
R: Lincoln Michel, Co-Editor of Gigantic, Parul Sehgal of the New York Times Book Review & Rose Friedman, NPR Books
The drink they were holding was likely a vodka/grapefruit juice combo usually referred to as a Greyhound but on this evening was knowns as a Wolf’s Head. As with any open bar, everyone drank until they forgot how awkward they were, or became even more awkward.
Later on crashers poured in from other (less fun) BEA parties, and who could blame them? They wanted to fête the fêted writers (and to fête in general): Kathryn Davis, Stacey D’Erasmo, Anton DiSclafani, Jessica Francis Kane, Chang-Rae Lee, Fiona Maazel, David Schickler and Meg Wolitzer. We raised a glass to glass raising, to writing, and to survival of another BEA. ***
–Sean Campbell lives, writes, and occasionally updates his blog in Bed-Stuy
A prodigious debut novel offers a new spin on the problem of the undead
Yes, A Questionable Shape is that zombie novel you’ve been hearing about, but don’t believe the publicity: Bennett Sims, the book’s author, is barely interested in genre at all. This isn’t even The Keep or Motherless Brooklyn — something that stokes the intellect while still delivering generic thrills. I get no sense Bennett Sims loves zombies.
In the novel, Michael Vermaelen (the narrator) and Matt Mazoch search Baton Rouge for Matt’s father, who has recently disappeared and might now be a zombie. Meanwhile, Michael and his girlfriend Rachel feel the stress of this search on their relationship. Rachel begins to fear Matt’s motivations: is there any possibility he might want to kill his old man? After all, what else is one to do with an undead dad?
Mostly, this book is concerned with memory. The undead “return to the familiar,” wandering “to nostalgically charged sites from their former lives.” Do they understand why they remember what they remember? Do any of us? For all the talk about the undead, Sims uses very few tropes from zombie narratives — not even to subvert them. He demonstrates little affection for genre.
Instead, Sims demonstrates great affection for David Foster Wallace (with whom he studied at Pomona), and who can blame him? The late genius has exerted probably the farthest-reaching influence on young writers since Raymond Carver. And, it must be said, AQS is sometimes very reminiscent of Wallace. Very, very reminiscent. Distractingly so. And I’m not just talking stylistics, like the footnotes that invade the bottom of nearly all of Sims’ pages, or the way the dialogue is quoted with apostrophes (a detail Wallace was very insistent upon in Infinite Jest).
I’m talking about the hyperawareness of the narrator, and his obsessive need to describe every little detail (the browning of an apple and the white man on pedestrian signals each get a landslide of explication). I’m talking about the narrator’s (and, by extension, Sims’s) effort to make absolutely clear every possible character motivation and philosophical underpinning of the novel, like a PhD candidate concerned that the point hasn’t yet been adequately argued.
Of course, Wallace isn’t the only source for this sort of influence (and, in fairness, Sims has mentioned Nicholson Baker as a model for some passages). But who gives a shit, really? Any 20-something-year-old writer who doesn’t wear his/her influences on his/her sleeve probably doesn’t love books enough to still be writing 10 years later. Bennett Sims is insanely talented. Even when he “does” Wallace (or Baker), he does him better than nearly anyone else.
Over and over again, Sims demonstrates astonishing skill with image. Shadows sweep “back and forth, like a massive phantasmal broom.” The wax at the base of a candlestick looks “as if a congregation of gnarled ghosts was kneeling in prayer before the flame.” These similes transform the familiar world into surreal gems, so concrete that I can feel each in my hand.
In the details of his characters, Sims is nothing short of brilliant. Rachel misses her own father so much that when a burglar breaks into her car and smokes the same brand of cigarette her old man used to smoke, she feels grateful for the stench in her upholstery — the scent that reminds her of dad. God, that’s so bizarre and funny and sad, all at once.
Another vivid relationship in the novel is between Michael (the narrator) and Rachel, who feel as much like a couple as any other fictional characters I can think of. At one point, they must practice a technique of “de-familiarization,” which consists of them sitting on the floor and staring at each other’s face until it becomes unrecognizable. They learned about this process from the FIGHT THE BITE, an oft-referred-to pamphlet (and a great George Saunders-like touch) that describes the protocol for surviving the zombie outbreak. The de-familiarization process is essential: one day, Michael might need to use it when beating zombie Rachel to death.
Michael remains something of a cipher, and intentionally so. Sims uses him as a pivot point between Rachel’s belief that zombies should be treated humanely and Matt’s belief that the zombies aren’t humans at all and should be left to die in the hurricanes headed to Louisiana. Parallels with the Bush administration’s response to Katrina are not hard to draw, but the book stretches farther than that: at what point do we start to see others as inhuman? In this manner, AQS becomes something of a political/social allegory.
So let’s call A Questionable Shape what it is: an extraordinarily prodigious debut novel that hasn’t quite struggled out from under its influences but exhibits numerous flashes of its own sort of crazed brilliance. But don’t forget: Even David Foster Wallace had to do Pynchon before he could do himself. When Bennett Sims writes a masterpiece very soon, I won’t be surprised.
Read an excerpt from A Questionable Shape over at Recommended Reading. For more fiction from Bennett Sims, check out his story “White Dialogues” here.
***
— Benjamin Rybeck’s reviews have also appeared in V Magazine. His fiction has received “special mention” and “notable reading” distinctions from The Pushcart Prize Anthology and The Best American Nonrequired Reading, respectively.
The Lit List is a sometimes-weekly compendium of New York’s finest literary events and readings. All events are 100% free unless stated otherwise. Something you think we should know about? Email dish@electricliterature.com
Monday, June 3
Elliott Holt launches her debut novel You Are One of Them at Powerhouse Arena in DUMBO at 7PM. RSVP appreciated, dudes.
Tuesday, June 4
OR Books and Jeanne Thornton, a Lambda Literary Award finalist, celebrate LGBT literature at The Dalloway at 7PM. Eileen Myles, Autostraddle, and Miracle Jones will be in tow. One-time only chance to see Eileen Myles in a Virginia Woolf themed bar. Ever. Go.
Wednesday, June 5
Tao Lin launches his new novel Taipei at Powerhouse Arena, DJed by Pitchfork Media staff writers Jenn Pelly and Carrie Battan. I am also hoping Tao will have a slideshow of this series of photos. 7PM.
McNally Jackson Books hosts the US launch of Cahier 18: Her Not All Her, a play by Austrian Nobel laureate Elfriede Jelinek that is about, around, and from Robert Walser. The translator Damion Searls and novelist Katie Kitamura will be there to discuss this work. 7PM.
Thursday, June 6
A reminder to all you ticketholders that Thursday is the One Story Debutante Ball at Roulette, starting at 7PM sharp. Pluck those eyebrows and grease those fly-aways, you beautiful people.
Friday, June 7
If you couldn’t make it to the One Story Debutante Ball because you noticed a run in that dress last minute, all of the debutantes will be at Greenlight Bookstore at 7:30PM, including 2013 The Story Prize winner Claire Vaye Watkins. Oh joy!
It’s quiet this weekend in the literary wonderland called New York City, folks, but not all is lost. It is Tom Jones’ birthday on Saturday. I bet you forgot.
Eisenberg got us started with a section from Screw Everyone: Sleeping My Way to Monogamy. Apparently, her last one night stand had a thing for stuffed cartoon cats: “Rob’s room was full of, and I mean covered with, Garfields.” Understandably, “the sight of this altered Jim Davis’s bedroom killed any sexy, warm, or even safe feelings.”
1. Dan Kennedy, “This is what a book looks like” 2. Fans John Mertens, Dan Vigliano, and AJ Wax
Then it was Kennedy lifting us up with some life coaching from his novel: “There is no reason to beat oneself up about switching to beer early in the day, as the prospect of getting back into jogging is daunting. Something is required to take the edge off. Drinking before noon [is] an OK thing, especially when it is fueling a man in an athletic way, or in a way that lets him realize his dreams.”
How does Dan Kennedy write ‘funny’? “I personally just try to capture the depression that frightens me… It’s usually me alone in a hotel or apartment feeling sad, alone and strange and weird. Then type I something out.”
1. Le crowd 2. Pals Valentine Lysikatos, Dan TaufikSenior Consultant, Bridget Mcfadden and Gina Levitan
Kennedy asked Eisenberg, “How do you write a story from your life? There can only be one ridiculously hung dude with 50 Garfields on his wall.” Eisenberg said, “I do say that he is well endowed. That was all he cared about. He was like, ‘Thanks for the story!’”
And then there was the process question. It’s always lurking. So, what is Kennedy’s process? “I write like how I watch Netflix or smoke or any other compulsive behavior… Writing is the one bad habit that I have that leads to something.”
***
–Sean Campbell lives, writes, and occasionally updates his blog in Bed-Stuy
Last night the Authors Guild Dinner was held at the Edison Ballroom, an art deco hall off Times Square fit for Baz Luhrmann. Guests gathered on the balcony for cocktails and hors d’oeuvres (the bacon-wrapped scallops won my unscientific taste test) before heading downstairs for dinner.
After welcome remarks by Authors Guild Foundation President Sidney Offit and Authors Guild President Scott Turow, our host for the evening, author and comedian Andy Borowitz, took the stage. “Phillip Roth and me, people like that, were sitting around trying to come up with a theme for tonight,” he said, adding that ideas like “Amazon is trying to kill us” were bandied about, but everyone agreed that the evening needed good news. The good news for struggling writers, apparently, is in greeting cards. Did you know that Maya Angelou wrote for Hallmark? (It’s true, I Googled it.)
And thus Mr. Borowitz presented a few possible cards from well-known authors:
Samuel Taylor Coleridge: In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a Stately pleasure-dome decree: but since I don’t make that kind of dough, here’s a Christmas card me.
Dylan Thomas: Do not go gentle into that good night, old age should burn and rave at close of day; rage, rage against the dying of the light, and have a happy Mother’s Day.
Geoffery Chaucer: Whan that April with his showres soote The droughte of March hath perced to the roote, And bathed every veine in swich licour, It’s just five months till Yum Kippur.
Needless to say, laughter drowned out the sound of forks clinking against plates (a choice of red snapper or steak). For more information about the Authors Guild, including mission, history, and services, visit authorsguild.org.
– Halimah Marcus is the Co-Editor of Electric Literature. Find her on twitter @HalimahMarcus
Recently I had the great fortune to travel across America to read in some of her greatest independent bookstores. From Square Books in Oxford, Mississippi to Politics & Prose in Washington D.C., I spoke with booksellers who have been at this for decades. They have outlasted Borders, are hanging tough with Barnes & Noble, and are refusing to flinch as Amazon closes in on all sides. How do these underdogs keep on picking up yardage when the game seems hopelessly stacked against them?
A great bookstore can be, to borrow a phrase from Hemingway, a “clean well-lighted place,” in other words, somewhere bright and pleasant where people can pass their time. Many readers know the joy of spending an hour, or four, just browsing some well-manicured shelves. Whereas spending just two minutes clicking around in the Amazon Marketplace is liable to make you hurl a Kindle at the wall. (No, I have all those Loorie Moore books already. No, I would not want to read the new Norah Roberts instead! No, I do not want a Studs in Spurs wall calendar from 2011!)
But beyond fundamentals such as mastering the art of what Beatrice.com blogger Ron Hogan calls “The Handsell”, what are the top indie stores doing to stay relevant?
This month Square Books, in Oxford, Mississippi, was named Bookstore of the Year by Publisher’s Weekly and it’s not hard to see why. From just one small store in 1979, they’ve now expanded to three locations, all close in the town square. There is Square Books itself, which features two spacious floors of fiction and nonfiction, including an entire wall dedicated to the works of William Faulkner, who lived in Oxford for most of his writing life. Hanging above the staircase are signed photos of Ann Patchett, Michael Chabon, and many other authors who have passed through. Then there is Off Square Books, just a block away, dedicated to lifestyle books. Just around the corner is the original store, which has now become Square Books Jr., filled with children’s books.
To pay for all that footage, Square Books pulls in crowds of Ole Miss students, tourists, and townsfolk. Since 2000 they have produced the Thacker Mountain Radio Hour either at the store or at the local opera house, with live jazz and blues music from local musicians and short readings by authors from new books. Locals pour in to see the weekly show, and others listen in on Rebel Radio 92.1 FM and Mississippi Public Radio, reminded often to shop at Square Books whenever they’re in Oxford next.
At Greenlight Books in Brooklyn, events are held not just in the evenings for adult readers, but also during the daytime for parents eager to bring little ones out into the world for a sing-a-long. A stoic staff member stands outside to guard the legion of parked strollers and by the end of story hour there is hardly a child departing without new books in hand. Nearby Community Books also welcomes young readers, with a beautiful garden and a host of indoor pets. (Note, the cat does not like to be touched, but does like to tweet @TinyTheUsurper). And for those who can’t make it into the store? They’ll deliver locally by bicycle, for free.
Across the country at Seattle’s Elliott Bay Books, survival has been all about location, location … you get the point. Originally located near the waterfront not too far from Pike’s Place Market, the bookstore saw its foot traffic steadily decline along with the neighborhood. Even though it meant abandoning their original home of 35 years, they relocated uptown to the Capitol Hill neighborhood in 2010 and business has boomed ever since.
Down in Sonoma County, Copperfield’s Books has five stores to host events, but they also draw their readers out to surrounding local businesses. A Debut Dinner ticket gets you a copy of a book by a new author and a meal at a trendy restaurant, where the author reads and mingles with diners. Or you could go in for a Debut Brew at the local beer garden, where the storytelling goes down a lot easier than the free pint of local Russian River Sour Beer. Or if you would rather dress up than down, you can go to a High Tea, where Tudor Rose tea and scones compliment a lineup of “the very best female writers.”
Getting to meet authors is still a big draw, but with so many books and readers with diverse tastes, it is harder to find guests who’ll please the masses. So the Bay Area’s “liveliest bookstore” Book Passage, in nearby Marin County does (wait for it) 600 events a year, for readers old and young. In a single day you can hear a reading, take a French class, meet in the kitchen with one of their local “Cooks with Books,” and sit in on a memoir writing seminar. With that kind of frequency the locals know that whenever they stop by something enlightening will be happening. Book Passage has found success by becoming not just a store but a community center.
Tattered Cover in Denver has taken its role as the center of a community to new lengths. When, in 2000, local police arrived at the store with a search warrant to obtain records relating to books purchased by a customer suspected of methamphetamine manufacture, the owners of Tattered Cover refused to turn over their receipts. They fought the case, at great expense, for many years, taking it all the way to the Colorado Supreme Court where Justice Bender upheld the protections of the First Amendment.
That might seem a lot of effort to protect a possible drug manufacturer, but to Tattered Cover the bookseller/bookbuyer relationship is something sacred. As they stated to their community on their blog after a judge ruled in their favor, “Imagine if the government knew what books you were reading. Would you buy a copy of Al-Qaida: The Battle Against Western Tyranny, The Anarchist’s Cookbook or Mein Kampf? Fortunately, for those of us living in Colorado, this Orwellian scenario is only a hypothetical.”
No surprise then, that when the store moved locations a few years ago, dozens of people from the community volunteered to help them move their stock, one shelf at a time. The woman who hosted my event there told me afterwards that she doesn’t technically work there. She’s actually a local librarian, but she just helps out at the store whenever she can.
Nestled out in the mountains near Vail, I found The Bookworm of Edwards, where they join Colorado Mountain College and local libraries to sponsor the One Valley, One Book program, where hundreds of local residents annually agree to read the same book so that they can discuss it with more or less anyone they encounter all year. A similar spirit lives behind the Signed First Editions Club at Politics & Prose, in Washington D.C. which offers their monthly subscribers… you guessed it, a signed first edition copy of a new book. Not only do programs like these bring in a reliable stream of monthly sales, but they reach out beyond the local community to readers around the world. I signed copies of my own book (shameless plug alert) for similar programs at three different independent stores, each of which told me they mail books to readers as far away as Australia every month.
If it seems extraordinary that someone living in Sydney would sign up for a mail-order book club in Oxford, Mississippi, that’s because it is. The indie stores don’t offer free shipping (although neither does Amazon in Australia), and Sydney certainly has plenty of its own independent bookstores. But it speaks to the relationship that some readers can feel towards their hometown booksellers — even halfway around the planet, there are loyal ex-pats willing to pay more to sustain a vibrant reading community.
These outliers can’t sustain independent stores single-handedly, but they are an indication of the type of bond that can be forged when bookstores become more than simply marketplaces or showrooms. Yes, Amazon.com can sell you practically any book on the planet, and while you’re there you can order up a birdfeeder, a snow shovel, gourmet pasta sauces, a box of Cheerios, new wiper blades, maternity clothes… etc. etc. But can it tell you about this magical perfect book by a little-known Austrian author from 1976 that is being reprinted with a new forward by that contemporary nonfiction writer you totally love? Can you step inside and thank the guy behind the counter for the tip? Can you chat with him for twenty minutes about the brilliance of chapter three, and then stick around for a discussion group about challenges facing modern poets?
Not everyone puts books or bookstores at the center of their lives in this way. But to be a reader of any stripe, in an age of on-demand streaming video, is already a choice for a path of greater resistance towards potentially richer rewards. This is the promise at the heart of every book, and in the soul of every independent bookstore: this could be your classroom, your playground, your concert hall, your cultural center. So long as this promise is renewed, month after month, year after year, neither books nor bookstores have anything to fear.
*** — Kristopher Jansma is a writer and teacher living in New York City. His debut novel, The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards, was published by Viking Press in March 2013.
EXCELLENT POINT, COOKIEKITTY7, one that most certainly deserves serious consideration, but before I address it I would like to bring another matter — of equal, or, perhaps, even, yes, greater (!!!) importance — to the group’s attention.
First, though, let me say once again how happy I am to be here on this essential culinary site, where every recipe, opinion, viewpoint, and perspective is given the consideration it so richly deserves.
For this, I humbly thank you.
(THANK YOU!!!!!)
Tonight, friends, let us continue together in the grand tradition of online democratic society — rough, fragile experiment that it remains — in strict defiance of the forces dedicated to crushing it under the black boot heel of petty fascism.
Let us also say: welcome!
Welcome to all who have heretofore been shunted from society’s fellowship because of their ability (and willingness!) to express unpopular but prescient opinions clearly, forcefully, and — this is crucial — without apology.
Welcome! Let us begin!
First, I admit I have hinted at this matter in previous comments (cf. “Yummy Vegetarian Lasagna for Two”), yet I have always hesitated bringing this case fully to bear for fear of what scandalous rumors and/or slanderous opinions might have previously crossed your screens.
But now I feel so strongly that for the good of our collective endeavor this issue must be brought up that I am disregarding the personal risk to my reputation such attention-bringing might afford, and I am plunging forward because this case has such grave repercussions for us all.
Risking everything on behalf of it is perhaps still not quite enough.
Now, normally, I am as light and carefree as the law allows, but for the past few months this matter has brought me terribly low.
Let me lay it plain: I have been, by a childish and ignorant member of the online community, banned.
More: My input regarding Charli and Nico’s wedding is no longer even considered for publication!
I have no idea why, and no one will give me the courtesy of a proper response.
At first, I thought perhaps it was benign neglect, to re-appropriate a phrase, but I’ve since realized something much more sinister is afoot, so now — since I am no longer even allowed on Charlico.com — I am bringing this matter before you here on this august and humane recipe blog you call, surely in jest, BrendaCookingFun.com.
No doubt, scandalous rumors and libelous character assassinations have passed before your eyes, sent, as ever, by Charli and Nico’s “best man,” Chris Novtalis — that sulfurous toad, that young dullard, that tyrant erroneously allowed to be in charge of Charlico.com out of misguided goodwill or charity — but please hear me out.
I am just a citizen who wishes his voice not be silenced.
My banishment from Charlico.com has obviously been an immense personal loss for me, not only because I made so many wonderful friends and admirers through that site, but because together my cortege and I made great strides toward solving a number of problems of the world.
I know that sounds grandiose, but I firmly believe that, just as Margaret Mitchell once said, “A small number of devoted individuals can, in fact, change the course of history; indeed, this is the only thing that ever has!” — yes, in my case, just look at the record!
Take heed!
It is all by some miracle still on the site for the world to see, if only said world could stop pursuing vile distraction long enough to read and take note.
It is shocking to see such truths laid out in plain sight, I know, but it is even more shocking to see them ignored, though I have come to expect no less from the sad excuse for “society” we float through.
Lest you get the wrong impression, let me be clear that I am not so narcissistic or naive as to think you would consider my personal loss, great as it is, worthy of your in-demand time. Not because you lack compassion! No, don’t think I write tonight to insult you!
Fear not! Despite what you have heard of me, I am not that man.
No, you wouldn’t consider my personal tragedy of much importance because you are spending your time working diligently to solve what you see as the great problems we all face in this fearful and horrid episode called “life.”
Yes, but hear me out — my tragedy and the world’s are not so different. No, in fact, shocking as it may sound, I believe they are ONE AND THE SAME!!!
The exclamation points, I know, seem out of place or perhaps too much, but you see I’m quite an exuberant fellow, a joyful soul, really, and I can let my emotions get the best of me like a schoolgirl face to face with a succulent lolly, but it is all only for the greater good since, as I hope you’ll see, underneath the emotion there is cold hard reason, such that is missing greatly in this ill-begotten world of incorrigible ineptitude.
I have had so many — SO MANY! — friends and acquaintances tell me, at long last, that they see my point after all, and yes, it seems I was right all along, and had only exposed my solution with too bright a flash of rhetoric.
I am working on this admitted character flaw, but I hope you’ll agree that it is a relatively minor one, especially when it is often the reader’s own flaws that prevent him (or her!) from seeing my point.
A mere distraction, though. I’m quite likable, really.
In fact, I think we could be great friends if given the chance to meet, if I could be allowed to arrive at your very doorstep with a rose in my teeth. (TRA LA!)
But let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves.
You see, I would be perfectly willing to look past my own personal feelings of being slighted, abused, and wantonly rejected by this cruel and imagination-less “best man” if I weren’t able to see in my personal issue the problems of the world.
I, a humble man of limited means, alone in life except for a vast but distant group of online peers, simply wanted to put my modest writerly talents to use in service of gnosis.
Contrary to what you might think, the fact that my banishment has become the central topic of discussion for this particular wedding and its affiliated blog does not in any way cloud my thinking about the overall concepts at play.
I see the “big picture” despite the bride’s continued silence toward me (surely kept up on the advice of the groom’s brother, the wretched best man and moderator, Chris Novtalis, who fancies himself some kind of chivalrous knight instead of, accurately, a bilious nuisance), and in fact, I did not even seek out that particular blog but rather had it thrust upon me by fate and simple geometry.
Triangles and pyramids, my dears!
Natural shapes, true, though they are not nearly as simple or as ordinary as they first appear, especially when they manifest themselves in human relationships, as they do more often than one might expect, if one knows how to look.
The impatient reader here surely asks, “Fascinating, but how does this revelation lead in any way to the full-blown catastrophe on the previously mentioned wedding blog?”
Gravioria manent, dear readers.
Gravioria manent.
Allow me a brief reminisce: I once had a particularly contentious encounter with a confused and dissolute young woman I like to call My First Love, or MFL.
We do not (yet!) need to go into detail about MFL, but suffice it to say that in the years since this encounter I have desperately wanted to explain myself more articulately to MFL, as well as to see what might have become of her, how she has developed both emotionally and physically in the time since our memorable encounter.
Despite these dreams — and despite my dedication — I have had little luck tracking MFL down in the “meat space,” since it seems she refuses to register her utilities in her maiden name, nor will she list her phone number in the white pages of any conceivable locale.
Quite frustrating, yes, since I simply want to tell her that I misunderstood my role, lo those many years ago.
For reasons that seem silly now, it was, in the first few days of my unemployment, QUITE IMPORTANT for me to explain myself thusly to her, and my inability to find MFL began to cause me serious harm.
The dark folds began, once again, to smother and choke me.
But then — praise be! — fate intervened and my search for MFL became a mere prelude to this Charli matter.
Let me explain.
Since I had been given this gift of time away from employment, I embarked on a few long-delayed projects, including the aforementioned search for MFL, and one such project involved obtaining images of certain female politicians.
In the course of searching for a particularly choice candidate — one I will not name, for fear of giving her my unpaid endorsement — I came across a luminous image that was clearly A BOLT FROM BEYOND!
The image itself first appeared quite ordinary — “my” candidate waving smugly to a group of protesters — but in the background, in amongst this motley group, I spied a young brunette insouciantly waving a placard while staring directly into the camera’s lens with a kind of dégagé pout that could not but stir a proper man’s soul.
My eyes took in this young brunette — her gleaming doll’s teeth, her eyes done up in slipshod shadow, her rabbit nostrils midquiver, all on display in the background of this idiotic campaign shot — and I immediately felt as if I had once again fallen through a wormhole into the past, for, dear readers, this young woman in the campaign photo looked EXACTLY like MFL as I had known her twenty years ago!
Are you still seated, readers?
Yes?
Then, I have not made myself clear.
How can I accurately explain the singularity of this?
It’s not as if MFL had a common look — no, she seemed a one-of-a-kind beauty, a very particular taste, a young Ally Sheedy in a bulky sweater hiding quite an array of goodies — and so the idea that someone twenty years later would strike the same pose, cut the same profile, shock the same system…well, it might as well have been a narwhal leaping from a city sewer system to impale a passerby with its tusk.
What were the odds?
The odds were so improbable that the fact of this occurrence clearly indicated that the true structure of reality had been made manifest in our false world in order to tell me…what?
WHAT WAS THE STRUCTURE OF REALITY TRYING TO TELL ME?!?!?!
Perhaps, I thought then, slumped over my keyboard from mental fatigue, this young replica of MFL and I would have an opportunity to correct the mistakes of the past.
Perhaps, I thought, brightening, there may indeed be second acts in life.
Perhaps, yes, I sat up straight, I do have one or two adventures left in this dim interval.
Perhaps there is a reason I have been cast aside from the workaday world.
Perhaps I do indeed have a purpose in this new millennium!
I lifted my head from atop my keyboard, raised my fist to the sky, and yelled, “YES!!!!”
I made a personal vow then and there to investigate, for, if given the chance, I would do everything in my power to give this new young woman the benefit of my love!!!!!
Unbowed by the tracking devices surely installed in the search engine I am forced to use, I set to work with my detective skills and unsurpassed vigor to uncover the identity of this young beauty.
In no time — never mind how, ye cops! — I had a name: Charli Vistons.
And — in a blink — I had a Facebook page.
Wondrous bounty!
I deliriously noted her interests and affiliations, her likes and (implied) dislikes, all laid bare for the world to see like some streetwalker’s tawdry wares, and, dear readers, disappointment did not touch me, for Charli was not only the very image of MFL, but it seemed she possessed the spirit of MFL as well!
Salinger, the Beatles, Dusty Springfield, Harold and Maude, the Umbrellas of Cherbourg — it was all the same!
I felt the stars aligning after noting that Charli lived a mere hundred miles from me, a day’s journey, and she worked semipublicly “on campus” as a “Film Studies Teaching Associate” at my very alma mater.
Film studies!
It truly was all happening again!
I began an itinerary in my head, had gotten halfway down the interstate of my mind, in fact, when I saw — brutal fate! — that Charli was “in a relationship.”
Dagger!
What was this twist?
Worse, it seemed she was to be — ah — married.
And soon!
Samsara had seen fit to deal me yet another blow, eh?
I shook my fist at the ceiling, then out the window at the sky.
I rent my night garment (still worn from the previous night) and clawed at my chest.
After a few long minutes of this, I found I could not ignore my feelings any longer, and so in a flurry of clicks and scrolls I delved further into the life of Charli Vistons, obstacles be damned!
I saw, of course, that the young beauty’s fiancé was a rotund pud of a man named Nico, unworthy of her succulent charms.
I admit, this was more than a bit shocking — surely she could do better? — but I followed the chain duly, hoping to find some indication that Charli would not be throwing her life away, that perhaps her fiancé was handsome on the inside.
Sadly, he was just as dull and insipid, it seemed, inside as he was out.
Thinking Nico’s Facebook profile might offer a different and perhaps better perspective on Charli’s situation, I clicked on each morsel offered there until I arrived, finally, on a link to the dire and garish wedding website, Charlico.com.
I stayed there, despite the insult to my sensibility, in good faith.
Once there on the “splash page,” I felt I had sufficiently calmed down — I admit I can get carried away — and could accept whatever role in Charli’s life destiny assigned me: teacher, lover, admirer, friend.
I knew I could still help Charli — which, dear readers, is all I have ever wanted to do! — but I knew even then I must be judicious about my battles. I couldn’t simply heave myself headlong into her life.
That was, of course, the mistake I had made with MFL.
So, how to approach Charli?
Would her “wedding” really happen?
Was the whole thing as ghoulish as it seemed?
The hidden world does reveal itself to us, readers, if only we take the time to look.
I proceeded with my clicking, and, thinking I was headed to Charlico.com’s “registry,” where I could perhaps offer some consumer advocacy, I must have misclicked in a moment of inattention, for lo, I found myself unwittingly “on the blog.”
My browsing history reveals that this fatal act happened in the small hours of a Wednesday morning.
Immediately upon load of the Charlico.com/blog page, I became confused.
Society had clearly declared to me on numerous occasions that weddings were private celebrations restricted from public online discussion, and yet, here was a wedding website with a very public blog?!?!
Why?
Momentarily perplexed, the thought came suddenly that perhaps this wedding party wanted to discuss the issues!
Yes, of course!
That is why lovely Charli had a wedding blog!
For me!
Maybe there was hope after all, maybe, I said to myself. I could not only scrub my past clean, but also strike out anew with a joyous community!
Naively renewed, I dedicated myself to studying the behavior on the blog, cataloging the speakers, the arguments, and the ever-present rhetorical follies. It was a time of study.
The facts: Here were two young people without real jobs, prospects, or ideology, set to marry in the countryside out of, one assumes, boredom — an everyday occurrence, nothing special, and yet, I felt, in this case, it was somehow indeed extraordinary.
At first I couldn’t quite put my finger on why.
True, the principal players resembled some from my past, but I vowed not to let the Personal distract me from the larger issues at hand, for beyond the resemblances to my previous intimate entanglement (MFL), and despite the poor match between Charli and Nico, I felt there was the potential for something special here.
But what?
I continued my observations, and despite what you might think (and, I admit, despite what I initially predicted), I found the perspectives of the young people on the blog to actually be quite engaging.
In fact, after a time, I found them peculiarly resplendent with compassion, wit, and intellectual vigor.
Believe me, I was as surprised as you.
The more I read, the more I found in these voices a rare potential to bring into being a true haven, a shelter from the worldly storm of sorrow and strife, a space where a small group of forward thinkers could discuss the issues without society’s censors concealing them.
I had found kindred spirits dedicated to the free exchange of ideas, and I thought I could content myself by simply observing and taking note.
Soon though, it became clear the blog was missing a key element, a sagacity that comes with age that could activate the yeast, as it were, and bring the loaf of true thought into the world. The blog was missing my presence.
So, gingerly at first, I tried out my own voice in a meek little comment on a now-forgotten post (cf. “Alternate directions to the Clark House Inn”), and, gracious, I found that I was embraced!
Cousin_Kevin said, and I quote from memory, “It’s true that there is quite the ‘wedding industry,’ but I don’t think WE REALLY need to go on and on about it here, dude. Congrats, Charlico!”
When I read this response to my meager posting, I’m not ashamed to say it was one of the happiest days of my life.
Truly!
And so many wonderful days ensued of adroit badinage (I won’t deny that I took great pleasure in the back and forth) that I literally lost track of time, spending hours upon hours engaged in joyous debate with all comers — Linksys181, Cousin_Kevin, nico!, Emma_1, and, yes, even Chris.
Dear readers, it was then that I understood this blog itself offered the revolution I had been searching for. Why? Because this seemingly private blog offered FREE AND OPEN COMMENTS!
The personal is absolutely political, after all.
Of course blog comments in general, dear readers, are revolutionary because they allow for point X, which dilates our triangular perception from simple A, B, and C into the pyramidal realms.
Before comments, we all thought only in these paltry terms: “words = writer/reality.”
Now, of course, it seems comical to those of us in the know that anyone would live such a restricted life, but, dear readers, many still do to this day!
The words these ignorant saps read, the worlds they assume, are only bound manifestations of various writers’ consciousnesses mingling with reality, and so unwittingly these “readers” literally TAKE THE WRITERS’ words for it — “it” in this case being the very reality we drift through on a daily basis.
!!!!!!!!
As we know, comments change all of this.
On a blog with comments, the writer and his reality mingle to make the words as ever — but outside, on a separate plane, the commenter is THERE evaluating this mingling manifestation, weighing veracity and fidelity on the scales of justice.
And he will not keep quiet!
No, the true commenter alone advocates on behalf of reality unbeholden, and so now, with comments, we have a new equation:
(Words = Writer/Reality) COMMENTER
And thus a new, expanded universe!
The true commenter takes nothing at face value but remains intractably, joyously skeptical of any purported reality.
Of course, most commenters don’t take advantage of this coveted position.
Most commenters simply parrot the writer’s version of reality with hopes of some condescending pat on the head — sad! — but the form itself is revolutionary, for even in the seeming non sequitor spam comment soliciting consumers for penile enhancement, our conception of reality has been, yes, enhanced!
And so, in this spirit, on Charlico.com/blog, I saw suddenly how I would be able to enhance this wedding party’s reality.
If allowed to reach its full potential, the blog and its commenters could be, I thought, yes, a harbinger of beautiful things to come, for I saw quite clearly that the wedding blog’s comments existed for me, in order to facilitate my role within Charli’s life.
The comments were a gift from the gnosis, delivered so I could have the opportunity to not only be of use to the young, but to cleanse my soul of clinging problems of the past.
Thus, with hopes high, still unaware of the pyramid’s exact dimension or how exactly I would perform, once again, the role of point X, I began my initiative.
Happy?
Yes.
But even in those delirious hours, despite my happiness, I sensed a lurking evil.
Something was not quite right.
It was as if, hidden beneath the floorboards of our meticulously constructed yet still tenuous shelter, the carcass of some dead mammal sat decomposing in a riot of flies, maggots, and brainy juice, out of sight of casual onlookers, threatening to undermine with its rot whatever foundation might have been established above.
How could I tell something was wrong?
Easy.
After every true comment I made, a snide, mocking tone emerged from the false commenters in response, first from just one, then from another, and then commenter after commenter began chortling at my (correction: our) earnest striving toward a better tomorrow, as if I/we were a kind of amusing mascot rather than a sage.
Being a sensitive sort, as well as a seasoned hand at online discussion, I did not simply “let it go,” as I have often been advised to do.
Oh, yes, how many times have I been told to ignore my feelings, bottle them up, and simply skip on down the path to another web community.
I can even hear you now — “Web community? What about life away from the computer? A family? A garden? Go for a walk! Ride a bike! Get away from the screen!”
You can never know it, but how cruel such remarks are to me.
You see, I cannot.
There are reasons, even those besides the fact that when I do journey to different web communities I feel — no, I know! — that the impetuous twerp Chris Novtalis is on Charlico.com/blog working away to undo all of my efforts.
He’s fanning the flames of rumor, innuendo, and, yes, a legal term is necessary: defamation.
He wouldn’t have an online community — a reason to live? — if it weren’t for me, but he goes on day after day taunting me.
He deploys the letters of my name in muddled anagrammical jibes at my character, he reworks my carefully wrought language in pathetic efforts to take credit for my ideas, and then, of course, he makes direct attacks on my good name and character.
Chris, this peasant of a man, telling his vast and undeserved audience that I am “psychotic” and “boring” and “not even a part of the wedding.”
Boring! Is that a capital offense now?
God forbid I would bore such a fertile mind as that bloodsucker has!
Boring!
From such a racist, sexist, classist, ageist Neanderthal I suppose I should see that as a compliment!
But, alas, I cannot.
I see it for what it is: a base and degrading insult from an inferior.
Do you want to know what happens when I try to “move on,” as you suggest?
Do you?
Well, I’ll tell you.
I get heart palpitations.
I get night sweats.
I’m sure I run a fever (though I haven’t confirmed due to a childhood trauma involving thermometers).
A heavy, static-filled succubus sits on my neck, jams its arm down my throat, and stops up my breath until I force myself to go to the computer to see what vile filth is cascading down the corridors of the internet unchecked while I’ve been away.
And every time, I find that I am right! There it is! It is ALWAYS there — and worse than I imagined!
Hear me out: Like everyone else, I wake up each morning. A deceptively simple phrase, true, but what a gift! I am grateful!
This morning, for example, in the dank June air, consciousness broke over me like a pane of glass, and for a few minutes I felt free and clear of strife, anxiety, and horror.
I thought I might take in a film or eat a nice apple, work on a screen or teleplay. In short, live my life. But then, I remembered.
I thought of the putrid excrescence spewing out into the world as I was lying there, and so I lurched from my cot to my desk and I turned on the computer.
Horror! Filth!
I admit, because he is a crafty little devil, sometimes I think of the runty, Skittle-brained moderator and chuckle, Oh, that’s all he’s got?
Sometimes I even leave the room, go buy my meager rations (as my submitted recipes indicate, I cook everything in my coffeemaker — instantly! — oatmeal, polenta, Tasty Bite Indian cuisine, rice; it’s an ingenious system, if I may pay myself that compliment, and quite cost-effective considering my “condition”), but while I’m out a phrase or even the subtle implication of a phrase inevitably comes crashing back into my mind, where it festers and oozes until I’m back at my “desk,” blinded by fury.
I’m surprised I can even type. But type I must! And what does he want? Finally, what does this goon want?
Only the complete annihilation of my person, my history, and, I suppose, my ideas.
I believe he would kill me, given the chance, and so I am justified in my actions because it is a fight to the death. It is truly either him or me, and I am not one to back down!
Why does he hate me so?
Because I know that he has plans for the bride.
Shocking?
Yes.
Quite.
But you should know that I don’t level this accusation lightly or without merit. I know, because I did not let it go. No, I began to investigate further.
As many of you know, I soon pulled back the floorboard in question and uncovered the stinkmaker, the sock-puppet handler, the chortler, the fascist, the overweening point C of the love triangle:
Chris Novtalis!!!!
Assassin!
Yes, I was as shocked as anyone that it turned out to be the best man and wedding BLOG MODERATOR, who, I might as well make it plain again here, had (and has!) plans not only to degrade the idea of marriage, but to ravish the bride, Charli, and destroy her happiness with lusty violation in flagrant delicto!
Those who do not study history, etc.
I know at first you will doubtlessly find it at best curious that someone with coital plans for the bride would be such a vocal cheerleader for a marriage involving, primarily, his brother, but don’t let the blinders society has saddled you with restrict your reason.
Remember the basics of geometry, my dears, for Chris surely does.
He wishes to assume the role of C, to shoot his line straight through Charli’s B, obliterating Nico’s A.
Squirp is the horrendous noise I imagine this act making.
Squirp.
Squirp.
Squirp.
Over and over again!
For you see, Chris does not wish to expand the triangle into a pyramid, but rather to reduce it to a fascist line.
Clearly, Chris wants this marriage to go forward simply so he can have dear Charli close at hand, as part of his “family,” and thus within his filthy reach in order to violate her repeatedly and at will behind the back of his sad, pathetic brother Nico (point A).
This would, of course, simply be hurtful toward Nico and destructive to Charli (i.e., none of my business), if it weren’t symptomatic of the larger issues at play.
Proof?
My word is not good enough for you?
Well, I can’t blame you, since most of you aren’t aware of my record as online justice-seeker and truth-teller, so how about this, an e-mail I received from “Charli” soon after my campaign began. I present it here in toto:
Hello,
I don’t know who you are, or why you write the terrible things that you do on our website, but I’m writing today to ask you to please stop.
Please do not comment anymore on our blog. It is hurtful and destructive. Please. Just stop.
You’re a writer, a real one, and I respect your gifts. As you know, I’m a writer too, and so I know what it’s like to be misunderstood.
I’m guessing from what you’ve written in the comments that you feel like you aren’t in control of the narrative of your life. People — on our blog, and I’m sure elsewhere — accuse you of being a number of things you swear you are not. I believe you.
But I have to tell you: your writing only makes it worse.
This is hard to understand, I know, because it’s clear that all you have ever done is write in an attempt to give shape to what you’ve called “the lurching chaos of our time.” You say you’ve begun to feel like “an emptied-out version of what you had hoped you’d be,” and I don’t doubt it. But this is not the answer.
I’m sure you don’t believe me when I say I understand, but maybe I can prove it to you.
Years ago Nico read hurtful things I had once written about him in my journal. I was trying to weigh the pros and cons of staying with him after a fight, and I wrote down thoughts I would never say aloud in an attempt to understand my own muddled thinking. Nico read these thoughts — never mind how — and our relationship nearly didn’t recover. In fact, to this day I’ve felt only dread and paranoia when I’ve written anything down — even this e-mail — worried I’ll somehow hurt him again without intending to.
To make matters worse, for some reason Nico showed his mother what I had written. This woman is soon to be my mother-in-law. When she finished reading she said, jokingly, to Nico: “I’m not sure I should’ve let you shack up with that bitch!”
You see, I was misunderstood. Just like you.
Or how about this:
A film studies student of mine who was upset about his grade put e-mails I wrote to him up on his blog — along with pictures of me taken from my friends’ public Flickr accounts, some of them in my bathing suit. Other former students of mine, all male, wrote terrible, hurtful things about me in the comments, but what could I do? Write in and tell them to stop looking? Of course not. Sometimes, you have to just let it go.
I’m begging you, as a sympathetic friend, to please do just that. Whatever has caused you to latch on to us, please, just let it go. Please, please leave us alone.
Sincerely, Charli
Well, dear readers, I must tell you this ruse nearly worked. I felt touched in my very soul by these hysterical words, ashamed that I had caused Charli to feel further misery when all I had wanted was to love her. So much strife! She sounded deranged!
Had I caused her so much trouble merely by commenting?
My god!
But then I thought, Isn’t it CONVENIENT for her to have had so many similar experiences at her fingertips, ready to be deployed at just the right moment? Isn’t the language employed to convey these feelings a bit too deranged and yet still precise? Isn’t this e-mail a bit too, dare I say, mannered?
Yes, of course it was!
Because it wasn’t Charli at all!
It was Chris himself who must have sent this epistle from Charli’s account!!!!!
It was the only explanation, since I know she couldn’t truly want me to stop enlightening her.
Nice try, scoundrel!
I copied the false letter in its entirety and posted it on the blog for the community to see, and just like clockwork I received the following note from Chris, the Charlico.com/ blog “moderator,” whom I’m sure must have been appointed to his position on a day in which the bride was too overtaxed to see he is, in fact, retarded.
Now, don’t take offense — I don’t use the word “retarded” to put down the disabled but rather to illustrate in the most succinct way possible that this horrid cur is malformed, that something must have gone wrong very early, in the womb perhaps, or even in the very first coupling of dna strands; a fateful deficiency of protein or glucose caused him to take on that slack-jawed look, that high slope of forehead, and that squeezed-melon of a skull.
How sad his mother must have been when she beheld him in the nursery!
I don’t doubt she considered heaving such a creature into a dumpster on her way home, or smothering him with her begowned belly whilst still in her hospital bed.
And if she had! How we would have been so happily spared such trouble! ☺:
Hey ***hole,
**** you, you ****ing piece of diseased intestinal waste.
Fun time is over.
If you publish one more comment, send one more e-mail, leave one more voicemail, contact me, Nico, Charli, or anyone else in the family in any way again, I will ****ing kill you.
You are a sociopath.
Seek help.
If I see you on the street — ever — I will push your ****ing teeth in with the heel of my hand.
I will rip your nostrils out with my fingers and shove the little flaps of skin down your throat until you choke.
I will cut you from your ****** to your scalp with my **** and **** in your chest cavity, you *******.
**** you.
**** off.
Die.
— Chris
Oh my!
I am aghast even to cut and paste such filth into this post.
I vow to, as far as I am able, keep my comments free from the language implied by the asterisks, but you see I must give you a sense of what I’m up against.
You need to be shown the truth so you can see how troubled your own online endeavors — your life’s work — might be at this very moment!
For if any of you are sheltering or employing a wretch like Chris, let’s be clear: you are abetting criminal activities that will not go unpunished.
I mean, my nostrils!?
I believe, dear me, he would, too!
How was this person given any authority at all?
The mind reels.
I know I should go to the police with such a threat, and no doubt that is what you will advise me to do — or may even be doing yourself at this very moment — but please, hear me out.
The police?
I do not want the police.
Not yet.
It is possible to solve this without getting the State involved, though I am, of course, keeping all the correspondence from this sorrowful episode on file, just in case.
I have found records such as these useful in the past.
In fact, it is thanks to my record keeping that I was exonerated, officially cleared of any wrongdoing, in that infamous case years ago with MFL, which I may have occasion to revisit with you at some point in the future.
Rest assured that those points A and B got their comeuppance — and more! — once I was released from the hospital (C got his, of course, but I was not at fault).
In fact, there are a few choice details from that affair no one has yet turned up, and if the time is ever right and you turn out to be the compassionate and trustworthy compatriots (or compatriotesses!) I assume you to be, then I daresay I will let you in on it.
My word!
I’ve gone off again!
I must be subconsciously trying to distance myself from those hateful and poisonous attacks sent to me before and quoted above (defecate in my chest cavity? That does NOT sound sanitary☺).
But — Chris’s words — there they are.
As frightful as they may be for you to look at, think of me!
I have to live with them!
A man is never a prophet in his own country.
I believe this is the saying.
But what of a man with no country?
Might he be recognized as a prophet simply because he has no local pharmacist, no chauffeur, no passel of gossiping ladies to destroy his reputation from inside out?
Sadly, in my case, it seems I am not to be recognized as a prophet anywhere but scorned forever everywhere, even after my detractors see the light and come to accept — embrace, even! — my ideas.
All continue to shun me as if no one had thrown the cold water of reality and reason on their fevered brains.
But not just reality and reason, passion and wit too!
The Lit List is a sometimes-weekly compendium of New York’s finest literary events and readings. All events are 100% free unless stated otherwise. Something you think we should know about? Email dish@electricliterature.com
It’s also BEA week in NYC, which means that your liver and brain finally go on that week-long bender they’ve been promising you for the whole year!
Tuesday, May 28
Christine Vines invites you over to 2A to see 50-foot projections of Teju Cole, Fiona Maazel, Aryn Kyle, and Jessica Soffer on a wall behind a taco cart. Something she calls Fiction Addiction. 8PM
Dan Kennedy, of The Moth fame, launches American Spirit at PowerHouse Arena at 7 PM.
Housing Works throws “Yes is the Answer: Prog NYC BEA Party 2013” at 7PM, with Rick Moody, Charles Bock, Wesley Stace, Rob Roberge, Marc Weingarten, and more. Readings, signings, and music.
Wednesday, May 29
“The IM Readings” at Happy Ending Lounge at 7:30PM. Their tumblr promises Moses’ tablets and the Guttenberg bible, but, curiously, mentions nothing about emojis. Ancient emojis perhaps?
The lit podcast Bookrageous is throwing a huge BEA party at Housing Works with Nathan Larson, Rosie Schaap, Sarah Maclean, and Teddy Wayne. The store is staying open until 10PM with lots of free drinks, raffle tickets, and nicely perfumed book people. Starts at 7.
Thursday, May 30
Elliott Holt appears at The Center for Fiction to discuss her debut novel, You Are One of Them, with some guy named Michael Cunningham. 7 PM.
Friday, May 31
Karen Green is at 192 Books to launch her novel Bough Down. The description: “In this unusual narrative constructed of crystalline fragments of prose interspersed with miniature collages, Green conjures the urgency and inscrutability of a world shaped by love and loss.” Yep. 7PM.
Saturday, June 1
Enclave Reading Series Spring Finale: Jessica Hagedorn, Michael Cunningham and debut poet Angelo Nikolopolus at Cakeshop from 4–6 PM. Cool!
“NY ❤’s NW: A Backyard Reading” at Unnameable Books with Joseph Riippi, Kevin Sampsell, Dawn Raffel, Matt Nelson, and Polly Bresnick. 8PM.
Aside from his well-known gig as the host of the popular podcast and live show The Moth, Dan Kennedy is also the author of two memoirs and a contributor to GQ and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. His first book, Loser Goes First, is a trek through Kennedy’s adolescence and early adulthood, often citing awkward situations with employers and ex-girlfriends. By contrast, American Spirit, which launches May 28th, turns some of Dan’s real life friends into characters. While it’s fiction, “the stuff I had to make up is obvious,” he says.
I met Dan at a Moth party at the Moth HQ in Soho when the show became a national radio broadcast, and tried to find out the backstory to his satire “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills: Season 99” on McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, a satirical short parody of the reality show, “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” set in an apocalyptical future. But parties being parties, I didn’t hear as much as I wanted.
Months later, we sat in his favorite corner (the far back right) at “S’Nice” in the West Village, where we discussed satire, storytelling in the digital age and American Spirit.
EL: Your book comes out at the end of May. Are you doing a live performance [like you would at The Moth]? Going on tour?
Kennedy: Oh, I tour it up.
EL: [Laughs] Oh, you tour it up?
Kennedy: There’s a reason there’s always a tour. I don’t really know what happens to me, but it’s like a cross between like a funny reading and an anxiety attack. Like, a low-grade anxiety attack. And a Moth show. A combination of those three things. It usually takes place at a bookstore or a club.
EL: You mentioned that you were introverted, but that you have this onstage presence that’s the opposite — [Laughs] you’re making this face! [Dan furrows his eyebrows and pouts his lips] Do you feel that having this introversion affects the way that you present on stage, or the way that you come out, or are you all not that introverted?
Kennedy: You know, I’m really introverted and it’s not a shtick, and when I used to hear performers talk, or writers or anyone who does anything public, talk about how shy they can get — I saw someone recently who literally gave me a flyer and he was like, “Hey man, I’m doing a show about my shyness,” and I was like, “What the fuck, seriously? You’re doing a show about your shyness? This has all gone too far. We should all just quit.”
But, I mean I get really nervous, but I’m very comfortable. It’s weird. I’m nervous about the idea of doing it. I say yes almost habitually, for the last 13 years, I’ve just said, “Yes. Just book it, just book it, book it. And, send me where I need to be.” And I’m always surprised that I said ‘yes,’ or scared that I said ‘yes.’ It’s something I can do, and it’s something people tell me I’m good at, so intellectually I’m like “This is obviously a psychology sort of con-job that you’re doing to yourself to get freaked out, because literally you’ve done this over 1,000 times.” You know if you’re nervous and excited before you go on that you’re going to be better or [that it will be] worth the money. Although this bookstore thing is free. So I should really rethink this whole thing. I guess they buy a book?
EL: You would hope. What do you think makes TheMoth so successful at this day and age?
Kennedy: I used to say that it was finally having a chance to speak uninterrupted for five or ten minutes in New York City, and everyone was like, “Fuck yes! Sign me up!” But now that we do shows all over the country, and all over the world. I just think it’s what people do. I almost don’t even think The Moth is popular, so much as The Moth just decided to give a place to do what people do. That’s all it is.
As soon as people see the show or take part in the show, they’re like, “Oh, right, I’ve been doing this my whole life.” And I also think it taps into something — as corny as it sounds — I think it taps into something really hugely loving. I’ve just never felt anything like it. Just sitting in a crowd, not even being on the bill, or hosting, or just going to a show, or being on stage, it’s amazing to say something, hear people laugh, and look down and it’s not like fool laughter. It’s not like, “Oh, we’re all really hip and we’re laughing at the hip thing you said.” It’s like, “Oh my god, all of our families went camping together, this is so awesome.” It seems somehow sweet and really wholesome to me. I never thought I’d say stuff like this. It’s like that version of yourself you are when you go to your friend’s house for Thanksgiving… to their family’s house for Thanksgiving, but they’re your friends and they’re cool I’m not saying this really well.
See this is an example of being nervous. I’ve done a lot of interviews, and I can imagine a million clear concise things to say, but when I actually do it, it’s like, ah fuck.
EL: I think you’re doing great.
Kennedy: Yeah it’s okay. It’s normal. It’s not normal, but…and it’s funny. I see certain people that I’ve known through the years that have gone on and done certain things and they’ve been on sitcoms, or they’ve been in movies, or they play way bigger stand up shows now, stuff like that, and it’s funny because there’s this part of me where I’m like, “Why aren’t I doing that?” and then there’s this absolutely honest inventory where I go, “Because, you would never, you would literally not say, ‘yes’ to showing up and trying to act happy.” There’s footage out there, somewhere, of me out there of me standing on the Total Request Live set, trying to sound excited about introducing a pop video. And, that’s really the only answer that there is: the nervousness is genuine. But it’s also weird too. I feel a little bit of suburban shame. To get all those people here tonight, and then talk.
EL: I think that those people gather because of that sense of compassion, or whatever it is that you’re describing.
Kennedy: It’s amazing at this point. The Moth was the only family I had in New York and I just clung to it. And now it’s weird to go different places, to go all over that country, and have that feeling that you’re around people you really like or that you’re your best self with. There’s a huge like therapy or rehab component to what we do, somehow. I don’t know how. But everybody gets up there and shares the shame and laughs and feels better or talks about something that’s not necessarily funny. You feel a lot lighter.
EL: Are there any horror stories from The Moth? Have you gotten into fistfights?
Kennedy: No, but it’s really weird you mention that. I’ve been waiting to get in trouble for a really long time. For like, 15 years, ever since I first started. I’ve probably only been seriously been doing this for 10 years. And I’m always waiting to get in trouble. Sometimes I think someone will just hit me in the face. When Rock On came out I thought “I’m going to get sued for seven figures by Warner Music, I’m just going to, I know it.”
EL: Well, you can always hope. I really liked Loser Goes First. Your stories aren’t controversial, they’re universal … that sounded silly.
Kennedy: We both have subtitles underneath us right now about what we think we sound like right now, so it’s okay.
EL: It’s an honest account of who you are. You’re not trying to be a fictional character, and you’re not superimposing some other idea of what you think you should be. It’s actually what happened. I don’t know if there’s any hyperbole in there…No?
Kennedy: That’s the most beautiful part.
EL: I think it’s impossible to get flack for putting who you are out there in the world. I guess people do get flack for memoirs, but you’re not in charge of the Iraq war…
Kennedy: I think it’s somehow to me comforting to know there are a lot of people that hate what I do. When you first start, you think, “Well it was in Entertainment Weekly, I guess everyone likes it!” There’s this weird dumb precious sort of young thing. But then it becomes comforting to know that some people are like, “Dude, fucking whatever.” And in a weird way, I’m like, “Yeah I know, sorry, want to go out after this?”
EL: Back to writing satire for McSweeney’s…
Kennedy: Wouldn’t that be funny if you just got everything on purpose a little bit wrong, just to shake me up: “Back to writing your science fiction for Miss Sweeney, I believe, is the name of this site.” And then I’m like, “No, it’s actually called…”
“So, you’re in a play about the Mothman? Mothman or something like this?”
“Uh, no, it’s actually…”
EL: [Nods yes] You wrote “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills: Season 99” in a hotel room while you were watching the reality show imagining how it would eventually spin out 100 years in the future. Is all of your satire that spontaneous? Were you angry when you were watching that show?
Kennedy: Just about everything on the McSweeney’s site is urgent and spontaneous, and usually in an attempt to feel better or in the fear of depression. I’m an addict — I don’t do drugs anymore or drink or anything, but if something bad comes along, like that show, I start off just trying to do a little bit of it and then it’s 5 a.m. and I’ve done a lot of it. And I get sad. It sounds weak to say sad, but it just broke my heart that people were being that way to each other.
It’s the alcohol too that gets me down in that show. Don’t you understand that maybe you shouldn’t be drinking if you drink gin in a car and then strike someone with your hand because you don’t like them — in a limo? I’m like, “It could be better for both of you.” And then I told my girlfriend about it, “I was in a hotel while I was out, I watched this show and you know this is just bad, it’s getting out of hand, something is going to happen,” and then she said one of the guys killed himself. That was years ago. And then other times I just laugh and flip off the TV and say that’s not sad, those are fucking rich white people that drink too much. Sad is babies being born with cancer. And the other thing is, a lot of these little satirical indictments that I write don’t come from my best self, I don’t think. In “Pleased to Meet the Facebook Version of You,” I’m the Facebook version of you. I’m full of shit. I’m completely flawed. I’ve made mistakes and I want people to think of me in a certain way. I’m exactly the person that I appear to be railing against. Jesus. I’m sad now.
EL: Okay, so let’s go back to, are there any stories…?
Kennedy: Let’s go back to why you’re flawed…
EL: [Shakes head no] So there really are no funny stories from The Moth? I find that really hard to believe.
Kennedy: That’s great, that’s great. “So you don’t really have one interesting anecdote about all this shit you do? It’s just a bunch of self-important stuff like you were just blabbing?” Ah, pretty much.
EL: [Laughs]
Kennedy: Funny stories, yeah there’s always a funny story. Let me think.
A guy fainted like a sack of potatoes and that kind of freaked me out. Like, I was on stage, and I just came back to sit down, and Jennifer Hixon, my producer and I, used to sit in the front of the side of the stage, and we always invited people up to sit, since it was so packed, to sit on the side of the stage with us in chairs. I was saying something, and then I was done, and I sat down next to Jennifer, and I felt this large, I don’t know what it was. I heard this commotion and then stuff fell against me, and then it was a man.
EL: I just realized there is a dead fly in the middle of the table.
Kennedy: Is it dead? I hope it’s not just sleeping. So that was weird. I’m sure I’ll think of something as soon as I lie down in bed tonight, “I can’t believe I didn’t say anything about…” but there’s always something. I’m just trying to think of what. Let’s pause and think of what.
[Pause]
There used to be a guy at the Nuyorican, Miguel, who would echo me, this older gentleman, and he’d bring merch for the Nuyorican, and he would set it up on the end of the bar, and then just proceed to drink. He was hilarious; he was like a Puerto Rican version of the old man on The Muppets. I loved it. It was the best heckling on the face of the planet. Sometimes, I’d just go back and forth with this guy for what felt like an eternity. Essentially it’d just be this weird moment for us, having this strange conversation back and forth over the heads of 200 people.
EL: In American Spirit the characters are sort of morphed from the real life characters you know. Can you describe that process?
Kennedy: The last nonfiction thing I did was a few years ago. I went and stayed with my parents, kind of on a dare from my editor, for 30 nights straight. And I loved it. That was the trick, it was this weird twist that I loved it and we’d all wake up in the morning and read Reader’s Digest together. We were reading the workplace humor column in Reader’s Digest over oatmeal, and it occurred to me that none of us had jobs, my mom my dad or me. I was like, why are we reading workplace humor? I wrote about that, and it came out in the magazine, and they had a big photo shoot at my parent’s house. Everyone was really sweet to them, and that was really nice. But there was a certain aspect to that where it just felt really weird. It just felt like, this isn’t right to drag people you love into this stuff. My mom hasn’t had time to get used to seeing her face in a magazine on a newsstand. It’s a little shocking to everybody. I don’t want to do that to people that I love.
When I first started thinking about writing a novel, I thought, “All this stuff on McSweeney’s is fiction, you’ve been doing this for a really long time.” So, I just came off this period of my life, a bunch of stuff just collided. I had never really traveled that much before in my life. It was a year I was gone a lot. I was everywhere from an island in the Baltic off the coast of Sweden to working in a record store in the Midwest for a month to report on it. It was a crazy year and I had a couple friends, I was at an age where I had a couple of friends that got seriously wealthy off of Wall Street and the Internet, during that boom. It was freaking weird, how do you adjust to this? It feels like all your life you’re 19, 20, 21, and then all of a sudden you wake up and you’re like, some of us are in movies now, and some of us made a killing in tech. We’re like grownups now I didn’t have anywhere to tell these stories, and I didn’t want to drag my friends or write about them very directly.
EL: Protect the innocent.
Kennedy: I mean the stuff I had to make up is obvious.
EL: What do you think is the most profound change for storytelling in digital media and you can’t say the Internet?
Kennedy: I’d say personal computers.
EL: [Laughs] Most profound change in storytelling in digital media.
Kennedy: Somehow there’s a new currency, when we’re having a sandwich. We feel the need to let 4,000 people know that. That’s kind of odd. I think that might be the biggest thing. On a less cynical note, there’s a really beautifully written obituary, and it went crazy on social media. His daughter wrote it, and it was a beautiful, funny piece of writing. Heartfelt. That might have been a rousing story at a dinner table for that young woman, x number of years ago, and now it’s the sort of thing where, it goes up on her site, her Tumblr or something, and then the next thing you know, millions of people are passing it around because it’s good, and heartfelt and deserves to be read.
EL: Are you implying that this currency is good and bad?
Kennedy: It is weird. Twitter, I love Twitter. I’m addicted to it and I love it. But it is odd too.
EL: I know that they hire people who have over 1,000 Twitter followers. At agencies, there are certain requirements that you have to meet socially before they look at your application.
Kennedy: That’s ridiculous.
EL: Followers are money now.
Kennedy: That’s the dumbest barometer of a person’s effectiveness.
EL: I agree, because you can buy 1,000 Twitter followers right?
Kennedy: I have 4,500 twitter followers. In terms of a hire, if that got me in the door, and they ask, “Well, why did you have that many?” “I say stupid shit at four in the morning.” “Welcome aboard, we have high hopes for you, guy that says stupid shit at four in the morning.”
EL: [Laughs] I don’t know. A lot of brands are into that. Because it’s like instant sharing, if you have a million followers, even if it’s funny or stupid. Have you seen brands that hijack hash tags?
Kennedy: But you know, a cool thing to say happening too, this was the one thing I was going to say, that’s brilliant is that it’s self-policing, which I love. I think The Moth kind of shares that. Like everybody says how do you make sure the stories are true, how do you make sure the people are good, how do you make sure this and that The community does that itself. Everyone wants to be good, and everyone wants to be true. No one really tolerates the stuff that’s the antithesis of what they want to experience in that community.
Social media is pretty funny too. The other night, Capital One credit cards — it was like three in the morning — promoted a tweet in my timeline that said, “Retweet if your team is still dancing” and then it had was a picture of a basketball and a megaphone. And I didn’t really know what that meant, but it was literally Capital One. So I replied, “Re-tweet if you understand that it takes a person 22 years to pull off just 2,000 dollars of credit card debt making minimum payments at 18% APR.” I expanded the conversation to see what other people were saying, and they were saying, “I hate your credit cards and I’m quitting your bank.” If you’re doing it for that reason, it’s so hilarious, it’s like the square detective that’s in a club like, “Hey, can I buy a marijuana? I want to get down!” People are just like, “The fuck? Get out of here, man.” Love that.
***
— Haniya Rae is the assistant art editor for Guernica, and writes about media and advertising for Digiday.
At this year’s The Common in the City celebration (hosted by the Amherst, MA-based journal and held on the seventh floor of NYU’s august Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute), commoners and royalty alike gathered to hear live jazz, bid on justifiably-pricy artwork, and listen to André Aciman read from his new novel Harvard Square, a novel that speaks to the intersection of place and identity.
1. The Common Editor Jennifer Acker, contributor Amy Brill 2. Beats: NYC Hot 3
Aciman — who’s published both fiction and memoir — opened with a note on his uneasy relationship with autobiographical writing. “Once you write something,” he posited, “you don’t know if you made it up or if it happened.” His excerpt introduced listeners to the conman-like Kalaj, who, says Aciman, has no education but is “an encyclopedia of notions.” With a keen ear for the well-crafted rant, Aciman charmed the crowd with Kalaj’s manic take on American exceptionalism and excess, with our mad needs for what he calls “jumbo ersatz.”
1. Matt Weiland, Paul Morris & André Aciman 2. Emma Patterson, Jody Klein (Brandt & Hockman) & Maya Ziv (HarperCollins)
The line became the night’s de facto catch phrase, but the party’s tone was one of humility and community, not hubris. “One odd thing about the lit world is that you can work with people for many months and still never meet! An event like this confronts that,” said Sonya Chung, The Common’s Associate Editor. “It’s an odd challenge, especially for a publication so focused on place.”
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–Jake Zucker is the Editorial Assistant for Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading, and wears sunglasses on the net.
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