BGB Interview: Ben Tanzer

Ben Tanzer is the author of the novels You Can Make Him Like You, You Go Your Way and I’ll Go Mine,  Lucky Man, other works of fiction and non-fiction.  Ben is a long time friend of the blog, which makes it a little shocking that it has taken us this long to do a proper interview.   Considering our lapse in judgement, we are mighty pleased that he agreed to submit himself to an interview with us.  We got a little long-winded, so grab yourself a snack and read on…

Baby Got Books interview with Ben Tanzer

Baby Got Books:  The new book You Can Make Him Like You seems to be getting rave reviews all over the blogosphere.  In my completely biased review I said, “Tanzer’s best work yet, and I expect that it will propel him onto his largest stage to date.”     How accurate is my prediction so far?

Ben Tanzer:  First off, thank you for the kind words, and bias, many a fine career has been built on bias and I warmly embrace it. Second, this is a great question to both take seriously and not. One piece of this I think is whether the book’s wider exposure and good tidings as compared to my previous books equates to a larger stage or to just some more elbow room on the fairly obscure stage I’m already on. I think it’s probably more of the latter for now, but even that has been wonderful, and shocking, and I really appreciate it. Another piece though is whether some of that space is a result of the book’s quality, which I hope is good, and which I hope is the case, or from the incredibly expanded network, and interest in my work in general, holy grandiose, yes, sorry, that has emerged, or is it evolved, between the release of Most Likely You Go Your Way and I’ll Go Mine and You Can Make Him Like You. And I think to a great extent it’s the latter, but that maybe the former is coming into play as well, which if that is the case, is also wonderful. Either way, the reaction to You Can Make Him Like You while arguably quite limited compared to the Hunger Games or Go The Fuck to Sleep, has definitely been intense, and really positive, which is shockingly wonderful. Or is that wonderfully shocking?

BGB:  You mentioned your expanded “network.”  That’s not something that you generally hear authors talking about, but it seems absolutely critical to writers in the age of social media.  You clearly work hard at getting yourself out there by maintaining an online zine and blog and being active on Facebook and Twitter (@bentanzer) – did I miss anything?  How critical is social media to building your audience?  Is there a point when it becomes a distraction to writing?

BT: My father was an artist who had a lot of success, but during the last years of his life, he didn’t feel like he had accomplished everything he wanted to. One thing we talked about was his inability to make sense of how best to network, something he wanted to do more of if he only knew how. When I started writing this was always on my mind, well that, and the idea that no one just finds you, there is little magic involved in any kind of success and you have to actively try to make things happen. So I asked myself, how could networking work and how can I enhance the likelihood of people knowing I am out there? And from that perspective, I don’t think we need to network more in the age of social media necessarily, because it’s always been required to some extent. But social media does offer a new and different means for doing so, and for someone like me it’s very helpful.

I have a day job and kids and I travel for work, which has some benefits, but I also can’t be out and about like I would like, hitting every reading and bar and going to every conference and city that networking requires. Further, the writing I do exists primarily in the indie realm, which is a great place to exist, but that also limits exposure to my writing and with all the terrific work happening in the indie space alone, how do you rise above all that magnificent clutter? In part, I decided that I needed to hit whatever platforms I could and as often as I could and early on I decided on two primary strategies for approaching this. First, I would use all of these platforms to broadcast what I’m up to, at all times, writing, reading, editing, interviewing, and on and on; and two, what I’m up to has to have some kind of cohesiveness, a brand to some extent, and so inspired by the monorail episode of The Simpsons, what I also decided early on is that what I want to do is change lives, with my work, your work, anything I like.

I’m offering a lifestyle choice, with my writing being the products at the center of it all. I write this somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but I always pretend it’s real. I also try to ensure I’m having fun. Is it a distraction? In general, that’s not my experience, but I mostly limit my time on all of this to branding and broadcasting purposes. I rarely hang out on Facebook or Twitter or anywhere else, sometimes sure, but my time there isn’t for entertainment or for killing time, it is mostly tactical, and when I’ve done what I intended to do I try to move on to the next thing. Interestingly, for me anyway, the biggest distraction these days is people more proactively reaching-out and asking me to check-out, hype, review, blurb and support what they’re doing, which I embrace, and am thrilled about, though it takes increasingly more time to do these things. I see this though as part of the brand, and it’s mostly fun, and I always intended, hoped, to support other people, in bigger ways, if, and when I could and now that I sort of can at times I feel obligated to do so.

BGB:  It seems to be working.  It’s apparent that you have been able to generate an incredible amount of goodwill in the wired world. Your Twitter and Facebook updates are an endless stream of glowing reviews and congratulations on the new book.  Speaking of which, let’s talk about You Can Make Him Like You.  (Check out my review here.)  YCMHLY is the instantly relateable story of a not so young man coming to grips with the changes that married life and family bring.  The story has the absolute ring of truth, which begs the question – how much of the story is autobiographical?

BT:  And thank you for that. There has been a lot of goodwill and a level of intensity and self-reflection that has caught me off guard. When I write, I try to let you know what’s in my head, and I hope to get into your head, the conversations you’ve had, and haven’t, touching on things you struggle with, can’t figure out, and celebrate. All of which is to say, how autobiographical is it, to loosely paraphrase the writer Scott McClanahan from a recent interview in The Rumpus, “75% of the stuff I write about is just stuff that happened to me. Of course, what’s different with me is I try to live my life like a fiction…I would expand on it by saying this: I was probably lying when I came up with that answer (at least 83.2% of the 75% percent figure is a lie).” That wasn’t exactly a paraphrase was it? But, what I am trying to say is, when I write almost anything, short story, novel, humor piece, I tend to get stuck on an idea that may have little to do immediately with me, and then as the piece slowly evolves, pieces of me get woven into the narrative. In this case of You Can Make Him Like You, I was thinking about the characters in the songs of The Hold Steady, characters I once looked like, and I was wondering what they would look like now. As I thought about this, I also began to think about the number of guys I know who while otherwise happily married still stretch what I would consider somewhat inappropriate behavior with other women to lengths I am not. Those guys fascinate me. Their brazenness, their belief that they won’t get caught, or can talk their way out of it, and for many their tremendous lack of self-awareness and reflexive behavior. That’s not me, not exactly, I can be reflexive and unaware, but I really go out of my way to avoid all of that other behavior. Do I think about it? Yes. Behave obsessively about alarm clocks being set and decision making on The Bachelorette? Yes. Fight with neighbors, hot ones, old ones and opera singing ones? Yes. Spend an afternoon compulsively assessing whether I think U2 or R.E.M. is the true super group of the late 80’s and early 90’s? Yes. And those kind of details, the parts of a story that make it more than idea, that give it some girth and flesh out some of the characters’ quirks and language, that can be a lot of me, definitely some of me, and certainly some of Scott McClanahan as well of course.

BGB:  Your book takes its name from a song by The Hold Steady and their music is quoted frequently in the novel.  Can you talk a little bit about what it is about The Hold Steady’s music that inspired you and the role that music plays in your writing?

BT:  Music in general plays a role in my work that I don’t necessarily think of as an inspirational, as much as I am always listening to music as I write, because well, I’m just always listening to music. I tend to latch onto a song with most of my projects because inevitably some song hits me as complimenting, or illuminating, for me, what I’m trying to say in that story. It also gives me a sense of what it might taste like, or feel like, which tends to get me even more focused in terms of texture and vibe. The idea for a book, and the writing of it, always precedes the song or music though, and this applies to You Can Make Him Like You as well. I knew I wanted to do something about guys around my age, guys struggling with being married, even when you’re happily married; and the allure of interns, all young and fresh, even when you don’t want to sleep with anyone besides your spouse, not exactly anyway; and having a kid, which you’re sort of into but not wanting to be as freaked-out and scared as you are; and these ideas were all bouncing around in my head when I went to see The Hold Steady for the first time here in Chicago between the release of Boys and Girls in America and Stay Positive. I was in the audience and the ideas started congealing and coming together; and there was structure and scenes and later as I wrote and edited the draft versions of You Can Make Him Like You, I saw The Hold Steady again, and then again, and I came to see the characters I wanted to write about as the more adult versions of the characters in the songs The Hold Steady sing; small town dudes and chicks, sort of literary, taking drugs and going to concerts, hoping to get laid, looking back and looking forward to bigger cities, maybe even bigger lives and being something other that what and who you are. And I know those characters, I was them, and I am now something else, older anyway, less druggy, married, with a job and kids; and that urge to be that something else was what I hoped to try to capture with this book and these characters, and these songs speak to where that starts, and what I wanted to do.

BGB:  I know that one of your interests is keeping up with the independent book scene.  Who should we be checking out?

BT: When I first read this question I thought about that famous New Yorker cover where it shows New York City as the center of the universe and the rest of the world sort of slowly unfolding under the shadows of the city’s awesomeness. This wasn’t because it made me think of New York City though, it was because it made me think that to answer this question I had to start with Chicago, because while there is a lot of indie literary things going on everywhere these days, I’m not sure it compares with what’s going on here. How’s that for grandiose? Still, and I am bound to leave some people out, but starting with Chicago there are really so many indie writers doing so many cool things to check out, Lindsay Duncan, Robert Duffer, Spencer Dew, Gina Frangello, Lauryn Allison Lewis, Brandon Will, Jason Fisk, Victor David Giron, James Tadd Alcox, Kathleen Rooney, Tim Jones-Yevlington, Mark Brand, Pete Anderson, Joseph G. Peterson, Jacob S. Knabb, David Masciotra and Luis Humberto Valadez. And then looking around the county you have BL Pawelek, Nick Ostdick, Barry Graham, Caleb J. Ross and Brandon Teitz out across the Midwest; Michael FitzGerald in Montana; J.A. Tyler in Colorado; Hosho McCreesh in New Mexico; James Greer, xTx, Matty Byloos, Ryan Bradley, Joshua Mohr and Lavinia Ludlow all points West; down South there are your neighbors Jamie Iredell and Collin Kelley; J. Bradley, Nathan Holic and Gregory Sherl in Florida; Alex Kudera in South Carolina; S. Craig Renfroe in North Carolina; Shannon Burke and Corey Mesler in Tennessee; Thomas Williams in Oklahoma; Jason Jordan in Kentucky; Mary Miller and Elizabeth Crane in Texas; and finally, and loosely, in the East, Paula Bomer, Greg Olear, Tim Hall, John Reed, Ken Wohlrob and Shya Scanlon in New York; Mel Bosworth, Laura Cherry, Ray Charbonneau, Rusty Barnes, Steve Himmer and Timothy Gager in and around Boston; William Walsh in Providence; Scott McClanahan in West Virginia; Dave Housley and Karen Lillis in Pennsylvania; Nik Korpon and Michael Kimball in Baltimore; and Amber Sparks in Washington, DC; and that’s a big list and I apologize, but I think it’s a good place to start.

BGB:  Wow.  Lots to check out there.  And you’ve been busy yourself.  Since we began this interview, a review copy of your next book My Father’s House has arrived in the mail.  From what I’ve been able to check out so far, it has a much different feel than You Can Make Him Like You.  Can you tell us a little about My Father’s House?  Anything else in the works you want to tell us about?

BT: Sorry, still feeling guilty about that last question, one of the many problems with being a fanboy. And yes, there has been some busyness, which also makes me feel a little guilty, though it may be self-consciousness, I will look that up. But with My Father’s House I think there is a different feel in two ways. First, and especially with the last couple of novels, I have been trying to tell humorous stories about relationships in a pop culture saturated world with layers of pain, coping and confusion lying closely below the surface, and with My Father’s House, a story focused on a character losing his father, I flipped this approach, and so it is more overtly about pain, coping and confusion, with the humor and pop culture is lurking just below the surface and serving as a sort of salve for both the characters and readers. I would also say though that I have been trying to emulate the music of the Ramones and the recent movies by David Cronenberg in my writing, tight, intimate, punchy, funny, and violent scenes that come fast and propel you into the next scene or chapter, and with this book I decided to tighten that approach up even more, so more sparse, quick and insular, and more like how I see the actual experience of living through some one’s death. In terms of what else may be in the works, and at this point more self-consciousness abounds, I have a collection of humor pieces coming out at some point this summer titled This American Life and I am working on my first science fiction joint, similar themes to my previous work, though more focused on work and the intersection of work and family, albeit in a not so distant Chicago where work is hard to come by, life on Mars beckons and the drugs are mostly synthetic.

BGB:  Is that sweet ‘stache staying?

BT: Not remotely. No. Next. Or is that it? Because if so, thanks for the great questions and your support, both are much appreciated.

Guest Blogger: Barbara Friend Ish

Today we welcome guest blogger Barbara Friend Ish.  Barbara is Barbara Friend Ish is Publisher, Editor-in-Chief, and Wild-Eyed Visionary for Atlanta-based Mercury Retrograde Press, which publishes fantasy, science fiction, Interstitial and the Weird.  Her debut novel, The Shadow of the Sun, was published in February.  She is a self-described geek and is wonderful fun to cut up with at the back of the room when the book reading you’re attending drags a little. We’re thrilled that she took the time out to file this guest post.

Life in the SF/F Ghetto

I live in a ghetto. Not the kind of place in which you live because you can’t afford anything better, but rather the kind of place in which you live because other people aren’t sure it’s okay to like you.

Earlier this month, the publishing industry and readers everywhere celebrated World Book Day. BBC coverage of the events served to remind everyone with an interest in SF/F that people just aren’t comfortable with admitting they like the stuff. (Read bestselling author Stephen Hunt’s take on it here; the video itself is available here.) Hunt sums up the attitude of so many readers, as expressed by the BBC host: “Fiction has to be painful, a little like school.”

I must admit I don’t understand why we as people of intelligence and a certain amount of culture beat ourselves so relentlessly over our tastes in reading material. Maintaining that only literary fiction is worthy of our notice is no different from insisting that we must never listen to any music but classical—or, if we do, we must not admit to doing it. Pure silliness, of course. A variety of musical genres have long been accepted as not only significant parts of our culture but art in their own right. And yet our self-loathing over our tastes in reading seems to run right down to the center of the earth.

It’s particularly baffling to me that we cringe over admitting to an admiration for SF/F. Speculative literature has been called “the literature of ideas”: a just moniker, in my estimation. Of course there’s the literary equivalent of popcorn available in SF/F, just as there is in any other section of the bookstore. But SF/F is also the area of literature that offers authors the tools to create sufficient distance between the reader and the issue under examination that the reader may look at the problem with fresh eyes, unhindered by the most unconscious of prejudices. I don’t want to leave you with the impression that I don’t respect mainstream fiction; but for deep treatment of serious issues that non-academic readers can truly engage with, I turn to SF/F.

In the hands of a talented author, the themes and tropes of mere entertainment become the tools of moral inquiry. Nowhere is that more valid than in the speculative field. Stories about alien cultures allow us to explore what it means to be human, to examine our attitudes on race, gender, and similar issues. Stories of future or foreign worlds allow writers to address concerns about the role of science in society and contemporary issues like the environment, in ways that allow readers to consider without being preached at. Some of the most penetrating examinations of religion and morality being written today may be found in the Fantasy shelves of your local bookstore. A few examples: Shorn by Mercury Retrograde’s own Larissa N. Niec features a race of winged people who have become an oppressed minority, mired in self-loathing and ritually shorn of their wings. Readers share with me on a regular basis how that tale has changed their attitudes towards their own sexuality or given them fresh perspective on the politics of oppression. Isaac Asimov’s Robot stories allow us to examine our attitudes on oppression and the question of what makes humans human. Stephen Leigh’s Dark Water’s Embrace, returned to print after too long an absence, offers one of the most profound examinations of the experience of being transgendered ever written. My own The Shadow of the Sun, published last month, explores power and corruption. None of these stories would communicate their themes with even a fraction of their current strength without the use of the tools afforded them by the SF/F genre; and none of them is painful, like being in school. They sweep the reader away into experiences she would never have otherwise, and those experiences only heighten the power of the themes.

If you clicked through to Stephen Hunt’s post, you caught a taste of outrage at the disrespect SF/F endures. Many residents of the ghetto feel that way. But for my part, I’m not angry. I feel sad for the Margaret Atwoods and Jeanette Wintersons of the world, who spend their days denying their roots and trying to pass. I’m grateful I don’t awaken in the dead of night, in the grips of self-loathing for my addiction to this literature and of terror that I will be discovered as a geek.

I’m a geek. I’m a speculative fiction writer and publisher. I arise each morning in gratitude for the opportunity to help craft and bring to market some of the most powerful stories being told today. And if I do the occasional appearance in mainstream literary venues, when I go to SF/F conventions to be among my people and discuss the ideas we share with one another in these works, I come happily home.

Boys and Reading: Part 3

Over the past few weeks, I’ve written a series of posts about the apparent reading gap between school age girls and boys.

In Part 1, I discussed The Center for Education Policy’s report that shows that boys consistently lag behind girls in reading as measured by standardized tests.   I also discussed the debate around the use of “gross out” books as the answer to closing the gap.

In Part 2, I delved a little deeper into the Center of Education Policy report that kicked this all off.   I also offered some “context” for framing the problem.

In Part 2.5 I threw out some interesting graphs that I thought added some additional context to the discussion.

For Part 3, I’m branching out beyond what I think and  enjoying some Q&A with Raymond Bean.  Mr. Bean is the author of the children’s books Sweet Farts and the sequel Sweet Farts: Rippin’ It Old School.  Mr. Bean first came to my attention in an AP story that asked “Can fart jokes save the reading souls of boys?”  This story was run in seemingly every newspaper, blog, and PTA newsletter in North America. Mr. Bean also received a prominent mention when the inevitable backlash followed in the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal.

Mr. Bean seems to be uniquely positioned at ground zero in the war for the hearts and minds of America’s male readers.  (I’ve tried a million times to lay off the hyperbole.)  When he agreed to field questions from the likes of us, I jumped at the chance.  Read on for…

The Baby Got Books interview with Raymond Bean, author of Sweet Farts and Sweet Farts: Rippin’ It Old School

Baby Got Books: Tell us about how the idea for Sweet Farts came about?

Raymond Bean: I wanted to write a funny book for kids. In my search for a universally funny topic I kept coming back to the topic of gas. If teaching elementary school for over a decade has taught me anything, it’s that kids find gas funny. If someone passes gas in an elementary classroom you’re going to have giggles.

I decided to try and build a fun and silly book around this giggle inducing topic. In an attempt to work science into my story, I decided to have a fourth grader set out to find a cure for the smell of human gas for his annual science fair project. My research led to a letter written by Benjamin Franklin in 1781 called A Letter to a Royal Academy. In the letter, Franklin mentioned the need for someone to find a cure for the smell of human gas. It was perfect, I figured, if Franklin could write about farts in 1781, surely I could do it today (not everyone agreed).

BGB: You are both a teacher and an author. How does your experience in the class room inform your writing?

RB: Kids are pretty honest about what they like and dislike in books. I spend my days reading with and to students. Having a constant dialogue with young readers about books helps a great deal toward developing my understanding of the kinds of books they wish were out there. I can’t wait to get more of my books out for young readers to enjoy.

BGB: I’ve read that Sweet Farts started out as a self-published book, and the agent and publishing contract came only after you were able to sell a lot of books on your own. What has that experience been like?

RB: Self publishing the first Sweet Farts book allowed me to reach my audience almost immediately. After several years of close calls and rejections, my wife and I decided to self publish under a pen name. Within three months of release we were selling multiple copies on Amazon every day. We had little more than word of mouth, but we were proving that there was an audience for the series.

About ten months after the release of the first Sweet Farts book, I signed with AmazonEncore to write Sweet Farts: Rippin’ It Old School, the sequel. About the same time I started getting more agent and foreign rights interest. A few months ago I signed with the Andrea Brown Literary Agency. I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to work with such an amazing agency as I move forward as a writer. So far the first Sweet Farts book has been translated into Korean and is being translated into German and Italian. In addition, both books have been recorded as audio books by Brilliance Audio. I’m currently working on a third Sweet Farts book.

BGB: You’ve been the center of some recent controversy. On the one hand, you’ve been put forward as one possible savior for boys who won’t/don’t like to read, and on the other as being personally responsible for the downfall of civilization. This must be a little surreal for you. What do you make of all this?

RB: Surreal indeed! I was thrilled to be included in the AP article. At the time of the interview, I was a self-published author being interviewed by the AP. In my opinion, the author of the article was attempting to draw attention to the CEP report on the gender gap in children’s literacy. As a teacher, parent, and author I was elated to be included in the conversation. In the days and weeks that followed the publication of the article, I was fascinated by the response.

The point I hoped to make in the AP article was that silly fiction can help bring the most reluctant readers to the book shelf, get them reading, and leave them seeking more books. I have encountered many 8 to 10 year- old students who were video game and TV “addicted”. When this happens, reading falls away as an option outside of school. Many of these students do not live in homes where reading is a priority. Silly fiction can help some kids discover that books can be fun and surprising. Once that connection is made, young readers are hopefully eager to read.

The WSJ editorial piece was particularly surprising to me. The writer made reference to the “Sweet Farts philosophy” of education. I wrote the Sweet Farts books, but I was not aware that it was a “philosophy” of education. The article went on to state that books within the genre do little more than create, “morons and barbarians.”

I take issue with such an extreme statement. I argue there is a need for light-hearted and silly children’s fiction for the simple fact that it is light-hearted and silly. Like adults, children sometimes just need a good laugh. They generally spend a few days with a book and then are on to the next one. A few days of harmless fun with a silly book is just that, harmless.

As a teacher I encounter students every year that are dealing with divorce, sick parents, and other heart- breaking situations. Silly books can provide a much needed laugh to a child dealing with an overwhelming life experience. Is the child who has a father sick with cancer a “moron” or a “barbarian” because he read The Day My Butt Went Psycho for a distraction?

BGB: Do you get the feeling that many who criticize your books haven’t actually read them?

RB: Yes, I have a sense that some of the people who are the most outspoken probably framed their opinion based on the title alone. I’m quite certain Rush Limbaugh didn’t take the time to sit down and thumb through the Sweet Farts books. Although the visual is kind of fun to think about, don’t you think? He did, however, blast them on his Morning Update in July 2010. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciated the exposure. Personally, I think he might have enjoyed the books if he read them, just a hunch.

Why so many adults are paying this much attention to my book is beyond me. It is intended for ages 8 – 12. In my experience, people generally like the series. I’ve received feedback from teachers, librarians, and parents (some of them homeschoolers) on how much they enjoyed the Sweet Farts series. It’s currently being carried in over eighty library systems across the country and close to one-hundred libraries. You can search for a library near you on www.worldcat.org.

BGB: I’ll own up to suggesting in a recent blog post that just maybe the AP news story that touted your book (among others) was suspiciously timed to coincide with the release of your sequel Sweet Farts: Rippin’ it Old School. So how about it? Is your marketing team really that good?

RB: I’m pretty sure the timing of the article had more to do with the release of Dav Pilkey’s new release, The Adventures of Ook and Gluk. I think I just wrote the right book at the right time.

BGB: I’ve been talking about the “reading gap” between boys and girls for a few weeks now. What do you think is really behind the gap and what are the solutions?

RB: In my experience, every reader is different. Every child approaches reading from a different life experience. You can’t dictate a child’s readiness to become a reader. That being said, there needs to be a wide variety of good books on the shelf (and e-reader) waiting for children to discover, explore, and share. Insisting that ONLY one genre is the answer is naïve and fruitless. When young readers are immersed in all genres and many authors, they learn to love books.

One thing I’ve noticed over the years is that many parents read to their children when they are very young. Then, when the child learns to read, parents expect the child to read independently and still love reading. I find that when parents read chapter length books and picture books with their third, fourth, and fifth graders, it helps tremendously. Reading together not only helps increase comprehension and a love of books, it also allows for time well spent between parent and child. If you want your child to love reading, read with your child. Only, don’t be afraid to read a silly book now and again, who knows, you just might enjoy a good belly laugh together and feel like a kid again. It doesn’t get much better than that! I recommend the Sweet Farts series by Raymond Bean.

My thanks to Raymond Bean for taking the time to chat with us.  Anyone who has been taken to task by Rush Limbaugh has our enduring respect and admiration.

The Smell of Damp Flags in a Hall

Run, don’t walk, to this article from the New York Times Magazine about Franz Kafka’s literary estate. Life imitates absurdist fiction.

To summarize, Kafka probably asked his friend Max Brod to burn his unpublished papers upon Kafka’s death. But nearly a century later, the papers remain very much unburned, and are worth tens of millions of dollars. An Israeli court will soon decide whether the archive rightfully belongs to a crazy cat lady with no relation at all to Franz Kafka or to an entity, the State of Israel, that did not exist during Kafka’s lifetime. Kafkaesque!

(I wish I could link to a clip from the great movie “The Squid and the Whale” where the teenage boy who’s trying to impress a girl–and who clearly hasn’t read the book–describes The Metamorphosis as “Kafkaesque.”)

The Litigant

There’s so much to love about this story, but my favorite is this exchange:

According to Brod’s biography of Kafka, the two met at a lecture Brod gave on Schopenhauer, during which Kafka objected to Brod’s characterization of Nietzsche as a fraud. Walking home together afterward, they discussed their favorite writers. Brod praised a passage from the story “Purple Death” in which Gustav Meyrink “compared butterflies to great opened-out books of magic.” Kafka, who took no stock in magic butterflies, countered with a phrase from Hugo von Hoffmansthal: “the smell of damp flags in a hall.” Having uttered these words, he fell into a profound silence that left a great impression on Brod.

That’s some mighty fine brooding right there. But really.

DBF Kids Tent

No matter what else happens at the Decatur Book Fest the kids tent is always hopping.  Here Liz Kessler entertains the masses:

Lev Grossman at DBF

Another event on my “absolutely must see” list at the Decatur Book Festival is author Lev Grossman at 2:30 on Sunday.  I loved his wildly inventive novel, The Magicians.  Check out my glowing review.  Just make sure that you get behind me in the book signing line.  Thanks.

Laurel Snyder at DBF

Laurel Snyder may be the hardest working author at the Decatur Book Festival.  The one-woman powerhouse will be part of events on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.  She is the author of several books that are worth noting.

Her children’s picture book Inside the Slidy Diner is a favorite with the young reader in my home and introduced the family to our adopted catch phrase “Clatter and din! Hullabaloo!”  We’re actually able to work that into conversation more often than you would think.

Her novel for middle readers Any Which Wall was just named one of the 25 Books that all young Georgians should read.

On the occasion of the release of another novel for middle readers, Up and Down the Scratchy Mountains, Laurel Snyder took the time to submit herself to a BGB interview, which you can check out here.

Her most recent picture book (just out last week), Baxter, The Pig Who Wanted to be Kosher, is awesome and was instant classic over at my house.  While waiting for the bus, Baxter meets a man who is headed home for Shabbat. Baxter is so enamored by the man’s descriptions of the upcoming celebration that he wants to join in, too.  Hilarity ensues as Baxter sets out to become kosher.  He doesn’t know what “kosher” means exactly, but he’s a determined pig.  He eventually learns from a young rabbi (a female rabbi, no less) what Shabbat is all about and finally gets an invitation to join in.  The illustrations are wonderfully comic and offer knowing chuckles for adult readers.  Snyder dedicates the book to “anyone who has ever felt excluded, which is to say…everyone.” It’s a wonderful story of inclusiveness and a great introduction into Jewish religious ideas for young readers.  Buy it for the glossary alone.

And if that weren’t enough, Snyder has another novel for middle readers coming out later this month, Penny Dreadful.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie at the DBF

So far this week, we’ve been subtly referencing some of the goings-on at this weekend’s Decatur Book Festival.  Those days are over.  The remainder of the week will be given over to “OMG, I can’t wait to see this” fanboy posts.

One of the events that I am truly looking forward to takes place on Saturday at 1:45PM.  Author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie will be in conversation “Tavis Smiley-style” about storytelling with Lain Shakespeare of the Wren’s Nest. Adichie is the author of the brilliant Half of a Yellow Sun (read our reviews here and here) as well as the novel Purple Hibiscus and the short story collection That Thing Around Your Neck.

The best part of this event is that BGB is totally responsible.  You can read all about how awesome we are at the Wren’s Nest Blog.

In the DeLillo Papers, Part Three

Part One is here. Part Two is here.

Jim Bouton’s Ball Four is known as the first “tell-all” book about professional sports—in this case, baseball—but it’s much more than that. First published in 1970, it told the story of Bouton’s efforts during the 1969 season to resurrect his pitching career with the expansion Seattle Pilots—a team that was so ill-fated that it left Seattle after one season and became the Milwaukee Brewers.

Bouton displayed an irreverent, even subversive, sense of humor and an absolutely original view of the world around him, not to mention some serious “stuff” as a writer. There are good reasons for the book’s popularity and staying power. A lot of what he wrote in 1970 is conventional wisdom among modern fans, but it was considered radical then. Many readers then would have said to themselves, “What?! I thought baseball players visited sick kids in hospitals in their free time. This doesn’t sound like the guys I’ve read about in the sports section.” Bouton portrayed his fellow ballplayers as dumb, juvenile, moral degenerates. But he also made them seem like a lot of fun, and if you’ve ever wished you could be one of them, you’ll want that even more after reading Ball Four.

Most famously, Bouton pulled the curtains back and exposed ballplayers’ illicit practices like popping “greenies” (amphetamines, which many ate on game days the way some people eat altoids) and “beaver shooting” (if you don’t know what that means, I’m not going to be the one to tell you). I had also thought that he introduced the world to the term “road beef,” but in re-reading the book for this post I see that I was mistaken in thinking he had used that charming turn of phrase.  Bouton did allude to players’ infidelities on the road, but ironically, it looks like it may have been that Cervantes of the Weight Room Jose Canseco who first used it in print, at least in the baseball context. (Again, if you don’t know what this refers to, you’ll have to find out from someone else.)

What I’m trying to tell you is that the book is a fun read, and it made a splash in the culture beyond the shallow pool of baseball literature.  For better or worse, it quickly became iconic. There is no chance whatsoever that Don DeLillo didn’t read it before he wrote “Pafko at the Wall.” None. As you’ll see, I can’t prove that, but I know it.

Read more »

In the DeLillo Papers, Part Two

Part One is here.

“He speaks in your voice, American, and there’s a shine in his eye that’s halfway hopeful.” With this compact, beautiful, Whitmanian sentence Don DeLillo introduces Cotter Martin, a major character in “Pafko at the Wall/The Triumph of Death.” Cotter, a teenager from Harlem, has skipped school to watch the decisive third game of a playoff series between the New York Giants and Brooklyn Dodgers at the Polo Grounds, the Giants’ home stadium, on October 3, 1951.

Cotter can’t afford a ticket to the game so, with a group of fellow truants, takes a run at the entrance, jumps the turnstiles, and escapes a stadium cop. DeLillo achieves a slow-motion effect as he describes that action:

Then he leaves his feet and is in the air, feeling sleek and unmussed and sort of businesslike, flying in from Kansas City with a briefcase full of bank drafts. His head is tucked, his left leg is clearing the bars. And in one prolonged and aloof and discontinuous instant he sees precisely where he’ll land and which way he’ll run and even though he knows they will be after him the second he touches ground, even though he’ll be in danger for the next several hours—watching left and right—there is less fear in him now. …

Then you lose him in the crowd.

Cotter finds purchase in the left-field stands; Bill Waterson, a white businessman in his early forties, strikes up a conversation and a temporary friendship with him as they endure the game together. (Lost in the collective memory of the contest is the fact that the Giants misplayed balls in the field, made base-running mistakes and otherwise had a hell of a time generating any offense. They probably didn’t deserve to win the game, and up until the last pitch it seemed certain they wouldn’t. Cotter and Bill and all the other Giants fans there that day had to have felt like they were bleeding from a thousand cuts—until they didn’t.)

Read more »

Freedom Flyers: The Podcast

Also while we were out of communication last week: my pal Todd Moye was busy recording a podcast about his book Freedom Flyers: The Tuskegee Airmen of World War II over at New Books in History.  Check it out.

On plagiarism, redux

I’ve had plagiarism on my mind lately, so this news about historian Stephen Ambrose caught my eye.

Ambrose had a long history with the subject. Fortunately, he was called out shortly before he died in 2002 for his habit of repeating things that others had written without putting quotation marks around those things. That’s textbook plagiarism, but because Ambrose more often than not included footnotes that led readers back to the original sources of the words he had appropriated as his own, he did not receive much more than a slap on the wrist from the historical community or from his legions of readers. And lest you think that this problem only cropped up after Ambrose got famous and put together a factory that churned out book after book under his name, you should know that he plagiarized his dissertation and first book. I don’t doubt that a thorough review would show that he plagiarized everything in between, too.

It now appears that Ambrose’s fraud didn’t stop with plagiarism; not only did he appropriate others’ words, he flat out made shit up. And then based his entire, fabulously successful career on that shit he made up. Not to put too fine a point on it, but if you own a book with Ambrose’s name on the cover, you should not trust a single word in it.

Maybe Tom Hanks can start making movies based on non-fiction books that contain only non-fiction.

The Beats

I’ve always had a fascination with the Beats since reading On the Road in high school.  Recent beat-related reading like The Awakener and the tangentially beat-related Just Kids has only fueled that fascination.  When I came across The Beats: A Graphic History with text by Harvey Pekar et al. and art by Ed Piskor et al., I had to check it out.  As the et als suggest, The Beats has numerous authors and artists as contributors.  Given the number of people involved, it should be expected that the book would be a little uneven – and it is.

The book starts off with biographical sketches of the lives of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burroughs. All three stories sketches are by the Pekar/Piskor duo, so I thought that it was weird that each of the biographies had to mention that Burroughs took off for Tangier because “the narcotics and young boys were cheap” (p.24), “the dope [was] plentiful and cheap, as were the young boy prostitutes” (p. 56), and “dope was easily obtained, as were young male prostitutes” (p.86).   The pictures that accompany these nearly identical passages are as similar as the text. Each features smiling boys and a creepy looking Burroughs in a minimalist exotic setting that is meant to suggest Morocco. (For some unknown reason, a boy in one of the pictures calls Burroughs “meester” .) In fact, the Pekar/Piskor duo seem a little too interested in everyone’s sex life and come off as the equivalent of leering-while-elbowing-you-in-the-ribs creepy uncles themselves.  If that was all there was to this book, I wouldn’t recommend it.

The second part of the book is called The Beats:Perspectives and features shorter biographies of the others on the Beats’ scene as well as some background on the various people, places, and influences that shaped the movement.  These start out with more (but much shorter) pieces by Pekar and Piskor (and I swear that the have at least one more young boys/cheap drugs Burroughs reference left in them, but I can’t find the page.)  Eventually the pair yields the floor to other authors and writers, and that’s exactly when this book begins to take off.

Standouts pieces for me include pieces on the City Lights Bookstore, the picture poems of Kenneth Patchen (an example of Patchen’s work), Philip Lamantia, the Beatnik Chicks, and Tuli Kupferberg.  I was also happy to see Patti Smith got a few shout outs along the way as well.  Overall, the book does a reasonably good job of balancing the good and the bad of the movement and the people involved.  There are few hagiographies included in this volume.  Do check it out if you too have a fascination with the Beats or just want to learn more about the movement.  Feel free to roll your eyes regularly at the Pekar/Piskor shenanigans.

BGB Interview with Scott Russell Sanders

A Conservationist Manifesto by Scott Russell Sanders is a collection of essays on conservation and environmental issues.  Though titled a “manifesto”, Sanders’s writing here is a wide-ranging and often personal look at the state of the environment and our obligations to it.  Often the essays bravely tilt at modern windmills, such as the modern culture of greed and entitlement, “prosperity gospel” churches that distort  the ideas of environmental stewardship presented in scripture, and the misplaced notion that corporations will do what is right.   An underlying theme of many of the essays is the search for the peace and tranquility that accompanies nature and is often missing from our frantic lives. An echo of Thoreau’s call for the need to live more simply is evident throughout Manifesto. Sander’s also makes clear that environmental conservation is very much a matter of social justice.  The titular essay, among the last presented in the collection, lays out the principles that should guide capital “C” Conservation.

In a rare display of literary vandalism for me, I jotted notes directly in the margins of Manifesto, adding my own ideas to Sanders’s and jotting down questions for future thought.  Luckily, Dr. Sanders was kind enough to field some of my questions directly. Dr. Sanders is a Distinguished Professor of English Emeritus at Indiana University.  I am deeply appreciative of his thoughtfulness and of his generosity with his time.

Baby Got Books interview with Scott Russell Sanders, author of The Conservationist Manifesto

Baby Got Books: The Conservationist Manifesto is an impressive collection of essays on environmental and conservation issues. How many years of work does the book represent?

Scott Russell Sanders: The essays gathered in the book were written over the past six or eight years; but the ideas and concerns have been building in me for most of my adult life, ever since I began to realize, in my twenties, that the industrial economy and Earth’s wild economy are on a collision course.  The book draws on Biblical stories that I first encountered in childhood, on science that I began studying in high school and college, and on reading and travel that I have pursued ever since.

BGB: When you first started writing on these topics, did you envision that they would grow into a book length body of work or did it just evolve organically over time?

SRS: I wrote the essays separately, and only later gathered them into the book.  Because they all arose from the same ecological and cultural concerns, however, they combined to lay out a larger argument.  In its briefest form, the argument is that we need to shift from a culture based on consumption to a culture based on conservation.

BGB: Your essay “The Warehouse and the Wilderness” concludes with a passage about the power of myths, i.e., storytelling, as the basis for how we collectively view the world and our place in it. It seems that our national myths have become increasingly materialistic, more deeply ingrained, and more widely broadcast. How do we change the stories that we tell about what it means to live productive lives as Americans in the face of such strong (and frankly very glamorous) opposition?

SRS: The dominant stories in America are indeed materialistic, and that is because they are composed and broadcast—from television, radio, billboards, the pages of magazines and newspapers, and every other medium of communication—for the sole purpose of persuading us to buy things.  The advertising that permeates our society is funded by corporations, which are not devoted to improving our lives, serving our society, or protecting the planet, but only to selling their goods and services.  The US Supreme Court has enshrined this crass storytelling by defining corporations as persons and dollars and speech. It’s hard to imagine how any collection of ordinary citizens can gain a hearing in an arena dominated by multibillion dollar corporations.  So changing the dominant story will not be easy.  But it will change, if only because its ruinous consequences, for ourselves and our world, are ever more obvious.  Meanwhile, each of us can speak up for a vision of personal, communal, and ecological good that embraces peace, justice, caretaking, and spiritual richness, rather than aggression, power, and material accumulation. That our voices seem to be small and scattered is no excuse for remaining silent.

BGB: Thoreau is often cited as the first American guide to living simply and to getting in touch with nature. However, if all of we city dwellers were to suddenly decamp for the woods, it would be an ecological disaster. How do you think city dwellers should go about maintaining a healthy balance between city life and time spent in natural settings? And how do the urban poor get to join in?

SRS: Certainly we can’t all go build cabins and live in the woods.  All except the very poorest Americans, however, can live more simply than we do, whether in city or country, in house or apartment.  When I advocate living more simply, I am not speaking to the poor—and perhaps a third of the world’s people live in desperate poverty. They deserve to have better food, shelter, clothing, healthcare, and education than they presently do. I am speaking mainly to middle class and rich Americans, who consume nonrenewable resources and emit greenhouse gases and other pollutants at a rate ten or twenty times as high, per capita, as do people in developing countries.  Conservation should begin with those of us who are most privileged, and that includes myself along with the vast majority of the American population.

BGB: You note that “conservative” and “conservation” share the same etymological root but the politics of the two words are often in conflict. Why do you think that modern political conservatism places so little interest in conservation?

SRS: The first question I ask of anyone who labels himself or herself a conservative is: What do you want to conserve?  My own answer to that question would include preserving a stable climate, drinkable water, clean air, diversity of species, a fair judicial system, honest government, high quality public parks and schools and museums, and many other shared forms of wealth.  Too often, today, self-proclaimed conservatives seem intent on conserving only their own money, their power to acquire and keep more money, and their freedom to do as they wish regardless of the consequences for society or planet.  There is nothing conservative about such an attitude; it is reckless in the extreme. Traditional conservatism—epitomized by Theodore Roosevelt—placed a high value on conservation of land, water, wildlife, and natural resources.  The loudest voices in conservatism today seem to regard nature and other species as raw material for private profit; they resist efforts to protect the environment or endangered species as a restraint on “free enterprise”; and they fight every attempt to reduce our rate of resource consumption.  To explain how that shift in mindset came about would require more space than we have here.

BGB: You argue for the need of a return of the “common wealth” – the idea that there are things and places that should belong to us all. If recent events are any indication, the ideas of taking any actions for the “greater good” are wildly unpopular in certain (very vocal) circles. How can the national dialogue on conservation be rescued from the scorched earth partisan fighting that we’re seeing now?

SRS: I’ve offered a partial answer to this question in my previous responses.  America’s founding generations maintained a balance between a regard for individual wealth and a regard for the common wealth.  They insisted on the protection of private property; they celebrated the opportunity for entrepreneurs to make money, for hard work to be rewarded in cash. But they also created the world’s first free public schools, free public libraries, national parks and national forests; they cooperated to protect and foster the whole domain of shared goods—air, land, water; museums, courts, roads, bridges, colleges; scientific research, inventions, and so on.  Over the course of the past two centuries, and especially the past thirty years, however, the balance has been tipped heavily toward private wealth, especially that of the very richest individuals and the largest corporations. Our political system, from the city to the state to the federal levels, has been all but taken over by those moneyed interests. How can we restore the balance?  Let’s require television, which uses the public airwaves, to provide substantial time each day for public-interest programming, including alternatives to the stories told constantly by commercial advertising. We need to insist that all political campaigns be publicly financed; that the public airwaves be made available, free of charge, on an equitable basis, for all qualified candidates; we need to take the primary nominating process away from political parties, and instead allow all candidates that accumulate the specified minimum number of voters’ signatures to appear on a single primary ballot, and then allow the two top vote-getters to compete in a run-off election.  The moneyed interests that currently have a stranglehold on our democracy will not give up their control without a fight.  So we’ll have to fight—not with violence, but with every means at our disposal.

BGB: You make a distinction in a story about your own life between “making a living” and “making a good life.” While we may not be able to drastically change the national dialog, making changes to our own personal narrative seems within the motivated person’s reach. What advice would you pass along to those who want to begin making changes towards a “good life”?

SRS: The meaning of a “good life” will vary from person to person, of course.  I don’t presume to tell anyone else how to live.  But I do invite people to ask themselves a few questions:  What gives you the deepest satisfaction?  How do your actions affect the lives of other people, for better or for worse, and how do they affect the earth? What gifts have you received, from family or biology or society or God, and what obligations follow from those gifts? What are your talents, and how do you wish to use them?  What do you love most deeply, and how can you protect and nurture what you love?  What are the values you seek to live by?  In answering those questions for yourself, you will gain a clearer sense of how to lead a good life.

Dr. Sanders will be giving a reading tomorrow evening, Thursday, March 25 from 8-10 PM at Agnes Scott College in Decatur as part of their 39th Annual Writer’s Festival.

Attention Book People

Our pal and BGB Contributor Todd Moye’s new book has just been released by Oxford University Press (fancy!). Freedom Flyers: The Tuskeegee Airmen of World War II is based upon the author’s work directing the Tuskeegee Airmen Oral History Project here in Atlanta. My copy arrived in the mail yesterday, and I can’t wait to check it out. I’ll be back later with a review that will be completely biased, but you should buy it now so we can compare notes then.

Kathryn Borel Jr Uncorks in the ATL

Atlantans, mark your calendars.  There’s a very cool reading in town this weekend that you’ll want to check out. Kathryn Borel will be reading from her memoir Corked on Saturday evening at the Savi Urban Market in Inman Park. There will be free wine.  Free. Wine. And I trust Savi to bring the good stuff.

I first became aware of Borel when Boing Boing posted a video of the author demonstrating how to open a bottle of champagne with a sword.  That’s a skill you can use.  They posted another Borel video titled How to Sample Wine Without Looking Like a Clown.  That one’s fairly self-explanatory.

I’ve been meaning to check out Corked ever since. I was alerted to Borel’s upcoming Atlanta visit by Russ Marshalek, sometime BGB contributor and the hardest working man in books.  Russ sent an impassioned e-mail to his Atlanta friends and associates urging us all to drop everything and check out Borel’s reading.   Well, I’ll let Russ speak for himself…

(Dramatic interpretation of an an original e-mail by Russ M created by the Baby Got Books Thespian Society.)

The reading is at 5PM on Saturday March 6. A Capella Books will be there to hook you up with a copy.  Here are the directions.  You remembered the part about the free wine, right?

10 Rules for Writing Fiction

The Guardian collects writing tips from an all-star gallery of authors:

Part 1

Part 2

A few highlights:

• Philip Pullman – “My main rule is to say no to things like this, which tempt me away from my proper work.”
• Colm Toibin – “Stay in your mental pyjamas all day” and “No going to London.”
• Roddy Doyle – “Do not place a photograph of your favourite author on your desk, especially if the author is one of the famous ones who committed suicide.”
• Anne Enright – “The first 12 years are the worst.”
• Jonathan Franzen – “ Interesting verbs are seldom very interesting.”
• Neil Gaiman – “Write.”

BGB Interview with Stuart Archer Cohen

Stuart Archer Cohen is the author of three novels, Invisible World, The Stone Angels, and his latest – The Army of the Republic.  Cohen lives in Juneau, Alaska and is the owner of a company that deal sin the trade of wool, silk, alpaca and cashmere in Asia and South America. I posted a review of  The Army of the Republic yesterday.  I noted that the novel stuck with me and raised all sorts of questions.  I am thankful that Mr. Cohen generously agreed to answer my burning questions.

Baby Got Books interview with Stuart Archer Cohen, author of The Army of the Republic

Baby Got Books: Army of the Republic features the activities of several citizen groups that are in opposition to a repressive and powerful Right wing presidential administration. Their responses to the perceived injustices range from protests/direct actions and violent “terror”. Were there particular real world events that inspired you to write this novel?

Stuart Archer Cohen: I was inspired by two things. One was a long-standing interest in guerrilla movements and revolutions in South America. I’ve been doing business there since 1984, and I was intrigued, on a human level, how a bunch of university students and young professionals could develop the will and the skills to take on a corrupt state. I was also acutely tuned in to how the state responds to that.

With the 2nd Bush Administration, I saw our government becoming more and more like Latin America in its corruption, cronyism and absolute impunity. Also, the Right has taken on an increasingly war-flavored rhetoric and stance, where the goal is now to utterly destroy the “Left” and its institutions by any means necessary. I see this as a recipe for political violence, and that made me want to tackle the subject of political violence in a United States setting.

BGB: The recent non-fiction work It Could Happen Here: America on the Brink by Bruce Judson says that a potential political uprising could occur here that would be driven by financial inequality. The events in your book that lead to protests and sometimes violent political action include mass privatization of water supplies, ballot irregularities, domestic use of of a Blackwater/Xe-type contractor for police actions, and the abuse of courts. Are the issues that you raised in your novel the specific powder kegs that you see on our horizon? Or were they more hypothetical?

SAC: I haven’t read that book so I can’t comment on it. The things you mentioned above are all elements that can engender a violent reaction, as they are in the book.

However, I think the real danger is not those symptoms, or even inequality, but rather the constant, dehumanizing propaganda that is being regularly pumped into American society. The non-communist world has never had such a sophisticated, wide-ranging and cohesive propaganda campaign directed against its own people. Psy-ops techniques that we formerly used on enemy countries are now being used against the American people by the Right. The message of Fox News and other hate-speakers is that Liberals are subhuman weaklings, that Left-of-Cheney politicians are liars and traitors, and that we are engaged in a civil war of Right vs.Left, Patriots vs Elected Government. That’s the real powder keg, both because it stokes Right Wing anger, and, more importantly, because it sets up a future Right Wing administration to ruthlessly, violently repress any opposition.

BGB: I read that your research for this novel included conversations with 60’s activists, CIA operatives, and current student protesters. How did you go about locating these people and were they generally open to having frank conversations with you?

SAC: I locate sources in various ways. The CIA people I met through martial arts connections. It’s something that I have in common with these men and it establishes a certain bond beyond politics. The Argentine revolutionaries I tracked down through introductions provided by friends and other sources. Some people I contacted simply as names I saw on the Internet. I hit some dead-ends, too. I’m not so big and famous that everyone is eager to talk to me.

My experience is that people will answer as honestly as they can if you are non-judgmental and they know you won’t embarrass them. Sometimes, it’s what they don’t say that’s most revealing.

BGB: “The Inside Story” on your web site mentions that you were once held under suspicion by the Salvadoran military. How did that experience inform the events that unfold in AOR?

SAC: That experience really enlightened me as to how decent people become caught up in an evil machine. Things came out fine for me in El Salvador because I had an American passport, but Salvadorans picked up there who were equally as innocent as me met some terrible ends.

BGB: The types of reading that you did as research for this novel, books on “how to form a new identity, improvised explosives, surveillance and bodyguarding”, would seem to send up numerous red flags under the “Patriot Act”. Were you concerned at all about ending up a “No Fly” list or experiencing other negative consequences as a result of researching/writing this novel?

SAC: I didn’t really worry about that, although that distributor where I got most of those books was under constant pressure from DHS to surrender his client list. My feeling has always been that I’m just a novelist writing fiction. People like community organizers, lawyers and investigative journalists are a much greater threat to a regime than someone working in a dying field of the entertainment business. When I see those people start to go down, I’ll worry about myself.

BGB: In the book you present a fictional right-wing reactionary television news host called The Hammer who seems all too believable. In the novel, your protagonist Joshua Sands has a discussion about the power of pictures over words, and The Hammer seems to embody the power of the “picture” side of that argument. Why did you elect to tell this story in words (instead of pictures) and what does that say about where you weigh in on the relative merits of each?

SAC: To tell a story in pictures, you need a movie studio, and I don’t happen to have one of those at hand. Also, making a movie is, above all else, a major business venture, and a book like mine, where urban guerrillas are, to some degree, the heroes, isn’t necessarily a good risk for a backer. I did get a film offer on this book but I turned it down because I didn’t like the direction they wanted to go with it to make it more mainstream. It was probably a stupid decision on my part.

That being said, words can convey ideas in a way that pictures simply can’t. That’s why movies are always shallower than the books they are based on. I was an Art History major, so I know well that pictures can be beautiful, and they can convey a lot of emotion and spirituality. But they are in no way worth a thousand words, not if the words are any good. If you want to illuminate deeper, complex truths, there’s no substitute.

My two previous books were optioned, and at one time I thought I might want to write screenplays of my books, both because of the money and because movies are just so damned large. You think you’re large by extension, but you’re really not. You’re still just a guy sitting in an empty room, so you might as well be writing what you want, and not have to take notes from some producer or see your work covered over by some re-write man.

BGB: While reading your novel I had Reagan-era punk songs going through my mind, songs that were relatively straight forward in their left wing militancy. I kept waiting for these kinds of songs and other artistic responses to surface during the Bush 2 presidency, but for the most part they never did. Do you think that Sept. 11 effectively killed what I’ll call the “romanticism” of anti-government action and rhetoric during that period?

SAC: I think Reagan’s 1984-style propaganda was new, so maybe people reacted to it more strongly. I think by the time Bush 2 came around, the Right had massively amplified and perfected its propaganda machine and 9/11 had also enabled them to up the ante. Rove and his gang made it pretty clear that anyone who didn’t support them internationally was an enemy, and domestically, a traitor. I think this was very successful in intimidating a lot of people in and out of government. Look what happened to the Dixie Chicks for making a few comments on stage in London: they were vilified and their records were burned publicly. Artists see that and they don’t want to go down that road. Also, the propaganda machine made the troops sacrosanct, and, by extension, the wars, so it was just uncool for artists to question government policy.

There was protest music, such as Green Day’s American Idiot, but I think people were worn-down by the endless barrage of garbage that was being dumped every day by the propaganda infrastructure. That’s one reason they do it. After a while, I think it’s hard to keep reacting.

I truly don’t understand why no other novelists have taken on the issues that I did in The Army of the Republic. My book was rejected more than forty times by publishers: so maybe all those other writers were right! The only books I’ve seen dealing with the possibility of political violence are racist garbage like The Turner Diaries, or Right-Wing heroic fantasies written by ex-military guys, where heroic gun-owners fight an oppressive Federal Government.

BGB: Does the rise of right wing protests and direct actions (i.e., Tea Parties, attempted bugging of Sen. Landrieu’s office, etc.) surprise you?

SAC: I’m not surprised, because dissatisfaction among that element of the Right was pretty high even in the waning days of the Bush Administration. Those people are doubly angry, both because of the drift of the country and because their illusions about the Republicans have crumbled. Unfortunately, they are so crippled by their own ingrained hatreds, as well as a completely fanciful view of how the world really works, that they’re unable to express their very justified anger in a positive way. Instead, they just want to dig the hole even deeper. They don’t even realize it’s a hole.

I thought it was interesting that the Corporates used these people to harass and intimidate the Democrats during the health care debate, disrupting Town Hall meetings, etc. The Tea Party people would say that it’s not Corporates who are organizing them, but let’s not forget that the main platforms for Tea Party ideologues (Beck, Limbaugh, Palin) are Corporate platforms like Fox News and Clear Channel. So, yes, to a great degree, this already is a Corporate-backed movement.

If the Tea Party people succeed in gaining real or ideological control of the Republican Party, and the Corporates decide to fully back them, we will be on the fast track to authoritarian government and political violence.

I actually would like to see the Left working on organizing them, because they have the potential to help change this country for the better.

BGB: As an author whose work was recently caught up in the Macmillan/Amazon feud with the result of having your book become suddenly unavailable from the world’s largest bookseller, what do you make of the situation?

SAC: I don’t know all the ins- and outs: it has something to do with electronic rights and e-books. My general impression of Amazon is that they’re always looking for a new way to pick the publishers’ pockets, and I guess the authors just got in the way this time. My advice is: try www.Powells.com or your local bookstore.

Need more? Check out Cohen’s blog post about the Revolution from the Right.

Salinger is dead. Happy now?

Frank Portman, author of King Dork, which features a defaced Catcher in the Rye as its cover, answers the question at The Huffington Post. (Thanks, Kathleen!)

Peace, JD Salinger.

For a man who wanted nothing more than to be left alone, the hoopla around JD Salinger’s death would surely frustrate the reclusive author.  A local DJ here in Atlanta not known for his love of literature was breathless wondering aloud if now – finally! – unfinished manuscripts would be discovered in his home and published.  If only he had died sooner! Groannnn…

Best of all the million headlines so far: Bunch of Phonies Mourn J.D. Salinger.