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.

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.

Tom Key (left) and Director Richard Garner (right) – Photo James Christerson

Baby Got Books interview with Tom Key, author of the Theatrical Outfit’s stage adaptation of A Confederacy of Dunces

]]> http://www.babygotbooks.com/2010/08/11/bgb-interview-tom-key/feed/ 2 http://www.babygotbooks.com/2010/03/24/bgb-interview-with-scott-russell-sanders/ http://www.babygotbooks.com/2010/03/24/bgb-interview-with-scott-russell-sanders/#comments Wed, 24 Mar 2010 11:45:14 +0000 Tim http://www.babygotbooks.com/?p=3729 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.

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.

Baby Got Books interview with Michael FitzGerald, author of Radiant Days

Baby Got Books: I found out about your book over beers with an author that I met through my blog. I read your book, loved it, and then was able to meet up with you via Goodreads. What’s your take on this crazy web 2.0 world? It must be nice to have these avenues for getting word out about your book and to interact directly with readers, but does it take away from time that you would have spent writing if a global corporate marketing department was doing the work for you?

Michael FitzGerald: Many cool things happened with the book because of these avenues, but communicating with people on Goodreads, while somewhat rewarding, just sort of wasn’t writing. As it’s been said, the web is a 2-inch deep ocean, going on in all directions indefinitely, but nothing really under the surface. I guess to extend that flimsy metaphor: marketing your book on the internet is like wading through this massive puddle. No real danger, but not a rewarding as swimming across something big and deep.

Sort of along these line… my own process with this book…I’m not connected to any sort of writing community or the publishing world in any real way. I don’t teach regularly. (I’m a software developer to pay the bills—although I was laid off last Friday!) I had two boys under the age of 3 when the book came out. So I really had no idea what I should be doing for promotion. The best I could come up with is to treat it like writing, which is to just show up. My writing process—if you could call it that—is to wake early and write for 2-3 hours before my day job. When the book came out, I did the same thing with promotion. Just made sure I spent 30 minutes every day doing something, anything, toward getting it read. The Web 2.0 world certainly made this easier to do from Boise, ID than it would have been 5 or 10 years earlier.

BGB: The reviews that I’ve seen for your book focus on Anthony, your protagonist, as a prototype of the disconnected American youth living abroad. Yet by and large the European characters seem to be as morally bankrupt, if not more so, than Anthony (perhaps for different reasons). Do you think that this emotional disconnection among young people is just part of the modern condition?

MF: I did when I was in my 20s, when most of the book was written. Now I think it’s just how we are in our 20s. And the European characters were a bit extreme… they were forged by war or 50 years of Communism.

On a personal level—and I think each of us has some distinct thing like this that we use—but I had a strict Catholic upbringing. All-boys Benedictine uniform-wearing boarding school. And while in that structured environment, I experienced all the normal stuff high school kids do: a bit too much LSD, awkward desperate attempts at sex, humiliating social life. But because the Catholic part was so unbending, there was a feeling that once the rules have been broken, just get hurly-burly. You’re going to hell anyway, etc… It all felt very dramatic but cool, since we were in bowties.

BGB: I read Radiant Days after reading “genius grant”-winner Aleksandar Hemon’s The Lazarus Project and couldn’t help but notice that the two books work well together as companion pieces. In Hemon’s book, a young Bosnian finds himself disconnected and adrift in the US. (Some literature class somewhere will be assigned both books.) I’ve read an interview where you were quoted as saying that you have read all of Hemon’s work. Do you know if Hemon has read your book? Is your genius grant on its way?

MF: Yeah, Hemon is so amazing. I read The Question of Bruno just as I’d finished the first draft of Radiant Day and immediately felt like a fraud. I don’t know if he’s read it. I think my ears would fall off.

BGB: Marsh, the British war correspondent, was an especially interesting character. He was one of the few people that seemed to have some purpose (and a real job) in his life and there are hints in the book that suggest that his aloof attitude may have been a front to some extent. In many ways he seems out of place with the motley group in Bucharest. I kept wondering what he was doing with those people. (There’s a question here somewhere – I’ll go with this:) Does the expatriot scene lend itself to this type of strange bedfellow scenario?

MF: Yes and no. Common language, especially someplace like Hungary where expats are pretty isolated from the natives, creates bonds between people that wouldn’t normally exist. But at the same time, the young journalists I know tend to be game for anything. Marsh was accomplished, but he was also just sort of finding his way. He was educated, but he really couldn’t drive a car. And there’s a tradition of witty Brits who have little utility outside cocktail conversation.

I don’t how I feel about revealing this… but Marsh is based on two close friends, both journalists. He’ll vigorously deny this, but Owen Matthews was a main inspiration for Marsh. (Read his Amazon review.) He’s brilliant and a lot of fun. He’s presently the Moscow bureau chief for Newsweek and the author of the astonishing, Stalin’s Children. The other is Charlie Graeber, who writes for Wired, National Geographic’s Adventure, and others. He has a book coming out about the compliance of New Jersey hospitals with a serial killer nurse. He’s a dear friend.

BGB: It is unclear from Anthony’s account whether Anthony’s “girlfriend” Gisela’s activities in Hungary and Croatia were on the level, and he may not have cared one way or the other. Did you purposely keep her actions vague to keep Anthony on the hook for his apparent lack of concern?

MF: I’d like to say there was something purposeful behind this. But mostly I just felt it was true. I dated Hungarians when I was over there, and I never had any idea what was going on with them. Once, I thought we were going to church, and we ended up a pig slaughter (family ritual) which involved a four-wheeler and palinka.

BGB: The travels in the book kept me running to my laptop to fire up Google Earth to follow the trail and check out the locales via maps and the user-posted pictures there. Some of the war torn areas you describe in Croatia are among the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen, and they appear (from here) to have recovered well. I’ve read that you visited the area extensively before the war broke out, have you been back since writing the book? If so, how has it changed from your memories?

MF: No, unfortunately, I haven’t been back. I was pretty delusional about how a book gets published. Specifically, I thought there would be a step where I got a massive advance and could return to the Croatia for some fact checking. Whoops.

BGB: Radiant Days was nominated for a Henry Miller Award by Nerve.com for best literary sex scene. I went and re-read the passage that they cited. What’s wrong with those people?

MF: Intern with a wicked sense of humor?

Baby Got Books interview with Frank Portman, author of Andromeda Klein and King Dork

Baby Got Books: I was a college DJ way back when the MTX album Night Shift at the Thrill Factory first came out.  Looking back on it, a song like “The History of the Concept of the Soul” may have hinted at a bookish future.  When did you first begin to write prose (as opposed to songs)?  And at what pint did you first begin to think seriously about writing a novel?

Frank Portman: Before doing King Dork, the only kinds of writing I’d done other than songs were essays and papers for school (and a blog that I started up in 2001.)  That song was actually a song version of a paper I did for a class on Greek and Roman religion when I was in college.  At the time, it just seemed like it would be funny to put footnotes in a punk rock song, and I guess it kind of was.

I started writing the first book in 2004, at the suggestion of an agent who believed the sensibility and characters in some of my songs might make for a pretty good YA novel.  Turns out he was right, but I don’t think I really took it all that seriously till it was well into the revision process.  Then it hit me that it was really happening.

BGB: Neither of us is a young adult exactly, but here we are talking about books that are ostensibly “for” young adults?  Did you set out to right for a particular age group?  How do you feel about the “YA” label that has been assigned to your books?

FP: I love the YA tradition, and I have for practically all my reading life.  I’m proud to be part of it.   That said, I don’t believe in “reader profiling” and I think trying to tailor a novel to match the supposed expectations and tastes and attention span, etc. of a particular narrowly-defined demographic group is a recipe for dull, inauthentic books.

There is a debate, not likely to be resolved, about “what is YA?” (similar to the “what is punk?” debate in some ways.)  I think the marketing answer (e.g. they are books marketed to or “aimed at” young readers as opposed to the general reading public) is the least interesting or fruitful one;  it’s certainly not an approach I’d recommend as guide to how to write a worthwhile novel.   For me, the thing that makes YA YA is something more essential and profound:  it is the attempt to depict a teenaged  character from the inside rather than as a figure observed from without.  The high school years are crucial years for everyone in our culture, and the sting and occasional joys of that experience stays with you, forever.  So it is a great “frame” within which to examine some universal things about human experience.  (Of course, you can read it as nostalgia as well.  I’m not saying that’s not there for older readers — I’m just saying it’s not all that’s there.)  Anyway, there is a reason why the fascination with high school so evident in our popular culture never seems to die out, among all age groups, and I think that’s it.

As for the marketing label, it’s a blessing and a curse like most things.  The downside is that a lot people in the literary establishing tend to take you less seriously as a writer.  And people in general will often tend to assume that your books are simplistic or dumbed down and not worth their time.  (This is summed up pretty well in the question that every YA author hears over and over again:  “so do you plan to write a real novel one day?”)  On the plus side though:  it is a happening, hip place to be these days.   We’re like the “cool kids” of publishing all of a sudden.  And it is a growing market, which is not something you can say about many things in this day and age.  Also, I believe that YA publishers are a lot more open to new things and are prepared to take more risks than “adult publishers.”   So I think it is a good fit for me.  It certainly has worked out well so far.

BGB: Your new novel “Andromeda Klein” features a high school girl who has a strong interest/obsession with the occult, a subject that always seems to be at the top of the list along with “Satanism” as a rationale for challenging books at libraries. Was the possibility of challenges/banning a concern for you or publisher?  Has it happened yet?

FP: While I was writing, that honestly didn’t occur to me.  I was just so absorbed  in Andromeda’s world that I wasn’t really looking at it from the outside, perhaps.  And that’s ironic in a way (and maybe says something unflattering about me) because that it is sub-theme in the book itself.  It wasn’t till we were at the publishing point-of-no-return phase when people started saying “you know, this book is going to get banned” that the thought first entered my head.  I was shocked by that.  And then I was even shocked-er when a school visit was actually cancelled.  So far, that’s the only incident I know of.  We’ll see what happens.

BGB: It’s clear from the book that a great deal of research into the arcana of the occult was involved.  Has the occult always been an interest of yours or did you dive into the subject as you began to write Andromeda Klein?

FP: It was an interest of mine as a kid, sure, but I really did have to do my homework to get up to speed with Andromeda.  The model for Andromeda’s obsession with and approach to the occult, to the degree that there was one, was not my own obsession with the occult as a kid but rather my obsession with rock and roll.  I think the two areas of interest have a lot in common, especially inasmuch as the “record nerd” and and the “occult nerd” can be equivalent types.  Moreover, in both cases it is a side of things that fairly common, but not often recognized or depicted.   So there’s a similarity between the two books, and the two characters, if you like, despite the fact that they are very very different in almost every other way.

BGB: One of the things (among many) that I learned from Andromeda Klein is that Ozzy Osbourne mispronounced Alistair Crowley’s name in the song Mr. Crowley.  The book presents several examples of musicians who botch the meaning of occult symbols/beliefs (e.g., they are Satanic).  Do you think this is due to a general misunderstanding based on the esoteric nature of occult texts?  Or is it just lazy appropriation?  Both?

FP: The big mistake people tend to make in general regarding esoterica is to assume that because it is of an earlier age and off the radar of conventional contemporary rational discourse that it is simplistic, or naive, or that it can be discussed meaningfully without much knowledge about or engagement with the material.  In fact, it might well be nonsense, like anything, but it is a rich, extremely complex chunk of nonsense with its own rules, conventions, traditions, etc.,;  and moreover, it relates to various unquestioned aspects of our own conventional rational discourse in often surprising ways.

Rock stars are no less immune to these habits than anyone.  And of course there’s nothing wrong with appropriating iconography and symbolism for effect, “coolness,” what have you.  It is done all the time, to great effect.  I don’t know that the song “Mr. Crowley” would have been a better song if it had truly attempted to depict “Crowley the man and his thought,” but I kind of doubt it, really.  I think the mispronunciation, though, is a kind of symbol of the general situation,  and thus is rather precious as a reminder never to assume you already know everything about everything.

BGB: Andromeda Klein differs markedly from your first novel King Dork.  A notable example for me is that Andromeda is largely clueless regarding modern music where King Dork‘s Sam Hellerman and Tom Henderson discuss music constantly.  Did you make a conscious effort to limit the musical references in the book or did the pop culture obliviousness of Andromeda Klein limit the opportunities?

FP: There were lots of reasons to make Andromeda oblivious to contemporary music and pop culture.   It underscores the degree to which her occultism obscures everything but itself in her world, and it makes her eventual discovery of Led Zeppelin “mean more” in the end.  Mostly though, it had its own logic.  Not to belabor the point, I hope, but occultism plays much the same role in Andromeda’s life as rock and roll plays in Tom’s and Sam’s life.

BGB: A character in Andromeda Klein is an HP Lovecraft-inspired Cthulhu-rock band?  Is there really such a thing?  What does/would Cthulhu-rock sound like?

FP: There isn’t such a thing as Cthulhu Rock, per se, as far as I know.  I imagine it as a kind of techno-metal geekery, maybe the least hip music conceivable.  So of course, I bet I’d be pretty into it were it to exist.

BGB: The covers for both King Dork and Andromeda Klein are made to appear as though they have been defaced.  Should we read anything into that?  Is it becoming the Frank Portman signature look?

FP: I think that is more a function of how “booky” both books are.  Books as artifacts play a big role in both.  That said, I do like defacing things, on principle, and I suppose you could say that that’s part of what I enjoy about writing novels, as with just about anything else.

BGB: A character from King Dork makes a surprise cameo in Andromeda Klein.  Can we expect to hear more from Sam Hellerman and/or Tom Henderson in your future novels?

FP: My next book will be a sequel to King Dork called King Dork Approximately, so there’s wall-to-wall Tom and Sam in that.

BGB: I am a HUGE fan of your novel King Dork.  I hear that the book is being made into a movie by the Adam McKay/Will Ferrell production team (true?). What’s the latest word on the movie and to what extent have you been involved in the process?

FP: Thanks a lot.  Glad to hear you like it.  The film is in “development” currently.  That term can mean anything from “we forgot we bought the rights to it” to “we’re definitely for sure gonna make it.”  You never know.  But yes, the producers are Will Ferrell and Adam McKay and the studio is Sony Pictures.  A lot has been happening recently, and the project seems very much alive at the moment.  We’ll see what happens.

BGB: NPR recently aired an interview with Mitch Horowitz, author of Occult America, that claimed that Jay-Z may be “a master of occult wisdom.”  Are The Mr. T Experience secret masters of the occult?

FP: I guess all I can say to that is:  them as knows don’t tell, and them as tells don’t know.

Don’t forget to enter our Andromeda Klein giveaway over here.

Audio Bonus:

Ozzy Osbourne – Mr. Crowley (Andromeda says the first syllable should be pronounced  ”crow” like the bird)

[See post to listen to audio]

Katie Kitamura was gracious enough to take time out to answer our burning questions.  She’s awesome like that. Read on…

Baby Got Books interview with Katie Kitamura, author of The Longshot

Baby Got Books: Your novel The Longshot takes place in the violent world of mixed martial art fighting. What is it about violent sports that makes for compelling literature?

Katie Kitamura: I think writers necessarily live in their heads. It’s a disembodied lifestyle, and the highly embodied nature of combat sports can become an alluring contrast. I don’t know that writers are necessarily drawn to writing about what they know, even if they should be. I can only speak for myself, but I’m more often drawn to writing about what I don’t understand. You have to be a little bit in love with the world you’re writing about, and I think it’s easier to fall in love with what you don’t fully know.

BGB: At what point will it become very old and/or very insulting that every review or article about this book will begin with pointing out that you are “a girl”? (And I am as guilty of this as anyone…sorry about that)

KK: To flip the tables again, if a man wrote a novel set in a nail salon, people would inevitably comment on it! I genuinely don’t mind – it seems like a natural enough response.

I’m slightly more intrigued by the fact that on the whole, people are saying they can’t tell the book was written by a woman. I can see myself all over the book, and I’m not exactly out of touch with my feminine side. Having said that, I can’t pinpoint exactly where and how that expresses itself in the novel; I think it must do so ways that I haven’t fully worked out myself.

BGB: A cornerstone of the book is its intense realism. It’s clear that you must have spent a great deal of time with fighters and coaches. How did you go about inserting yourself into the very male MMA world? Was there resistance to you being there?

KK: I spent a lot of time with fighters, but to borrow from Joan Didion – I’m small, unobtrusive and neurotically inarticulate. I think they were only half aware I was present. I spent most of my time listening. I wasn’t necessarily listening for content (although a lot of the fight lingo that is in the book came directly from the mouths of fighters); I was listening more for the cadences of their speech. The rhythm of the banter, the jokes that would be picked up and drawn out, the things that were left unsaid.

I never sat down and asked a direct “What is it like to step into the ring?” type of question. It almost didn’t seem necessary, because so much of that experience was telegraphed in their faces, and – both before, during, and after the fight – their bodies. The atmosphere around a fighter is very particular, it has an incredibly tense vibration. I can see how people get addicted to the adrenaline rush of a fight. Even the post fight crash has its nuances.

BGB: Did you ever end up lacing gloves on yourself?

KK: No, no – physically speaking, I’m a complete coward. Probably if I’d had the courage to fight myself, I never would have felt the impetus to write the book in the first place. Maybe to write at all!

BGB: Longshot centers on the relationship of two men, Cal the fighter and Riley the coach. Clearly there is an interdependency between the men. Quoting myself, “Each has a responsibility to the other, neither wants to let the other down, and each play a central role in the continued livelihood of the other.” On the page their relationship is defined as much by what they do not say to one another as what they do say. How did you find the restraint, and the confidence, to leave so much of what is happening between the men off the page?

KK: Any good fight tells an emotionally engaging story through the bodies, and not just the minds, of the fighters.  I think I wanted to see if I could do the same in fiction. I didn’t want to do a lot of exposition on the emotions of the men, their motivations and their back-stories. When you sit down to watch a fight, you don’t need to know the back-story of the individual fighters to get drawn in; all you need is the most basic of narrative arcs.

Having said all that, I really did not want to (and hope I haven’t!) frustrate the reader by leaving things unsaid and off the page. I hate the idea of frustrating the reader solely for the purposes of servicing some kind of larger conceit you’ve entertaining as a writer. I hope the relationship between Cal and Riley still feels sufficiently engaging, and also realistic. I think there are a lot of relationships where the core of what is happening is never explicitly stated, but is only revealed in the small details.

BGB: In a profile featured on The Daily Beast, it quotes you as saying that you were shocked at first by the way that MMA is fought here as opposed to Japan where you had previously seen the sport. It’s difficult to imagine your description of the scene in Japan – 50,000 people in attendance, families watching together, polite applause, etc. Why do you think what can be a family outing in Japan has been recast here – whether through marketing or perception – as a bloodsport?

KK: There are a lot of arguments for cultural context – there’s a long history of martial arts in Japan, with judo, karate, and sumo, and most children learn some kind of martial art in school. Certainly I think the way we understand any sport is couched in a received set of aesthetic standards. We perceive boxing as aesthetically valid in part because of everything from Norman Mailer’s prose to archive footage of Ali. I don’t know that a similar aesthetic has been developed for MMA; on screen, it can strike people as ugly, in part because when we watch MMA, we don’t have the tape of Raging Bull or Fat City running in the back of our minds.

Maybe the language of martial arts has been more fully integrated into the Japanese imagination, but I think you’re absolutely right to think that it’s as much a question of marketing as anything else. In America, there was initially a bit of a back door approach to the sport. The marketing relied on shock tactics (the use of the cage, for example, is in essence one giant marketing ploy). It’s now methodically cleaning up its image, and I think is poised to become fully mainstream. But in Japan, MMA was presented and understood to be a mainstream sport from the beginning.

BGB: I’ll admit to not having watched any MMA fights prior to reading your book, so forgive the ignorance that is inherent in this question, but… The fight in your book takes place in Mexico in what seems to be a traditional boxing-type ring. Everything that I have ever seen about the sport – which is only the marketing behind the UFC – takes place in a small cage. Did you purposefully set the fight in Mexico to avoid the UFC scene as – maybe? – too distracting from the story that you wanted to tell?

KK: Yeah – well noted! They use a ring in Japan, and when I went down to Tijuana to watch some fights, they also used a ring. But on the whole, the cage has become the standard across the sport. I’m getting used to it, but I still prefer the ring. I like the associations better, I like the word better in prose – and then there’s the very simple fact that you can see the fighters more easily in a ring.

But to respond to your larger question – in a lot of ways, the book is deliberately nostalgic. In some ways, I wanted to take a very contemporary sport (MMA) and blunt that currency by creating an atmosphere around it that was less immediately locatable, less identified with a particular brand and cultural moment.

BGB: Your first novel has not only found its way to a supportive (and large) publisher, but it has also been getting great reviews. What has that experience been like so far?

KK: I feel very lucky that the book found a home at Free Press – it’s not the most obvious book, and first fiction remains a gamble for any publisher. They’ve been incredibly supportive; my editor used a very sure and light touch in working on the book, and the team at Free Press were very generous in allowing me to meddle in everything from the font on the book cover to marketing ideas.

I’m starting to get feedback from actual readers, and that’s possibly the most exciting part of all. It will sound naïve, but I’m completely astonished to discover that people apart from my friends and family have taken the time to read the book! Giving over that time to an unknown writer seems to me an incredibly generous thing to do, and I’m very grateful.

Bonus: Speaking of grateful, the author has graciously signed three (3!) copies of The Longshot for us to give away here on BGB.  Again, she’s awesome like that.  If you’d like to get your mitts on a copy to check out this excellent novel yourself, leave us a comment. At the end of the week holiday weekend we’ll choose three enthusiastic readers at random.

Hall was the subject of our very first author interview, and he has been a friend to the blog ever since.   In the greatest coup this blog has ever scored, Steven Hall was the guest of honor at a  Baby Got Books’  Reading Series event here in Atlanta.  See!:

We decided recently that it was high time to catch up with Steven Hall to see what’s new.

Baby Got Books Interview with Steven Hall, author of The Raw Shark Texts:

Baby Got Books: First things first.  When’s the new book, variously known as “Book 2″ and code name “Hula Hoop,” coming out?

Steven Hall: I’d tell you if I knew! “Hula Hoop” really has taken on a life of its own and I’m just holding on as best I can. It’s a very complicated book to write, it has a lot of specific demands, some of which are pretty unique. I want to make sure I get it right, or at least give it my very best shot.

BGB: At 3 AM Magazine, they quote you as saying, ““Even more than Raw Shark Texts, the second novel uses the architecture of the book to tell the story (but not in the same way). The book also features one and a half returning characters from the first novel, a kite, lots of dolls houses and a gigantic art installation called Narnia Junction.” One and a half characters? What is that supposed to mean?! Any new developments to share?

Steven Hall: Heh, it means that the second character had a tiny cameo in Raw Shark Texts, so brief that most people won’t remember. Actually, it’s starting to look like ‘one and two half returning characters’ – somebody else from that first book is now making very odd semi-appearances in this one, it least, it might be them…

I’m very interested in creating a series of books that all enhance each-other – You can read any of the book alone, that’s fine, but if you chose to read Raw Shark and Hula Hoop, then each would be enhanced by possibilities presented in the other. Or not. It’ll depend on the sort of reader you are. I’m excited by the meta-game of how all these books fit together (the plan is for there to be seven, eventually) – so there will be areas for dedicated reader to explore not just within each novel, but very much in the spaces between them.

Hula Hoop is a hub book, in some ways – we’ll be meeting people in Hula Hoop that play important parts in books 3, 4, maybe 5. And that someone who played a very important part in book 1 too.

BGB: How many languages has Raw Shark been translated into now?  I’ve lost count.  Do you have a shelf with all of the editions on it?

Steven Hall: I think we’re up to thirty languages, although not all of them have been published yet. The complex Chinese edition came out last month. It’s a thing of beauty. Yes, I have a shelf with all the editions. People say “wow, I didn’t realise you’d written so many books.” I have to put them right. It’ll be nice when there are copies of ‘Hula Hoop’ up there too.

BGB: The screenwriter for the film adaptation of The Raw Shark Texts is Simon Beaufoy, who won an Oscar for Slumdog Millionaire moments after working on your project.  Nicely done. What’s the latest word on getting Raw Shark to the screen?

Steven Hall: It was nothing to do with me! The credit for that goes to FilmFour and Pete Czernin from Blueprint Films. I think they’re trying to attached a director to the project at the moment, I’m trying to keep my nose out and let them get on with it. It seems to me that there are wall-to-wall cooks in film making at the best of times, they don’t need me sticking my nose in too. That said, I am very interested and excited to see what they come up with.

BGB: On your blog you mention working on any number of projects: Dr Who radio plays, a short film project, a top-secret e-book project for Book Two, on-going Raw Shark projects, Book Three (or did I make that one up?). Anything else that I’ve forgotten?  It sounds very busy over there at Hall Manor.  With so much happening, how do you keep everything moving forward?

Steven Hall: With difficulty (and no, you didn’t make Book Three up – that’s on the slab too, insanely). I’m also putting the groundwork together for a big project with the very talented Christian Ward. This is going to be something a bit different to my novel work, a different area of interest for me. I’m looking forward to stretching a different set of muscles and hopefully adding a second string to my bow. If we can pull it off, it’ll be quite a piece of work, I think. There never seem to be enough hours in the day, but I’m enjoying myself very much. To be honest with you, Raw Shark Texts was paralyzing for a while – it was so big, it completely took over my life, and it was very difficult to get past the craziness that ate up almost all of 2006-2008. I think I’m doing that now, or at least I’m getting there.

BGB: Speaking of Dr Who, you went out and bought your own Dalek with your Raw Shark advance.  Have you picked up any new sci-fi ephemera lately?

Steven Hall: I haven’t, partly because there doesn’t seem to be anywhere to go after you have your own dalek!

BGB: When you were here in Atlanta, you got me listening to the Finnish band Pepe Deluxé.  It’s still my go-to disc if I am faced with “I need to be cool” emergency.  Do you have any new top-secret bands that I should get hip to?

Steven Hall: I’m sure a lot of people wouldn’t call them cool (but that’s good, cool people are often a bit naff, aren’t they?) but I’ve been very much enjoying the Envy and Other Sins album ‘We Leave at Dawn.’ It really is a brilliant piece of work, I think. And the last song, Shipwrecked, could have been written for the Raw Shark movie (if you’re reading this, FilmFour!). Very much worth a listen, I’d say.

[See post to listen to audio]

Pepe Deluxé – The Mischief of Cloud Six

BGB: Have you started laying the groundwork with your US publisher to make sure that the book tour for “Book Two/Hula Hoop” comes through Atlanta?

Steven Hall: If I tour the States with it, I shall do all in my power to pass through Atlanta. We drank a lot of beer that afternoon, didn’t we?

BGB: Anything else we need to know about while we’re checking in?

Steven Hall: www.steven-hall.org

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Through a top secret arrangement that I really can’t talk about, so we’ll really need to keep this between the two of us, ok?, I have a draft of the first few chapters of “Hula Hoop” in my inbox as we speak!  What I can tell you, from what I’ve read so far, is that this second novel is going to be an interesting departure from Raw Shark.  But remember, mum’s the word.

Baby Got Books interview with Joe Meno, author of The Great Perhaps

Baby Got Books: Your books, particularly the new one, are all very, very
character-driven-the characters are incredibly fleshed out and real,
with frighteningly well-thought-out eccentricities. Who are some of your
favorite characters in literature-”classic” or newer?

Joe Meno: Thanks so much for the compliment. To me, stories about characters, and their relationships to one another, so that’s where I always start. The ones that live on in my imagination always seem to have a real sense of complexity about them—Byron Bunch from Faulkner’s Light in August, Salinger’s Fanny and Zoey, Pecola Breedlove from Morrison’s The Bluest Eye. I have stolen liberally from each of those authors for my own books and stories—how Faulkner uses place to reveal character, what Salinger does with dialogue and gesture, how Morrison can give the reader a new understanding of a character through a single object.

BGB: Regarding the new book-clouds and squids: did you have to do much
research into either topic to make the imagery/meaning factually
accurate (is it factually accurate?)

Joe Meno: I worked on The Great Perhaps for about four years—the research for the novels was pretty extensive, ranging from looking into the prehistoric giant squid, German-American internment camps, radio serials of the 1940’s, social bird dominance, Marxism, the development of the F-4 phantom jet, and epilepsy, and I tried to make it as factually accurate as I could, although that is never the goal I have when I write. I just kept following my curiosity, looking for connections between the lives of the characters I was describing and what already existed in the world. For me the most interesting thing I discovered was how prevalent and, at the same time, how little we know about epilepsy. In the book, Jonathan has seizures which are triggered by clouds, which seems pretty absurd. But in reality, there are all sorts of cases of people whose seizures are triggered by these incredibly specific cues—lights, movement, sounds, one woman in Germany is stricken whenever she hears a certain piece of music by Brahms.

BGB: What was the impetus for Boy Detective Fails? That novel ranks in my
favorite books of all time, ever, and it’s so funny and aching and strikingly original that I’d be remiss in not asking about how it came to be.

Joe Meno: Thanks again. I actually started working on the book some time after September 11^th, and at the time I was turning thirty, and in that way, the book is about how terrified I was that the world had become this random, violent, disorderly place. Usually, when I feel lost, I turn to books and music. In this case, I started thinking back to The Hardy Boys and Encyclopedia Brown and bands like Belle and Sebastian: there’s something incredibly sad about children who are smart, which Belle and Sebastian seem to capture in their music. Like all my books, it was a way for me to come to some kind of understanding about the world: why mystery was something important, something necessary.

BGB: What books do you recall reading as a child that first pushed you to want to write?

Joe Meno: With my daughter, I’ve been revisiting some of those books, like Where the Wild Things Are, and Madeline, and Ferdinand, and you realize how all the basic storytelling techniques that work for adults are there: character, place, action, change. It’s actually really helpful to see that, even as adults, I think we go to books for the same reasons: to have a moment to daydream, to experience something outside of ourselves, and be reminded of the possibilities of things.

BGB: What music are you listening to as of late?

Joe Meno: I’ve been listening to a lot of Beatles lately. My daughter is a year and half old and she just started asking to hear them by name, which is pretty exciting. I feel like whatever mistakes I make as a father, that at least I passed on something important, like an appreciation for “Hey, Jude.” She gets very serious and sings the Na-na-na parts at the end of the song, and it makes you realize what the point of making art is all of a sudden.

If you’d like to have Joe Meno read a part of the first chapter of The Great Perhaps just for YOU, click here.