Self-confidence and a good heart can overcome many difficulties.

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Rabbit at Rest

Jason Chambers: As no doubt most of you have learned by now, literary giant John Updike has died at the age of 76. He wrote more than 50 books, and includes 2 Pulitzer Prizes and 2 National Book Awards among the many recognitions of his work. Read the Salon article listing the highlights of his life, his many accomplishments, writings, and criticisms. Also check of the NYT database including reviews for many of his older works. There's also a lot of links to interesting pages to be found here

On a personal note, while I generally prefer novels to short stories, I find that his short stories really stand the test of time, even compared to his longer works, some of which feel dated. Here's one I like. Read his earliest collections, and be amazed at the precision and characterization. Good stuff.

Also, as a baseball fan, I highly recommend reading some of his sports writing. Here is a link to a great piece on Ted Williams. Definitely worth the time. Read more!

First Chapter of Sunnyside Reviewed...Interview with Glen David Gold!

I can’t remember when I met Glen David Gold. It wasn’t in person; it might have been when I was still writing for Ain’t It Cool News. We carried on an email correspondence, that, to be honest, was very friendly and collegial right from the start. From time to time I would send him missives about short stories of mine that had been published, or links to my book reviews at Ain't IT Cool News. Glen always had something nice to say. A while back he told me he was working on a new book and directed me to his blog. The only entries were numbers, 990…1100…1155, and always going up, which reminded me of Grady Tripp in Wonder Boys. Then he told me more, still being secretive, giving dribs and drabs, and I really thought this was a long shot to actually happen. Finally a few months ago he promised me something from his new novel, Sunnyside, his follow up to Carter Beats the Devil. It would be a first chapter that is going to be bound up in a limited edition and given to friends and family prior to the publication of Sunnyside in May 2009.

I don’t read historical fiction, as a rule. It’s not for me, and I tend to read what I like, you know, the whole ‘life is short’ thing. Glen David Gold has written, in my humble estimation, nothing short of a masterpiece (I’ve only read the first chapter). I like Charlie Chaplin, and the dawn of the motion picture business is intriguing but this chapter made my heart race and I found myself re-reading the pages over and over. Gold manages to write about a specific time and place with incredible assurance, much like Kurt Andersen in Turn of the Century. Andersen, I thought, traveled forward in time to write about the future of New York City, and did it with candid ease. Gold travels back into a well-worn time period and takes a seat in a lighthouse, or imagines an important historical figure, even a girl in a tree watching for a train carrying Charlie Chaplin.

With ‘A Day’s Pleasure’, the opening pages of Sunnyside, Gold gives us a spectacular narration of the coast of Northern California in and around a series of lighthouses, which is all described with a mix of “the parlance of the day” and fluid historical detail that melts all around you…seemingly without a single stumbling point, or stiff sidebar filled with technical gab. Chaplin drowns in the first few paragraphs of the story, but then he’s sighted across the country in New York City. At the same time, America is feverishly dreaming of Charlie Chaplin; seeing him in their soup, so to speak.

Finally we met Edna, Chaplin’s girl, as she runs back to her place of residence and finally makes a discovery on the roof. The way Gold writes about the scenery, the hills, the landscape, seamlessly presenting a coven of cats and pigeons who populate the rooftop, and the discarded sofa chair…okay, I’ll tell you: Chaplin is watching the sun rise while he gives his best Brando to a stray cat. And of course Gold gives Edna and Chaplin their own catch phrase, “Be good, and if you can’t be good, be careful.”

I was just dumbfounded by this old time story telling that Gold makes look easier than breathing. It reminds me of a time before TV and radio, or newspapers, when a stranger would come to town and tell the townsfolk about his adventures into the New West, filled with bandits and heroes, celebrities and whores. He would fill small children with nightmares and adults with the urge to leave town and find their fame and fortune. Glen David Gold has dropped a whopper on the literary establishment, and readers everywhere should be fighting to get this book when it comes out.

Glen David Gold has been kind enough to answer a few questions about the first chapter.


Jason Rice: After Carter Beats the Devil, how quickly did you start researching Sunnyside?

Glen David Gold: Simultaneously. There's a great photo in Silverman's biography of Houdini that shows him hugging Chaplin. It was an obvious passing of the baton from the first most-famous-person-in-the-world to the next. I understood there was a difference in the quality of their fame but I couldn't describe it. Because I was hampered by lack of details (I couldn't find a description of their meeting) and because Chaplin kept demanding more space, that meeting never happens in Carter.

And, ironically, it doesn't happen in Sunnyside, either. By the time I had read all of Chaplin's biographies (which also don't describe the meeting with Houdini) I'd figured out based on the buildings in the background that they met around 1918. And the more I read about that time, the more I realized the period was a crucible through which Chaplin passed unlike any other apotheosis I'm familiar with. Houdini controlled his fame. Chaplin couldn't. He was the first person whose whereabouts became a commodity.

It turned out his story was about everything: money, power, creativity, sex (dear God, quite a bit of sex), cruelty, love, comedy, tragedy, war and the essential question of whether the universe has meaning, or if it's utterly random and we, because we like to make narratives and constellations using our brains, impart it with the virtue of meaning. Because the contrary would be too horrible to contemplate. That turned out to take 220,000 words -- 988 pages, according to my blog -- to figure out.

JR: Why Chaplin? What is it about this time period in American history that so fascinates you?

GDG: I wrote Carter, which is set mostly in 1923, because I was obsessed with the Marx Brothers as a kid, which led me to being obsessed with the Algonquin Roundtable. An unhappy, mouthy kid would be -- of course -- fascinated with being popular because of your ability to move words around.

The more I researched the era the more like home it felt. There's apparently a German word for nostalgia for a place you've never been, and that's how the late 1920s feel to me.

That said, Sunnyside ends, definitively, on a day in July 1919. Which might seem like the same thing, but tell me: would 1999 seem like 2008? Nope. I was looking hard at the way Hollywood changed from a farm town in 1914 to the center of the universe four years later. Of course, you can see decisions being made then that shape the world today, but the larger thing for me is how people of that era were battling with cynicism and hope. It fascinates me that with the best of intentions, with the wealth of information that they had, they managed both to build a lasting legacy and screw everything up almost unimaginably.

I should say that the book is about Chaplin the same way the first chapter is -- he's there, but so are the ripples around him. We follow several storylines and they all loop back, thematically, to that change in character that you witness in "A Day's Pleasure," the first section.

JR: In the first chapter you seem to take the reader on a ride through several narratives, like Bonfire of the Vanities, where you don’t know how everyone will hook up, and then you drop crumbs to lead all involved to the same spot. How difficult was that to write?

GDG: It took me about two weeks to write what you read -- about 13,000 words. But it took me four years of false starts before I found the voice you're talking about. I'm comfortable with writing action, and had to trust that writing about ideas would also be compelling.

Perhaps the hardest thing was trusting. I like your breadcrumb analogy, because that's what writing is like -- there are times when you realize you've given yourself clues as to what's coming next. I had to learn to listen for those.

JR: There is an awful lot of historical data in the first chapter. I can’t tell what’s real or made up, which is perfect, and it seems like a story that actually happened.

GDG: Perfect. Deep in the novel, there's a discussion of a term Noel Burch uses, "diegetic effect," in which you're absorbed into a work of art. In other words, the painting is no longer brushstrokes, but you're involved in what it's telling you. There's a very similar experience with film (i.e. you stop thinking about cross-cutting and instead you're enraptured). I'm glad that my tools seem to work the same way for you.

JR: Your voice is almost non-existent, there are no seams in this story, no shadows behind the curtain. You’ve created the illusion that feels real; that’s quite a feat. How long from cradle to grave did it take you to find this voice, and write this book?

GDG: It's funny you should say that. Something I did in Carter that slipped by mostly unnoticed is that it's told in a non-fiction voice. The first section in particular reads as if everything actually happened and I might have footnotes and interviews to back it up. I reined in metaphor and since the events were so outlandish tried to tell much of the upheaval as plainly as possible. So it's good to hear that the current work also feels seamless. Because the writing style feels very different to me. And perhaps just me.

And: I took notes for Sunnyside for about four years, but didn't connect the dots until I wrote the chapter you read. Once that was done, the rest of the novel suggested itself. As did the ending -- there is a moment in Chaplin's life that I understood would end the novel, but I didn't know why. When I sat down and wrote that scene, I understood both what the book was about, and that the ending was the most disturbing thing in the world. It's an image that, in itself, is disturbing, and then when you realize what it means, I think it has the effect of -- well, I don't want to put my thumb on the scale too much. Let's just say I think if you finish the book at 3 AM, you aren't going to sleep. Like, ever.

JR: This chapter blew me away. Thank you so much for sharing it with me, Glen. I look forward to reading the whole thing.

GDG: Thank you for your enthusiasm, Jason. Sunnyside is goes on sale May 5! Read more!

The Slide by Kyle Beachy

Dennis Haritou: Two kinds of people graduate college. The first kind have already made plans to attend grad school or are heading for a career. It's like they are on a train track that is not going to vary. Career, family, regular hours, home for dinner, television, bedtime...five days a week plus weekends off. This pattern will probably persist for most of their lives once they leave school at one end of the adult life cycle until they are ready to retire at the end of the line.

What's the appeal? When you walk into your kitchen, it's nice to know that the oven mitt is always to be found in the same place. When you walk into your bedroom, the upright chair that you customarily drape your robe over will always be found by that sunny window.

That's the first track. But there is another kind of graduation. On the second track we have the kids who have taken courses for their entire lives. Teachers are assigned, homework prepared and the classes that largely define the contours of their identity are attended. But college graduation is annihilation day. It's like that train, careening at full tilt, has suddenly run out of track and had its wheels sucked into the mud.

This is where we find Potter Mays of Kyle Beachy's debut novel, The Slide. It's the tale of Potter's lame duck school vacation. The novel concludes on Labor Day.

Potter's "last summer" is framed by his obsession over whether his girlfriend Audrey will come back to him from a European jaunt. They are already ominous signs, like the keepsake starfish he receives from her in the mail with several of its tentacles broken off.

But I found myself not caring whether Audrey comes back. Audrey's absence provides a context for Potter's free floating anxiety. It looks like his parent's marriage is heading for the rocks and the comfortable home that he has lived in all his life will soon be part of history. That's certainly quite a shake up for a man whose mother still makes his breakfast and packs his lunches for him.

But Potter has returned from school to the heartland of a St. Louis that is trying to revive its decaying urban core. He will count on old friends and encounter some sadistic enemies. He will try to be a mensch but in general he will fuck things up. He may sleep around some. Audrey?

It is my opinion that you should take a look at what Potter Mays is up to during the last vacation in which he may arguably be called a child. It's a season that fades fast, as those who have been through it know. But I loved St. Louis and I loved the Cardinals after reading this book. As for Potter, if he existed on Facebook, I'd friend him, as I have Mr. Beachy.

Jason Chambers: I actually like the way Kyle Beachy writes. You can see some great examples here and here. Serious, tough, smart writing. Some funny stuff too. Some excerpts from The Slide, taken on their own, are beautiful and touching, if a bit Lifetime for Men. The growing sense of family in the face of separation is notable and very good. I wish the book had delved deeper into those relationships and Potter's changing impressions and growing maturity.

But, frankly, I think that Beachy's all over the place here. First we're watching Potter moan about Audrey and hang out with old friends, then flirting with the jail bait next door (I did love the Lolita line, very funny), then establishing an entirely inappropriate relationship with a semi-abandoned latchkey kid. The focus of the book gets away him between the farm girl, the ogre and the labor cult (really, what the hell was that about?)

Dennis is right that The Slide is really a coming of age novel for late bloomers. Potter is a loser without a clue about the future. By having as little common sense as possible from an ostensibly intelligent person, he fucks up just about everything, while reveling in in his lack of awareness. Audrey? Well the best way handle the situation is to ignore her for three months, of course. Don't know what to do for a job? Take the first shit job someone throws at you. Met a strange kid home alone? Let's hang out with him! Potter's utter discombobulation in the face of the world around him falls short of charming for me, and his enlightenment at the end is minor.

Good writing, but deeply flawed, The Slide misses its mark. I wondered if this was a very good short story, or a series of stories, that was expanded into a weaker novel.

Jason Rice: I wandered through this novel, much the way the unconvincing Potter wandered through his post-college life. It wasn't pretty, his parents are getting divorced, he's interested in the neighbors' teenage daughter and he's thinking about baseball, all while navigating his wealthy friends and a down on it's luck St. Louis.

But then I realized this is what post-college life is like, you think that there will be a job and a ready-made life waiting for you (because College never told you otherwise, just filled you with a healthy ego, and positivity), and it isn't there, because you haven't made it yet. Beachy is a good writer, JC, I agree, but this novel is too many things, and not enough of just one thing. Potter doesn't have a goal, he doesn't achieve anything, he is miserable, philosophical about everything, and nothing at the same time. I thought the water job would reap some funny anecdotes, and it only provided a missed opportunity. Potter doesn't speak like a kid who has been to an expensive college, he speaks like a child raised at NASA, his voice is too enlightened for a kid just out of college. He has college-level experience, and he's talking about things like he's Yoda. His parents suffer the same uneven hand, overworked and peppered with fifty-cent words, when a sentence worth a nickel would do. I believe less is more, Beachy piles on so many things, almost like he suffers from ADD, or OCD, and is trying to cram it one long short story.

Novels aren't easy to write, that I know, Potter has potential, but too many things that don't mean anything seem to crop up in his path. And Audrey? She sounds like a rich character who got locked in the freezer, and forgotten about. I would love to see her and Potter tear it up, instead he thrusts his hands down the pants of a little girl, which I thought was a painfully wrong choice for both Beachy and Potter.

Beachy can write circles around most young writers I've read, and know personally, I just think The Slide needed a through line, and a half way decent pay off.

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Kyle Beachy Trailer

Jason Chambers: While we're at it, why don't you take a look at this trailer for The Slide, created by Brendan McGrath. Don't forget to come back tomorrow for the 3Guys discussion.


Home Video (For: The Slide) from Edsel Denk on Vimeo. Read more!

Kyle Beachy Giveaway

Thanks to all our readers for their interest in The Slide! In co-operation with Kyle's publisher, Dial Press, we are happy to offer a FREE copy of The Slide to the first Three book lovers who ask us for it. You will have to provide us with your name and a shipping address so the publisher can send you the free copy! Read more!

To Be Honest, I Never Liked You.

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Excerpt from The Slide by Kyle Beachy

What was good about the road was that the road’s decisions were already made. For two full days I’d watched it emerge on the horizon and disappear beneath me. I saw it change colors, from black to gray to brown, and sometimes felt the seams between them, a clunk against the steady tremble. Los Angeles giving way to glittery Vegas, Martian Utah, and a blind nighttime passage through the Rockies. Then a fresh morning of eastern Colorado fading into prodigious fields of Kansan wheat, forever-sized and flat like nothing you’ve ever seen, until finally Missouri, blunt and dark, a series of brake lights to guide along the final leg. I surrendered to the road. Only once did I pick up my phone and call Audrey. After eight rings I heard her voice mail, and here I likely should have made some gesture, but everything had already been said, repeated, thrown around like rolled-up socks.

Then I was back in the driveway, engine idling, wondering just what in the shit to do now. There was a new addition to the house jutting into what used to be side yard. I could imagine my parents in the living room, quiet and mostly still, cozy within that special silence of the long-married. If I unfastened my seat belt, the car would beep at me.

Soon enough the front door opened to reveal parents silhouetted against the yellow glow of home. I cut the engine, stepped into the night, raised a hand, and smiled. Hello. The air felt and tasted heavy and wet. A hug, a hand pressed flush against cheek, and even though it wasn’t a week since we’d all been together at commencement, I sensed relief in them both. During her second hug my mother swayed and spoke quietly to the air,our boy, our boy, our boy.

Excerpted from The Slide by Kyle Beachy Copyright © 2009 by Kyle Beachy. Excerpted by permission of The Dial Press, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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Kyle Beachy Interview Part 2

This is Part 2 of Dennis' interview with Kyle Beachy. Read Part 1 here.

DH: One of the most interesting features of your coming-of-age novel is the way you treat Potter's evolution in his attitude towards his parents. I think it's a reach for someone your age to be able to grasp the life situation of adults who are a generation older. It's like the pendulum is swinging...away from Potter's parents as they grow older and towards Potter as he comes into full adulthood. It's one of the ways that you show that he is growing up. Was presenting well-rounded parental figures in your novel a challenge? A learning experience perhaps? I'm not putting it right really...I mean a step into a different world?

KB: The way you've worded this reminds me of what Brian McHale has written about the "dominant" with respect to cyberpunk. In McHale's view, the shift from modern literature to post-modern literature is a shift from an epistemological dominant to an ontological dominant. That is, turning from questions based on knowledge (its acquisition, its limitations, and so on) to questions of the nature of the world itself: what world is this, what I am to do in it, and which of my "selves" is to do it? I think it's fair to consider "adulthood" as a world separate from childhood, and even adolescence. In The Slide, these worlds rub against one another, and characters find themselves straddling the lines between them. Which proves to be uncomfortable as hell.
And this dovetails nicely with the earlier thoughts about empathy and successful projection of oneself into a situation. When my own parents were divorced it came as a total shock to me because I never saw them angry, or sad, or anything less than (what I thought was) content. For a long time afterward, because I wanted to understand better, I devoted a lot of energy into creating my own versions of how their marriage failed. Because how? How did this nice pretty marriage between two nice loving people fall apart? If they couldn't endure, who possibly could? And asking these questions made me confront some of the same confusion that we see Potter facing. So in that sense, yes, a learning experience to be sure.

DH: Class distinctions are rather blatant in The Slide as they are in our society even though it seems that everyone is trying to pretend that they are not. I liked the joke about Stuart's wealthy parents that everyone was under-resourced in comparison to them. Potter tries to help the impoverished kid Ian, who he runs into in his water deliveries, in part because he has sympathy when he realizes how limited the kid's opportunities are. Ian's situation is exemplified by the lousy quality of his catchers mitts which he has gotten as a cheap giveaway and are about to fall apart. But Potter doesn't have true empathy for Ian, it seems to me, because he can't really understand a social world where people don't have nice things. It made me quite sad. What were your feelings about the situation that Ian is in.

KB: Potter doesn't understand Ian's world, no. But with his uniform and delivery van he is granted a kind of access that he otherwise wouldn't have. And his gut instinct, once he overcomes his initial fear of being in over his head, is to try and help. Of course, "help" is a tricky thing to pin down depending on whose standards we want to apply. And though this isn’t Potter's motivation per se, a lot of his instincts align with the old Christian virtues, notions of camels and needle heads, the sort that so many of today's loudest religious leaders conveniently ignore. A sense of obligation to help those in need however you can. That Potter learns of his family's Mennonite ties halfway through the novel sheds some light onto this idea of service, but there's always a chasm between intention and result. So, while sadness or pathos can spark action, one has to monitor exactly why one is driven to help. Is it selfish? Potter thinks the act of helping Ian might offer him a chance of absolution and salvation. Can this instinct ever be anything other than selfish? And, most importantly, is it okay if selfishness drives our desire to do something good? One of the things I wanted to touch on in this book is the relativity of challenge. Stuart Hurst puts it best, and rather crassly, when he says, "This isn't Cambodia." Ian's challenges are the most obvious in the novel, and definitely the saddest. But for a reader to only sympathize and only despair for the boy's life is to make the same mistake Potter makes. That is, to project one's own values onto circumstances where they may have no business.

DH: The gifts that make a good writer are plural. One of them is the ability to set the stage. The stage of The Slide is St. Louis and the Midwest more generally. The sense that you are celebrating the heartland is palpable, a least from where I sit, in a very un-heartland New York City. Potter's father is trying to revive the urban core of St. Louis, which is celebrated towards the end of the novel. However we are not talking about real estate values but how the city is a community of families with its heart at its center. It's really a splendid conception of what an American city should be and a symbol of the hope for renewal that makes The Slide such a high as a read. Last time I looked, I noticed that the galley of your book lists your residence as Chicago but your Facebook page says St. Louis. These two cities seem to define the orbit of your life right now. Would you say something about what you feel about them?

KB: I just spent eleven wonderful days in New York. But at the risk of getting too Jim Croce about it, I will say that no matter how much I enjoy myself there, it's obvious that it's not, and won't ever be, my home. During my flight back to St. Louis, an off-duty flight attendant took the empty window seat next to me for the landing. "There it is," she said, watching our descent. "Right smack where we left it," I said, and she turned to me and agreed vigorously. St. Louis is a pair of permanently open arms: a place of return more than arrival, if that distinction makes any sense. It is also a city of roads, which I drove endlessly for research. Winding roads that change names and form a kind of softcore labyrinth. Plus all the highways leading outward to the rest of the country – this is one advantage of centrality. Of course these same highways are the medium for the sprawl that's threatened to destroy, or at least render ineffectual, the city core. Though there's too much history buttressing the city for it to every go away. Too many bricks. And what to say of Chicago? Winter is torture but has proven exceedingly good for my work ethic. Summer is like a shared citywide orgasm, everyone bursting onto stoops and sidewalks and roads, smiling and laughing over beers and grilled meat. It is a city of neighborhoods and diversity and culture, which can sometimes breed conflict and always provides flavor. City of books and music and restaurants. It is a bicycling city, completely flat and widely paved. The rumble of the el, gorgeous rippled blue of the lake, scent of chocolate windblown from downtown. Don't tell anyone, but it's actually the greatest city in America.

DH: Kyle, this is my last question, so please accept my gratitude for showing me the kindness which is helping me to understand The Slide better. I mentioned the gifts that make a good writer as being multiplex...among them a gift for dialogue, a sense for the flowing currency of language, being a good psychologist, having the osmotic ability to soak up the quality of the times and put it on the page. Not all writers have all the requirements in equal measure, but you seem to be hitting the full range in your first published novel. I could see you going to Hollywood and writing screenplays...you'd be good at it...or joining the writers colony in Brooklyn. But my best guess is that you will have Chicago as your home base. You are at the beginning of your writing career and it seems that a lot of doors are open. What are your plans as you look forward? And can you give us any hints about another novel? Best wishes, Kyle.

KB: While I tend to have a few short things I'm juggling at all times, my main focus currently is on a second novel that has very little in common with The Slide. It is about bones and debt and fear and several others, and I'm happy with how the process is going. I learned a lot with The Slide, primarily that I have much to learn. So, while I thank you for the kind words, Dennis, I fear you're being too kind. As for other options, I would love to work on a screenplay if the right project came up. I would not "love", exactly, to join the working writers in Brooklyn. Much more likely that I'll dip southward somewhere, find myself some kudzu. But for now I will stay in Chicago and read as much as I can, teach my classes, play with my dog, and write books about Americans. Thank you for your time, Dennis, and thank you to the Jasons as well.

Come back Monday to read the 3 Guys discussion of The Slide. Read more!

Kyle Beachy Interview Part 1

This is Part One of Dennis' interview with Kyle Beachy. Part 2 will appear tomorrow.

Dennis Haritou: Kyle, thanks very much for considering my questions. I took up the galley of your debut novel, The Slide, one more time when I began writing them up. The first thing I noticed is that I had circled the first sentence. It read: "What was good about the road was that the road's decisions had already been made". This reminded me of an encounter I had with a friend once who was about the same age as your hero, Potter. My friend turned to me and said out of the blue: "I wish someone would tell me what to do." I didn't have an answer. The question...where do I go from here? Why isn't this a simple question for Potter?

KB: In general terms, there would seem two scenarios in which this question is simple to answer. The first involves having limited options. The second requires confidence of both where you want to go and the best route to get there. Potter qualifies for neither. Regarding options, the specifics of Potter's life are such that he faces a relative abundance. He is thus officially "privileged". As for confidence, I think it becomes clear rather quickly that Potter has trouble with desire, primarily because he's unable to believe in its purity. Potter desires to be a loving boyfriend and someday a successful spouse, but also realizes that one factor driving this desire is a fear of being alone. He sees the system of influence behind desire, the network of codes and expectations that contribute to the way we define our goals. The result is that, like a lot of young people, Potter is far more certain about what he doesn't want. If we translate this back to our trusty journey metaphor, we can say it's absurd to read a map based on the many locations you'd hope to avoid.

DH: I wonder if we could try an experiment on my second question. In this experiment, we would pretend that I am from Mars and know nothing about baseball...I mean especially why baseball is so important. Baseball is woven into the lives of your characters. Even when Potter encounters the little waif kid, Ian, who he tries to help, they play catch. Towards the end of your novel there is a decisive batting practice scene and there are other scenes of games throughout the book. I have to confess to you that I am like that minor character in your novel at Stuart's pool party who doesn't get it about baseball...who doesn't understand the magic. But by the time I had gotten two thirds of the way through your novel, I had joined a Cardinals Facebook group...I just felt I had to be supportive somehow...I was swept up in it. So can you tell me what you love about baseball?

KB: I hesitate on this one, because much better writers than I have been answering this question for years. But if I'm to try, I'll start here: take a minute to track down footage of Ozzie Smith fielding a ground ball. Not one of his miracle plays at short stop, not even the backflip as he took the field. Talking about a simple, routine ground ball. It is an act of poetry and beauty, as natural a set of movements as ever there were. And the best part is that we're talking about his defense. He is a .262 career hitter who hit a grand whopping total of 28 homeruns in over 9,000 at bats. And yet he is an obvious Hall of Famer, no debate whatsoever, and in 1985 he hit a miracle home run against the Dodgers that I bet three of five people you stop on the street in St. Louis can recite verbatim from Jack Buck's historic radio call. So a lot of my love for the sport comes from growing up in St. Louis, where Cardinals baseball approaches the religious.

But more generally, I think the ineffable "something" of baseball has do with the balance between isolation and teamwork, and the division of labor. Stand roughly here in the grass or dirt and be ready because the ball might come to you. Chew what you like. Spit. When the ball comes, run after it and throw it to the right place. And now step to the plate and take your cuts. Reach base and run fast and score the run, celebrate, and take the field all over again to protect that run. Offense and defense. Hit, run, catch, throw -- everyone (the designated hitter is an insult to the game). Baseball is physical poetry amidst an ongoing war between numbers and intangibles, the novelistic pace of a 162-game season dense with intertwined narratives, rookies and veterans, middle-relief specialists and franchise superstars, all playing beneath the strategic aegis of the old, grizzled manager who, god bless him, is wearing the same uniform.

DH: Potter is described at one point in the novel as a person who notices everything. You had a character describe him as having teeth for eyes...or eyes with teeth. I loved that expression...it seems like a paradigm of the writer's state of consciousness and I assumed it was a paradigm that applied to you. But I'm conflating it with another passage in your novel where there is talk about the difference between sympathy and empathy...a very important distinction in this story. Do you think writers "have eyes with teeth"....that they are omnivorous when paying attention. And should writers have sympathy...or empathy for their characters?

KB: One of the working titles I had for this book was "The Opposite of Blind", which I liked for the implication of seeing too much and the paralyzing effect that comes of looking too hard at the world. In his sixteen years of schooling, Potter has been taught to be not only aware of the world, but critical of it; to analyze it and pick it into constituent parts. This becomes a problem when he tries to break apart something that is essentially un-break-apartable: human love. Meaning he tries to apply his skills of reason to the unreasonable, and fails resoundingly.

Regarding writers, I always think back to David Foster Wallace's famous description of writers as "oglers", the subway riders staring creepily from our seats, jotting mental notes, basically stealing raw material from the world to appropriate how we see fit. So in a sense there's a hint of exploitation, always, for a writer as she moves through the world. This also makes me think of what Keith Gessen has said about how literature's responsibility is to hold up a mirror to society. Because it's in this reflection, I think, that sympathy and empathy become important. This might be a little crude or simplified, but let's say a writer without either of these can offer, at best, a flat reflection of whatever situation she's addressing. Shapes and colors. A sympathetic writer, on the other hand, can offer something fuller, rounder, and more textured. But if writing is to feel real, if it's to touch on something true (which ideally it should), the writer has to go beyond mere collection and exploitation of details to the wholesale projection of herself into a situation; to root around inside of it, imagining how it smells and looks and most importantly feels to be there. So, it's empathy absolutely. Whether this would qualify as forced empathy, or artificial empathy, and whether this distinction matters, I'm less sure…

DH: I wanted to talk about the loutish character Edsel who is referred to at one point as "the ogre". It can be very hard to express what we believe in...to talk about deep-seated values. It's more that we have to show them. But it seems to me that one way to present values in a novel is to create a character like Edsel...a horror show really, totally brutal, to show the contrast. Edsel is the anti-Potter, although there seems to be a little of "Edsel" in Potter. Isn't there?

KB: With Edsel Denk, I tried to capture the competitive drive that we associate with American capitalism. He has a clear idea what he wants, and he is almost constantly working toward achieving his goals. These are the principles capitalism historically promotes: hard work, noses and grindstones, integrity, and standing squarely behind your good or your service. However, in the early twenty-first century these principles can be said to have either evolved or devolved into lying, cheating, manipulating, and other forms of brutality. To varying degrees, of course. In that sense I wanted Edsel, the ogre, to embody the underbelly of the self-made man. That he affects Potter so deeply I think comes down to types of fear. There's the routine horror of the modern world, then there's the deeper horror of finding ourselves implicated in that which is horrible. Potter is scared of what Edsel says about himself, the reluctant acceptance that they have things in common, that they're both products of the same US culture.

to be continued... Come back tomorrow for Part 2 Read more!

This Might Be The Most Important Moment Of Your Life.

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Read It Before It's Written

Jason Rice: Considering how bad things are in the economy, I was shocked to see how many titles FSG is publishing in their spring 2009 catalog. Holt runs about the same amount of titles each season, and they’re list makes good sense topically as they continue to keep their finger on the prescient pulse out there in the wilderness of book retail. Sure, Borders is in trouble, or seems to be. Maybe the book world needs some atrophy? Remember the days when you went to your local bookstore and bought a book you read about in the New York Times Book Review, and they had it displayed in the window because they read the review too? Chains sell everything, toys, dolls, chocolate, magazines, book marks, pens, pencils, notepads, and some bestsellers in their closely guarded bestseller rack. (Which makes me wonder, how do you determine a bestseller in your store? The New York Times does it by sales, how do you figure it out?), and lots of mass markets. But it’s like going to Dunkin Donuts and expecting your tires to be rotated.

When did bookstores stop selling just books? Sure, Three Lives in NYC is a great example of the “just books” philosophy; they know their business and stick to it. But if the chains stopped selling this wide variety of bargain books and sidelines would they continue on the path they seem to be lost on? Just because the chain stores can offer you a variety doesn’t mean it’s going to sell. Non book product in a bookstore turns me off, and remember this, the chains aren’t Amazon.com, and never will be, leave the sidelines to them.

The fall list for FSG is pretty good. Jonathan Franzen (I’ve seen a lot of Franzen activity lately, does this mean his long awaited follow up to The Corrections is in the pipeline?) and Zadie Smith both raved about a new novel by Clancy Martin called How To Sell, and if the catalog copy is any indication of this books ability to interest cynics like me, then I think this it has a chance. I would be lying if I said I was looking forward to the new Denis Johnson novel, Nobody Move. I’ve tried his books over the years, and I can’t get into them. Nobody Move saw its first light in Playboy, which if nothing else is an interesting way to hype a book. Rachael Cusk has new memoir called The Last Supper about her time in Italy, and if this book catches the right tailwinds…I think it might surprise some people. I don’t go in for graphic novels, but Fahrenheit 451 is going to get the graphic novel treatment from Tim Hunter, which should be exciting for those of us who did that kind of thing. Graywolf Press brings us Robert Boswell as he returns to his fiction roots with a new collection, The Heyday of the Insensitive Bastard…and Percival Everett has a new book called, I am Not Sidney Poitier.

On the Holt side, I think Fifty Grand by Adrian McKinty could make some waves. From the just declassified FBI files comes the lives of Bonnie and Clyde, if you’re still interested in those two. I’ve heard rumors that Jonathan Lethem’s next book is called Chronic City and should be out next fall, advance reading copies start circulating this summer, which in the book business is just a few minutes from now. The advance word on that novel is tremendous, but it’s Doubleday, which I don’t buy. Some other Doubleday notables; Chuck Palahniuk has another novel, lets see if can keep his head above water with Pygmy. Kevin Canty brings us a great collection of stories, Where the Money Went. I’ve read a few of these stories and they carry the Canty tone, stark, clipped dialogue, and tough outcomes. There is a first novel from Matthew Dicks called Something Missing; the catalog copy gave me some hope. Of course before that Sunnyside by Glen David Gold should be a huge success when the rubber meets the road. I’ve spilled some ink on this book, and it’s coming to us from the biggest of the big, Knopf. Read more!

At Some Point, You Should Forget Your Birthday.

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Party

DH: Our blog partner Jason Rice just attended one of the hottest book parties of the season, for the launch of Maria Semple's This One Is Mine from Little Brown. The account of his adventures is below:

Jason Rice: There isn’t a good time to show up at a book party, too late and you miss all the fun, too early and the conversation gets stiff. I’ve been to a few parties, (I can name them on one hand) and I always show up too early and end up talking to myself while sipping Pellegrino in the corner. Sometimes I get lucky and suddenly find myself standing next to a movie star of note (you’re asking yourself, “this is a book party, why the movie star? I don’t have the answer), and get to discuss my favorite movies of theirs and sometimes discover that they’re even nicer than I thought, (that happened at an A.M. Homes party two summers ago).

Last night I was invited to Maria Semple’s book party in the West Village of Manhattan at the home of Melisa and Robert Soros. I had heard whisperings that this would be a big deal. The home itself was supposed to be filled with incredible art work. I showed up 20 minutes late, a nice woman took my name and another wonderful man, and his team of co-workers took my coat and offered me a Pellegrino. On the table next to the door was a black and white framed photograph that I couldn’t place, and a small video screen that gave me a crystal clear view of the front steps where I had just been standing, (I tried knocking when I got up the steps but the door opened without me getting a hand out, now I know why). The home was immediately warm and inviting with high ceilings, crown molding, stunning chandeliers and furniture that seemed almost too perfect to sit on. This wasn’t Queen of England decoration, but very hip and modern, post- modern, if that’s still an operative phrase. I saw Maria Semple and we chatted for a second - for the first time in person. She was wonderful, radiant, friendly, casual and funny. The first floor of the brownstone was two rooms; the back room had a fireplace, the front faced the street. I was one of twenty people at this point. After a few minutes, the crowd grew and I found myself in the back room of the first floor with two wonderful people whose name I couldn’t remember if you held a gun to my head. We talked about our kids: their daughter goes to school with the daughter of a famous bad boy writer whose work we’ve covered on the blog. We talked about the stress/joy of raising kids, and then they excused themselves to talk to other friends.

At this point I just wandered around and nearly run into a world renowned actress who just flew in from the L.A. (I saw her on the Golden Globes, with an actress many years her junior, they presented an award together, giggling like they’d just heard the funniest joke in the world) and she looked ravishing in all black. I’ve loved her movies for years, her playwright husband and sometimes actor wasn’t in attendance (they live in the neighborhood). Safely tucked away in the back of the room I watched the party turn into a feeding frenzy. There were macaroni and cheese canapés, (odd, but they looked like Rice Crispy treats that had gone through the dryer) and prime rib on toast, very small, no bigger than a fingernail. I had two slices of Ray’s pizza prior to walking over to the west side, so I passed on the snacks. Silver platters (real silver) covered in drinks were gliding around the room held by lovely waiters, and seemed to arrive every few seconds. Standing in the corner I stared at the Andy Warhol black and white mural of Elvis pointing a pistol at me, and then wondered how heavy the Warhol Brillo Box that was encased in clear Plexiglas weighed?

After twenty minutes of watching the party reach its peak I decided to ask for my coat, but not before going downstairs to the restroom. The apartment warms up immediately because of the wood floors and the dark oak banisters; you can’t help but feel right at home. Downstairs I found the kitchen and a dining room that was decorated in a burgundy theme. In the bathroom over the toilet was an 11x14 Diane Arbus, something that I’d only seen in my History of Photography class in college. I noticed on the way down to the restroom that the wall was lined with black & white photographs, Garry Winogrand, Lyons, more Arbus, more pictures that I’ve only seen in books, and having my degree in photography, I’ve seen these pictures over and over.

I said my goodbyes to Maria Semple and tried to find the Hachette online marketing team that I was told would be at the party, but got lost in the crowd. On my way out I got a good look at the man whose been telling me to buy a PC, instead of a Mac, and for all these years I thought he would be different in person, turns out he looks just like he does on TV. Read more!

Summer Penguins Raped by Vikings!

Dennis Haritou: Here's what I thought of the fiction part of the Penguin Summer list, the part of the list that seems blog worthy anyway. The first Viking I come to has reached the mountains of Wyoming. I am talking about The Signal by Ron Carlson. Now I know that my beloved friend, Jonathan Evison (who I have never met) thinks that I wouldn't like any novel that had a tree in it...but that's not true JE, I can take a few anyway. But when JR, who can detect a good galley even if I hide it in my file cabinet, saw The Signal, I thought I was losing it for sure...like I would come in one morning and it would be gone. Get your own, JR. If that wasn't enough, JC also immediately pounced when I mentioned the book to him. A marriage in failure mode in mountains with dark secrets by the author of the acclaimed Five Skies. I am reading this.

Wyoming is followed by Maine in my literary geography and Ron Currie's debut novel Everything Matters!. I have already talked about Ron a lot on the blog. I have read half of Everything in my computer. I decided to wait till the Jasons start reading it before I finish it. Ron illustrates what the word "intelligent" means and kicks ass besides in Everything Matters!. I think the cover presented in the catalog sucks...too "boys great adventure stories" for me, but the book looks like a triumph.

Why hasn't my rep given me a galley of Nick Laird's Glover's Mistake?...he'd better...and in the category of "You must have this in your collection if your taste is weird." there is the final volume of Library of America's series of Phillip K. Dick novels...this includes Valis.

Everyone at Penguin Press is apparently excited by Reif Larsen's The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet...excited enough to print 125K copies. But I have to say that I am very eager to read it...12-year-old genius mapmaker, massive volume with illustrations apparently. The author went to Brown which is a positive sign...maybe he knew Josh Bazell? Thomas Pynchon's Inherent Vice? I'm stunned with excitement. I want Penguin Press to know that there is a lunch at Bayonne's best diner with Pynchon's name on it for anytime he wants it. And all Three Guys would email interview him together if camels could fly.

The guys have Riverhead galleys for the linked stories of Aleksander Hemon, (Love) and Obstacles. We love short stories at Three Guys...perhaps the best way for an author to find their audience. Hemon, of course, already has an audience but pile it on bibliophiles! There is always room for more readers in the great library. The Wish Maker by Ali Sethi may be a reach for the guys but I'd like to read it. The Fall by Colin McAdam looks hot and double that for the Latin American Juan Gabriel Vasquez, The Informers. Shades of 2666? I plan to find out.

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Fresh off the boat, a young Kafka parties in Manhattan

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Blogging Amerika: Mark Harman Interview Part 2

This is Part 2 of DH's interview with Mark Harman. Part 1 is here

DH: Kafka's work is full of tragedies of exclusion...of characters not making it through the door to the better place. But it also seems to me that there are some comedies of inclusion as well. After all, Karl does get to work in a marginal position in the great Occidental Hotel, even if the job doesn't last. And he does get admitted to the Theater of Oklahoma, which reminded me of Pilgrim's Progress, and the journey into heaven. So do I need to view the work of Franz Kafka as irremediably pessimistic? I was projecting into the fragmentary last passages of Amerika the possibility of a happy ending...that is, the possibility of a comedy. Of course, I can imagine what I please. But do you think that's entirely off-base?

MH: Yes, there's a great deal of unsettling comedy in the book, most of which escapes the earnest and naive young hero. After each ejection or dismissal Karl dusts himself off only to walk straight into the next trap. His social trajectory seems to go relentlessly downhill until we come to the Theater of Oklahoma, or Oklahama, as Kafka tellingly mis-spells it. Opinions about the degree of pessimism versus optimism in this enigmatic theater chapter have long been divided. Before working on the translation, I was inclined to side with those who believe that the Theater is a bogus and possibly sinister outfit. However, as I honed my version of this chapter, which I regard as one of the literary high-points of the book, and as I read it out loud to a group of writers and artists at the MacDowell colony in New Hampshire, I thought I could sense through the mixture of promising and skeptical nuances that until he laid down his pen Kafka kept on toying with the possibility of a farcical happy end. Readers interested in this issue might wish to check out a recent piece in the New England Review, available online here.

DH: After Karl gets fired from the hotel, he crashes with Delamarche and Robinson in the apartment of one Brunelda. Brunelda sits enthroned on a settee amid helter skelter piles of belongings like some ineffectual whore of Babylon. She's ovoid, she's gargantuan and I imagine her quivering like a behemoth of a bloated jellyfish. This company tries to enslave Karl and make him live on the balcony. He is to serve and worship Brunelda. In an early anticipation of the Stockholm syndrome, Karl decides to stay because it's such a good job! The depravity of this whole scene blew me away. What do you make of all this perversion. Does it relate to trends or cultural traits contemporary with the novel? Or should I conclude it's just damn funny in its own sick way and leave it at that?

MH: The scenes with the immense ex-diva Brunelda are indeed grotesque! Indeed, some readers may fault Kafka for letting his imagination run riot here. But I find that the longer one spends with this novel, the more apparent the connections between such seemingly outlandish scenes and other episodes in Karl’s American odyssey. I agree with you that the hero’s decision to remain a prisoner in this odd menage does seem odd, if not perverse. But doesn’t it fit in with Kafka’s portrayal of the New World as a land of meager opportunities, at least for those who, like Karl, are close to the bottom of the heap? Why should he give up this at least familiar hell for another that would in all likelihood be worse? As for possible connections between Kafka’s imaginings and cultural currents in turn-of-the-century Central Europe: Kafka is the kind of writer who read voraciously but who transforms what he read so completely that, in spite of the massive scholarly excavations of that lost world in recent decades, it is always difficult to say with any certainty what tidbits he used as fodder for his imagination. We do know from his diaries that he believed there was some relationship between ardent musicality--he mentions opera singers specifically--and sexual voraciousness. For the record, he, unlike Karl, considered himself completely unmusical.

DH:There's a short fragmentary section that follows which I like to call "Brunelda's transfiguration". I am using this phrase because my attitude toward Brunelda undergoes a transvaluation here. There is an exodus from the apartment. Brunelda is pushed through the streets in the early dawn in a cart because she is too heavy to walk. She is covered by a grey cloth so no one can see her and embarrass her. This hit home for me. When my overweight mother was dying of the cancer that she would not admit she had, I would push her around in her wheelchair from one locus of despair to another. I guess that one man's Kafka can be another man's family situation. So I ended up having sympathy for Brunelda after all. Are you able to see Brunelda as a sympathetic figure, or could Kafka? Or is this just me and the arbitrary reaction of one reader?

MH: I don't find your personal reading of this scene at all arbitary. Kafka himself always read in a highly personal manner e.g. his well-known aphorism that a book should be like an axe for the frozen sea within us. Also, power in Kafka is transitory. One moment a figure such as Brunelda can throne over everybody with her prodigious bulk only to appear in the next scene as a vulnerable invalid in a cart, with Karl at the helm. Of course, our reading of Brunelda’s transfiguration or transformation--a more apt English title, incidentally, than the excessively flowery “Metamorphosis” --is complicated by the fact that there are gaps in the narrative here. And, of course, she seems to perk up when Karl and she reach the brothel-like Enterprise Nr. 25, where the doorman seems to regard her as a promising recruit. Could she be about to undergo yet another transformation?

DH: Professor Harman, we haven't even gotten to the section with the angels and the devils, or to that bleakest of all "democratic" political rallies. I would recommend that readers look out for those extraordinary scenes for themselves. But I wanted to talk to you a little about your own academic background. I was curious about your dual professorship in both German and English and your specializing in both modern German and Irish literature. We are bibliophiles on this blog. Would you like to recommend any contemporary Irish or German writers that have captured your attention in recent years?

MH: My dual literary interests reflect my background: while I came to this country from Dublin to study German literature at Yale, I never lost touch with Irish writing. My fondness for Beckett's prose came in handy while translating The Castle, which Beckett himself, of course, had read in German. Stylistically, The Missing Person presented very different challenges for me as a translator. But re your question about German and Irish writers: There's a wealth of intriguing writing by authors from the former East Germany, among them the novelists Christoph Hein and Ingo Schulze. Then there, of course, the Swiss maverick Robert Walser, a long-time favorite of mine, who died in 1956 but whom many German-language writers regard as a contemporary, partly because he has, at least in German, perfect pitch. When it comes to becoming known in this country, English-language Irish writers have an obvious advantage over their German-language counterparts . However, there is a tendency to crown one or two as THE Irish writers in a particular genre and to ignore the rest. In the interest of brevity, I’ll confine myself here to poetry. Readers of your blog here will, of course, know the work of Seamus Heaney and Paul Muldoon. But there's a galaxy of talented Irish poets such as--to name but a few--Ciaran Carson, Derek Mahon, and Medbh McGuckian. I would direct poetry readers to the admirable Wake Forest University Press, which specializes in Irish poetry. Anybody interested in the Gaelic tradition, of which I am especially fond, should read the poetry of Nuala ni Dhomhnaill, whether in Muldoon’s unmistakeably Muldoonish translations or in versions by other English-language Irish poets.

DH: I'm up to my last question, Professor Harman, so thanks very much for taking the time to help me with my puzzlement over the art of reading Kafka. You have translated benchmark editions of The Castle and Amerika. Are you saving the best for last? Are you working on a new translation of The Trial? For that matter, is there any other work of German literature that you are planning to translate or are attracted to as a translator? Perhaps something you would love to do sometime?

MH: There's already an excellent recent translation of The Trial by Breon Mitchell (Schocken), so that novel doesn't need redoing. At the moment I'm writing a series of linked essays about my favorite authors, German-language and Irish. Other German-language authors I’d love to translate?: Possibly something by the Austrian poet Ingeborg Bachmann. I used to enjoy translating short pieces by contemporary German-language writers for the now sadly defunct New York arts magazine, Grand Street. However, high-quality literary websites that are open to foreign-language authors have sprung up, such as harpandaltar.com and worldwithoutborders.com, to which I've begun to contribute.

Finally, Dennis, I've enjoyed responding to your discerning questions. I took on the project precisely in hopes of stimulating such fresh readings of The Missing Person, and I hope that readers in this country will set aside old cliches about Kafka and discover hitherto unnoticed qualities in his "American" novel.

How American is it really, though? Well, that's really not up to me, an immigrant, to decide. But readers may wish to pitch in....

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Blogging Amerika: Mark Harman Interview Part 1

This is part 1 of DH's interview with Mark Harman. Part 2 is here.

Dennis Haritou: I am blogging Amerika, Franz Kafka's unfinished debut novel, in a distinguished and groundbreaking new English translation by Mark Harman. Amerika consists of an early set of finished chapters, only the first of which Kafka revised, followed by a grouping of glittering fragments that conclude the work. At least they glitter thanks to Professor Harman's pen which provides a restoring clarity to the work's overall structure...revealing it with great distinctness for what it is and not trying to parse over the holes and gashes that remained when Kafka left off the text. Amerika has been published by Schocken.

Fortunately, Professor Harman has consented to answer my questions about the work. My impressions of Amerika, some of them rather subjective I'm afraid, are those of a general reader, and are embedded in my questions to Professor Harman to whom I am very grateful.

Mark, the Schocken cover of the very well designed volume of your translation of Kafka's Amerika strikes me as rather schizoid. I discovered with great interest that Kafka's intention was to call the novel The Missing Person (translated into English). In this book design, "The Missing Person" appears either as a subtitle or as an alternate title to Amerika. Would you have rather re-titled the book The Missing Person? Was that ever a temptation?

MH: Yes, Dennis, I was indeed tempted to call the novel simply The Missing Person since it echoes Kafka's working title, Der Verschollene, which is characteristically succinct and at the same time rather paradoxical. The title Amerika was, of course, coined by Kafka's great friend and posthumous editor Max Brod. However, the people at Schocken Books were concerned that readers might be confused by the appearance of a "new" Kafka novel. So I agreed to the double title. I'm not altogether unhappy with that compromise. After all, Kafka himself occasionally referred to the manuscript of his "American novel," and the novel is indeed set in this country.

DH: The opening description of the Statue of Liberty, notoriously holding an upraised sword rather than a torch, transforms Manhattan into a weird dystopia that I no longer recognize as my home. At the heart of Kafka's conception of justice is a profound moral ambivalence, yes? "Justice" seems to me like a synonym for terror. With this alteration of the statue, I felt like the Enlightenment standards of European culture were being denied. Am I right to dread a Statue of Liberty that wields a sword rather than a lamp?

MH: Yes, justice certainly is a central theme, especially in this opening chapter. Kafka transforms the Statue of Liberty into a highly ambiguous symbol of justice, or, as you suggest, injustice or even terror. Young Karl's subsequent intercession on behalf of an aggrieved stoker whom he befriends on board ship clearly stems from a strong sense of justice. You ask whether you should dread that sword? Well, a lot depends on whether the seemingly dark symbolic significance of this refashioned Statue applies to all of us or merely to hapless young Karl. As with all great literature, the text is so suggestive that individual readers will make different choices here and elsewhere throughout the novel. I'm confident that Kafka himself wouldn't have been unduly concerned about this multiplicity of possible interpretations. Unlike some authors, he did not claim any special privilege in interpreting his own texts. By the way, it's interesting that you use the word home to describe Manhattan. Kafka could use that term only if he qualified it with inverted commas. As a young man, he referred to Prague as this "little mother with claws." He never felt at home anywhere, nor do his heroes. And, of course, who could blame young Karl for feeling ill at ease in a country guarded by a statue that wields a sword?

DH: Let's talk about Karl Rossmann, Kafka's hero. I try to keep in mind that he is a 16 or 17 year old kid. It almost made me want to consider Amerika a Young Adult novel. Karl seems to be kicked out on his ass nearly everywhere. His family throws him out of the house and out of the country because he messes up with a maid. In NY he stays with his uncle who also throws him out on some nutty pretext. He falls into a job at the mammoth Occidental Hotel because the head cook is sweet on him. (Women love Karl.) But he is then summarily fired because he deserts his post for two minutes: a minor infraction which somehow explodes into a major incident. We are supposed to love the hapless Karl are we not? The effectiveness of the novel depends on it. And Kafka loves him. Isn't that right? When I looked at the picture of a hopelessly young Kafka on the back flyleaf of the book, I was tempted to compare him to Karl. Could you compare and contrast Kafka as a young man with the fictional Karl Rossmann?

MH: I love the idea of The Missing Person as a kind of coming of age novel. I've found that my students respond to The Missing Person in a more personal way than they do to other works by Kafka. And no wonder. After all, it is a tale of a young person trying to find a niche in an often absurd-seeming world after leaving the comfort of--or in his case after having been ejected from--the family circle. I'm not sure I agree, though, with your saying that Karl is thrown out by his parents after messing up with a maid. That may be how we generally think of such situations, but Kafka's wording is quite precise: It is the maid who seduces Karl rather than vice versa. This has implications for the theme of justice: What kind of world is this where the punishment for a misdeed is visited not on the perpetrator but on the victim? And yes, I think we are meant to love Karl in a way that we are not meant to love, say, Gregor Samsa in Metamorphosis or Josef K. in The Trial. But, as the opening lines of the novel suggest, in Kafka's world innocence is no excuse. As for the resemblance between Karl and young Franz: while Kafka is often autobiographical, he is always furtively so. In sketching Karl, he draws selectively on traits of his younger self: Like Karl, he was extremely assiduous yet constantly afraid of impending catastrophe. He was one of those good students who, despite evidence of prior success, always believe they will fail the next test. I suspect that some book-lovers may recognize their former selves here. I certainly can. So, as in his other fiction, he does not attempt to make Karl a fully rounded character. Like most Kafka heroes, he is more of a cypher than a fully realized figure. And yet, as you suggest, for some reason we can't help falling for him.

DH: The letter that Karl's American uncle writes him when he throws him out is a masterpiece of comic irrationality. The uncle says that because Karl is visiting friends against his wishes, he should stay away permanently on the grounds that a man should be consistent. Karl's uncle confesses that he finds his own reasoning incomprehensible...but he doesn't change his mind on that account. It's sort of like Lewis Carroll...treating nonsense as if it were plausible. So in my question above we have justice as a form of terror and here we have nonsense masquerading as sense. I am bewildered by the ontological disorder every time I pick up Kafka, by the commitment to irrationality. You have been visiting Kafka's world for a long time. Does it make any more sense to you as a result of your studies?

MH: I love your picking up on the element of Lewis Carroll-like whimsy, which readers often miss because they are understandably focused on the hero's increasingly tough plight. At the same time Kafka is the kind of writer who consistently refuses to take sides. His obvious affection for Karl does not get in the way of his seeking to understand what makes Karl's uncle behave as he does. There is, I find, something to Elias Canetti's assertion that Kafka is the great literary authority on power. So, though the letter in which the uncle bids Karl farewell may strike you and other readers as comically irrational, for the uncle Karl's failure to return to the city on time is a matter of supreme gravity. Like most of Kafka's authority figures, he knows that he stands on a wobbly pedestal; hence his unwillingness to grant any exceptions, even to his nephew. He fears that one sign of weakness could prompt a general attack against him that would destroy everything that he has built up in America. Given what has being happening in the real world of late, should we cease dismissing such abrupt reversals in his fiction as merely kafkaesque nightmares? In any case, always a scrupulous writer, Kafka captures not only the brusqueness of this authoritarian titan but also his almost tragic degree of self-awareness and his complete isolation from others.

to be continued...read Part 2 here. Read more!

JR's new story is published online.

DH: I read it four times! Even though it's short, it's meaty. It's about the struggles of a writer. 

You can see it here: www.fictionville.net/

It's called Robert and Kelly. It's number 50...right at the top.

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John Niven Interview

Jason Rice: First I was hoping I could get to the bottom of why you wrote a book about the music business, or that business as it used to be, right now, in an age when most people couldn't name a single record company, and have sold all their CD's, bought an IPod filled it with songs costing no more than 99 cents. And second, what do you think happened to the music business, and will it ever be the same, or has it evolved into something that hasn't been categorized or can't?

John Niven: Without getting too grand – but I will - the novel's really about greed and ambition, particularly about the awful cost when a culture allows the primacy of ambition over talent. That conceit kind of goes back to Euripides and it seemed to me like it might have a little more mileage left in it beyond whatever format people choose to consume music in. As for the future of the music industry – I wouldn't be giving the last rights just yet. The old business model is finished and everyone's scrambling around to try and find a new one. But they will. Or maybe not. Maybe the music industry will be one of the features of late period capitalism that the world finds it can get along without...

JR: We thought the book was an absolute homerun, funny, witty and very hard to put down. To get to this point, you know, of being able to write a novel, what kind of rough draft process did you have to go through? In the P.S. section of the galley I read you've mentioned you wrote several other novels in a short period of time. Could you have written this without writing those other books? Can you take us through the gestation period on Kill Your Friends?

JN: I left the music industry for good in 2003 and tried then to write a draft. But the whole thing was still too fresh and raw and the book wouldn't come. The experience needed a while to distil down. So I wrote a novella (Music from Big Pink) set in Woodstock in the 1960s and attempted, then abandoned, an entirely different novel and I outlined The Amateurs (my third book, now finished and due for UK publication in Spring 2009.) Then, sometime late 2005, I went back to Kill Your Friends and it just poured out. Once you find the voice for a character like Stelfox, they often won't shut up. The book went through three drafts over fourteen months before I submitted it to my agent, and then another draft based on her notes, which has kind of become typical for me.

JR: The slick and greasy nastiness that gurgles up out of the moat which surrounds Stephen is truly gruesome but yet totally hysterical and over the top. When did you say, "Jezz…this is good, but I really want to get people's mouths to drop open." Like the piece of corn on the shit smeared dildo. You had to come up with really titillating dialogue, scenes and situations in your mind, (drawn from where ever, I don't ) and then write them down, maybe save them for a moment like Stephen has when the cop and his girlfriend show up towards the end. Is there a stock piling of ideas that happens when you write, or maybe when you don't write, probably in the shower, or driving to the cinema, or right before you go to sleep?

JN: My single worst habit as a novelist is failing to keep coherent notebooks. I'll scribble things down on napkins, hotel stationary, etc and then lose them. But I have a pretty good memory and I find that act of writing something down is sometimes enough to commit it to memory. To answer the first part of that question - I never, ever, had moments when I thought 'I really want to shock people here.' It's funny that you mention the dildo/sweetcorn scene because a few people have mentioned that as a particularly, umm, memorable moment. I don't know – it didn't seem too extreme to me! Sweetcorn often makes it to the bottom of the alimentary canal completely undigested, so it seemed logical that if he had a dildo stuck far enough up his ass then a piece of sweetcorn might have made it onto it. It then seemed like it would be funny to have a reasonable human being – like Parker-Hall – witness this atrocity.

JR: From what I understand about the music business, it seems like everyone has a demo, and if they find out you work for a record company you're pummeled by everyone from the doorman to the newspaper boy punting CD's filled with monosyllabic chanting that don't ever make it through your eardrums. How do you deal with this, and how does it carry over to your job, which is to find the wheat buried in the chaff?

JN: Oh every lunatic out there has a demo. It took a truly evil genius like Simon Cowell to decide to put the fuckers on national television and make a billion dollars out of them.

JR: This is an incredibly cynical and nasty piece of writing. At any point did you or your editor think you needed to lighten this up, make it palatable, and even get Stephen more likeable? As it stands now there isn't a redeemable moment in this story. Where and when do you tear the rearview mirror off with your narrative structure and just say "fuck it", this guy is an asshole, and I'm never taking my foot of the gas.

JN: 'Lightened up...palatable...likeable...' Yeah, that would have made it just like the record industry, huh? The thought never crossed my mind and I was fortunate enough to have a marvelous agent in Clare Conville (she also handles DBC Pierre) who – upon reading the first draft – urged me to go further, darker. And then – doubly fortunate – I had marvelous editors in Jason Arthur at Heinemann UK, and Carrie at Harper US who got the book completely. You can call Stelfox an asshole and I'd have to agree. You can say he's depraved, self-obsessed, cowardly and satanic and I'd be right there with you. If, however, you think he's in any way extraordinary, in any way extreme (in terms of his thought processes), or excessively cynical then that, I'm afraid, is where we part company. Stelfox is utterly representative of his time and place. Funnily enough the only time I started hearing nonsense about making him more 'likeable' and 'palatable' was when we started having meetings about the film rights. Boy oh boy can these guys (producers, directors) talk themselves a bunch of shit about 'character arcs' and the like. It's a miracle I'm fucking sane after some of the cack I had to hear, sitting there listening to fools talking about how he had to be either 'redeemed' or 'punished' in some way. Here's a character arc for you – a guy's an utter inhuman bastard madman until that no longer works for him. Then he might try something else. The entire point of the novel is this: the nice guys finish in the incinerator and the demons run amok, rocking on your dime. Forever.

JR: Where does Stephen end and your experience in the record business begin? You said you've burned every bridge available to you in that business, and if I look closely I can't help but wonder if you might have done some of these things yourself. In fiction writers take from the world around them, anyone who says they make it all up is doing just that. Will there be any late night phone calls apologizing to people who might see themselves in this and wonder, "Why did John say I did that…I was never there…?" You claim that real people are rarely good enough for a novel, I have to disagree, and there are plenty of people in my life who would make perfect characters in a novel.

JN: KYF is completely true while barely a scene in the book is drawn from real life. I think there's one, maybe two, actual conversations that I was witness to. Oddly enough I've had people come up to me claiming to have been at scenes in the novel that never actually happened! And I'm far less like Stelfox than people always imagine. I could introduce you to a couple of people who make Stelfox look like a social worker. As to real people vs fictional ones, what I meant was that you tend to want to grab a few aspects from different people to make one monstrous whole. Sadly I tend to try and surround myself with sane, reasonable people, people who are, in other words, completely useless for the purposes of fiction.

JR: Rick Rubin talked about the music business becoming something else, taking a new business model and maybe just selling its wares through subscription online. What do you think of that idea? And obviously Rick Rubin isn't the only guy thinking this, and it's hardly a new idea. What happens to the record business if kiosks replace record stores, you know, plug in your IPod and download songs, erasing all the middle men.

JN: The problem with this line of thinking is that the world just becomes a blog: a huge, cyberspace Speaker's Corner with everyone standing on their soapbox and shouting. A&R men – like editors – are filters. They're necessary. The good ones at any rate.

JR: I think it would be an insult to compare Kill Your Friends to American Psycho, because it's so much better, to the point and funnier than that faded dye job posing as classic American literature, but people who've read that book, can certainly look for more of the same with Kill Your Friends, except your book is better, much better. What are your hopes and dreams with this novel? Could Guy Ritchie be involved? I know Madge is taking him to the cleaners, but he would be a perfect director to adapt this book.

JN: Ahh, I'm afraid I can't even pretend that my book is fit to breathe the same air as Mr. Ellis', so I won't. I think American Psycho is a masterpiece that blowtorched the entire culture while all I've done is kick one small component of it in the balls. Guy Ritchie. Wow. If only he could make a masterpiece like Revolver or Swept Away out of my book...

JR: We really loved the Cannes, Miami and New York City sections, and when in real life did these parties ever end? When does the money run out? For Stephen, even though he's broke, he seems to find his pockets bottomless, and his appetite endless. Is there any truth to this behavior?

JN: From people I still speak to in the record industry these things – conventions – are getting smaller and smaller and less frequent. Back in my day there seemed to be one every month, each more lavish and ridiculous than the last. And you're right, a lot of A&R guys might be personally broke, but the expense accounts were pretty much bottomless back then. By the late nineties I was spending around six thousand dollars a month on expenses. Allowing for inflation that's close to ten thousand dollars a month today. I mean, I think that's more than most normal people's salaries, isn't it?

JR: Thank you for taking the time to talk to us. Any last words?

JN: Keep a clean head and always carry a lightbulb.

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Kill Your Friends by John Niven

Jason Chambers: Think of the funniest person you know. Then take away all hints of compassion or human feeling other than anger, lust, and greed. Now, add copious volumes of testosterone, cocaine, champagne, liquor, a wide variety of pills, a shitload of money, and whores. Shake.

Meet Stephen Stelfox: Music executive in 1990's London. He's despicable, mean and self-centered and quite funny, as he negotiates his way toward the corner office, profitable new artist contracts, and a few beds, as the music industry changes around him. Book industry folks will find a lot of amusement in the discussions on how to tell if a new artist will be a success. I suspect that quite a few editors out there may have a similar philosophy in developing new talent. There is also a fair amount of talk about art vs business in the industry. Stephen could be selling cans of baked beans, for all he cares, as long as it gave him a huge expense account, easy access to drugs, and frequent lays.

A couple of missed or bad signings and a growing hole in his finances threaten his security, and he decides that some competitors need to be eliminated, in order to preserve his position. As his plan and his sanity unravel in the following pages, he faces a curious cop, wannabe musicians, rivals for his position, a person who is capable of doing his job, wedding-crazy stalker secretaries, and much more -- all intruding on his quest for even greater wealth, and an ongoing orgy of self-gratification. Very dark, occasionally disturbing, and very funny. Not for the thin-skinned, politically correct, or faint-hearted.

Jason Rice; the music industry? What's that? This book is a period piece, it's like writing an 80's style comedy now, and calling it prescient. Which is not my way of saying that this isn't a scorch and burn festival of the highest order, I mean come on, who but Brett Easton Ellis could write something this misogynistic and over the top? Stephen is never in a sober state, his access to drugs, porn, loose women, and stupid co-workers seems unlimited. I do think Mr. Nevin has written a fine novel which when laid on the tombstone of the record industry will serve as a cautionary tale for generations to come. All of that aside I don't think I was ever disappointed by this story, and for some strange reason I was rooting for Stephen to find his place in the sun. I've always been partial to English writers and their take on modern culture, especially when it takes place in London, even with a few trips to the United States where Americans are painted slightly out of touch and over the hill. I've never had a worry about the music business or how it works, I do know that $18 is too much to pay for a CD, I don't care how long you put the act on the road, or how many people are listening and talking about a certain song. Stephen isn't interested in music, he's thrilled if he can fob off his work on someone else and drink his self into a sex crazed drug addled coma and string as many of these nights together as possible. I rooted for Stephen when his co-workers were giving each other a rough go over about certain record deals that had suddenly turned to crap, but was amazed that Stephen almost never took a hit, even though he was face down in more drugs and the finest call girls available to mankind.

"Bish, Bash, Bosh", a very funny way to sum things up in a hurry, and this novel is filled with little English sayings that warm my heart and show a certain kind of flair for a funny vernacular that is only heard in England. Nevin is unkind to a type of music that is basically the norm over here, and the Brits seem to love, bubble gum rock, and Spice Girl knock offs. But he does love Richard Ashcroft, and what's not to love, the guy is great. I thought the insider stuff about the music business, the corporate outings in New York City, and Texas, were outstanding, but the trip to Miami just blew me away. When Nevin describes that nearly darkened hotel room and the sliver of sunlight that trickles in through curtains I was very impressed. Everyone huddling around together in the bathroom on a paranoid drug binge while more alcohol was delivered. This section is nearly outdone by a trip to Cannes which was the first time I knew that this novel and Nevin were something truly special. The music industry is a fairly banal business of making money out of nothing, but Nevin describes with incredible flair and Gothic accuracy how fucked up it was. This is a high speed colonoscopy without anesthesia, and with any luck John Nevin and his highly literate talent will take hold here in the US.

Dennis Haritou: John Niven came to a fork in the road and decided to take the riskier path. He left the lucrative marketing and manufacturing of aesthetically worthless pop music and decided to turn himself into a serious writer. Thank you. Early in the book, I realized that the roots of John Niven's "fabulous" style lay in the dead-eyed world of marketing copy. Quote: "With a comic, cartoonstrip "EEEK" the wheels rubberise the tarmac and we're already popping buckles and reaching for bags." Translation: The plane landed. If Niven can psych-up a mundane arrival like that imagine what he could do with a drug-besotted psychopath in bed with a whore. Imagine it. Then read Niven and see how much better he is doing with it than you are with your imagination.

One more: "Terrible ravenous sharks with hypodermics for teeth, the chambers of the syringes filled with plague, anthrax and Aids." And you thought you had rough days with your co-workers. Reading this book is like falling into a Masterpiece theater special that is being broadcast in hell. Stephen Stelfox is the Caligula of the music industry. He expends enormous energy in dehumanizing everyone around him the better to rape and destroy them. You don't end up rooting for him but you are entertained by him...just imagine Richard the Third let loose on the Spice Girls.

This wicked little number provoked me into thinking about the nature of good and evil because I felt guilty about enjoying it so much. What I came up with is that good has no use for evil but that evil needs good. Evil needs to have something that it can exploit. A world composed only of Stelfoxes would annihilate itself. Stephen is "hardcore": totally anti-life. Kill Your Friends blows out 20th century pop culture with massively corrosive style.

JC: That's interesting JR, I thought Cannes was great and thought that the culture shock of the NYC trip was a better scene than Miami. It's funny how you know that Stelfox is the most brutal, vindictive, morally-vacant, asshole you could imagine, yet somehow, against my better judgment, I found myself in his corner, not unlike the anti-heroes of the criminal-centered crime novels, or, as JR suggested, Ellis' American Psycho.

Yes, the record industry has collapsed upon itself, but at least we have this little book as a potent reminder of the idiocy and debauchery that ruled the day, now that that unrestrained depravity has moved to the literary blogging industry. If you are feeling a little evil, read this book; if you are easily offended or are a sensitive soul, run away.

Kill Your Friends pubs in January from Harper. Check back here in a couple of days for JR's interview with John Niven.

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