Sean Beaudoin reads an excerpt from his acclaimed novel YOU KILLED WESLEY PAYNE. Produced by Aaron M. Snyder and Megan DiLullo. Executive Producer, Brad Listi. Music by Goodbye Champion.

I write Young Adult fiction. So does M.T. Anderson. The difference between us is that I am me, and he is one of the two or three best writers in the genre, with a large and ridiculously diverse stable of titles. Thirsty long predates the cross-platform vampire onslaught with more wit, style, and weirdness than all of Twilight-iana combined. In a sane and just world, where Anderson took daily baths in royalties cash, his butler would have refused this interview outright. (Also, this is not an interview). Feed envisions an ad-slang dystopia that’s equal parts sly satire, A Clockwork Orange, and a Vinyard Vines catalog. The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing is a two-part novel of immense scope and sheer intellectual urgency, written in a mix of crystalline prose and Revolutionary War-era argot. There’s no way it should work on any level, and yet it does, setting an impossibly high standard within YA and without, while investigating notions of individuality, altered history, slavery, classical education, fecal heft, and the evolution of language.

Also, it won the National Book Award.

In an effort to avoid the trappings (read: dullness) of your typical interview structure, we more or less had a free-ranging discussion with no prepared questions. Did it work? Who knows?

 

 

 

 

Sean Beaudoin: Salman Rushdie’s YA novel Luka and the Fire of Life was just released. He said he “wanted to write a story that demolishes the boundary between adult and children’s literature.” Does that boundary exist anymore? And if so, do you think his statement reads as brave or presumptuous?

 

 

M.T. Anderson: I’m inclined to give the man the benefit of the doubt – considering that he spent the late 80’s hiding in a wienie shack in Van Nuys. I’m sure Luka will be a wonderful book, and, having read his own explanation of why he wrote it, it’s hard not to sympathize with him as he writes of his mortality.

The question is, does he really believe that he’s the first to undertake heroically the demolition of this literary boundary? And what, precisely, does he mean, respectively, by books for children or books for adults? He himself ornaments the terms with the scare-quotes. Is he forgetting Lewis Carroll, who he mentions? Or Stevenson’s swashbucklers? Or Yann Martel? Or much of science fiction? Or, to really throw the doors open wide, V.C. Andrews? (What twelve year old will ever forget the tar, the arsenical donuts, the blocked toilet a-roil with siblings’ shit?) Each of these authors traverses the ghetto streets from children’s lit to stuff for adults down different byways and hidden alleys.

 

 

He may not think he’s the first, but he certainly seems to think he’s the man to wield the hammer. And he’s probably right. You and I can stand on the sidelines and cheer, our ball peens safely holstered.

 

 

Regardless of Rushdie’s sense in this passage, it’s a great way to start our discussion, because the relation between “literary fiction” and genre fiction – be it kidlit, sci-fi, whodunits, or porn – in fact often plays out in a mildly (very mildly) post-colonial fashion. That is to say, those who write “literary fiction” – a genre that appears to be no genre at all – a genre unmarked and self-evident to its readers – a genre where the clichés and weary tropes are invisible, or taken as signs of quality – they can survey the generic ghettos below them and around them – shanty neighborhoods where men in spacesuits labor up rickety staircases, or friendly hedgehogs hang out their laundry with clothespins in their teeth. It is for those “literary” writers to judge, to deny entry, to admit, to explain to the rest of us readers and writers what we lack, how we might improve. The fact that many more millions of readers are deeply moved each day by supermarket-spinner romance writers we’ve never heard of than will ever read (for instance) The Wapshot Chronicle only damns the romance writer more. Every once in a while, a genre writer will receive the kiss of benediction, and will suffer an apotheosis, mounted up and whisked to heaven surrounded by bunny-rabbit putti or saucer-ships. Suddenly Thomas Pynchon is not a science fiction writer and John LeCarre is not a writer of spy thrillers. So long as they are snatched early enough in their career, they are unstained with the taint of genre. (To suggest John LeCarre is a writer of spy thrillers seems like a denigration.) And, at the same time, by hauling up and resituating many of each genre’s most promising practitioners (by shifting them in Barnes and Noble from the genre shelf to the unmarked “Fiction” section) the “literary” world assures the continued impoverishment of spy fiction or sci-fi.

So there’s me being cranky. What about you? Cranky? As someone who has written a book that partakes of two genres – teen fiction and noir – do you feel shunted off doubly into the corner? Or invited to two parties at once?

 

 

Cranky? Yes, certainly. Although my shawl-and-rocking chair orneriness reaches beyond the injustices of literature and chain store shelving practices. For the most part, I have a hard time being annoyed with a certain amount of condescension, even from those who ask when I’m going to “write a real book,” because I’m sure back in my sweaty V.C. Andrews-reading days, I too was nurturing the tendency to shit on anything that didn’t have the Manhattan imprimatur of serious fiction, an attitude that took me at least another decade to jettison.

I do think it’s sort of popular at the moment, among both those cowering in wienie shacks and wandering out in the open, to say things along the lines of “there are increasingly fewer walls between genres,” but I have the feeling the genre battlements are as manned as ever, despite the quote’s success in making us feel as if we’re evolving. The fact that numerous “literary” writers are now penning YA novels seems to speak more to the quality of YA in general than a Stonewall-esque change in attitude. To answer your question, I do feel at a disadvantage having written something that straddles marketing niches. You Killed Wesley Payne, whatever its faults or merits, requires a subversion of expectations, which is not always a friend of the impulse buy.

 

 

But as we both seem to be saying, the things that straddle different genres are often the particularly exciting projects – great to read, if difficult to work on.

 

 

Writing is hard. And pain don’t hurt. Producing even the clumsiest, most turgid novel is usually the equivalent of giving birth in a covered wagon three days after the midwife was carried off by Apaches. So, you know, a good novel in any genre is a triumph over the continuum of mediocrity and should be celebrated in equal measure, in any section of the bookstore. It’s easy and almost reflexive to hate the success of zombies or Da Vinci, but so many “literary” novels I read seem just as derivative or cynical. So, where do you think this almost universal authorial compulsion to constantly compare dicks comes from?

 

 

You know Hemingway and Fitzgerald literally compared dicks? Hemingway, being – if not having – the bigger dick, tells the story in A Moveable Feast.

Fitzgerald confided over lunch that Zelda had told him he was too small to satisfy her. He pleaded (says Hemingway) positively pleaded for help with the problem. Papa H. took him into the bathroom and they ran a scan of the equipment. Hemingway, needless to say, had some sage advice. “‘You’re perfectly fine,’ I said. ‘ You are OK. There’s nothing wrong with you. You look at yourself from above and you look foreshortened. Go over to the Louvre and look at the people in the statues and then go home and look at yourself in the mirror in profile.” And furthermore: “‘It is not basically a question of the size in repose. It is the size that it becomes. It is also a question of angle.’ I explained to him about using a pillow and a few other things that might be useful for him to know.”

Talk about the running of the bull.

While clearly the moral of this story is that you should never, ever ask a man who’s grown a mustache questions about your penis size, it’s also instructive in that the two of them, for reference, see whether they measure up by comparing themselves with the classical canon. I mean that literally: The kanon was originally a statue by Polyclitus that showed, supposedly, the perfect human proportions. In the same way, the idea is that we as writers are supposed to somehow match ourselves up to the canon, and to check our own growth – in repose, and in the size that we become – against Fitzgerald and Hemingway.

In our post-modern era, this use of the canon has become profoundly destabilized. It’s a fascinating moment. The collapse of book reviewing, for example, means that I really don’t think we have this view any more that there are Olympian observers who are right in damning or praising. The role of the reviewer really has become to characterize a work, rather than to judge it – since the myth of authority has taken such a blow as our newspapers and their book sections fold.

I can no longer claim to know exactly how to appraise fiction. In some ways, I think that’s very exciting.

 

 

Your argument makes me want to rub on some eye-black, grab a torch, and storm the castle of Lowered Expectations. Not to mention the moat of Not Hurting Anyone’s Feelings. The obverse of the impulse for two authors to literally (or literarily) talk junk in the bathroom, is for one of them to stand in front of a series of whistle stop crowds and spit-wax their mustache with a denunciation of all shit prose, not just the dangle to their left. Since this sort of thing almost never happens in public anymore, let alone on Sunday after Sunday of tepid and formulaic book reviews, an intellectual broadside against The Chaff That Is Deemed Acceptable would be exhilarating to behold. One author of Upper West Side apartment novels slamming another author of Lower East Side apartment novels over Madeira and cheese cubes would be meaningless in the face of a larger proclamation. And maybe some form of ruthless objective judgment going viral is the best way to distract the endless autopsies on publishing’s corpse. Either way, the absence of a collective set of lit-onions, the willingness to say some books SUCK, and THESE are those books, is an incalculable failing of the industry. Or the species.

 

 

I guess, when it comes down to it, it seems to me there are two separate elements that go on in judgments of literary quality. The first, and less reliable, is the fact that the “literary” is also a genre with its own rules and its own boundaries. It defines itself by a clean and antiseptic absence of genre elements. But the “literature” genre also has its tropes, as I said above – the epiphany, the neighborhood bar, the fragile marriage, whatever. If you set a novel in New York, describe upper middle class people feeling vaguely sad, and ensure that not much happens, the book is literary. Such books have the appearance of literary centrality to certain reviewers, especially those who write for New York publications read by upper middle class people feeling vaguely sad. But in fact, quality here is somewhat beside the point – we’re really talking about genre conventions, and many of these books would be far more moving and effective with the addition of a finely-crafted alien abduction, or, for god’s sake, a murder in that chef’s kitchen.

Of course, there is obviously a huge body of fiction that doesn’t include any so-called “genre” elements but is still gorgeous, disturbing, and moving. But there is also the ballast that gets a “literary” pass because it uses the same set of realist conventions but is too bland to offend.

More legitimately, perhaps quality can be judged by the tension in a work between surprise and cohesion. You want a novel to twist and to turn in ways you don’t expect (whether that means a beautifully turned phrase or a plot that pulls away from what you know); but on the other hand, some jolts seem accidentally ludicrous, abrupt, or clumsy. But that’s the problem: We all have different tolerances, different expectations, a different “canon” to which we’re measuring the proportions of these works. (Coloring books? Gossip Girl? Gertrude Stein?)

So help me: Is all pursuit of objective judgment dead? Should we really swallow stale, thin narrative as if it were the rich bouillabaisse of Moby Dick? Do we have to all applaud at the Emperor’s new clothes as he primps in front of us, declaring the genius of his see-through culottes?

 

 

Well, I was just reading about an interesting study that concluded taste was mostly a matter of genetics and social position. It suggested that what we think of as a lifetime’s individualized accretion of knowledge–and the hard-earned ability to discern between quality and populism–is really a matter of our subconscious need to lord over the economic strata below us. In other words, if the neighbor making twenty-thousand less than you loves Wanted Dead or Alive, you’ll suddenly loathe the pedestrian fretboard stylings of Ritchie Sambora, unable to boot your computer fast enough to download the next band up the complexity ladder.

But wouldn’t it be a crushing blow to find out your (my) love of The Velvet Underground has nothing to do with odd intervals, transgressive lyrics, or inspired viola-abuse–and everything to do with an embedded chemical elitism? I know I’m playing devil’s advocate, especially by using an annoying cliché like devil’s advocate, but perhaps it would be good to start by defining where the nexus of accessibility, entertainment, sales, and literature lies (or lies to us.)

 

 

I’m not sure I believe that there’s a direct correlation between elevated social class and artistic complexity. Before a flight, when I slog on back through the First Class cabin of a plane in that familiar economy-class walk of shame, I’m not sure that most of the people sitting in those massive pleather seats with noise-reduction headphones are bobbing their heads to the All-Schoenberg station. No, the rich are listening to Miley Cyrus like the rest of us, because for them, it is a party in the U.S.A.

 

 

Except that the rich do go to the opera, even if they hate it, to prove some sort of point. And despite their internal yearning for The Ring Cycle to end as fast as possible so they can race home and down gin and tonics while cruising Miley Cyrus websites, they’re still affected on some level by having Wagner seep into their cortex, and it probably does elevate their taste to some degree. Even if that means cruising Sophie Marceau websites instead. Also, I love my noise reduction headphones.

 

 

I do believe that in more complicated ways, social class does play into our taste (as Pierre Bourdieu describes), as do many other circumstances: the music your parents listened to, the stuff teachers introduced you to as a kid, ethnicity and other forms of community, etc. … This is what makes judgment so touchy right now – because we recognize now that no one is detached and located at the center. Everyone, in a sense, is peripheral to others.

 

 

The Bourdieu drop! I should have been more specific. But, yeah, I sort of love that randomness of influences, and the certainty that can fester inside it. I recently got a Google alert for a young woman’s website where she recorded the names of all the books she’d read this year. At the bottom was a smaller list of books she hadn’t bothered to finish, mostly because she thought they sucked. Next to each of those losers was the page number where she’d given up on them–112 or 89 or 71. At the very bottom of that list was You Killed Wesley Payne. And the page she’d given up on was 1. One fucking page! In a way, I think that’s the best review I’ve ever gotten. And who’s to say she’s wrong? YKWP didn’t work for her, the first sentence was a complete failure, the second paragraph a travesty, time to move on. And why not? A few years ago I read half of an extremely popular metaphysical bestseller on the balcony of a Mexican hotel. My wife had torn through it on the airplane, so when I finished the 900-page anvil of Thucydides I’d brought along (embarrassing, but true. I mean, when else am I going to have the time to tackle Big T?) I gave that bestseller a try. It was, from almost the first line, clumsy, insincere, and emotionally manipulative. So much so, that in an instant of Modelo-fueled rage, I tossed it off the balcony and into the waves below. Where, no doubt, a sea turtle immediately ate it, and then had the burning shits for a month. But, you know, I’m quite sure the author isn’t losing any sleep over my opinion. She has a vast audience of readers she speaks to, with a great deal of mutual satisfaction. And she probably sold more copies during that vacation weekend than all my books ever will, combined. So who’s right? And does it matter? With the insane number of books published each year (somewhere around 170,000), and the average number of books each American is said to read in that same span (between 1 and 5), the sheer randomness of making a sustained writer/reader connection has sort of cudgled me into the opinions are like assholes camp. Or at the very least, although I feel as capable as anyone else in pronouncing judgment on lousy books, movies, and bands, I no longer see much sport in it.

 

 

One of the great things, actually, about being a writer for children, is that the community is so welcoming and supportive. Perhaps we’re all united because of a certain sense of mission: the vital importance of writing good, interesting books for kids. Some writers for teens now even set up events and travel in groups, working together to try to cross-promote. It’s a generous response to an ugly problem – all of the noise, multifarious media, and emphasis on visibility currently. I love the warmth of my colleagues, the fact that we’re actually happy to see each other at conferences, parties, and readings – regardless of our aesthetic differences.

Of course, there are a few pains in the ass, but that only makes things more entertaining for the rest of the industry, snuggly as it is. Without a pain in the ass, who’d ever sit up straight and take notice of the world around them?

 

 

You’re talking about me, aren’t you? About that time I got up on a table at BEA and pissed on a stack of zombie debutante novels. Can’t you just leave that incident alone?

 

 

You mean the launch party for Her Hand in Marriage – And Wrist for Lunch? Yeah. That was an interesting moment in critical judgment.

 

 

Actually, I’m talking about the sequel, Tell Portia I’ll Have the Neck-Steak with Fries.

 

 

Ah, yes.

 

 

Man, I can’t believe we’re at the end here. There’s so much I wanted to ask you about, and we hardly got to any of it.

 

 

It’s been a pleasure! Looking forward to seeing where you go next. Fictionally, I mean. I know more generally, the answer is “Sea-Tac.” Thanks for asking me to talk!

 

 

 

In a scenario reminiscent of My Dinner With Andre, only with way less creepy background music and little or no Wallace Shawn, two Nervous Breakdown newcomers utilize the cold war-era concept of the “face to face chat” in a likely misguided effort to push beyond the personal essay format. Daly, already a TNB darling due to his heavily reported dust-up with Wally Lamb, and Beaudoin, still reeling from the announcement of David Coverdale’s defamation lawsuit, come together for a wide-ranging discussion on a number of subjects. They each arrived armed with three pre-prepared questions in case things hopelessly flagged, but the idea was to wing it as much as possible. No topics were off limits and no feelings were spared. So here it is: unedited, unexpurgated, and without a single national security redaction:

Sean Beaudoin: (sliding into a booth in which Joe Daly is already comfortably ensconced. An awkward male-bonding slap-five handshake-y thing follows) So, this diner is a little on the sleazy side. Just the way I like it. But I’m guessing you took a pass on the eggs benedict.

Joe Daly: Food poisoning changes your perspective on everything.

SB: Our waitress looks exactly like Endora from Bewitched. If you don’t get that reference, I’m even older than I thought.

JD: You’re barking up the right tree, brother. I remember both Darrins. And they were both Dicks.

SB: They were, weren’t they? Dick Sargent and…

JD: Dick York.

SB: There used to be a bar in San Francisco called Doctor Bombay’s.

JD: Nice!

SB: Actually, it was good place to get punched in the neck by some guy who decided you stole his bar change.

JD: Yanno, the last time I was in San Francisco, some guy tried to pick a fight with me.  Has it always been a big fighting town, or was it just me?

SB: I think there are just certain places where it’s unwise to stare at the expensive vodkas, mostly because they’re full of people who see your back as an opportunity.

JD: Have you ever been in the mafia?

SB: Lipstick or Trenchcoat?

JD: Either.  Your comment about sitting with your back facing people made me wonder. That’s the thing about TNB- we really don’t know much about each other. That’s the royal “we” by the way.

SB: It’s true. I sort of feel like I know you through post-osmosis. But in reality, I know absolutely nothing about you. I guess that’s why we’re sitting here. I’m going to take out my folded piece of paper with three questions on it now.

JD: I’m keeping mine in my pocket until the last possible second. My list of questions, that is.

SB: Okay, here’s the first one: let’s talk about the ubiquity of Joe. It seems like every post I read, you’ve already commented on it. Which I mostly take to mean you’re really conscientious about participating in the TNB model, as opposed to just slinging your own work up and basking in the glory. Do you feel an obligation to make the rounds, or do you just really dig the give and take?

JD: (pulling fake pencil from behind ear and leaning over napkin) Hold on-I need to write down “The Ubiquity of Joe.” If I ever record a folk album, I now have a title. I just need the Irish sweater and kinky hair.

SB: I can see the cover. You’re on a stool in a pirate’s jacket with a banjo, doing tunes from David Crosby’s solo album. Which I’ve actually listened to, by the way. Every single song is called something like Ecology, Ecology, Mustache, Drugs. Or Morocco, Booze, Mustache, Freedom.

JD: Classics.

SB: Anyway, I know “ubiquity” might sound sort of negative, but I’m trying to say I think it’s kind of an excellent thing.

JD: How so?

SB: Just that there’s a certain sort of “writerly cool” that requires being all enigmatic and not putting yourself out too much, trading ironic for earnest, not being willing to say things if they’re not always “brilliant”…  I see you out there sort of just being supportive and I like it. It’s anti-cool. It’s zero-hipster.

JD: (chuckling) I’m like the Hootie of TNB. No, I mean, I realize some people might think it’s sort of a yahoo thing to do-to consistently comment. But I really appreciate the feedback when I publish something, so I want make sure I’m supporting other writers in the same way. Personally, I find virtually all comments on my pieces to be enormously helpful-at the very least it brings my attention to what caught their eye, good or bad, and what they related to on some level. And you?

SB: At first I felt weird commenting beneath my own pieces, like I was fluffing the totals. But I got over it. And I really like the dialogue. It forced me to think about the entire process in a different way. That whole dynamic of “I am the writer, you are the reader, there will remain a wall of silent genius between us.” Totally subverting that.

JD: I hear you. My first thought on commenting on my pieces was that it was a pretty slavish way of pimping yourself out. Then some other writers suggested to me that actively commenting on your pieces was a good thing because it drives discussion and brings readers deeper into the piece, as well as the TNB community. Let’s face it-the Bible is online, the complete works of Shakespeare, most of the Garfield cartoon strips. There are some pretty good options for readers looking to kill time on the internet. I think that for people to spend their time reading a piece on TNB is deserving of some grateful acknowledgment, in my opinion. Oh, and yes-I just implied that I’m bigger than Jesus.

SB: You are. My oatmeal is bathed in loving light.

JD: I wish I ordered oatmeal. Maybe I’ll try to multiply yours.

SB: Can you multiply me a coffee refill, too? Okay, here’s my second prepared question: Writing about music is easy in a way, because almost all of us have spent our lives immersed in it, and also pretty impossible, since almost all of us have spent our lives immersed in it.

JD: Exactly.

SB: So there’s pretty much not a single thing you can say-“I love Rush, I hate Rush”-that won’t be considered by someone to be not only ill-informed, but actively offensive. So why take that whole package on?

JD: (briefly considering) Writing about music isn’t the most original endeavor. We music obsessives all suffer from the delusion that our passion is unique in intensity and/or variety. In reality, the only thing unique is probably our album collections, which are like snowflakes-no two are exactly the same. When I crawl into an album or a band’s catalog, sometimes a theme pops up, or I find myself struggling with the question of “what it is about THIS music that makes me feel this way, when this other music doesn’t?” And next thing I know, I’m writing about it. Know what I mean?

SB: I do. Except I tend to ignore that compulsion. To write about it. To me it’s like covering a Pro Choice rally. There’s two groups of people with signs and bullhorns, a bunch of nervous cops, and no possibility of convincing anyone of anything.

JD: Speaking of convincing, you used to write for The Onion. How in the world did that happen?

SB: I pitched the SF city editor an idea and he liked it. Never thought I’d hear back from him. They were desperate, obviously.

JD: Did you just come up with an individual story idea and send it to him, or was your idea to write a regular column?

SB: I pitched him “How to Spend Christmas Day Alone” which was essentially about being that guy who doesn’t have the cash to fly back to his parents’ in Cleveland like the rest of his roommates. The idea being, okay, here’s a list of places you can go to stag in hopes of warding off the crippling depression.

JD: So what’s open?

SB: Um, not much. The Avis rental car counter. Walgreens. I advised stealing lots of candy, getting caught, and spending the day with friends in jail. Also, David Brenner does a comedy night at this Chinese restaurant in North Beach every year. Which sounds almost like jail. After that I kept pitching the idea that SF really needed a sarcastic weekly sports column. And they finally agreed. As it turns out, it wasn’t at all what SF needed.

JD: What happened?

SB: I got canned.

JD: Sexual harassment?

SB: I wish. No, like two days after Lehman Brothers ate it, the SF and LA offices were shuttered. I’d just finished my column and the editor calls and says “don’t bother to send it in this week.” That’s more or less the last I heard from them.

JD: (reaching into pocket for notebook) I guess this brings me to my first pre-prepared question: In the cultural juggernaut Road House, Patrick Swayze’s character Dalton imparts nuggets of wisdom to friends and enemies like “Pain don’t hurt,” and “Go fuck yourself,” to name a few. Ok, in one of Buddhism-lite lectures, he tells the battle-weary staff of the Double Deuce, “I want you to remember that it’s a job. It’s nothing personal.” Is it possible for a writer to follow this advice?

SB: (Crossing fingers over chin in a Zen manner) Well, you probably remember that just before the climactic fight scene, the bad guy tells Swayze “I used to fuck guys like you for breakfast in prison.“ That’s pretty much my writing motto.

JD: It’s all starting to fall into place.

SB: Not to mention the 26-point Helvetica banner I have tattooed across my back…

JD: I’m sorry, but I’m going to need to see that.

SB: Obviously you’ve done a little research, and I appreciate you slyly bringing up Road House. Yeah, the lead character in my next book is named “Dalton.” And, yes, it’s an homage to Swayze.

JD: People are going to think you’re kidding. But you’re not, are you?

SB: Nope. It’s called You Killed Wesley Payne. But let’s talk about how Brad Listi called you and me onto the carpet of his mahogany-lined Fifth Avenue office last week.

JD: Good idea. We haven’t had a chance to break it down yet.

SB: So, after the usual niceties, he essentially told us-

JD: -to shape the fuck up.

SB: Yes, but also, if we did get our act together, we had the potential to be the Doc Gooden and Darryl Strawberry of this year’s TNB freshman class.

JD: Right.

SB: You seemed to think he was warning us not to stay up all night doing coke with Lenny Dykstra/Greg Olear anymore. I sort of thought he was trying to tell us to enjoy this time of innocence, because it doesn’t last.

JD: Seriously? I’ve been having a blast at TNB. It’s like a literary Lollapalooza. But without the eight dollar bottles of water and overflowing port-a-potties.

SB: You’ve mentioned you’re working on a book.

JD: (tenses up) Wait, is it bad luck to talk about a book that you’re still writing?

SB: Yes, and now the thing is doomed. Even so, what’s it about? What are your wildest expectations for it?

JD: The book is a direct consequence of TNB. I know it sounds trite, but the author community really inspired me to give it a shot. Being outside the literary world, I always had the idea that all novelists were pretentious and unapproachable-

SB: Aren’t they?

JD:-and riddled with fear and sarcasm. But most of the authors at TNB seem down to earth, passionate about the writing process, and sincere in participating in a community vibe. I realized I could either keep doing the one-off pieces and being a hired gun for other artists, or I could take on the challenge and see what I’m all about…the book will deal with music, which means that any expectations I have for it are hellaciously modest. In a genre populated with Nick Hornby, Chuck Klosterman, and Michael Azerrad, I have no pretensions that I’m going to burst onto the scene.

SB: The scene could use some bursting. You could be the new Klosterchuck.

JD: I’ll just be happy to get it published and read by a few people whose opinions I respect….(suddenly laughing) um, excuse me, Miss? Yes, waitress? Did we really order all these cliches?

SB: She’s like, “fuck off and tip me already, you guys are camping at my best table.“

JD: Here’s my next written question, while we’re on the subject: You’re quite a music aficionado, seemingly across a number of genres. One of which is apparently jazz, which is sort of like the absinthe of music-few dare to sample it for fear that they won’t understand the experience. Even established musicians can be intimidated by the unfamiliar scales and chord progressions. What does jazz do for you and is it possible to discuss it without sounding pretentious?

SB: It’s unfortunate but true that you pretty much can’t talk about jazz without sounding like an asshole. Unless I meet someone who’s as much of a twitchy stalker about it as I am, I usually play dumb. There’s definitely this sense that, if you’re into Charles Mingus or Sun Ra, it must just be a bid for hipster credibility. It’s like, “there’s no way you actually listen to that for pleasure!”

JD: Right, right.

SB: But, you know, I will cop to the fact that there have been times in my life when I claimed to like things that I was actually not that into-Foucault comes to mind-because I thought it might impress people. One of the great things about getting older is completely not giving a shit anymore. I mean, if I want to waltz into Starbucks and order a triple caramel whipped cream enema, I’m going to do it and not worry what the cute barista thinks, you know?

JD: It depends how cute.

SB: And I would say that the “intimidation” aspect of jazz is probably more about the fear of looking dumb at a party than the complexity of chord changes. Even the name is sort of meaningless, because it encompasses so many different styles of music. You mean your grandma’s Artie Shaw collection? Cake walks? Hard bop? The fifteen incarnations of Miles Davis? Machito? Free Jazz? B-3 funk? Fusion-y shit?

JD: So then what’s the appeal? Does it relax you, inspire you, make you want to lay with a woman?

SB: A long time ago, and this was back in the cassette days, I worked the overnight desk shift at a hotel, and I had this one TDK of Coltrane’s Ascension which is, you know, a challenging piece of music. Seriously dissonant. People would walk into the lobby, hear it, pick up their suitcases and walk right back out again. I wore that tape down to the felt.

JD: It’s like you’re a conundrum, inside of a mystery, served next to some potato croquettes.

SB: I get bored easy. Verse, verse, chorus, solo. Turn on the radio, here’s another song about a girl you like. Here’s another song about how it sucks to be twenty and have no idea how your life will turn out. Here’s an ironic song about a toy we all grew up with. Did you really order the croquettes?

JD: I did. Out of all the world’s vegetarians, I have the worst diet by far. (gripping non-existent tofu gut). And I’m ok with that.

SB: A bunch of people I know got into a massive pixellated conflagration about Lady Gaga on Facebook last week. One side loves her, mostly for campy reasons, but still some true acolytes. The other loathes her, mostly because she doesn’t sound anything like ZZ Top. And the middle thinks arguments about musical preference need to be left in the dorm room, so grow the fuck up already. But I thought it was interesting that the main sticking point seemed to be that while some people admitted to finding her entertaining, they weren’t willing to concede she had any actual talent. Well, Joe Daly, does she?

JD: Wow. I do have a theory on Lady Gaga, which may or may not impact this question. The theory is that there are at least five Lady Gagas.

SB: Good, I like it….keep going…

JD: If you look at any series of pictures of her, she looks wildly different across all of them. Basically, you’ll see that her body and facial structure aren’t particularly unique-just the outfits, makeup, and hair. It occurred to me that if she got really blown out at a party, and was too hungover to make an appearance the next morning, she could easily send a similarly-shaped friend to do the gig, and no one would ever be the wiser. Plus, the way she sings has been auto tuned up to the max, so really there’s probably a legion of women who could pass themselves off as LGG in the studio. You see where I’m heading?

SB: Completely. And I do think she’s incredibly talented. It may just be that her incredible talent does not lay in the musical arena. I mean, she and some very smart people got together, came up with a character to inflame the pop fires, and every day they deposit truckloads of cash into various accounts. They’re just really bald about it, which I sort of admire more than bands or singers who pretend they’re not all about business.

JD: Dead on! You do have to respect an artist who plays it straight like that. So it’s my own personal conspiracy theory that Lady Gaga is like Lassie in that she’s played by a number of different actors/singers.

SB: And also that she can bark and claw the dirt in a way that tells you there’s a little boy who’s been kidnapped by Apaches and it’s time to run and get the sheriff?

JD: She would also probably be really handy if someone got caught in a bear trap. “What’s that Lady Gaga? It’s Timmy? Timmy needs help?”

SB: Seems like a good time to introduce a pretty clichéd scenario that was asked of me last week, mostly cause I got no more good material on Gaga…

JD: Bring it on.

SB: Okay, you’re going to the typical theoretical deserted island and can bring the entire recordings of only one artist to play on your coconut-fueled iPod. The caveat is, you don’t get any bootlegs or re-issues, just the studio albums. To listen to over and over, for the rest of your life. So, even if Working for the Weekend is your favorite song ever, choosing Loverboy limits you to a tiny pool of recordings. Who do you pick and why?

JD: Well, if it were one album, I was going to go with the Best of the Stone Roses, but as they only have two studio albums of original stuff, they don’t make the island.

SB: The smart move would probably be to snag Mozart, not only for the volume of material, but because you could while away the years studying him. If only to keep yourself from talking to a volleyball. Unfortunately I’m not that smart, so I’m going with Slayer.

JD: Because…

SB: Because only Slayer will keep me and my new monkey-wife sane.

JD: I’m going to have to go with The Who then.

SB: Really?

JD: I’ve just always related to them on a very deep level. I got into them in high school, when I was starting to feel my oats, and that was the same general age that Townshend was when he began writing some of his best stuff. I’ve always thought Daltrey was money. Great rage. Plus, end to end, they have a great legacy that includes anthems, punk, heavy riffing, and very melodic, stripped-down stuff.

SB: Supposedly Hendrix hated Pete Townshend. So, by extension, I am obliged to hate Pete Townshend, too. But I dig Live at Leeds. Total early punk.

JD: And one of the best motherfucking live albums ever! (waitress walks by, glares, shakes head.) Whoops-sorry for the profanity, miss. (In a quieter voice) Didn’t realize she was right behind us.

SB: We’re totally getting 86’d. I better do my final question.

JD: Good idea.

SB: (composing mentally, taking deep breath) Okay, so yesterday I was thinking about how, as a society, we process things in tiny increments-

JD: I agree. Next.

SB: (laughs)…we spend all our time like, what do I have to get done by noon? Who am I hanging out with this weekend? It’s pretty amazing how much has changed just in the last year alone, but we don’t really acknowledge it. For instance, Tiger Woods. He’s a punch-line. His iconography is permanently shot. But eight months ago he was a walking brand, one of the most revered, most reliable money-machines of the last century. Pretty much a god, at least to people who find their gods in someone else’s backswing. Okay, so….sorry this is so long-winded….so I was just reading that David Shields self-interview where for the third time he more or less said “literature is dead” and I was thinking how that was like saying “Tiger fucks waitresses at Waffle House.” Bang! Hit the defibrillator, lock your kids in the rec room, start selling off all those valuable first editions. But golf goes on. Tiger’s still playing. People still watch and care. It’s just different now. It seems to me that saying “literature is dead” is really “here’s a contentious generalized statement with which to drum up interest in my $25.95 hardback.” You know what I mean?

JD: I think I do. I mean, does anyone really think literature is dead? In fact, it’s more alive than ever-look at the growing list of contributors to the TNB, many of whom have their own books out. Maybe print is dying, but the fact that it’s easier than ever to get people to read your thoughts, via book, blog, or social networking site, shows that literature is very much alive, it’s just diluted. But for the record, I think the “contentious generalization” tool is about as original as the serial killer not being dead at the end of the movie.

SB: Right. You gutshot Michael Meyers. He gets up. Light him on fire. He gets up. But I do like that Shields is really confident about staking out his position. He’s like, “here’s what I think, here’s what my book is about, buy it or don’t, I’m not trying to make any friends.” He’s obviously spent years thinking through this stuff while the rest of us were running with scissors. I guess in the end I just feel protective of the old model. Which is dumb, since I mostly get screwed in the old model.

JD: Speaking of which, you just posted this thing called Read My Finger: How Not to Get Published…

SB: I did. Which will probably guarantee I never get published again…

JD: All the TNB literary critics, editors, and very serious writers knocked each other over to effusively praise the thing. It felt like it was Christmas Eve and someone said there was only one Cabbage Patch Kid left, and it was in your article. Being an outsider in the literary world, I found the piece to be thoroughly entertaining, and at the same time, quite humbling. Not only did you name check a legion of authors I’ve never heard of, but you revealed the submission and acceptance process to be tired, saturated, and impersonal.

SB: Actually, once it was done I considered scrapping the thing. Even though most of it was intended to be comical, in the end I don’t want to genuinely discourage anybody. Writing is just too hard as it is. But, you know, it was all true. The truth cannot be denied. On the other hand, my mother called me up and was like, “that’s the last time I write anything but XXOO on your birthday card.”

JD: Nice one, mom.

SB: Since we’re at the end here, it does seem like I should mention that, even on a telepathic level, we seem to have agreed not to speak of the Steve Almond contretemps. Maybe if for no other reason than that we’re both bored to tears by ever single facet of it. But it occurred to me to ask you one thing, and maybe with this question put it all to bed, permanently, next to Hoffa in a layer of quicklime…

JD: (nodding warily)

SB: Did that experience give you, in even the most fractional way, a glimpse of what it’s like to be pinned down in the public eye like a Lindsay Lohan? By which I mean, caught up in some “spat” that was probably bullshit to begin with, but for whatever reason becomes a cultural snowball, conducted through headlines and discussed by third parties and generally taking on a life of its own, so that it goes way past really being about you, and you sort of end up standing by watching it happen?

JD: Yeah, it was really strange to watch things spin out so quickly. My thinking is that Steve had every right to say what he wanted to say, and I responded to him accordingly as a comment to his piece. My involvement ended there. I wasn’t going to get baited into some internet feud. As the saying goes, “never pass up an opportunity to keep your mouth shut.” But next thing I knew, people began weighing in and a very different debate arose. Greg Olear’s piece, “Something Nice,” was awesome because it set off a very thoughtful and sometimes animated discussion about what the TNB culture means to different people and what their expectations are for the site. Apparently it was time for that discussion to happen at TNB.  But as you say, the debate had little to do with me or my writing.

SB: I feel compelled to mention that I do admire pretty much any willingness to leap into the fray brandishing unpopular sentences. To not worry if your opinion is going to keep people from being gentle with your own pieces. To toss it out there like a raw steak and deal with how it effects your Amazon ranking later. I mean, essentially, the internet is nothing but a massive binary excuse to be righteously pissed about stuff. So the guy with the pointy stick, in the long run, is sort of doing everyone a favor.

JD: When the TNB dust up was still pretty new, one of the more veteran authors told me that when you put something out there, some people will like it and some won’t, and to realize that none of them are right. The important thing is to just keep writing because that’s all I can control. I’m not going to say that I don’t care what people think about my writing, but I think that as long as I’m writing about topics that mean something to me, and not for other people’s approval or feedback, I can be happy with my process.

SB: Listen, people who say ‘I don’t care what anyone thinks about my work’ are either lying or Thomas Pynchon. I mean, everyone cares. Deeply. The locus of writing is showing off. It’s narcissistic just by definition to imply “my deepest thoughts are worth your investment in time.” So I think it’s how much of that ego you can deflate, you know, that makes certain writing rise above. How much can you ignore your nature and access your true feelings without censoring them, or tailoring them to a specific audience. No matter what the genre, guns and spies or Jane Austen, that’s the kind of writing that, to me, never feels disposable. So, you know, I guess I’m trying to say, if you feel like you’ve written something artfully, but with a minimum percentage of bullshit, you can pretty much get away with anything. You can call anyone out, or reveal things that are totally ugly and not be condemned for it. But if you’re going to attack someone for the intellectual rigor of their distaste for Dave Matthews, man, you better have a pretty solid handle on your own failings.

JD: Ok, they’re turning the lights out in here. I need to ask one more question though, if that’s cool. When I was researching your works, I found out that your first book, Going Nowhere Faster, was just translated into Polish. Polish!

SB: I know, right? Now it’s called Donikad Byle Szybciej. I’m embarrassed to admit how pleased I am with how entirely random that is.

JD: Why Poland over say, France? Is there a big Young Adult market in Krakow?

SB: No clue. But I intend for my empire to span from Budapest to Helsinki by 2012. And by 2112, I intend for it to span from Spirit in The Radio to Tom Sawyer.

JD: Ha! In a perfect world, where would you like to see your writing take you? If you could decide your own fate, what does the future look like?

SB: Totally honestly? If I can sell just enough to not worry about checks or agents or self-promotion, to be able to sit in my little office with my laptop and concentrate on whatever project I’ve got going that day, I would be extremely happy. Anything beyond that is frosting.

JD: Amen.

SB: Selah.

JD: What does that mean?

SB: I’m not entirely sure. Hunter Thompson used to say it all the time. Something like let those with eyes see, and those with ears hear.

JD: It doesn’t get any more profound than that.

SB: No, sir. It really doesn’t.