Big Lonesome

The Fall of Berlin (Oil on Canvas)

I'm very pleased to announce that I have a new short story in Litro Magazine, which is based in London. The theme for this issue is Germany and my story concerns the unspoken love between an art forger and a Nazi official, bound together by their passion for irreverent art.

It's an unusual work in that it's an epistolary historical love story that took me a while to research and quite a bit longer to place. A sample:

All your life you know that you will die someday, but you don’t know it the way you know that your eyes are blue or that you prefer port to sherry, until death is standing on your doorstep, asking to be let in.

 

 

Artfully Fragmented

Bough Down, Karen Green's elegy to her late husband, David Foster Wallace, is one of the most moving books I've read in a long time. 

With cutting prose ("It's hard to remember tender things tenderly") and haunting imagery, Bough Down is a palimpsest of sorrow. It is a portrait seen through a funeral veil, a fragmented collage of a past that wasn't what it seemed and a future that never will be. "Sentences have been highlighted just to demolish me when I find them. I will find them for years."

Because it struck such a powerful chord with me, I neglected to mention in my review how beautiful it is as an object. Bough Down is an artifact I will keep close to me for a long time.

 

Baseball for Druggies

My long-awaited, much-anticipated predictions for the 2013 MLB season are up at Hobart. You should read it. Then call your sponsor.

 

The Next Big Thing

Special thanks to Matt Lewis who cattle prodded me into this self-interview in which I answer a series of pre-determined questions about forthcoming/recent books, chapbooks, projects, etc.

1. What is the working title of the book?
Make It Stop. Sometimes there’s an exclamation mark at the end, sometimes not. 

2. What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
In the near future, America’s hospitals adopt a stay-until-you-pay policy, turning healthcare facilities into debtors prisons; the hero of the story is a young woman who works for an underground organization that busts people out of these hospitals. Her specialty is addiction. 

3. What genre does your book fall under?
Literary? Crime? Addiction? It’s a high-concept, slightly speculative literary drug thriller. Is that a genre? 

4. What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?
I think Rooney Mara – someone who is part chameleon, part badass – would be perfect. 

5. Where did the idea come from for the book?
I read an article in the Los Angeles Times about patients being held hostage in Nigerian hospitals until they could pay their bills. 

6. How long did it take you to write the first draft?
It’s still in progress. I started in late spring/early summer and put it aside to work on a nonfiction book due this spring. Hopefully I can finish a draft this summer. The middle part of the book gave me some trouble, but during the time away I have developed some new approaches.   

7. What inspired you to write this book?
I’m attracted to “It can’t happen here” scenarios, so I wanted to imagine a world with nightmarish scenarios taking place in hospitals. What I discovered is that no one seems to think this scenario is all that far-fetched.  

8. What else about your book might pique the reader's interest?
Our hero's biggest undercover operation coincides with the outbreak of a super-addictive synthetic opiate with devastating side effects. Did I mention that she's also an addict? 

 

 

Notes on Grief

A little over four months ago, twenty children and six teachers were fatally shot at Sandy Hook Elementary School. It was I believe a watershed moment in our country's history, an event that future generations will study and ask themselves, "What the hell were those 21st century Americans thinking?"

It's a question that haunts Nuvia and I because our dear friends Jen Hensel and Jeremy Richaman lost their precious daughter Avielle that day. Horrified and stricken with grief, we went to Connecticut to be with our friends in the aftermath of the shootings. This essay attempts to describe what those awful days were like.

"Notes on Grief" appears in issue #73 of Razorcake, which is dedicated to Avielle. Normally, the articles and interviews that appear in the magazine aren't published online, but the publisher, Todd Taylor, felt this piece needed to be shared with as many people as possible. 

Jen and Jeremy are scientists. The foundation they've started in Avielle's name is dedicated to brain health. Please take a moment to learn more about their mission and to like their Facebook page. You can read more about Jen, Jeremy and Avielle in this profile, which gives a glimpse of what amazing people they are. It also provides a sense of what a remarkable young girl Avielle was and why we cherish her memory. 

 

An Ecstasy of Fumbling

I hadn’t read William Gass since being bowled over by his long story “The Pederson Kid” and the title story in In the Heart of the Heart of the Country. So I spent much of February and March reading and re-reading William Gass. I re-read his stories and tackled Gass’ debut novel Omensetter’s Luck, which has strong echoes of Faulkner and, to a lesser extent, Joyce. I loved it. Gass’s latest, Middle C, walks the line between his early modernist work and the experimental fiction on display in “The Tunnel.” It’s a lighter work that’s comical in places. I found it very hard not to read its protagonist as a stand in for Gass, particularly when he’s ruminating on art as it relates to its historical context. Unless Gass has some tricks up his sleeve, I suspect this will be his last novel. Call it the light at the end of The Tunnel. Was that bad? That was bad. Here's my review in the Los Angeles Times.

Crapalachia is a peculiar book from a writer I admire a great deal. I’ve read with Scott and featured him at Vermin on the Mount in Washington D.C. during AWP a few years ago. Although I don’t know Scott particularly well I feel as if I do. I think most people who have read his work or seen him perform feel this way. Scott McClanahan is from West Virginia and whatever way you think a West Virginia writer writes is not McClanahan way. I remember an Appalachian proverb I picked up when I lived in southwest Virginia: “Two things I love but seldom hear: the truth and meat a-frying.” Scott McClanahan is the truth.

In February I reviewed an odd troika of books: an elegy, a satire, and a literary collage. Of the three, Eric Raymond’s Confessions from a Dark Wood resonated the most. Raymond’s book is about work in the “post-idea” economy. As someone who has worked in advertising for a number of years, I found a lot to chuckle at in his lampooning of the creative class.  

If you’re going to the L.A. Times Festival of Books this year, be sure to check out my panel with Frank Bill, James Greer, Joshua Mohr and Rob Roberge. 

Borges & Cthulu

I think this is my favorite page in Tony Millionaire's 500 Portraits.

The Haunted Casino Makes the Cut

The first chapter from my novel The Haunted Casino was named a quarterfinalist in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. What does this mean? It means that 10,000 entries have been whittled down to 500 and next month they'll narrow it down to 25. 

You can read the first chapter here. I'm really impressed with Kindle's ebook platform. Even if you don't have a Kindle you can download the excerpt to your smartphone and read it on the Kindle app, which is free. If you are inclined to leave a review, it's probably best to keep it formal and succinct. Apparently, Amazon is sensitive to all the negative press about paid reviews and they're on the lookout for improprieties. So "Jim Ruland FTW!!!" probably isn't going to help the cause.

What's The Haunted Casino about? Drugs. Gambling. Ghosts. It was inspired by my experiences working at an Indian casino in Southern California. I call it my autobiographical ghost story.

Giving the Finger

No, I’m not mad at you. I have exciting news to share. I’ve been hired to write a book with Scott Campbell, Jr. of Discovery Channel’s Deadliest Catch. Scott is the captain of the Seabrooke, a fishing vessel in the Alaska crab fleet. He’s got some amazing stories about his adventures on the Bering Sea and I’m looking forward to helping him share them with the world. 

The book is called Giving the Finger (for reasons that will become clear when you read the book) and is scheduled to come out in early 2014 with Lyons Press. I’m grateful to my agent Peter McGuigan at Foundry + Media for making this happen.

This project has been in the works for a long time. I first spoke with Scott on the phone on Easter Sunday of 2012. Almost a year later the contracts have been signed, the proverbial check is in the mail, and I’m off for a short trip to Dutch Harbor in Unalaska, Alaska to do some research for the book. In other words, get ready for lots of photos of boats and snow!

 

 

Great Demo Review 2013

San Diego CityBeat's infamous Great Demo Review 2013 is out and this year my favorite new band is Teenage Burritos. (Hint, my review is on the last page.) Teenage Burritos has a 7" coming out from Volar Records and they're playing at the Tower Bar tomorrow night. 

 

San Diego CityBeat Expands Books Coverage

Great news from the good people at San Diego CityBeat: my books colum, The Floating Library, will now run every three weeks. At a time when many papers are reducing (or even killing) their coverage of books, this is welcome news.

You can show your suport of this move by linking to a recent column and sharing it with your friends and colleagues in the literary arts via Twitter, Facebook or Pinterest: Moby Dick, Ben Fountain & D.T. Max, Joshua Cohen, and more. 

And if there's a book you'd like to see reviewed in The Floating Library, then leave a comment or drop me a line. I'm always looking for great books to read and review!

 

The Rattling Wall at the Ink Spot

The Rattling Wall is coming to San Diego! Pen Center USA presents a night of literary merriment with David Ulin, Amy Wallen, James Meetze and yours truly. I'm looking forward to picking up a copy of the latest issue of the esteemed new literary magazine that has made editor Michelle Meyering one of the LA Times's Faces to Watch in 2013. The Ink Spot is located in San Diego's Easy Village at Art Center Lofts 710 13th Street, Studio 210. 

+1 Reading at Pop-Hop

Sarah Balcomb at Pop-Hop Books + Print in Highland Park has a great new concept for a reading series. A pair of writes are invited to read and they each invite one additional reader. It's a novel twist and should make for some unexpected readings, like this one. I've invited Chiwan Choi, an amazing poet and publisher who makes his home in DTLA. The other two readers are Jami Attenberg and Antoine Wilson, both of whom are celebrating the release new novels that have been extremely well-received. As for me, I'll read some short new work I promise you haven't heard before. 

2012: A Year in Books

 

Books I Recommend Without Reservations

Moby Dick, Herman Melville
The Keep, Jennifer Egan
Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, Ben Fountain

In 2012, I resolved to read Moby Dick and I just barely finished with a little over a week to spare. It’s a portmanteau of a “novel” that’s full of surprises. Most surprising to me is that I got through a good chunk of it on my iPhone via the Goodreads application. (Of course, I kept the Norton Critical Edition handy.) As both the book and the app are free, it’s an excellent way to read classics.

Books That Made Me Question the Worthiness of the Human Project

Ponary Diary 1941-1943: A Bystander’s Account of a Mass Murder, Kazimierz Sakowicz
Götz and Meyer, David Albahari
Four New Messages, Joshua Cohen

I grappled with Götz and Meyer and Ponary Diary for much of the year. I started writing about them in The Floating Library, continued in my column for Razorcake, and will probably make another go at it before too long. These books have colored both my fiction and my impressions of Lithuania. These books explore what it means to be a witness to crimes that go beyond the scope of the imagination. These books are arguments against the moral fitness of our species. As for Cohen, he made James Wood’s Books of the Year, and I don’t understand why he didn’t make more.

Books That Reaffirmed It

The Book of Disquiet, Fernando Pessoa
The Truth About Marie, Jean-Philippe Toussaint
Autoportrait, Edouard Leve

Pessoa is required reading for participants in the excellent Disquiet International Literary Program in Portugal, and I didn’t start it until I was on the plane. Big mistake. But what a revelation! The Book of Disquiet is about everything and nothing. This is a book I will return to again and again. As for Toussaint, it’s impossible for me to be objective, but this might be his best.

Books About the Oddness of Creative People

The Book of Drugs, Mike Doughty
Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story, D.T. Max
Wild, Cheryl Strayed

What do a rock and roll has-been, a reclusive genius, and an epic-but-poorly-planned hike have in common? Nothing. But for this reader, they were my favorite reading experiences of the year. 

Books That Anticipate the Future

Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
Radio Iris, Anne-Marie Kinney
Look at Me, Jennifer Egan

Perhaps it’s because I’m writing one, but this year I developed a strong affinity for novels that present a world that is just slightly off. Whether it’s an alternate future, a David Lynch-like present, or a past peopled with unusual abilities, I really enjoyed spending time in these places that wouldn’t otherwise exist.

Books That Zapped Me Into the Past

Bohemian Girl, Terese Svoboda
Jonah Man, Christopher Narozny
Train Dreams: A Novella, Denis Johnson

Bohemian Girl is a book that slipped under the radar in late 2011 and didn’t get the recognition it deserved in 2012. If you enjoyed True Grit by Charles Portis or The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt, this book is for you.  

Books That Don’t Rhyme

Abductions, Chiwan Choi
The Oregon Trail Is the Oregon Trail, Gregory Sherl
Fjords, Zachary Schomberg

I have two thoughts: 1) Chiwan Choi is the poet laureate of DTLA and 2) I need to read more poetry in 2013.

Books That Make Me Wanna Commit Some Crimes

Breakfast at Midnight, Louis Armand
Untouchable, Scott O’Connor
The Speed Chronicles, Edited by Joseph Mattson
Monsieur Monde Vanishes, Georges Simenon
The Man Who Watched Trains Go By, Georges Simenon

Ignore the genre label, Breakfast at Midnight and Untouchable contain some of the best sentences I read all year. As for Simenon, I think I’m going to have to move on to a new literary crime writer for 2013. Any suggestions?

Books That Were Stranger Than I Thought They’d Be

The Verificationist, Donald Antrim
Threats, Amelia Gray
Reticence, Jean-Philippe Toussaint
My Only Wife, Jac Jemc

I will never think about pancakes or dead cats the same way again.


Books with Ugly/Beautiful Pictures in Them

Cave In, Brian Ralph
Pinnochio, Winnshluss
The Art of Tony Millionaire, Tony Millionaire
Year of the Beasts, Cecil Castellucci
Henry & Glenn Forever, Igloo Tornado

This year I took two comics workshops with Kiyoshi Nakazawa and learned a great deal about the comic art-making process. I don’t know why this comes as a revelation but life is more interesting when I’m engaged in making art. 

Books That Are Difficult Classify

OD: Docufictions, Harold Jaffe
Fact. Fact. Bullshi*t!, Neil Patrick Stewart
Little Book of Big Fuck Ups, Ken Lytle and Katie Corcoran Lytle
Citation Needed: The Best of Wikipedia’s Worst Writing, Conor Lastowka and Josh Fruhlinger
10 Ways to Recycle a Corpse: 100 More Dreadfully Distasteful Lists by Karl Shaw

Because I’m lazy.

Books with Short Stories in Them

Vampire Conditions, Brian Allen Carr
People with Holes, Heather Fowler
Working Backwards from the Worst Moment of My Life, Rob Roberge
Emerald City, Jennifer Egan

Of all the books I buy and don’t read, I think short story collections make up the largest share. Not sure if I should read more or buy less. Brian Allen Carr’s “Lucy Standing Naked” was my favorite story from 2012.

Meh

The Invisible Circus, Jennifer Egan
The Neighbors, Ania Ahlborn
Jerusalem, Tavares Goncalo
The Odds: A Love Story, Stewart O’Nan
American Sniper, Chris Kyle
Melville, His World and Work, Andrew Delbanco

Egan gets a pass because it’s her first book and then went on to create some truly amazing work. With O’Nan I disliked the characters and hated the ending. Delbanco’s bio is a disappointment because his portrait of Melville is so thin.

The Book That Had the Biggest Impact

The Return, Roberto Bolaño

This collection of stories was my introduction to Bolaño. It wasn’t my favorite book or most enjoyable reading experience, but as a writer, I read for two things: insight and inspiration. How to live. How to write. Somewhere in the midst of this strange collection of tales, my own ambitions became clear: turn low-brow genre fiction into high literary art. My resolution for 2013 is to read Bolaño’s 2666, but I think I’ll start with The Savage Detectives. 

Ten Raddest Records of 2012

10. Tropical Popsicle Ghost Beacons Digital EP (Volar)
San Diego psychedelic. Honestly, I was a little disappointed in this release because I don’t think it’s as strong as their first 7”, “Always Awake in Shadows,” which I’ve played on my turntable for hours. It’s a dreamy little gem with a touch of menace to it that will either keep you humming through your day or haunt your insomniac hours. These songs are a bit peppier. Good, but I like my psychedelics the way I like a day at the beach: dark and gloomy. 

9. Occult Detective Club Alright Gentlemen Digital (Dirt Cult Records)
Three-chord, retro-punk hurly-burly from Denton, Texas. You know how a buzz saw sounds pleasing to the ear when it sinks its teeth into the meat of the wood at just the right depth and the just the right speed? That’s Occult Detective Club. These two-minute tracks come at you fast and loose like a homemade motorcycle screaming down the street. It’s tons of fun but you know it could fall to pieces at any moment. Shout out to Ty Stranglehold for turning me onto these guys.

8. Détective Basket of Masks 12”
Détective (note the French pronunciation) is a new rock and roll combo out of LA with novelist and former Guided by Voices bassist James Greer and French singer-songwriter Guylaine Vivarat. They released three DIY EPs this year “Very Fallen World,” “Basket of Masks” and “However Strange.” Pleasingly off-kilter and unexpected in all the best ways.


7. Blouse S/T (Captured Tracks)
This album came out in late 2011 but I didn’t stumble upon it until last summer when I was in Lithuania. I was bored of the limited amount of music on my new laptop and downloaded the album because it was slow and dreamy and weird – the perfect music for long writing sessions. It’s a bit like the Cocteau Twins only trippier. There’s a druggy looping quality to the music that makes time feel like it’s slowing down when it’s actually speeding up. No surprise that “Time Travel” is my favorite track, which opens with the line “I was in the future yesterday but it looked nothing like this.” It seems like I listened to this record a zillion times while I was in Lithuania, and it’s become the soundtrack for my memories there.

6. Santigold Master of My Make Believe
It finally happened: my wife’s pop diva addiction finally crept into my top 10. Depending on where you live, either you’ve never heard of her or the single “GO!” was this year’s “Paper Planes” by MIA, whom Santigold bears some resemblance to. Santigold isn’t one of those singers like Alicia Keyes where the first (only?) thing you talk about is her voice. With Santigold it’s all about energy and experimentation, a collision of styles and syncopation. The first time I heard “GO!” I immediately thought of Sigue Sigue Sputnik’s “Space Cowboy.” It’s such a strange and arresting song but there’s really nowhere to go from there, a dead end. But Master of My Make Believe is one of those balls-out records where every song is a departure. Style, tempo, instrumentation – you name it. It’s like she conceived of an album where each track draws from a half-dozen influences and those influences are different for every song. I can’t pretend to know what’s going on here, but I like it.

5. Mean Jeans On Mars 12” (Dirtnap Records)
Ultra catchy Portland pop punk. The Mean Jeans aren’t one of those bands with an endless repertoire of airtight numbers that are as bland as a beer fart. The Mean Jeans are fierce, funny, and they really like to party. The first two songs “Ready 2 Rip” and “Life on Mars” feel like they’re been on my playlist for years. Maybe it’s all the repetition in the cheesy lyrics fueled by ‘80s kitsch. Maybe its because the chord structure is straight out of the Phil Spector-era Ramones play book. Whatever it is, there’s a certain sameness to the songs, but it’s a comforting sameness.


4. OFF! S/T Digital (Vice)
Like everyone else on punk planet I got swept up in the hoopla over OFF!’s First Four EPs, but it wasn’t until I got my hands on this record that I realized how disjointed and spasmodic those initial offerings were. This record feels totally different. The songs are still super short – most clock in at around a minute, and the longest is 1:38 – but it feels more comprehensive somehow. First Four EPs was a novelty – “Hey, look, hardcore played the way it was played before it was called hardcore!” – but this is a little less straightforward, a little bit stranger, and it’s stronger for it. When frontman Keith Morris was touring with the Circle Jerks in the early part of the century (!) they always covered a Weirdos song (and not crowd pleasers like “We Got the Neutron Bomb”). That sensibility is present on songs like “King Kong Brigade,“ “Jet Black Girls,” and “Man from Nowhere.” These are songs that incorporate hardcore and venture into something new, telling the story of South Bay LA as only Keith Morris can tell it. Can’t wait to see them on their West Cost tour in February.

3. Shiva Trash S/T 7” (Cholo Punks)
San Diego pop thrash. I discovered these guys while writing for San Diego CityBeat’s annual demo review, and they really stood out from the pack. I went to see them live for the first time at the release show for this record – their first -- and had an absolute blast. The opened with The Screamers “122 Hours of Fear,” to a mostly bewildered audience, and I think the choice reflects what’s unique about their music. Sure, I could shoehorn them in somewhere between surf and punk and garage (or you could read I wrote in CityBeat) but that kind of misses the point. Shiva Trash neither looks nor sounds like anything else I listened to in 2012, and I expect great things in 2013.


2. K-Holes Dismania (Hardly Art)
No band got its hooks into me in 2012 like the K-Holes, a five-piece from Brooklyn. There are so many angles to this band I don’t know where to start. Take a post-punk trio, add a singer who could pass for Nancy Spungen’s hot hippie sister, and add a saxophone – a fucking saxophone – you’ve got all the parts and none of the essence of the K Holes. “Rats” is my favorite track on the album, but it’s their fastest song and while strange, this video, doesn’t really represent them. I’m not even sure if it’s part of their live set. (I saw them twice during their West Coast tour last year, and it would have been a third but I got to Bar Pink in San Diego too late.) K-Holes are dreamier and more disturbing, like their album title suggests. There’s a shamanistic quality that’s evocative but also a little scary. Ditto the saxophone, especially on the slower songs, which lures you in like a druggy siren. But during the faster songs the saxophone cuts loose and wails away with a fury that’s downright scorching.

1. Mind Spiders Meltdown (Dirtnap)
Earlier this year, I was bummed that I started listening to the Mind Spiders debut album too late to include it in last year’s top ten. Then Meltdown came out and blew me away. It started in the spring and continued into the summer when I interviewed Mark Ryan for this story. I learned that Ryan took the name “Mind Spiders” from a story by science fiction writer Fritz Leiber. But it’s more than a catchy name. Some of the songs are written from the perspective of desperate humans trying to escape the Mind Spiders, while others are written from the POV of their alien oppressors. The latter are my favorite. They typically feature long instrumental sections that marry distorted synthesizer effects with not one but two drummers. I think of them as “hunting for humans” songs. This video has it all: sci-fi shtick, mid-tempo rock, and synthed-out weirdness that will put an ache in your heart as you yearn for worlds that never existed.