1.) Have you known women like the character in your story, “Straight and Narrow”?
I think everyone shares morbid desires similar to the woman’s, whether we admit to it or not. Certainly I see myself in her just as much as I do in the narrator. But do I know anyone who has gone out and done what she’s done? I don’t think so. Though, I guess, who’s to say? Perhaps I do and I just don’t know.
2.) Who are your favorite writers, present or past?
Rebecca Curtis is one of our best living writers, in my opinion.
Other writers I return to often: Barry Hannah, Amy Hempel, Mary Gaitskill, Denis Johnson.
Also, Amie Barrodale’s collection is perfect.
3.) Have you written a novel, or do you plan to?
I’m a little superstitious and so all I will say is: Yes. If nothing comes from it, I’ll trash it and try again. And then again? And then again? Probably one day I’ll give up actually. Maybe get into gardening. Birdwatching.
The Tower is a novel I wrote over the course of about five weeks in 2012, while I was living in Philadelphia. I wrote it as a prototype political novel– with pop elements– wanting to express my thoughts about the recent Occupy protests in Philly and elsewhere, but also drawing upon my experiences with an activist writers group in the previous decade. The chief subject of the book, however, was the city itself (which I was to shortly move from), presented in an unnamed, thinly-disguised version.
I posted the novel as an ebook at Amazon and Barnes & Noble, and then more-or-less forgot about it. Forgot about, because of the uncertain nature of my life– living out of a duffel bag in low-rent apartments– and because I quickly moved on to other literary experiments, including with various attempts at fast-paced multi-dimensional fiction. (The first of those being an ebook novella titled Assassination of X.)
Forgot about, that is, until I noticed a notably negative “One Star” review of The Tower at Amazon, posted in 2019. From one of the critics of that activist writers group I mentioned?
Now, The Tower is assuredly not a Five-Star novel (few outside Tolstoy’s War and Peace are), but neither is it a One-Star book. Based on the clarity of writing and the clash of ideas alone, I’d think it’d qualify at least for Two Stars from any fair-minded reader! (More about that review and the person or persons potentially behind it in a later post.)
I’ve decided to correct some typos in the book, added one sentence, and have dropped the price to the lowest that Amazon allows– $0.99 U.S.– and reissued it. Why? Because I’ve realized this 50,000-word prototype is at least as relevant today, at the end of 2023, as it was in 2012. The world if anything is even more chaotic; the gap between rich and poor today even more extreme.
CAN I then get a few honest reviews of The Tower, anonymous or not? I’ve always enjoyed debate and the clash of ideas. I also wish to know the work’s actual flaws– I assume they’re many– so I can avoid such missteps in future experiments. There are many things I’d do differently with the novel myself. So: fire away! Let’s get those Two-or-Three Star reviews going.
1.) Is New York City as crazy as you depict it in your story?
Last week in Central Park, I walked by a man covered in what looked like dozens of raccoons who, amidst their striped fur and beady black eyes, lifted up a gloved hand and pointed at me to ask: “Do you want to help me feed them?” Many people might find that crazy but that was simply my Tuesday morning commute.
2.) Who are your literary role models?
To name a few: Toni Morrison, John McPhee, David Sedaris, Edgar Allan Poe and Edith Wharton.
LITERARY INTELLECTUALS became too caught up in their own intellects. They lost sight of what matters most: That authentic art is of, by, and for the people. IS a part of a society’s every day life. HAS meaning within that context.
The same phenomenon stagnated classical music. It became burdened by the art’s own intellectuals: music critics and academic pontificators who added to the form a heavy legacy of profound and-or pretentious thought, when all that mattered was the emotional connection between music and listener. Those notes or chords, or voices– those moments which went deep into a person’s soul and were beyond thought.
New fiction in this culture today especially should be playing chords deep within us, not merely impressing us with some Gaddis Foster-Wallace Knausgaard exhibition of disconnected intelligence.
Dickens and Dumas in the 19th century were wildly popular for reasons. Jack London’s tales have been translated into every language in every culture on the planet and loved by readers for over 100 years for reasons. Literature as an art form needs to get back to those reasons if it expects to be central to this society’s culture once again.
Vera opened the French doors of her kitchen. “Linda,” she said warmly.
An older woman wearing thin, baggy, beige pants, a white blouse, and a navy blue and orange silk scarf walked inside. She looked about Vera’s age. Her mousy brown hair was put back in a ponytail, and she wore a green sun visor hat. I hadn’t seen anyone wear a hat like that since the 1980’s.
As Linda stood by the kitchen island, I read the designer labels on her shoes and purse.
“I hope I’m not interrupting,” she said to Vera, giving me a thorough look up and down. “I didn’t think you’d have someone from the Center here so early.”
I had no idea what she was talking about.
“Oh no, no,” Vera said. “This is Jasmine. She’s Patsy’s friend.” Vera walked to my stool and gently patted my shoulder. “Of course, she’s my friend now, too.” She smiled, and sweetly looked into my eyes.
“Of course,” Linda said. But she didn’t smile, and she didn’t say it sweetly. I still didn’t know what ‘the Center’ was. Vera immediately cleared it up, as if she read my mind.
“I guess Patsy didn’t tell you, Jasmine.” Patsy shook her head ‘no’ from behind the stove, as Vera explained. “I volunteer at a Women’s Recreation Center.”
“Battered Woman’s Shelter,” Linda corrected her.
“That’s not accurate at all.” Vera motioned to Linda to sit down on a stool beside me, but she remained standing. “They don’t live there,” Vera continued. “It’s just a place for them to go as a safe and supportive space. These women are in a period of transition. Sometimes, they have just left an abusive marriage, other times, it’s a turbulent, dead-end relationship.”
“Most of the time, they just don’t want to end up dead!” Linda laughed at her own joke, and it was the first time she looked happy since she walked through the door. But her sour mood didn’t phase Vera at all. She just giggled and offered her French coffee which Linda finally felt comfortable enough to share with us.
Chrissi Sepe appeared previously at our main site, New Pop Lit, with the feature story, “We Love to Watch Zee Cockroaches.” She’s also appeared in our zeens, most recently in Fun Pop Poetry, available at our POP SHOP.
We also posted here a note about Chrissi’s previous novel Iggy Gorgess.
A strip of light fell over a face I now saw was stretched tight from a billion surgeries. Her lips were plump with filler. Hair held in a loose bun the color of gold, fried into a delicate, brittle state. Her skin was a shade of varnished wood—perhaps beech? Looking at the balls of sweat that formed and rolled down her chest, I worried her tanning job would run and spoil the perfectly white rug I rubbed my toes into. I still value life, I said. Even if it ain’t always worth living. The struggle is what keeps me alive.
It sounds like you enjoy your poverty, she said, folding her arms into her chest. She was, despite or because of Dr. Whozit’s work, gorgeous—but I liked women in extremes.
Money talks, wealth whispers.
Shouldn’t that make you silent?
What?
She sighed, dropping her arms to her sides. I want you to shoot me, she said, taking a step closer, slinging forward the scent of vanilla cupcakes fresh out of the oven. Her mouth was swimming in sweet gloss. Her cheeks coated with powders. Beneath it all, of course, I could see age and its cracks. We all had those. Not even Dr. Whozit could fully erase life’s faint fissures. That’s all, she said. You aim it into my chest, bang. Then we’re done. You walk away with $500.
PART II OF “WHAT’S WRONG WITH AMERICAN LITERATURE?”
Where are the stars? Where are compelling personalities who can draw the public back to what was once and should be again the culture’s central art form?
Where are they?
Where’s the charisma in today’s writers? It’s to be found neither in person nor on the page.
Do we find it in Jon Fosse, recent Nobel Prize winner, or in his work? In Margaret Atwood? Joyce Carol Oates? Jonathan Franzen?! Mary Gaitskill? George Saunders? Colson Whitehead? Paul Murray? Marilynne Robinson? Junot Diaz? Jeffrey Eugenides?
What about popular authors? Stephen King, you say. Uh, not really. George RR Martin– not! The biggest-selling novelist in America currently is Colleen Hoover. Is there a city or town in America where she would be recognized– by anyone?
Maybe we should consult our society’s esteemed literary critics, the acknowledged experts. They’ll tell us.
Or will they? They’ve spent the last couple decades touting recluses like Don Delillo, Cormac McCarthy, and Thomas Pynchon. Front men for a cultural band on its way to oblivion.
HOW TO GROW A CULTURAL PHENOMENON
History tells us you need a few larger-than-life personalities to do so. Popular music had Elvis, The Beatles, Michael Jackson, and so many others (while “serious” music has all but vanished).
What’s the most prominent cultural force in the U.S. at the moment? Judging by interest, I’d say NFL football. Sixty-five years ago, the NFL ranked far behind Major League Baseball for sports fans. Three things turned this around. 1.) A more exciting product, geared toward the society’s faster-paced lifestyle. This included giving the position of quarterback a more prominent role in the game. More passing improved the aesthetics. 2.) A yearly Big Game which became the focus of the entire nation: The Superbowl. 3.) New stars. One of the most important of them was quarterback Joe Namath aka Broadway Joe, who played in the media capital of the globe and carried around with him bold talk and a truckload of swagger and charisma. His leading the New York Jets to a win in Superbowl III put himself– and the National Football League– on the map. Afterward there was no looking back.
WHAT ABOUT LITERATURE?
What’s the template for renewed importance? Among our literary intelligentsia, there isn’t any. They’re like slow-thinking clerks in a Charles Dickens novel– like the proceedings of Jarndyce versus Jarndyce: allowing the wheels of the activity to turn slowly, while they go through the motions of preserving remnants of the once-exciting and entertaining literary art.
The blueprint to follow as alternative is clear. Faster-paced, better-designed, more thrilling novels, stories, and poems, with better aesthetics. The merely competent, the simply adequate, isn’t good enough. We also need a few writers with energy, smarts, and swagger willing to take the cultural stage instead of hiding in cabins in woods or in dusty academic monasteries– writers willing to engage this mad tumultuous world, in their persons and in their art.
The journalists had already hounded the hospital for that information, not that it mattered. The damage was done with or without him being alive; the video of him walking home – and of course he had a respectable job as a custodian of an elementary school, which the news outlets were loving so they could paint him as defenseless never mind the fact that he had been walking home from his mistress’ house four hours past curfew – and then disappearing under a mound. A mound of rats. The video, which was from a surveillance camera in front of a bank across the street, was black-and-white and grainy, so upon first watch it looks like a wave of sewage water encased the elderly man, rolling over him and leaving him stunned lying on the concrete sidewalk leaking blood. But, once you squinted, you could see their eyes. And their tails, which were light enough to register as a milky white on the camera. A pack of rats jumped on top of him with the precision of an assassin squad and, in seconds, took him out. It had taken a few days to find another video but, with a new angle, the world saw that, after the rats had finished with Mr. Reed, they dispersed back onto the streets; they had come together as a writhing mass of spiky grey fur for no clear reason other than to harm him and then they disappeared into subway tracks, pipes, ripped open garbage bags – any dark place where they could find food.
1.) Your story, “Killian and the Black Blade,” has a 19th century, Robert Louis Stevenson vibe to it. Is he an influence on your writing? If not, who is?
The Killian Archibald stories, of which there are several and of which I hope to write more, have two main influences.
The first is the long tradition in the United States and Europe of children’s short story collections, meant for young adults. The most prominent of these to influence the Killian stories are the Wayside School books by Louis Sachar. Saint Catherine of Siena’s School for Girls is crafted very much in the spirit of the titular Wayside School: a building of strange happenings and odd events.
The second major influence is the slice of life stories featuring groups of female friends that are very popular in Japanese anime and manga. In particular, the anime Azumanga Daioh, with its laid back, realistic stories of the misadventures of a group of high school girls.
Finally, my general love of fantasy, science fiction, and magical realism creeps into this story in all sorts of ways.
2.) What’s most important to a short story: characters, setting, or plot?
This is a difficult question because it will be different for different writers. Jorge Luis Borges was not typically in the habit of creating memorable characters. His stories are powerful because of the ideas they explore, the imagination they show off, the way they weave fiction and nonfiction together. James Joyce, on the other hand, is all about characters in Dubliners; we continue to read it because Joyce makes us connect deeply with the characters in each story.
Setting is the least important part of a good short story. One must sketch one’s characters and lay out their affairs with the space one is allotted, which does not always leave time to dwell on the landscape where the story takes place. Edgar Allen Poe, in his masterful story “The Masque of the Red Death,” manages to beautifully sketch out the castle that is the story’s setting without sacrificing the thrust of its plot and the horror therein.
Characters are the key to good fiction’s power. If I had to rank my own valuation of these three elements, in my own stories, it would go Characters > Plot > Setting. But they are all important.
3.) Have you done any fencing yourself?
Yes! Years ago when I was an undergrad at Baylor University I dabbled in the fencing club there. I have also had some minor experience training with the Japanese long sword. But competitive fencing is something I’m not keen on doing. I generally don’t like to participate in sports and games of chance, where the outcome is in doubt and factors not in my control have an influence on the final result. That’s the nice thing about being a writer and telling stories: nothing happens in them that isn’t completely up to you. Most of the time anyway.
“ruthless men seek my life” —King David, “Psalm 54”
Does anybody still believe, in ode or threnody, Lee Harvey Oswald murdered John Fitzgerald Kennedy? There was so much corruption in that so-called Camelot, and false analysis done on the body that was shot.
Which members of the militant industrial complex joined with police and secret service for such vile effects? Which judges and which politicians were complicitous? How many people in the world were duplicitous?
How many had to die to keep the cover-up in tact? How much fake news flew through the mainstream media, in fact? Who in the mafia, the FBI, and CIA, were at the beck and call of ruthless men and LBJ?
XXX
(Caud Sewer Bile is a pen-name anagram for poet Bruce Dale Wise.)
