A Talk with Jeff VanderMeer

Are you interested in ominous cities covered in creeping, mysterious fungi? What about flamboyant narrators, noir and the New Weird? Yeah? Good. Sit down a spell and have a listen to a man who has written it all – Jeff VanderMeer. The two-time World Fantasy Award winner and creator of Ambergris talked a slice of time to MPPL about music, new writers and a hep bit of miscellaneous more.

Mount Prospect Public Library:  What do you think are the three best, new albums to come out in 2011?

Jeff VanderMeer: That’s tough for me because I haven’t listened consistently to a lot of music. What I can tell you is that I’m really high on The Black Keys’ El Camino, and the latest releases by Ringside, Three Mile Pilot, Steve Wynn, and the Rosebuds.

MPPL:  Who are three bands that you “discovered” in 2011 and now can’t live without?

JV: I really delved back into bands I already knew, for the most part. However, I can say I can’t live without Murder by Death, Black Heart Procession, and the sadly defunct Pleasure Forever.

MPPL:  You have blogged about working with Murder by Death to create a soundtrack for Finch. How did you first find their music?

JV: That’s a really good question. I believe I heard a song from Red of Tooth and Claw, and just started to explore them more and more from there, picking up a lot of their back catalogue at the local CD store. I really love what you might call dark alt-country or Americana, stuff that’s also very dynamic and atmospheric, and they fit the bill. They tell stories a lot, too, which I like.

MPPL:  What was it about their music that drew you to approach them about creating a soundtrack?

JV: I was listening to their music a lot while I worked on my novel Finch, which while fantasy has a really dark noir side to it, and again their music really clicked with me. So since I’d been inspired while writing, I thought perhaps they might be inspired to do a soundtrack. I really think it came out beautifully—it’s just a wonderful, wonderful CD. Sometimes I catch a track on Pandora and I think “what the heck is that amazing stuff?” and I look and it’s from the soundtrack. They even reproduced a song by a band in the novel, using the same instruments.

MPPL:  What sort of music do you think Thackery T. Lambshead liked?

JV: Wow. I’ve never thought about that before. I’m tempted to say more experimental classical, but he might also like a bit of jazz. But for all I know he was completely contemporary up until his death and loved the Beatles and Radiohead and all of that stuff.

MPPL:  If you were to gather musicians to be on a dream soundtrack for the Thackery T. Lambshed anthologies…who would be on your shortlist?

JV: The anthologies are so broad that we could get a lot of different bands in. I think definitely return to Murder by Death and The Church (who did a soundtrack for my second Ambergris novel), along with Black Heart Procession, Murder City Devils (if they were still around!), Spoon, Radiohead, Robbers on the High Street, and…hmmm. So many possibles it’s hard to narrow it down, but probably get Ray Davies to do a lot of it, to be honest. My co-editor and wife Ann would want XTC and British power pop in the mix.

MPPL:  The most recent Lambshead collection was The Thackery T. Lambshed Cabinet of Curiosities, is there another one coming down the line?

JV: There are rumors of a Lambshead bestiary, but nothing we can as yet confirm or deny…

MPPL:  Who are three up and coming writers that you’ve recently anthologized that everyone should know?

JV: Amal El-Mohtar is a really great new writer as is new Swedish sensation Karin Tidbeck, along with Micaela Morrissette. A couple who aren’t new but really ought to be better-known are Karin Lowachee and Michael Cisco.

MPPL:  Similarly, what are three online journals that everyone should know about?

JV: Collapse isn’t necessarily online-only, but I think they do important work and I’m always fascinated by what they put together. The World SF Blog is doing very cool stuff, and do publish fiction. You can’t go wrong with either the online version of Rain Taxi or the content that Conjunctions posts online. All the usual suspects I think people already know about, like Clarkesworld, Strange Horizons, and Fantasy Magazine.

MPPL:  Speaking of online journals, the Weird Fiction Review is one of your new online endeavors. Why the focus on publishing nonfiction rather than fiction?

JV: WFR is a joint enterprise from my wife Ann and me that aims to be an online repository of all things related to weird fiction, headlined to begin with by our massive 750,000-word, 100-year, 1,200-page overview of weird fiction, The Weird (Atlantic). We actually do run fiction, although at a somewhat slower pace than the nonfiction. We’ve published interviews with the likes of Thomas Ligotti, Neil Gaiman, Kelly Link, and Tanith Lee, features on Jean Ray, Leonora Carrington, and critical pieces by China Miéville, among others. Fiction has included Caitlin R. Kiernan, Jean Ray, Kathe Koja, Jerome Bixby, Steve Rasnic Tem, and much more. We’ve published several pieces of fiction in translation, as well, by Leena Krohn, Jean Ferry, and Michal Ajvaz.

MPPL:  What’s been the biggest joy to come out of the WFR so far?

JV: Just about everything, to be honest. We love weird fiction and we’re in our element. We’ve also done so much research for The Weird and other reprint anthologies that it allows us to share a lot of what couldn’t go into our books, as well as follow up on leads to bring readers a lot of things they cannot find anywhere else. We also have a brilliant site design by Luis Rodrigues that makes us look extremely good. Also, this sense of community—that people understand and appreciate that we’re a nexus for all kinds of weird fiction and nonfiction. We’re not an advocate for the Lovecraftians or the Ligottians, or European weird or any particular group, but for all of it. We’re also operating at what we feel is an extremely high level of quality and readers appreciate that.

MPPL:  What about the biggest hardship?

JV: It does take a lot of our time, and the time of our many volunteers—your donations really do make a difference. We feel like it’s a blessing for the most part, though, and we’re happy to have added new columnists like Nancy Hightower, Edward Gauvin, Matthew Pridham, and more. I mean, who else but Gauvin could have brought us news of the Weird Questionnaire?

MPPL:  What was the last excellent book you read?

JV: Hygiene and the Assassin by Amelie Nothomb blew my mind and made me re-evaluate certain aspects of narrative in my own writing. So did The Great Lover by Michael Cisco.

MPPL:  What about the next book you're dying to read?

JV: I am just about three-fourths of the way through Murakami’s latest, and one recent joy was getting to interview him. As for upcoming books, I have a whole bunch of novels from the Europa imprint that I want to make headway on. I also have finally picked up Tristram Shandy and hope to read it soon. I have more and more given up on trying to stay current with genre books and to instead pursue all kinds of other enthusiasms.

MPPL:  Finally, what do you look forward to working on in the new year?

JV: My last novel was Finch in 2009, but I am currently finishing up work on a new one called Borne, as well as something called The Book Murderer and another novel called The Journals of Doctor Mormeck. In addition to writing Wonderbook, a unique visual guide to writing fiction from Abrams Image.

 

For all things VanderWeird, click it over to Jeff VanderMeer's blog and the Weird Fiction Review. Then stop on by the Library's Fiction/AV/Teen desk for Jeff VanderMeer's books and other fantasy recommendations.

Hounded, Hexed, and Hammered

Don’t look now, but see that twenty-something Irish lad with the curly red hair and the tattoos?  He’s not what you think.  Atticus is actually an ancient Druid, and he would tell you that the mythologies of different cultures co-exist in the modern world, even in Arizona.  There is full agreement on one point: everyone hates Thor, and he needs to be taken down.  Kevin Hearne’s thoroughly entertaining Iron Druid Chronicles begins with Hounded, continues in Hexed, and raises the stakes in Hammered.  Atticus and his wonder-dog Oberon are at the center of it all, and you won’t want to miss their action-packed adventures in this exciting, funny, and fantastic series, especially recommended for fans of Jim Butcher's Dresden Files.

A Creepy Pair

If the combination of evil and isolation intrigues you, let narrator Bernadette Dunne read you one of Shirley Jackson’s tales of psychological suspense.  Dunne’s ability to serve the story by making her voice husky, girlish, breathy, or shrill adds just the right touch of chill to gothic horror, and Jackson’s works are well-matched.  In We Have Always Lived in the Castle, two sisters have become outcasts in their town after the arsenic poisonings of several family members.  The Haunting of Hill House tells of a group of strangers who agree to participate in a study of occult phenomena.  Both deal with darkness subversive and real, and the echoes will resonate long after the final words.

Might As Well Live

Dorothy Parker was a notorious wit, wisecracker, poet and writer. She was a founding member of the Algonquin Round Table (as portrayed in the movie Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle). Parker was a New Yorker regular, a Hollywood screenwriter and an O. Henry Award winner. She was active in politics as early as 1927, where she was arrested for “loitering and sauntering” at a protest. Later, throughout the 1940s and '50s, the F.B.I. created a 1,000 page dossier on her activities. For a taste of Parker’s hilariously belligerent, bittersweet work, try her Complete Stories or the collection of her “lost” poems, Not Much Fun. 

LIST-O-RAMA: Villain, Lover, Storyteller, Spellcaster

Intoxicating voice, inescapable gaze.  Whether Alan Rickman is directing his own screenplay, menacing a skyscraper, narrating Thomas Hardy, or singing with Johnny Depp, we can’t imagine anyone else owning the role the way he does. 

To sample the talent of Alan Rickman in its thrilling and versatile forms, click here.

A Talk with Amal El-Mohtar

When you taste honey, do you think of ravenfolk, the wicked and the lovely? Do you find sex, death and trickery on your tongue? Ms. Amal El-Mohtar does. Amal was given 28 vials of honey. She tasted one vial per day over the course of one month and wrote down her impressions – some days in prose, others in poetry. These writings have been published as The Honey Month.

Here is the Library’s chat with Ms. El-Mohtar:

Mount Prospect Public Library:  Do you think poetry is as important today as it was in the ages of Milton, Keats or even Ginsberg?

AMAL EL-MOHTAR:  I think it depends on where you are and what's going on. I was raised with the understanding that poetry was a Big Deal, and that To Be a Poet was a huge deal. To Be a Poet was to speak for your generation, your nation, your historical moment, to raise your voice above empty noise or enforced silence and speak what couldn't otherwise be spoken. But my parents grew up in the context of civil war and unrest in Lebanon, and my grand-father spoke poetry while imprisoned for his politics, so my perspective is informed by their experience.

It's very interesting to me that the most common reaction I see people having to poetry is one of recoil, one of I don't understand. I wonder, sometimes, if that lack of understanding comes from not needing to understand – from not having anything in one's life that yearns and longs for articulation in a way that prose can't quite satisfy.

MPPL:  Do you think that the value that was placed on poets and writers has shifted to other artistic cultures or dried up completely?

AE:  I don't like to think of things ever drying up completely, unless we're talking about the evaporation necessary before precipitation. So let's say shifted – phase-shifted, even. Also I'm suspicious of any "it was so much better back then" rhetoric; I might think of the early nineteenth century as a time when literature really mattered, or when a writer could make a significant wage from their work, but how many people could read, then, versus now? Who was placing that cultural value, and deciding what culture was? I don't know – but I'd rather not assume that things have gone downhill, I suppose.

MPPL:  Who are three dead poets you’d have everyone know?

AE:  Oh, just three! Augh! And there are so many dead poets I have yet to know as well as I should, like Edna St. Vincent-Millay, whom I can't believe I'm only just developing an acquaintance with! Keats, Rossetti, H.D., off the top of my head, because theirs are poems I sing, but you've gone and made me leave out Shakespeare and Yeats only on the basis that everyone probably DOES know them, but then that could go for my mentioned three as well, so maybe I ought to think of obscure poets, but then I won't stop, and anyway if everyone knew all the poets I loved I wouldn't be able to introduce them to anyone, so I think I'll leave it at that.

MPPL:  What about three living poets folks should know? 

AE:  Catherynne M. Valente, Lisel Mueller, Sonya Taaffe, though again, the list could and should go on and on and on. Robin Robertson! David O'Meara! JoSelle Vanderhooft! Ach.

MPPL:  The Honey Month isn’t a book of poetry and it isn’t a book of prose, what is it? Where would you want it found in a library or bookstore?

AE:  I think I'd love it to be shelved in Fantasy. That's what it is, more than anything else, I think – though I daresay readers of poetry tend to be more forgiving of prose in their books than vice versa, so perhaps it should be in poetry. But in my ideal imagined world, someone would see it in the Fantasy section with a hand-written shelf-talker beneath it proclaiming it to be delicious, and home it would go with a curious bystander who's always kind of liked honey and has been dazzled by Oliver Hunter's art, and who then, after reading it, thinks "well, if that's poetry, that wasn't so bad," and start attending local readings and open up to a shiny new art form.

MPPL:  With all the free form writing going on, when does a piece stop being a poem and become prose?

AE:  This is how I think of it: the difference between poetry and prose is the difference between singing and speaking. You are using a different part of your brain. You are performing a different action, though you are using the same physical muscles.

MPPL:  Were you to put music to The Honey Month, who do you think the ideal musician(s) would be?

AE:  Oh, what a beautiful thought! I have had one very dear musician friend whose work I adore suggest she'd be interested, so S. J. Tucker is the first to spring to mind – but honestly, I don't want to think of ideals here so much as of how profoundly grateful I would be to have anyone be inspired enough by my words to make art of their own. I don't want the limit of the Platonic – I want to hope for a wellspring of songs and tunes from different people, as many flavours of sound as there are flavours of honey, and more.

MPPL:  Does music feature into your writing process?

AE:  Absolutely. Characters often have playlists; a given musical mood will seep into a story here or a poem there. Sometimes when I really want to write but nothing's coming, I put on ache-inducing songs and transcribe the lyrics until something breaks and pours out.

MPPL:  If The Honey Month became an audiobook and you had an unlimited budget, what actor(s) would you want to read it aloud?

AE:  Oh wow. Ideally I'd want many different voices, I think, for different pieces – and different accents and cadences. Similarly to the music question, I just feel that the aggregated nature of this project requires something similar in performance. I'd want some pieces sung and some pieces spoken, some pieces acted, perhaps another (Ugandan Honey!) danced... But again, less a matter of big names than of people who've loved it and want to make something of it.

 
MPPL:  Was there a day that was harder to write than others?

AE:  There were a few that I had to sit with for a while, and that didn't come easily, or that I wasn't quite happy with when they were done. Day 4, Raspberry Rose Honey, I didn't feel I had quite right by the end of it; Day 13, Black Locust Blossom Honey, came out as a villanelle, and trying to keep the rhymes from jangling awkwardly was tricky; Day 20, Blackberry Honey (2), begins "It's gone, now" because I sat down with my head swimming with wants and needs and the desire to pour it all out, but then it just vanished, and I had nothing to say except that I had nothing to say. It came 'round to something eventually, but that loss was palpable.

MPPL:  How about giving a shout out to a few of your favorite bookstores and libraries?

AE:  Oh, definitely! My favourite bookstore is hands-down Perfect Books, in Ottawa, Canada, where I worked for five years, and felt I got to be part of a family; also in Ottawa is Collected Works, which has a gorgeous poetry selection, in addition to a non-Starbucks coffee shop and splendid staff and performance space. The Ottawa Public Library (Metcalf branch, represent!) is dear to me, as is the University of Ottawa's (MORISSETTE!) library, but dearest is the Aylmer Public Library, which is in a new location attached to Aylmer's City Hall, but previously was in a gorgeous old building which used to be a prison and is almost certainly haunted. That's where I spent hundreds of childhood hours, and where I first felt any measure of autonomy, being able to bike there by myself whenever I wanted. I also adore the Comic Book Shoppe on Bank Street in Ottawa.

MPPL:  What was the last excellent book you read?

AE:  Oh gosh. I've got a pile of NO DOUBT excellent books TO read, and am in the middle of Jeff VanderMeer's Finch, which is awesome so far, but the last excellent thing I read was the last volume of the Scott Pilgrim comics, 'coz I re-devoured them all over Christmas.

 
MPPL:  What writing projects do you have in the fire (outside of your PhD work and Goblin Fruit)?

AE:  I want to build up more of my Steampunky Damascus, and revisit some of the characters from "To Follow the Waves" — but I also want to revisit the world of "The Green Book," and wrap my brain around the science required for my sentient-diamond-oceans story. Also I want to finally freakin' write a novel, but the biggest writing project I currently have on my plate is my PhD thesis (about representations of fairies and other supernatural creatures in Romantic-era British writing), and it gets priority. Still, the World Fantasy Convention is happening in Toronto in 2012, and I would dearly love to have a novel to promote at that point, assuming the world hasn't ended.

Bonus Round

Fill in the blanks:

On Sunday afternoons I am composing hand-written letters to my best beloveds and on Wednesdays at 3 a.m. I am dreaming of ritualized adventure.

The first time I realized the world epically sucked was while watching a documentary about how we're destroying the planet, I think. But I can't remember how old I was. Otherwise it's when I was seven, and saw a young boy selling gum on the streets of Beirut, and my grand-mother explained to me that he did that to support his baby sister because their parents had been killed in the civil war.

The first time I realized the world was epically beautiful was when I saw just how many stars there were in the sky, far away from city lights.

 
Were I to duel any character in fictional history, it’d be St. Vier from Ellen Kushner's Swordspoint, because I would be training with him in the ideal world that exists in my head.  
 
With one day left in life, I would read some of Tolkien's The Hobbit, eat acres of my mom's tabbouli and sing all the songs my sister and I know together.

And the Nobel Goes To...

Mario Vargas Llosa, a Peruvian author who stands among the giants of Latin American writing, has been named the recipient of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature.  Novelist, essayist, playwright, journalist, and politician, Llosa often explores questions of power and its dangers.  Best known internationally for works such as The War of the End of the World and The Feast of the Goat, he has dabbled successfully in mystery, historical fiction, and parody.  He believes that “literature gives readers a kind of third eye and enables them to see what is lacking in the real world.”  Llosa is the first Latin American author to win the literature Prize in twelve years, and only the seventh since the award was first given in 1901.

A Talk with Glenn Taylor

Glenn Taylor is the author of The Marrowbone Marble Company. In it we meet Loyal Ledford, an orphan who becomes a working class man then a whiskey-drenched WWII vet and finally the proprietor of an egalitarian marble factory in West Virginia during the violent racial unrest of the 1960s. The Marrowbone Marble Company is founded by Ledford, his half-Indian cousins – the Bonecutter Brothers, a wide-eyed, philosophical preacher and Mack Wells – an African American man well aware of the civil strife associated with skin color. Equality becomes a battle and Ledford finds himself fighting for the future of the Marrowbone, its workers and his family.

MPPL chatted with Glenn Taylor about The Marrowbone Marble Company and more.

MPPL:  What sparked the idea for The Marrowbone Marble Company and how long has it been stewing around on your desk?

GLENN TAYLOR:  I had been reading a good bit about World War II, after having picked up a copy of Donald L. Miller’s The Story of World War II. It really got to me, reading of what young men endured, and I began to recognize how young enlisted men and women are still enduring it today. I teach several sections of required Freshman Composition each semester, and inevitably, I always have a few students who have recently returned from Iraq or Afghanistan. Once, when I asked a particularly bright and thoughtful young man (who had served three tours) how he had come to be in the military, he told me, “I enlisted on September 12, 2001.” That kind of answer sticks with you. I had Ledford in mind, and I knew that after Pearl Harbor, Ledford was the type to do the same thing my student did. Beyond this little spark of instigation, I was very drawn to glass making. And, like always, I feel compelled to write of folks who struggle against oppression.

MPPL:  Some writers can’t or don’t write about a certain setting until they have lived there and left. For example, Joyce wrote all his best work set in Ireland after he’d left his home country. The Marrowbone Marble Company is set in West Virginia, as was your first novel The Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart, how tied to place are you as a writer?

GT:  I am very tied to place. The question here is so insightful that it reveals its own answer. For me, it took leaving home to discover how to write about it. I spent the first eighteen years of my life in West Virginia, and during that time I was not drawn to investigate its history. Only upon moving to Texas did I fully develop the pride that leads to digging up the past. And what a past it is. Only upon moving to Illinois did I fully develop an appreciation for hilly terrain. And what hills they are.

MPPL:  It’s been said that there is a “hidden south,” meaning that there’s the magazine Southern Living and then there’s real life. Does that idea hold true to you? If so, who are the people and places of your “hidden south?”

GT:  I suppose the people and places of my “hidden south” are those oft misunderstood people of the southern coalfields of West Virginia. My father grew up in Matewan, Mingo County, and I visited there quite a bit as a child. It’s a complex place that the national media has not ever taken the time to understand. The people are diverse and tough and possess great ingenuity, I think. Yet, the civic resources to build on such qualities are long since gone. The boom and bust of the coal industry has left some scarring and heartache in its wake. The “hidden” part comes about in the media presentations of the people of such areas. These presentations usually involve very little historical perspective, so that contemporary viewers never realize how relatively socially and racially progressive such places once were, before the money disappeared. 

MPPL:  What kind of research did you wrestle through to nail down the setting in The Marrowbone Marble Company?

GT:  The book takes place in Huntington, my hometown, and in Wayne County, my neighboring county, so I had that advantage. Time was more of a stumbling block than place. And the spot where I envisioned Marrowbone Cut itself is now covered over by a 1200 acre, man-made lake, so that was a challenge. I suppose it was a combination of reading and talking to older folks. I read books like Huey Perry’s They’ll Cut off Your Project, and I talked to people like C. Michael Gray, who was active in the Civil Rights Movement in Huntington and elsewhere.

MPPL:  Were there any bits of phenomenal research that grabbed your brain that you couldn’t squeeze into the novel?

GT:  So many accounts of World War II experiences were either too painful or too beyond my realm of understanding to fully convey. I felt strange just trying to write about a few select days on Guadalcanal, as if I was treading ground I shouldn’t be, having never served in the military. Beyond that, there was research on glass blowing that was fascinating that simply didn’t fit, as well as a wealth of knowledge concerning the War on Poverty.

MPPL:  Do you think you’ll ever write any full-length nonfiction?

GT:  I’m open to it. It would probably be down the road a ways. 

MPPL:  How’s about a short story collection?

GT:  Though I’m open to that too, I don’t foresee ever returning to the short form. I’m simply not as good at it. In hindsight, there was a reason for all those rejection slips over the years. Some writers can make stories feel full, like little novels. Mine have traditionally run the risk of seeming gimmicky, or too clever for their own good. We’ll have to wait and see if I have the time and energy to change that down the road.

MPPL:  Speaking of short stories, have you read any good ones lately?

GT:  Yes. I’m reading Ron Rash’s Burning Bright, and they are all good. He is a true storyteller, no gimmick. 

MPPL:  Do you have a favorite bookstore around Chicagoland?

GT:  I must admit my lack of experience here. Where we live, the chains are easiest to visit. Beyond those, I’ve visited a decent range of city and suburban stores, yet I haven’t scratched the surface. I’ve been to Quimby’s, which I found very unique and interesting. I like the other style too, the old “stacked to the ceiling” kind, like Jack’s Used Books on Northwest Highway used to be. I got a signed first edition of a Harry Crews book there once upon a time. And I look forward to doing a reading at The Book Table in Oak Park. I hear it’s a great one.

MPPL:  What about favorite libraries you’ve visited while winding around on book tours?

GT:  I did a reading once at Barnes & Noble Georgetown, and it was embarrassingly sparsely attended. But the trip was worth it in the end, as I spent a day at the Library of Congress. It was incredible. I filled out the paperwork, got my researcher card, and had at it. I could’ve spent a year inside those rooms. Little staircases connected little alcoves of book-lined treasure chests, room after room after room. A couple was getting married in the main hall. Hell of a library.

Bonus Round:

MPPL:  In a bout of drag-down, knock-out literary fisticuffs, who would win in a cage match?

Flannery O’Connor vs. Carson McCullers

GT:  O’Connor. She’d throw mud in the eyes if she had to.

William Faulkner vs. William Gay

GT:  Tough one to call. I suppose Gay might triumph, even if it wasn’t in a totally “fair” manner.

Mark Twain vs. Harper Lee

GT:  Twain would go down by decision and claim later he let her win, but that would be a bald-faced lie.

Stephen King vs. James Patterson

GT:  I’ll go with King here. I heard Patterson has other writers do some of his legwork, which leads me to believe he’d slack on training.

Dorothy Parker vs. Shirley Jackson

GT:  A draw. Neither would manage to do much more than pull a few loose stands of hair out.

Stop by the Fiction/AV desk to find a copy of The Marrowbone Marble Company or Taylor’s first novel, The Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart – a finalist for the 2009 National Book Critics Circle Award. 

 

Elementary Sherlockiana

You’ve seen the new film adaptation Sherlock Holmes, and you want to know more.  For example, who was the mysterious Irene Adler?  The world’s most famous sleuth matched wits with “that woman” in "A Scandal in Bohemia".  For a peek at the real Baker Street, check out actual Victorian photographs in Sherlock Holmes in London: A Photographic Record of Conan Doyle’s Stories.  Curious about Sherlock’s older and smarter brother Mycroft?  Wondering if the stories of his cocaine use are exaggerated?  Any fan of deduction will lap up the gems contained in The Encyclopaedia Sherlockiana, a universal dictionary of all things related to Holmes.  Ultimately, there is no substitute for delving into the stories themselves.  Whether you read, listen, or watch, you'll enjoy the action when the game’s afoot.

A Talk with Joe Meno

Jonathan Casper is too busy searching for a prehistoric squid to realize his wife is falling out of love with him. Madeline Casper studies the pecking order of pigeons at the University of Chicago and has fallen in love with a man she sees in the clouds. Their eldest child, Amelia, wants to be a revolutionary. Their youngest, Thisbe, searches for God, and Grandpa Henry wants to disappear. If he eats a little less each day, if he speaks one word fewer, if he erases enough memories by writing them down and mailing them away, eventually he will be gone from the world. The Great Perhaps reveals the tense, insular worlds created when families split apart. 

The Great Perhaps is Joe Meno’s seventh book. He is a novelist, playwright, music journalist and professor at Columbia College Chicago. Recently, MPPL sat down with Mr. Meno and talked about how libraries intersect with his writing process, the future of the book and his newest endeavor, The Great Perhaps.

MPPL: Do libraries ever play a role in your writing process?

Joe Meno: All throughout undergrad and grad school I almost always got the novels, short story collections and any books that were assigned, at libraries. So I spent tons of time at the Columbia library and I spent a lot of time at the Harold Washington.

I also really like the idea of an actual physical place that is dedicated to books, in the way that I really like the idea of a record store where you can get lost. It kind of makes me a little nervous at the preponderance of music sites and the disappearance of record stores and book stores. Libraries themselves are going to be going more digital and there is less of an opportunity to walk down an aisle and see a title or see a book cover that captures your attention. I can’t tell you how many times I just kind of stumbled on a book. I think it is a very different experience, you know?

There is also something about solitude that I think is very important and I think it is almost the complete opposite of the experience of living in a city. There aren’t too many places of solitude. The idea of spending a couple of minutes imagining by yourself seems really important. So a library is kind of like a temple or a church or an art museum and I feel like those places, as technology increases, become infinitely more important. Almost like an antidote.

MPPL: The Great Perhaps is on the Kindle. What is your stance on gadgets like the Kindle or Sony Reader? Will there always be room in the world for the printed word?

Joe Meno: When the Kindle first came out I was really upset about it. Again because I grew up with records and going to record stores and all that changed so quickly. The disappearance of record stores, it happened within years, literally within three years these places disappeared. And I spent all my teenage years and my early twenties going to record stores and now those places are just gone. Yeah it is definitely more convenient to go online, but then again there is this thing that you are alone and that’s the thing about record stores and libraries, there are other people around you and I’m not saying that you have to have these long conversations, but I feel like there are these places and we are missing out on these opportunities for these moments of surprise and interaction with other people and for the sake of convenience. So I’m not worried. I think people have an innate desire, whether they like it or not, to be around other people. Libraries fill that need, especially with the current economy. Those Kindles are three hundred bucks. I don’t know anyone who has that kind of spare money to shell out. That doesn’t even cover the cost of the title you are downloading. Then there are some people, editors and people I’ve talked to, and maybe they have an environmental concern, you know? They are able to read a book without having to create the book and gasoline to distribute the book and I think that realistically in probably thirty, forty years that the book itself, the actually hardbound book will be a lot more like vinyl records, where…

MPPL: It’s collectible?

Joe Meno: Well not just collectible, not like old jazz records, but records where small labels are now putting something out on vinyl and inside the sleeve there is a download code and then you can download the whole thing to your iPod for free. So if you want the actual object, you can have it. Then it is convenient because you also have it on your iPod.

When the Kindle was released, there were a lot of people and they were ringing their hands that this is the end of the book and I just think it is maybe a moment for reinvention. There is no reason why you can’t have both and some people are going to prefer to read on their Kindle and a lot of people are not going to be able to afford it and they just like the tactile experience of actually holding a book.

The other thing, when you talk about the library as a place, to me a book is. It’s like this really interesting thing. It is this place that you take with you and there is nothing else really like it. It is like a portable world and I just don’t get that same feeling from the Kindle. It is not to disparage those things. It is just that it is different. It's like the difference between an mp3 and actual vinyl record. So it is like this affordable art object. I take everything from the look of the book and the illustrations, really seriously, because that is how I feel. They are these pieces of art.

MPPL: It always seems like you attempt to make affordable art. For the longest while you attempted to keep your books in paperback rather than hardcover. Has your stance on that changed?

Joe Meno: Well, you know, I have had the great opportunity to work with a lot of different publishers over the course of seven books and certain publishers have certain preferences and a lot of it has a lot to do with libraries. A lot of libraries have a preference for hardcover books over softcover.

There is also this really arcane review system in place where reviewers are more likely to review books if they come in hardcover first. And it’s funny because it is true. I have seen it over and over again with my books. The Great Perhaps got a New York Times Editor’s Choice notice and that’s the first time I’ve had that. I think that the book is really good and everything, but people for whatever reason, have this archaic notion that because it is hardcover it is more legitimate and that is a totally ridiculous idea. So, I love people to be able to afford my books. It makes me honestly really, really nervous to have a book come out in the middle of a recession that is twenty-five dollars and I had a long discussion with my editor at Norton about it. It was ultimately their decision to go ahead with that, but you know in some ways it is the form. Books are so much a part of history and the way you transfer information that sometimes it kind of steps on its own toe or prevents its own development because of these connections it has. I just have a hard time understanding the point of hardcover anymore. Before you could say they last longer if you have hardcover books in a library, but there are tons of paperback books in libraries now and if you were really that concerned about a book withstanding the test of time you could scan it now.

MPPL: Then we get back into a changed experience via reading from a computer instead of a physical object.

Joe Meno: Well you can scan it and print on demand. Hardcover is this weird holdover…like the appendix, you know? It doesn’t really have a function. It is beautiful. The reason we did The Great Perhaps in hardcover was to be an affordable art object, a keepsake. It’s engraved with a cloud on the cover and it is not just this disposable form, but then at the same time it is less affordable than a softcover, but more of an experience. Hardcovers are often times beautiful, but I have complicated feelings about them. I think, again, it is one of those things that with technology in progress you are probably going to see less and less hardcover books, especially with the economy.

MPPL: In general, libraries seem to be ordering more in paperback than they ever have before. Paperbacks used to be secondary copies, if anything, but now with so many small presses and independent workings going on libraries are now giving paperback first editions a chance. Accessibility is key whether that be for paperback or hardcover. Hardcovers will have a hard time disappearing.

Joe Meno: Then at the same time when you are twenty-two and working at a part time job and you want to buy a book, twenty-five bucks is a lot. That is a huge investment especially for something that is a commitment. You don’t know if it is going to be good. Like I said, I have mixed feelings. I think the older I get the more hardcovers I buy. I have a little more money. I love them. I love having them in my house, but to me the goal of a writer is to get as many people in contact with your work as possible and sometimes hardcover is an obstacle to that.

MPPL: Did you know that you keep appearing everywhere?

Joe Meno: Really?

MPPL: A runner-up for the Story Prize against Tobias Wolff and Jhumpa Lahiri. Your nonfiction was in the New York Times Book Review. Most recently a sixteen year old girl came in looking for The Great Perhaps because she had loved Hairstyles of the Damned and The Boy Detective Fails.   

Joe Meno: That’s the best. One of my favorite quotes is F. Scott Fitzgerald and he says that you should write for the youth of today, the critics of tomorrow and then the teachers of the generation after that. And I really think that’s true. It really means a lot to hear that you can get someone who has all these other choices and they have all this other stuff going on in their life and they pick up one of your books.

MPPL: Would you discuss why your writing usually has a fantastical or unusual element whether in story or format?

Joe Meno: I try really hard to make each book its own thing. The difference with this book, The Great Perhaps, is that it is very realistic. It is set in a specific time, a couple of weeks in October, with family members who are some of the most complicated characters I’ve ever written and the problems that they have in the family, and the questions of family and what they’re struggling with in their own lives are very realistic. But there are these strange things that happen and the father has this kind of absurd work and there are other things that happen through the book and, to me, it wasn’t a stylistic choice of ‘Oh let’s have something strange happen’ it was, well I actually tried to sit down and write a realistic depiction of the few weeks before the 2004 presidential election. I was trying really hard and the more I wrote the more I thought that there was no way for me to capture what was going on in those weeks without resorting to some kind of surreal or absurd turn of events. That moment, even looking back now, five years later, it seemed like this whole other time in ways, but to be fair, to get to the complexity of what was going on in those weeks, I had to bring in those elements, but I would never want to get to the point where I thought I had to do those things.

I am really happy with the short story collection Demons in the Spring because half of them are surreal or absurdist and the other half are very, very autobiographical or realistic. The writers that I admire, most are not one to limit themselves to one particular style, so to me it is like a challenge that is really, really frustrating because every time you start a book you have to invent a whole new language and the weird things that happened in The Great Perhaps, those surreal moments, they were very, very different than in The Boy Detective Fails which is way more cartoony. Even the language and the forms that you use. What makes it really interesting is that you are kind of starting from scratch every single time and then it actually gets harder because you are like, ‘Well I already did that thing,’ I already did things with the text and making different shapes on the page and I’m not going to go back and do that again or I did a book of very short chapters and so now I’m going to go do a book of longer chapters and the more books you write the less you have to explore so you don’t repeat yourself. So it actually forces you to be way more aware and sharper and that’s great. I feel like the kinds of constraints that you put on yourself as any kind of artist usually have great results. You take that form and use it to create something new and interesting. It is difficult. Every time you start a new book, in the way that I work, you have to invent the form from scratch and make something fit. But that’s what I love and I would hate to get to a point where I think I have run out of ideas or I have gone back to this one thing over and over again because it “works” like writing a sequel or writing something that has the same exact feel as something from before and because some people really, really love one book and hate the next one. There are some people that love Hairstyles and they are really devoted to it and thoughtful about it at readings, but they will be very honest about saying ‘I didn’t like The Boy Detective book.’ And it is really interesting. There are people who get really attached to one book and the next book is not going to be like that one and each time you start over, but it is also with a new audience.

I think there is a group of people who like that idea that ‘This guy is gonna give me something a little bit different every time.’ There are certain things: ideas, approaches, questions and even certain images that I seem to go back to again and again. Stylistically and structurally they are different, but there is definitely a core group of people who like that reinvention and there are other people who, my gosh, I just feel so lucky to have anybody like one book, let alone two. You know? I mean yesterday I got on the train and I saw this person reading Hairstyles of the Damned and what an amazing feeling…somebody is reading my book and if that’s the only book of mine that he reads and likes that’s fine. I would be totally content.

MPPL: Are there any bookstores that have been a key part in your development as a writer?

Joe Meno: Quimby's. Quimby’s has been so incredibly supportive and has done so many events and I’ve worked so closely with those guys and it feels like home. The more I travel and the more bookstores I visit…It’s really nice because it is almost like in every town there is a bookstore that is similar to Quimby’s, but not quite. That place is its own unique world. You know? That’s how willing they are to work with writers and showcase their work. They are incredibly supportive. And it is an experience, going into that store. You really can’t keep your eyes focused on any one thing. I go to readings there all the time and I’m listening, but a lot of the times your eye is moving from one book to the next and then there’s like this weird Japanese erotica and then amazing art books and then comic books and novels and it is like walking into someone’s imagination which is nice and interesting.

MPPL: Earlier on you mentioned working with five publishers over the course of seven books. What are the criteria you use for the publishers you work with?

Joe Meno: I think the more I publish the more narrow and developed my criteria have become. I sold my first book when I was twenty-two to St. Martins and I was just happy, overjoyed, that someone was going to put my book out. I had no criteria. The only criteria was… ’Are they gonna let me put my name on the cover?’ Even money. Nothing. I didn’t even care about getting paid. Well I did, but that was all secondary. I had worked on this book and just to see it come out in print I felt completely blessed and grateful and I was so young I didn’t know any better. I completely didn’t know anything about publishing. We have these amazing classes at Columbia now, but in the early 90s, I really wasn’t informed. I was happy that somebody put my book out and that’s pretty much all they did. There was no publicity, which was fine.

Then with the next book, again I was still pretty young and didn’t have a real firm grasp on how the industry worked and it was with a bigger publisher, Harper Collins, and the money was better and there was a publicist that was assigned to me and I was like ‘This is amazing.’ It took me a long time to figure out that as a writer I am most happy when I am involved in the entire process and not only writing the book. My argument is that artists need to be involved in the entire process and these great things happen when the publisher allows or invites the writer to have conversations about the cover or about marketing and touring and things like that and so the industry has built opposition. Most corporate publishers really don’t want you involved in any of those decisions. And now after working with Akashic and Norton they’re very similar. They are both independent. Norton is the oldest independent in the country. They have a very similar ethic with keeping the writer involved in the process. So that’s really a deal breaker to me. Am I going to be able to make decisions about the cover, about touring, about publicity and things like that?

MPPL: Whether you are writing about young adults or complex stories about war, there is always a little bit of beautiful heartache in your books. Why?

Joe Meno: I don’t know. It’s really odd. It’s not consciously that this person is going to be sad and this one’s going to be funny. I guess it is just how I experience life and it’s what I find in the books that I love. Faulkner or Toni Morrison or Barthelme. Their writing, there is an element of tragedy but at the same time there is black humor that offsets it. It is just like the music that I love. It doesn’t rely on one particular tone or one particular mood and it moves in-between. Like Faulkner, he is my favorite writer because he does that so well. He moves from these terrible tragedies to moments of grotesque humor and you laugh in spite of yourself and that is really important to me in this book. The whole book is complexity and why we need complexity and history and politics and I needed to and wanted to write a book with complexity in it. The complexity of the characters emotionally and the mood. It is also more than enough to read four hundred pages of sadness and heartbreak. There have to be moments that offset these tragedies and challenges that these characters go through.

MPPL: Or else you end up like Cormac McCarthy. Very good, but very dark.

Joe Meno: The Road is a complete masterpiece, but some of his other work, his earlier works, are so grim that they are really not enjoyable. I mean I can appreciate the writing and the language and what he is doing, but they are not enjoyable to read. I don’t mean it as an escapist, but there is a level of engagement where you are connected to the characters and Blood Meridian, for example, to me is beautifully written but so over the top gruesome that I finished it because I felt like I had to not because I wanted to. I don’t even know though. In The Road there is a scene where they share a can of Coke and the dad lets the kid have the can of Coke and it’s beautiful and so poignant and a touching moment. And that’s probably why I like that book so much more because it feels a little more even and balanced. They eat bacon or whatever, ham, in the basement and they are happy. It is typical for the writers I love to have that dynamic tone or quality to their work.

MPPL: Were there any particular bands that you listened to when you were writing The Great Perhaps?

Joe Meno: Yeah. It was definitely the Beatles. Revolver. The White Album. They came out in ’66 and ’68. The White Album is really expansive. There are four different singers. There are so many different styles of music. The kind of songs that are poppy and ballads and weird, early proto-metal like “Helter Skelter” and country and “Rocky Raccoon” and it tried to contain everything and I love it for that. I mean, I don’t love every song on the double album, but I love their ambition and their intent to do that. Then they also swing wildly from “Revolution” to some totally absurd song like “Honey Pie” where it is so weird and cartoony. I felt like I understood why they had decided to do that. There was a lot of art made in the ‘60s like Slaughterhouse Five and all the early work of Thomas Pynchon that has the same expansive quality where it is surreal and funny and strange and set in a specific historical moment. In The Great Perhaps you have the family riding in the car in the first chapter of the book and they are listening to “Yellow Submarine.” There were a lot of reasons why I picked that song. Jonathan’s search for the squid, but also it is about how I feel the characters are cut off from the rest of the world and each other. They’re in their own little, hermetically sealed world and there is also this really disturbed song playing. It is completely ridiculous and so I wanted to try to translate some of those ideas into a book.

MPPL: Continuing on with music, there are rumblings that you are possibly writing a musical?

Joe Meno: I did!

It’s great. It was commissioned by Signature Theatre in Washington DC and it was an adaptation for The Boy Detective Fails, which I had already written as a stage play. It was performed here in Chicago right before the book came out. Signature Theatre commissioned me to write a new script and I worked to collaborate with a composer and lyricist named Adam Gwon from New York. In July we went to DC and worked with ten actors on work-shopping the show and building it. Then they did one staged performance where they had scripts and everything. It was great and so the company will produce it one year from now in October which is amazing. It will have an eight piece orchestra and it will be really beautiful and the music is incredible and it’s like everything I loved about working on the book but with this really lush music. It was an amazing experience and it was one of my favorite collaborations of all time.

MPPL: Do you think it will ever play in Chicago?

Joe Meno: I don’t know. We’ll see. These guys, Signature Theatre, just got a Tony Award for Best Regional Theatre and that is all they do. What they do is build a show and then try to send it to New York or these other places. I will definitely keep my fingers crossed.

MPPL: To wind down with a final question, what would your perfect library look like and contain?

Joe Meno: I love the Harold Washington. I love the architecture. I love the big bronze owls and then there’s the Brooklyn Public Library. They are both amazing to look at and to behold. To walk inside. It is an older building, in Brooklyn, and it has this great mood to it. The Harold Washington is amazing, but it is a newer building so it’s a little more modern. But both of those are some of my favorite pieces of architecture in either city. Outside of Chicago, I have been to some, but those are the two that live on in my platonic idea of what a library should be.

MPPL: Maybe add a spiral staircase or two to the Harold Washington…

Joe Meno: Actually, that’s funny because I think there is a spiral in the Brooklyn one. It has a different feeling than some libraries which were created in the last ten years and look a little more functional. It is a temple. It is totally a church of books, you know? I just really like what that means, you make this beautiful building because what is inside is so important.