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[REVIEW] Destroy All Monsters by Jeff Jackson

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(FSG Originals, 2018)

REVIEW BY MICHAEL J. SOLENDER  

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Rock “n” Roll’s primal appeal has always been its siren call as a refuge, a way of life, and state of being for the disaffected.

Rock has time and again used its power to transport alienated youth to realms without parents, teachers, fast-food bosses, and authority types.

Even in rock’s infancy when the doo-wop vocal group Danny & The Juniors first recorded “Rock ‘n’ Roll is Here to Stay” in 1958, lyricist David White proclaimed rock would “never die.” While it’s unlikely White envisioned rock’s evolution and subcategorization into psychedelic, folk, surf, heavy metal, grunge and garage rock, he instinctively knew the transformative power of this music prophesizing, “Rock ‘n Roll will always be our ticket to the end.”

The end is where Jeff Jackson’s new novel, Destroy All Monsters, The Last Rock Novel, begins. Jackson’s tome explores the troubling consequences when something we love too much betrays us.

A spontaneous epidemic of violent shootings is happening at underground rock clubs across the country.  Musicians are being shot and brutally murdered while performing – yet the music continues.

Each new horrifying shooting builds upon the last.  Their impact is felt and experienced in total, both repellant and attractive to those caught up in the scene.

Jackson journeys into the violence through the lens of a small handful of 20-somethings who aren’t sure where their life is headed and face each day unconcerned about existential questions any greater than which band is playing where and when. The carnage is seen strangely as matter-of-fact, a not-so-unexpected byproduct of the dreary world they inhabit, outcasts by their own design.

Xenie, Jackson’s heroine and primary vehicle, is a tense and pouty goth-girl who is a club regular following the likes of the Carmelite Rifles at the Echo Echo (inspired by Jackson’s hometown-Charlotte Milestone Club). Florian and Shaun, aspiring songwriters, rocker wannabes, and probably good kids growing up who mowed the lawn without being asked, are in Xenie’s orbit as is Eddie, a hanger-on-er, perched just on the peripheral of the in-group, desperate to connect with them for validation of his self-worth.

Theirs is a world of garage bands, sold out concerts, and mealy clubs with questionable acoustics. Heroes for these kids aren’t wrapped in the flag, found hawking sneakers, or making their class honor roll. They’re windmill-swinging armed guitarists with vintage amps serving up numbing balm to soothe past indignities and inoculation against the uncertainties of what’s next.

The successive club killings aren’t portrayed as crimes as much as inevitable occurrences, each compounding upon the last and slowly gaining momentum.  Early on Xenie senses connectivity in the killings and muses over her relationship to them.

Bands were being shot in the middle of their performances all across the country. The noise duo at the loft party in the Pacific Northwest. The garage rockers at the tavern in the New England suburbs. The jam band at the auditorium on the edge of the midwestern prairie. The bluegrass revivalists at the coffeehouse in the Deep South. The killers simply walked into the clubs, took out their weapons, and started firing.

Everybody was slow to call it an epidemic They didn’t want to believe these deaths were connected. I tried to discuss it with my coworkers at the diner, but they reacted with raised eyebrows and sideways stares, treating me like the customer who only orders glasses of chocolate milk and claimed the birds were trying to communicate with him.

I kept my ideas to myself, even though it was clear the killers weren’t acting in isolation. It was as if they’d all been infected by the same idea. They seemed to be following the same subconscious marching orders.

Somehow, I knew each act of violence was a prelude to another. The night before each new shooting, I’d find myself closing the curtains throughout the house and pacing figure eights in the bedroom carpet without understanding why. These events seemed like something plucked from my most disturbing daydreams.

Jackson takes his reader into the club scene of his fictional blue-collar Arcadia, an any-town USA burgh where home base for his crew of clubbers is far from chamber of commerce write-ups or upscale millennial haunts serving $19 martinis.

So strongly do some followers identify with certain bands, they transcend mere groupie status and become communities complete with the viscerally connected and those on the outside looking in. History is filled with these swooning masses: Elvis, the British Invasion, the Grateful Dead’s Deadheads, Phish Phans, all enjoyed such super-fans.

Members of this clique nervously pluck out their eyelashes, wear strategically ripped jeans, and spend their paychecks on scalped concert tickets. Xenie and Shaun share matching scars on their wrists, twinned memories of the recent past where the goal was not hurting themselves but FEELING something, feeling ANYTHING. They belong to the only group that will have them – each other.

Being an outsider is not the exclusive realm of contrarians as anyone who has ever longed to be a cool kid can attest. Destroy All Monsters taps into this fundamental aspect of the human experience, nonbelonging, illustrating how those on the fringe coalesce forming tribes just as difficult to crack and complex as the mainstream groups they are eschewed from.

The book is presented in a unique “A” side “B” side format that mimics that of an old-fashioned 45 rpm single requiring the book to be turned and flipped in order to be read. Just like the two-sided vinyl short plays, each side, “My Dark Ages’” and “Kill City” can be read in either order and stand alone.

Side A, the lengthier “track” offers a more linear story line and heavier scene development. Destroy All Monsters B side is almost like a background vocal track, with details and context to the murders acting like harmonies to share underpinnings and give depth.

With the meatier narrative, Jackson asks his readers to more fully ponder the “whys” in the storyline and see how it frames up against America’s political impotence and vexing inability to actionably respond to our own chronic violence and never-ending mass shootings.

Jackson paints in sepia tones, his words create a filmy, nicotine-stained haze giving rise to a discordant lifestyle born from the ability to alienate and repel external understanding.

Staccato bursts and short-sentences create tension bordering on anxiety, tapping to the core of these characters’ angst, stripping it bare. Jackson artfully eliminates distance between action and the reader, hijacking with a propulsive style into real-time dilemmas of belonging, assimilation, acceptance, and attachment.

Our protagonists’ fatalism in the face of epic violence is no more startling than America’s benign acceptance of real-consequence school shootings and daily gun violence. The stark difference however between Jackson’s fictional characters and everyday Americans is in their not waiting for someone else to “do something,” but in acting on their own morals and values in real-time response.

Florian’s face is twisted into an odd strangulated shape. He has a simian brow, but his minuscule eyes simmer with intelligence. His large expressive mouth seems to conceal a perpetual secret. Essential components of his onstage charisma. His band has been invited to headline a gig at the Echo Echo, a local club shuttered since the shooting. It’s a special concert to try to resuscitate the Arcadia music scene. An opportunity to pay a worthy and genuine tribute to Shaun. If it only didn’t mean placing himself in the line of fire. Soon the other members of Florian’s band will arrive, and they’ll have to make a decision. As he navigates the empty hallways to their rehearsal room, he listens to the lonely echo of his footsteps. The crumpled paper in his hand begins to itch.

Destroy All Monsters effectively reveals the dichotomy of loving and hating something simultaneously, a space where what was once embraced and slavishly followed, ultimately becomes reviled, a demon to be exorcised.

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Michael J. Solender lives and writes in Charlotte, N.C. Follow him on Twitter @mjsolender.

[REVIEW] Ivy vs. Dogg by Brian Leung

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(C&R Press, 2017)

REVIEW BY PRATIMA BALABHADRAPATHRUNI

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Ivy vs. Dogg is Brian Leung’s fourth book. In 2005, he published World Famous Love Acts (Sarabande Books),  a collection of short stories, which takes a totally different approach to the art of weaving a story. What his novels and short stories have in common, though, is their careful attention to detail and thoughtful rendering. The pace is measured and even, but never monotonous. If I might draw a comparison, Leung’s work is like the spokes of a bicycle, releasing a colorful streak with each turn.

The cover of the book, replete with a giant technicolor squid, evokes this colorful and vibrant approach to storytelling. The ubiquitous “We” that surfaces and resurfaces throughout the book seems almost to come across as the arms of that giant squid.

Which leads to the reader’s first question:  Why does the title of the book have the phrase “With a cast of thousands” featured prominently within it?

Admittedly, as the title announces, the story is about  two childhood companions, both contesting for the position of Junior Mayor.  Still, how many characters can fit into a book of 275 pages?

I realized that it is not just the campaign, and the contesting of Ivy vs. Dogg, that drives the narrative, but it is the town of Mudlick, and the people who can swing the vote either way, that make the narrative arc as inherently unstable as it is. I whistle and startle the neighbor’s cat who has taken to snoozing under the shade of our frangipani. I am sure the cat has a story to tell.  But, it takes a Brian Leung to make that an interesting enough a story to sustain  the reader’s interest.

While the book concludes with the election results and their aftermath, it is not so much the suspense that keeps one’s interest. Rather, it is the dry humor bordering on sociological satire that sails the story through. For, this is not just the story of the popular rich boy, with good looks and blue eyes, and the good-natured plain Jane. It is about the town and the people, their friendships and fraternities.

Yet it is the voice of the Committee that rules the roost, and hands us reason to chuckle or even take a tiny pause, and finally reflect. Printed in large, bold font, and enclosed in parentheses, these pieces of language act as would rumblers on the autobahn, as they slow down the reading, and at times, offer comic relief. It is not as if these dialogue sections always support the text, for many times they seem to be in contradiction to or ridiculously synchronized with that which is being implied in the story. For somehow, the story seems to grow stronger by their presence, as if they were a scaffolding of sorts, although they seem oddly askew, sometimes.

It is not as if the book is a rider to one’s moral conscience. It is not even a social commentary.

(Still, there are specific and concrete expression, which are very precise, and reflect the usual mindset of any small town, and all the people that could make it.

The book is dedicated to among others, also to  “ every home town whose children hear the whispering fists.”

What whispering fists? Later, much later, I realized that the whispering fists are the Committee or really the social pressure on kids who grow up to not be kids and sometimes get to be part of these Committees, or could these fists be fists of determination to be who they want to be, as they fight a social system and social stigma, social oppression?

Some things in the book are purely farcical, or so it seems. When a topiary shaped like a little girl is treated like one and the actual kids are not given enough thought, when  a little girl is hit by a car and soon forgotten or pushed out of the minds, when a little girl who grows to be sensible and social conscious teenager, when  the blue-eyed boy born with a silver spoon in his mouth is always a winner because he is so much more to look at when compared to the plain jane or the wallpaper, …ah, yes, that is the town of the whispering fists, with its omnipresent Committee, surely there must be an instruction or two on rearing children.

(Cultivate the skills of attractive children.) -The Committee.

Or even

(Make your child smoke a full cigarette as a toddler to discourage the habit later.) – The Committee

Of course, the Committee know everything, is always right, and omnipotent…well maybe…

Here is an extract from Page 23 that goes with the Committee’s opinion on Page 24:

“Whatever the case, it’s always been a rough bit of housing and if you live there, it says a lot about your position in life, whether you want it to or not.

(Home ownership is a foundation of moral stability.) – The Committee”

That is not as simple as it sounds. Because, in the book, a boy disses a girl, states she hails from the Pink Ghetto, is poor enough to only live in an apartment instead of a house, even though, he kind of likes her.

Ouch.

When I said, the story reels off like the spokes of something that turns circles, this is what I meant.

Each bit of the wheel that the reader traverses, enlightens us a little more.

(This is not a book for those seeking Enlightenment ) – The Reader

I really wonder how Brian wrote them, these Committee monologues.

My guess is, he wrote the story,  and then spent an awful lot of enjoyable  time coming up with the Committee says, or he watched people playing Simon says… who knows …maybe he read old newspapers as he went about with the editing of the book. New news is no news. Really.

Yikes, I sound like the Committee.

Even though, this book is an absolute unified collage of several stories, given the unique lives of the town folk,  there is a lot of intelligence that went into the pieces of Committee quips, they are hilarious and acerbic, simultaneously. Of course, some are almost innocent and funny…

(Mustaches make a lip reader’s job difficult.) – The Committee

Oh, wait. Here is the text that follows:

“Jacob Alter crossed his legs and put his arms behind his head. He was growing a mustache and it was coming out redder than his hair had ever been. ‘I’ve heard from a pretty reliable source that Ivy Simmons didn’t tell us something very important about her candidacy.’ All of us, as if on cue, leaned in to hear what Jacob was about to say.”

And there, the Committee quip morphs into being the chameleon that it almost always is, it changes its color when hurled into its given its context.

What they do is transport the reader into a social commentary. They offer scope for argument, they involve the reader outside  and beyond the story, enable and afford her to interact in the scenario, without having to interfere with the plot of the story.

The story meanders on, unhampered, as languidly as a horse swishing its tail as it grazes in the meadow with other horses who swish their tails too. And the reader, watches it all, takes it all while thinking about the moral and social implications of sociological structures.

The author becomes the magician; out come all these stories: rainmaker, a plant girl, a woman who talks to the topiary, the man who insists on a fence, and his neighbor who relents, old time  girlfriends, boyfriends, and many more, many many more, a cast of thousands, who fit right into the brackets that hold them all together, allowing them fit right into the plot of the main story: an election campaign where the contenders have to constantly upgrade their acts, for “each event  is only as good as the last event” of the campaign.

But, also, the writer, is engaged in something else: a sleight of hand … and we are drawn into it all, it happens, on its own, without the reader trying to make it happen. There is a story and then, there is a social commentary. The reader is both accepting the story and also arguing the structures and pressures of living in closed societies, especially small towns where everyone knows everyone else.

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Pratima Balabhadrapathruni is a home maker, writer, and poet. A winner of the in the Poetry Sans Frontieres contest twice in a row, she also has been chosen for the 2014 IWP workshop in non-fiction conducted by the Univ. of Iowa. Her work has appeared in OTATA, and Haiku Presence, Haibun Today, and other publications.

[REVIEW] Blood Standard by Laird Barron

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Putnam Books, 2018

REVIEWED BY GABINO IGLESIAS

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An author known for his or her horror chops switching to crime fiction would be an intriguing development and something that would make readers wonder about the end result. In the case of Laird Barron, that was not the case. Barron is one of the most talented voices in contemporary fiction, and switching genre only means he gets to flex a different set of muscles. After reading Blood Standard, however, I’m ready to make a declaration that will send horror fans running for their pitchforks: I’d be perfectly happy if Barron only gave us Isaiah Coleridge novels for the rest of his career.

Blood Standard kicks off in Alaska, where Isaiah Coleridge works as an enforcer for the mob. He is big, bad, good at violence, and covered in scars that speak of a life spent hurting others and getting hurt in equal measure. Despite his hard exterior, there is a soft spot inside Isaiah, and that leads him to put a brutal end to the moneymaking scheme of a made man. The move makes him a dead man walking, but Isaiah has enough contacts in the game to stay alive, at least for a while. Beaten and unemployed, he finds himself exiled to a farm in upstate New York. Surrounded by animals and empty space, Isaiah begins a new life, one that is very different from the one he’s used to. Unfortunately, the peace is short-lived. When a teenage girl disappears, Isaiah tries to help, and that throws him back into the underworld he’s called home for most of his life. What follows is a maelstrom of action, crooked FBI agents, mafia dealings, Native American gangs, and secret agendas that hits all the right noir notes while offering a special combination of humor, hear, and mythology that could only have come from Barron.

The first thing that should me mentioned about this novel is that Barron did his homework before sitting down to write it. On the surface, this is a wild, action-packed, entertaining narrative about a man who is simply not built to stay out of trouble. However, once you scratch the surface, you’ll start finding a plethora of deconstructed/reconstructed noir and thriller elements. Yes, Barron left a few mobsters in sharp suits, the booze, and the high and tight haircuts in there, but he changed everything else. For starters, his main character is not white and he’s very educated. Also, there is a underlying discussion of how situations differ when filtered through Otherness. In other words, this is a narrative that is as concerned with big themes as it is with shedding plenty of blood, looking at a strange angle in terms of righteousness, and entertaining readers.

Isaiah Coleridge is a special character. He comes from a troubled past and has left many bodies along the way, but he is a good person. He is also a man whose scarred fists are as impressive as his intelligence, which is a rare thing in contemporary crime fiction. In a way, Barron used his literary interests to bridge the gap between his previous writing and his crime debut by showing that we are all still in contact/interaction with archetypal and classic narratives:

“The Odyssey,” I said. “It’s the precursor to Heart of Darkness. The sea voyage with all the evil kings and monsters, and screwing of sea nymphs and lonely witches. The revenge against the suitors. I was an angry kid. Revenge appeals to teenagers. I admired Odysseus, but my heart went out to put-upon Polyphemus. Trespassing Greeks eat his mutton and drink his wine, stab him in the eye, and sale of merry as you please. The other Cyclops laughed. He got a raw deal. That said, I’m still more in Camp Hercules than Camp Odysseus.”

While Coleridge is reason enough to make this a recommended read, the rest of the things Barron does well push this novel into must-read territory. He understands the poetry of violence and is not afraid of gory descriptions of it. The dialogue is superb, matching the humor and electricity so far found almost exclusively in conversations between Joe Lansdale’s Hap and Leonard characters in their famous series. Lastly, there is the writing itself. Barron is a household name because he can spin a tale in a unique way and his writing is always top-notch, and that is once again in full display here:

“I returned to my meditation and visualized our vehicle as seen from the eye of a crow. So fragile and insignificant amidst the thunder, the rushing wind, and the infrequent strokes of lightning. Three men connected tenuously by loose affiliation and camaraderie were headed directly into the belly of the beast on behalf of a young woman none of them called blood. I bore witness to a strange and wondrous event that felt suspiciously like a miracle. Rain dappled skull patterns upon the glass. That omen concerned me not a whit. I opened my mouth wide and took in several gulps of oxygen.”

If you mixed together the best violent portions of the John Wick movies, the almost inscrutable nature of vengeance as it is dealt with in Greek mythology, the tension and darkness that has always characterized Barron’s horror writing, and the sine qua non elements of all best-selling thrillers, you’d only begin to approximate what Blood Standard has to offer. The rest of it is worth discovering by reading it, which is something you should do as soon as possible.

 

[REVIEW] The Wild Inside by Jamey Bradbury

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William Morrow, 2018

REVIEWED BY GABINO IGLESIAS

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Jamey Bradbury’s The Wild Inside is one of those rare narratives that constantly morphs and reveals itself in new skin while still retaining a few secrets and surprises at it’s core. Beautifully written and packing an ending that is as heart-wrenching as it is poetic, this debut novel is the kind of debut that makes promises while screaming from the top of the mountain that a new voice is here, and it deserves to be heard.

Tracy Petrikoff spends her life between the forests surrounding her family’s home and the running dogs that share the property with them. Things like parties, education, and boyfriends are not on her agenda. Instead, she lives for the wilderness, the cold wind in her face, and the sounds of the forest as she zooms by on the back of her sled. Her days are spent tracking animals, running with her dogs, dreaming about racing in the Iditarod, and in the company of her father and brother, both of whom are, like her, still reeling from the unexpected loss of her mother to a car accident. While the loss was tough on everyone, it was especially so for Tracy because she and her mother shared a deeper connection, something that made them special and that Tracy now wishes she could ask about a bit more. The thing that brought them closer together had some rules. Chief among them was: never make a person bleed. Unfortunately, when Tracy has a quick, bizarre, violent encounter with a man in the woods, she breaks this rule. The event ends with Tracy knocked out after her head hits a gnarly root and waking up to silent woods and the man’s backpack, which he left behind during his escape. However, that ending was just the beginning of something else. The next day, the man shows up at their property and quickly passes out from his wounds. Where they caused by Tracy? What exactly happened in the woods? With the man in the hospital, a mysterious youngster appears at their home, looking for a job. The kid, Jesse Goodwin, is a hard worker and gets along with Mr. Petrikoff immediately, but there is something about his story that doesn’t add up. Between figuring out the truth about Jesse, learning to keep her impulses under control, his father’s new love, and the fear that the man in the hospital will soon return to get his backpack, which Tracy has under her bed, the narrative begins to spiral into a maelstrom of loss, doubt, and secrets that crescendos into an unexpected, explosive finale.

There is something unique about Tracy’s voice. It’s is at once uneducated and poetic, truthful and given to counterproductive inner dialogues, always doubting but somehow sure of what she hides from others and only lets out in the woods. That voice makes her a likeable character from the first page, and that likeability never diminishes, which leads to the novel’s last third to feel like a stab wound to the heart. Simply put, The Wild Inside is a narrative about growing up, but one that packs more loss, tension, and strangeness than normal. In fact, it is so like other coming of age narratives that even drinking the blood of animals out in the woods quickly becomes something we accept as a normal part of Tracy’s abnormal life:

“The other kind of learning, you drink it in, too. It’s warm and it spreads through you, wakes up your muscles and sharpens your mind, and you can see clearly, not just with your eyes but with your whole self, and then you know what you didn’t before. How a squirrel plans its route from branch to branch. How a mouse will hear you before it ever sees you. How a snowshoe hare knows to run in a zigzag, not in a straight line, to confuse its predator. Every piece of knowing makes the next hunt easier.”

On the surface, The Wild Inside has everything it needs to be a successful novel: it’s entertaining, the writing pulls you in, the backdrop is beautiful and wild, the dogs are a pleasure to be around even if you can’t touch them, and every character is multilayered. However, Bradbury takes things a step further by tackling the nature of righteous violence, the way our ow imagination can get the best of us and make good people do horrible things, and the unexpected ways a loss can affect the internal dynamics of a household. Lastly, it also deals with Otherness in the form of Jesse, who hides a secret as deep as any Tracy hides. This character evolves and the writing follows, making a strong case for the inherent normalcy in Otherness. There is no judgement here, only a youngster coming to terms with what he is in a world that often refuses to understand people like him. Ultimately, the way Bradbury deals with Jesse pushes the novel into the absolute must-read category:

“But once he started living the way he was meant to live, things changed. He didn’t have to explain to me how he’d new words like girl and she and her didn’t fit him, no matter what other people said, or why you giving himself a buzz cut at thirteen felt so good. You’ll look ridiculous in your Easter dress, his mother had said and I felt the sting of her words, all the lightness an joy a gone out of him when he seen the disappointment on her face.”

There is a lot of blood in The Wild Inside, but every drop is spilled with a purpose. Similarly, every word, every passage, and every action in the narrative has a reason, and that makes the last third of the novel work so well. When you don’t know all the facts, being right, fearing things, and planning are all floating signifiers with closed eyes. That Bradbury delivered a gripping story in which all of these play a major role is a testament to her talent, and a clear sign that she is here to stay.

 

 

 

How do you live when you’re hiding who you are? A conversation with Tadzio Koelb, author of TRENTON MAKES

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INTERVIEW BY YI ZOU

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Before publishing Trenton Makes (Penguin Random House), Tadzio Koelb had poems, reviews, and essays already under his belt. Now, after four years of on and off writing, editing, and revisiting, he has completed a tale of identity, isolation, and corrupt humans living in a corrupt society. In Union Square, on one of the few pleasant days in the middle of winter, he talks about his journey in writing, the inspiration for his protagonist, and how a story set in post WWII relates to our modern world.

 

Yi Zou: How long has the idea of Trenton Makes been in your head? What inspired it?

Tadzio Koelb: A pretty long time. I remember talking about it with my thesis advisor in my undergraduate program. I was finishing a different novel then, but I had already come across the CD of jazz music by Billy Tipton, who was discovered at the moment of his death to be biologically female.

That had set me thinking about a few different things. Most immediately, how do you live when you’re hiding who you are or what your body is? How do you do that? And I took it to an extreme because I think extremes are where you find more interesting stories.

 

YZ: How long has it taken for you to complete the novel?

TK: It’s hard to say exactly, because I started a bit and then went back to revise an earlier novel that I never managed to place with a publisher. So, I usually say it’s about four years.

You just have to do it. You just have to sit down in front of the piece of paper or the computer or however you function as a writer. Right now, I’m not really doing that since I’m sort of waiting, I’m so caught up in the excitement of publishing this novel that I don’t have the ability to focus on the next thing yet.

 

YZ: Is this a story that you planned out piece by piece before you started writing, or did the plot form as you wrote it? Have these characters changed from how you envisioned them in the beginning?

TK: A little bit of both. I would outline pretty extensively, but when I went to flesh out those various different pieces, they would sometimes be much longer or shorter than I would have anticipated. There were big question marks surrounding some of the events. How to arrive at them, and what all of the various repercussions might be.

Some characters changed, very drastically. I had originally thought that Dion would be almost a cult leader, for example.

 

YZ: Did you ever encounter a block while planning or writing, and what helped you get past it? What did you learn?

TK: I think of writer’s block as just another name for fear of failure. Naturally, I experienced fear of failure all the time. I think it’s a constant. I think if you’re an artist and you don’t fear failure, you’re probably not a very good artist, because you should want to do something that you’re not sure how to do. You should be attempting to do something ambitious and difficult.

I think the most important activity to do for a writer is to read. Reading is an enormous inspiration and a source of almost comradery with other writers, even if they’re long dead. They encourage me and they lead me.

This is my first published novel, but not the first one I wrote. I had an instructor at my master’s course, who used to say, “Writing a novel teaches you how to write the novel you just wrote”. Having said that, though, it’s like anything in the sense that the more you do it, the more you understand it, the less you have the question yourself.

 

YZ: What made you so interested in the post WWII time frame? Did you have to do a lot of research?

TK: I chose that particular time, because the character was, for me, best displayed against a backdrop of isolation. I didn’t want there to be chat rooms, support groups, anything that might suggest a kind of network to which this character could turn. But, I wanted a time that wasn’t so different from our own and I believe that a lot of things that happened in WWII are still affecting the politics that we’re suffering from in America today.

I thought I was familiar, but you discover a lot of small things that would have never occurred to you to ask. How did people get rid of their garbage? Or heat their houses?

 

YZ: Is the style of non-linear storytelling something you employ often?

TK: Yes, it is. In this particular case, I was also influenced or inspired by a book called “The True Story of the Novel” by Margaret Doody. She discussed earlier forms of the novel and different ways in which novels could be structured. It inspired me to be as transgressive in the formatting of the novel as I thought the character Kunstler was in relation to his surroundings and society

 

YZ: There is this element of reincarnation through violence, from Kunstler’s husband to Kunstler and finally to Kunstler’s son. How did this motif come to be?

TK: I pulled in my discussion of Kunstler as, sort of, the ultimate self-made man. I looked at a couple of stories, one of which is Frankenstein. In this case, Kunstler is both Frankenstein and Frankenstein’s monster. I also looked at the story of Isis, who tried to reassemble her husband but was unable to find his sex organs. I also looked at the Nietzsche-ian statements of the revenge of the son on the father, and these kinds of violent progenitors.

 

YZ: Kunstler ends up doing some incredibly immoral things. Were you concerned with keeping your protagonist “sympathetic” or “likable”?

TK: The important thing about Kunstler is that he demonstrates how bad systems generate immoral behavior. We see a lot of stories about people facing difficulty that are shown as deeply and essentially good, but forced to do something—perform an act—bad. I think that’s a misrepresentation of the way in which we are affected by our inequalities. I think that a corrupt system creates corrupt morality which the individuals trapped inside can’t even see as corrupt. Kunstler is somebody just like that. In order to get what he wants and needs, he will do things that seem, to him, to be justified.

 

YZ: Did you experience rejections while trying to get Trenton Makes published?

TK: Oh, yes, quite a lot, in fact. There were some agents worried about the length. Specifically they thought it was too short. Some liked the first half but not the second half. And some liked the second and not the first. Some, one rather, told me she thought it read like a first draft. It’s almost exactly the same draft, with minor changes, that’s being published one month from now.

 

YZ: Are you represented by an agent, and how did the two of you connect?

TK: I’m represented by Anna Stein, at ICM. I came to her through one of the many ruses I used for meeting agents. Essentially, any time I met a person, of any kind, whether or not that person had any relationship with the literary world, I’d ask them if they knew an agent. And if I submitted my work to agents, and they said it wasn’t for them, I asked them to recommend someone else. I was always on the lookout for an introduction. I got an introduction from a colleague at Rutgers, and I was very lucky that Ana was sympathetic with the work.

 

YZ: What advice do you have for aspiring authors?

TK: For the writing part, I think write what you really want to because you’re going to be rejected a lot. It’s better to be rejected for something you meant than something you did only to please others, and ultimately, you’ll write a better book if you’re being honest. For publishing, I think luck is a huge part of it. I thought I was going to have to publish this book on a mimeograph machine and sell it on the corner. I just got very lucky, I think, that the subject matter was timely, and I found an agent who was interested, and she knew the right editors to go to, and so on.

 

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Yi Zou is a graduate student studying fiction at the New School MFA program.

[A Reviewable Feast] Adult Gummies by K. Karivalis

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Neon Burrito Publishing, 2018

A Reviewable Feast is a hybrid book review/author interview series by Mandy Shunnarah.

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“I saw the best minds of my generation artificially enhanced by the excessive nutrients of two-a-day adult gummy multivitamins, upgraded alongside their devices… going through the motions as the world watched, being completely aware they were being watched… every one of them pretending to work harder than the next but only as hard as will require the least amount of effort.”

With that howler of an opening, K. Karivalis begins Adult Gummies, her satirical novella on the battle between Millennials making art, making money, and often being disenchanted by both. The characters learn the hard way that office jobs can lack creative and spiritual fulfillment, while full time creative self-employment can lack steady income. In the parlance of our times, the struggle is real.

Jen, Kat, Dirk, and Thad work at the amorphous Company, a business whose goings-on we know nothing of besides content creation, advertising, and sales. Jen dreams of being the Content Queen, vying for the head copywriting position. Kat wants to be a “real writer” who’s creatively fulfilled. Dirk coasts along, not having to do much since his privilege as a white man already affords him more money and growth opportunities than Jen, his chief rival. Thad endures the indignities of daily racial microaggressions just going to and from work. Adult Gummies is sardonic social commentary at its best.

I talked to K. Karivalis about Millennial struggles, music as an escape, and the effect of personal branding on art.

Mandy Shunnarah: I’m curious about how this book came to be. Did you have an office job you hated where you ran into the real-life inspirations for the characters?

  1. Karivalis: I landed my first office job when I was 24 and it was at Binder & Binder (yes, the Social Security Disability law firm with ads on daytime TV) and it was bleak, like a caricature of a mundane office job. I was hired as a “writer,” which meant I wrote legal documents and had to learn all these laws about Social Security Disability, etc. The contrast between the rather alternative “artsy” lifestyle I lived the first few years after graduating college and the 9 to 5 world was jarring, almost terrifying, but in a fascinating way because it was all completely new to me. I felt like I was thrown into a movie set, like I was starring in a movie about a young woman navigating the banality of big city office life. So it felt natural to translate those experiences into a book, though I didn’t do so until a few years after I left that job. One particular character (Dirk) is very much based off of a former coworker, the others are more inspired by bits and pieces of people I know and different millennial stereotypes.

MS: One of the things I loved about Adult Gummies is that, while satirized, it’s eerily true to life for Millennials who have worked at a company that produces content. Kat says she wants to be a “real writer, not a copywriter,” and meanwhile the protagonist Jen actively wants to be a copywriter because then she’d be the Content Queen she aspires to be. And yet neither of them fit well at The Company. I imagine there are a lot of writers who feel like this right now––wondering whether they should write for the sake of creating art or write what sells, even if what sells is often substandard. How did you navigate all this? Is this dichotomy something you find yourself struggling with?

KK: The characters Kat and Jen represent this dichotomy: quit your job and pursue your writing dreams with reckless abandon or climb the ladder of being a “professional” writer in a “professional” setting, hoping that if you reach your desired position, you will be satisfied creatively while still having the comforts that 9 to 5 jobs provide. Kat’s decision to (spoiler alert) quit her job and become a “real writer” and Jen’s dedication to playing the professionalism game represent the fork in the road I feel like I am at now.

I currently work an office job but it’s part time, which gave me the time to write Adult Gummies. Before I started working on the book though, I was focused on finding a full-time professional job as a content creator and/or copywriter at a company that I thought embraced the idea of a progressive office environment and encouraged creativity, such as the Urban Outfitters corporate headquarters, which is one of the biggest employers of young creatives in Philadelphia. At the Urban Outfitters corporate headquarters, people bring their dogs to work, buildings are situated on this beautiful campus with trees and public sculptures, there are many artisan options for cruelty-free lunch, you can bring your laptop outside to work on the grass when it’s nice out––this sort of utopian idea of The New Professionalism, trying to rid office jobs of their stigma. I thought the combination of my professional experience and online “clout” (some of these jobs require a minimum amount of Instagram and/or Twitter followers) would make it easy for me to land one of these jobs, but alas, this was not the case. So I thought, ‘okay screw you I’m writing a book.’

Unfortunately, I think most young writers these days give up on The Dream and get the creative labor job and tell themselves they’ll write their novel in their spare time. But this is the climate we are in now––this is the reality of money ruling the world, in addition to health insurance, benefits, sick days, 401K, job security, etc.

About a year into working at Binder & Binder, my dad died suddenly and unexpectedly from a heart attack at the age of 54. I got the phone call at my desk at Binder & Binder (I had left my cell phone at home that day by strange coincidence), and immediately that environment was poisoned with that traumatic memory. I quit my job directly afterwards and worked odd jobs for a year while in a deep state of grieving. I slowly started to rebuild my life and got the part time office job I work now, as a kind of minimal-amount-of-money-making placeholder until I felt ready to return to full time work. After I applied to and didn’t get the creative professional jobs I thought I wanted, I got real with myself and thought: “this is all a big procrastination dance to avoid putting my nose to the grindstone and writing a book.” So then I wrote the book.

I don’t think I would have had the dedication, motivation, concentration it took to write the book if I didn’t go through this horrific experience, but something about being reminded on a ceaseless, obsessive basis of my own mortality and the finite reality of living really gave me the kick in the pants I needed!

MS: I couldn’t help noticing the subtle music references throughout the novel, which was a nice surprise. I saw some Smashing Pumpkins, Pink Floyd, and others. Tell me more about the soundtrack to the novel.

KK: Parts of the novel examine intergenerational workplace dynamics––how employees from each of the three generations of working age people in America right now (Millennials, Gen X-ers, and Baby Boomers) interact with each other on a common playing ground. During the after-work karaoke party, Jeff in Sales (Gen X-er) sings “Bullet with Butterfly Wings” by The Smashing Pumpkins and Kat visualizes him in the time period of the song, in the 90’s, when Jeff in Sales (in her mind) was young and still had hope for a non-conformist lifestyle, before he sold his soul to the 9 to 5 world. The line “Despite all my rage I’m still just a rat in a cage” is in a way the thesis for the entire novel: you can hate your job as much as you want but you’re still working the job. Are you a victim of the system or are you playing yourself? Are you staying at the job you hate because you don’t have the financial means to quit or do you just lack the guts?

I decided to feature this song through karaoke because I had attempted singing it at a karaoke night a few weeks before I wrote that scene and it was surprisingly hard to sing. It starts a cappella so I was off key for like half the song. The frustration of searching for the right note after the song already started really helped me vocally express the desperation inherent in the lyrics of the chorus. So that’s what happens to Jeff in Sales too––he’s visibly frustrated trying to sing on key and also visibly frustrated at his life situation. Not only being a rat in a cage, but a rat in a cage that can’t sing its favorite song properly.

The Pink Floyd lyric “All in all your just another brick in the wall,” has become such a widespread shared sentiment for feeling helpless and dissatisfied with capitalism and modern society that it’s a cliché. Because it is so iconic and well known, I liked playing with that lyric and having Kat write on her Tumblr “All in all you’re just another blown up pizza pocket shit-stain on the wall, the white walls, the pin-pricked cubicle walls of the proverbial Dilbert.” Offices are filled with many different types of walls, both physical (glass partition, drywall, cubicle, rows of ceiling-high filing cabinets) and, of course, metaphorical.

I also want to touch on Jen’s karaoke choice, which is “Escape” by Enrique Iglesias. This is funny in context because she sings it to freak out Dirk, singing he “can’t escape her wrath.” Kat also visualizes Jen in the time period of the song like she did Jeff in Sales, but it is 2001, so she gets into a thought spiral about 9/11. Associating Enrique with 9/11 seems absurd, but it kind of made his career. Right before 9/11 happened, Enrique released “Hero” and it was a hit. However, after 9/11 “Hero” somehow became the theme song of honoring all of the fallen heroes of 9/11, and he sang it at NYFD/NYPD memorials, even though it’s a song about a romance, not about actual life-saving heroes. So this sappy, romantic-sad pop song became the theme song for the NYFD/NYPD 9/11 heroes. It was the chosen song for New York radio DJs to remix with audio from rescuers and politicians speaking about 9/11. It just seems so bizarre thinking back on it now.

MS: I want to slap this novel into the hands of every Boomer who’s ever told me I should get a “real job” while asking me to do work for free and simultaneously telling me that my generation ruined the economy. At first, I thought Adult Gummies was about disenchantment with office life, but as the characters find out, freelancing in the gig economy can be worse. In your experience, do you think the economy Millennials have had to battle makes creating art more difficult or do you think it forces us to be even more creative?

KK: This is my hopeful optimist answer: Overcoming obstacles makes for interesting art. Financial obstacles force us to be not only more creative in our budgeting but also more driven and dedicated to the act of creating (because time is money so if you spend time making art it better be worth it, as in it better be spiritually fulfilling or at least make you look cool). Creating can still feel like an act of rebellion, it can still help us express complicated emotions and ideas that go against the status quo.

The internet art of the 2010’s is a good example: artists who lacked the money for a studio space and supplies used whatever software they had on their computer. Music too, like bedroom pop and vaporwave––that all came from people holed up in their rooms with nothing but a laptop with Garageband and guitar or midi keyboard. And as far as promotion goes, everything can be done through social media. Living paycheck to paycheck and working a terrible job that barely covers your expenses is a bleak existence. Dedicating ourselves to creating art gives us purpose and an escape from the monotony of our money-driven reality.

This is my jaded pessimist answer: That being said, there is no denying the current economy makes it much harder for us to do what we want. It’s difficult to live on a minimal income, and that’s if you’re lucky enough to have dodged accruing massive amounts of student loan debt, credit card debt, getting sick and being unable to work, supporting family members, etc.

And the attitude we get from Boomers doesn’t help either, though it has given us such glorious tone-deaf clickbait as: “Millennials Aren’t Buying Diamonds, Why?” And that whole “if Millenials stopped buying avocado toast they could buy a house” fiasco. In recent times I have seen friends who were once set on being writers and artists choose the path of a full time job with a steady income after realizing how many risks have to be taken to dedicate yourself to your creative work.

If we take the little time and money we have and throw it all into writing a book, what if nobody reads it? What if it sucks? These were constant ruminations I had before, during and after writing Adult Gummies––a lot of self-doubt, anxiety and fear of failure.

MS: Nowadays it’s not just office workers who have personal brands––even writers and other artists are often expected to have a brand as part of their creative output. What effect do you think having (or striving to have) a personal brand has on art?

KK: I think it can have a profound effect at the beginning but then becomes problematic when the artist or writer wants to do a new project differently, thus having to not only re-brand but re-brand with grace. Marketing is so important (unfortunately) to get your work noticed and most artists or writers don’t know the first thing about marketing (unfortunately).

I picked up a bit of marketing knowledge when conducting research for Jen’s character, and also through my experiences on social media. A lot of the vocabulary in Adult Gummies is the result of my own experience trying to develop a personal brand for my Instagram account. Generally posts that had a consistent “theme” and “aesthetic” would get the most likes, and at that point in time my Instagram was my only active creative outlet (before I wrote Adult Gummies), so I put a lot of heart and time into it. Then I started developing a personal brand.

Kell Casual was my fake name associated with my Instagram account and she is a character who works in a dreary office but wants her microwaveable meals to be ethically sourced! And she rates different brands of adult gummy multivitamins on Amazon and links these reviews to her Twitter! And she writes melodramatic sonnets about hating Mondays! And she needs to know, for the sake of her brand’s philosophy: How does one make something so un-cool, cool?

Developing a personal brand included targeting Kell Casual’s biggest interests. There had to be reoccurring themes, including the character arc of writing and then finishing her book (my book). Jen’s character is kind of a vamped up, more clean-cut version of Kell Casual, like how actors stay in character for a few months to prepare for an Oscar-worthy role. I did a light version of this, performative for the internet, to create a multidimensional, round character for Jen. I lived in a similar flesh to experience similar experiences. Thus writing a book about a Millennial working a mundane office job became part of the brand, and then the brand became the book, and then the book promoted itself, and then people read it and apparently it doesn’t suck.

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Mandy Shunnarah is an Alabama-born writer now living in Columbus, Ohio. Her essays, poems, and book reviews have been published in or are forthcoming from The Citron Review, Barely South Review, Entropy Magazine, Southern Women’s Review, The Missing Slate, New Southerner Magazine, and Deep South Magazine. Read more on her website offthebeatenshelf.com.

 

[REVIEW] The Dark Net by Benjamin Percy

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Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017

REVIEWED BY JESSE LAWRENCE

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I went into Benjamin Percy’s The Dark Net mostly unaware of what it was about (good start, avoid any “dark” and “blind” puns). The older I get and the more that goes on, well, the more dodgy my memory gets. It’s sort of apt, considering this novel deals so heavily with technology, and this also points out why I jive with Lela (“a technophobic journalist”) so well: technology has made it easier to access, store, and recall information and content of any kind, not to mention doing it all faster, but the human brain has a general peak, after which it slows down. That, and the ability to more easily access a greater variety of stimuli means there are more things competing for memory space/retention, and it’s an endless battle to keep up or get ahead or suss out some stasis.

The Dark Net is described as a “terrifying horror novel” and reads like a paranoid rollercoaster stuck on a loop. It certainly is that horror novel, but it’s also a face-in-a-sink-of-iced-water (I never thought I’d make a Huey Lewis reference that wasn’t also an American Psycho reference, but here we are) comment on our current technological landscape, how we use it (or fail to), and how it uses us, how it controls so much of our lives, and how we maybe shouldn’t blindly (yep, going there) trust in it. Also, more painfully but no less true, just how minor we are.

Some people get lost in the Internet, disconnect from the “real world” and “live” online, but maybe the Internet is just illuminating how microscopic and unimportant people ultimately are, perhaps even to each other (though we should always be excellent to each other). Or, maybe, it’s that we truly are nothing but stimulus and response, and the medium doesn’t matter. But the Internet is eternal, right?

Once it’s online it’s out there forever. That sentiment is not just a scare tactic to protect people or prevent them from publicly doing stupid shit. No. It’s true. Yet, many things are lost, or can be, in the advancing/changing technologies. This is something the film community has already had to start thinking about, between the first shot-on-digital-video movie and now. So, is it forever, if it’s on the Internet? Maybe not. Yet, even the physical, which we deem more “real”, like the printed word — or etched, chiseled, carved — is not immune to time, nor human behavior. Which, all of this further proves how microscopic we are, and thus one could so easily spiral into a mad descent of existential ennui, because, really, “the universe has been around for a long time before us — and it will go on without us. We’re the merest speck in the unfathomable reach of its timeline and geography.”

So, then, yeah, this is some heady stuff. But it’s heady stuff in the best sort of way: a horror novel under three hundred pages. I’m not dissing longer novels, or saying they are in any way “less” because they might be “too long” or anything. Definitely not. I will happily live in a thousand plus pages of horror, but if you can cattle prod my brain like this in a number of pages that I can consume in a single day/evening, well, you get major bonus points. Long story short (too late (that’s a Clue reference, and I don’t get to reference Clue nearly as often as I wish)), Percy writes with the economy that all writers should aspire to.

The Dark Net will no doubt be compared to The Matrix in some fashion, and I can see why, to the extents it will, and there are some whispers there, though they’re not unique to The Matrix. Where my mind is going, though, and it’s just too obvious, because it’s Portland, Oregon and it’s a reporter, but I keep thinking of Chelsea Cain’s Beauty Killer series (like Lela in The Dark Net, I also totally identify with Susan Ward in Cain’s books). That, and Sneakers, because breaking into places sometimes makes me think of Sneakers, though there’s that technology connection, so that could be why. Also, The Young Sherlock Holmes, because of ritualistic goings on. Ritualistic killings feature in a lot of stories, sure, but they always remind me of YSH.

Of all the things that The Dark Net is, the greatest is that it’s a Blob-swallowing thing. In filmmaking there’s the notion of the four-quadrant movie. It’s a story that hits all the demographics. Sometimes it gives us magic (think any animated feature that kids go gaga for but also has stuff in it for adult audiences, stuff that kids miss, or don’t understand — this goes for many films and shows since before “four-quadrants” was even an idea, because all of the stuff that kids watched was created by adults, and they probably figured it’d be nice to throw some stuff in that adults, specifically, would pick up on, because they’re probably watching along with their kids, and maybe on repeat ad nauseam), and sometimes it’s dreck. This? The Dark Net? It is so far from dreck. Oh so very far. I’m not saying it spans the four-quadrants. Kids might not dig it, maybe shouldn’t even read it, but to a kid who grew up on King this technological horror novel might just be the ticket for modern adventurers/darers/rebels. If it’s not, though, it certainly hits all points thereafter, and it hits other points as well. Horror? Check. Thriller (and, yeah, sometimes thriller is just the gutless way of saying horror — think Silence of the Lambs)? Check. Action? I’m going to say check. It’s not Die Hard, but there might be explosions, and it’s got all the suspense built in that good action has, so, then: Suspense? Check.

If you’re into Benjamin Percy’s work, you’ll love this, and if you don’t even know who Benjamin Percy is, this book will make you want to devour his other books (and for my final reference I’m using words familiar to werewolves, because Red Moon, though I probably would have gone there anyway, because werewolves are the non-stop ultimate (sorry, couldn’t help throwing in a Psycho Beach Party reference)).

Navigate it well, let it suck you in, explore, venture out, but remember: “the Internet is a landfill and a treasure trove. Every object and every person and every place and every thought, every secret exists there. Every appetite can be satisfied there. Unlike a body, unlike the world, the Internet is limitless.” So, yes, explore. Be bold. Be a pioneer, but remember: it just might be navigating you.

The Mystery and Mythology of Found Audio by N.J. Campbell

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INTERVIEW BY MANDY SHUNNARAH

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Two Dollar Radio’s latest publication is hot off the press. Found Audio by N.J. Campbell is a Russian nesting doll of a novel with layers of mystery, mythology, madness, and suspense.

When three stolen audio tapes of questionable origin land on Dr. Amrapali Singh’s desk, along with a large sum of money to analyze them, she has two days to extract any clues as to the origin of the tapes and the identity of the unnamed journalist whose story they hold. Using her keen ear and expertise in antiquated audio formats, she transcribes the tapes, which form the majority of the novel.

From the murkiest bayous of Louisiana to the walled-in city of Kowloon to a chess tournament in Turkey, the unnamed journalist searches for the City of Dreams––a legend akin to El Dorado and the lost city of Atlantis. The clues to where this City of Dreams might be come sporadically, over the course of several decades, and each time he gets close to finding it, something mysteriously happens to affect his perception of reality. Whether under the influence of alcohol, mental illness or the energy-draining humidity of the bayou, our unreliable narrator is thwarted and the City of Dreams remains just that: a dream.

I read Found Audio in one sitting, completely engrossed in the story. Just as Dr. Singh was enraptured by the tapes, I, too, was Alice falling down the rabbit hole.

The novel is a brilliant work of metafiction, and the story within the story is as irresistible as gossip from a friend of a friend. The foreword and afterword are both in the form of letters written by the author, N.J. Campbell, which further add to the mystery by tinkering with the thread-thin line between the extraordinary and the realm of possibility.

There are degrees of truth in the otherworldly tales, which ignite curiosity and propel the reader deeper into the narrative. Found Audio reads like a modern-day version of “Kubla Khan,” where the fantastic is ever-present, just beyond reach.

Being the curious person I am, I Googled many of the myths and legends in the book and was amazed to find that many of them have been documented. The City of Dreams is a renowned myth, the walled city of Kowloon really was torn down in 1993 and The Turk was a chess-playing automaton from the 1770s, later revealed to be a hoax. I even found an obituary for an Otha Johnson in the Times-Picayune from 2003, which fits within the timeline and the location of the story. While his obituary didn’t mention him being a snake hunter, judging by the number of children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren he had, it sounds like he lived to be quite old, just like the Otha character in the novel.

While each of these myths may seem disparate on the surface, Campbell weaves them together with a deft hand.

“I remember things that interest me, and they inevitably show up in my work. Stringing them together is partly happenstance and partly planned catastrophe,” Campbell says. “What I mean by the latter is that I’m very critical of my own work. I don’t want to get bored with it, so I’m constantly trying to push myself to see what might come out of further exploration. If I think I can’t do something, I have to do it. And a lot of this stuff all being strung together is me just trying to see in what way something can or might connect to something else.”

As evidenced in Found Audio, Campbell has found that his best writing comes from challenging himself to write his characters out of seemingly impossible problems.

“My friend Joey said it best: ‘If you’re an artist and you can risk it, you have to. You won’t be able to back down.’ That’s really stuck with me. So, in many ways I deliberately try to see how far I can push my narrative––what if that character tells me to get lost? What if I paint myself into a corner I know I can’t get out of? I can always go back and tear up the floorboards, but I want to see what might happen if I build myself into places that look like dead ends.”

Some of Campbell’s best ideas have come to him while at his day job, which is working for a small university press.

“I am 0% involved in anything to do with the publishing process. I literally pack boxes, take orders, and buy shipping supplies. That’s it. But that gives me total freedom to think all day about whatever I want,” Campbell explains. “My body is absorbed in a mostly physical task, and my mind wanders. It’s been majestic. I’ve worked manual labor jobs most of my life to keep my mind rested in order to write.”

The mystery doesn’t end with Found Audio. His next writing project is in the works, though he’s not quite ready to share. “For some people I know, talking about what they’re working on is helpful, but for me it’s not. I get self-conscious and that’s a distraction,” Campbell explains. “I will say that I work very diligently and very deliberately, but I don’t talk about anything until it’s done.”
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Mandy Shunnarah is a writer based in Columbus, Ohio, though Birmingham, Alabama, will always have her heart. Her creative nonfiction essays and book reviews have appeared in The Missing Slate, Entropy Magazine, and The New Southerner Magazine, where she won Honorable Mention in their 2016 contest. You can read more of her work at her website, OffTheBeatenShelf.com.

 

Haints, Horrors, and Hilarity: JD Wilkes on The Vine That Ate the South

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INTERVIEW BY MANDY SHUNNARAH

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Vine-That-AteIf you grew up in the rural South, you’ve probably heard tales of big cats, vampires, the Bell Witch, flesh-eating kudzu, and other terrors that go bump in the night. You may have even encountered some yourself, though probably not all in a single outing. Unfortunately for the protagonist of The Vine That Ate the South––and fortunately for us––he did.

Author JD Wilkes spared hardly a Southern folk demon in his debut novel, The Vine That Ate the South. It’s a Homeric tale of going into The Deadening, a patch of haunted woods in western Kentucky, in hopes of coming out not only alive, but with an adventure tale so heroic as to woo his One True Love away from his sworn enemy.

The ultimate destination of our unnamed hero is The Kudzu House, where legend has it an elderly couple was eaten alive by carnivorous kudzu and their skeletons can still be seen strung up by the hungry vine, like two burned out bulbs on a strand of morbid Christmas lights.

When the myriad of Southern haints and frightful creatures are encountered alongside the more corporeal menaces, like trigger-happy hunters and murderous Masons, you’re not entirely certain what’s real and what’s not––and that’s where the magic happens. Rather than a moonlight-and-magnolias glorification of the South, Wilkes shows just how fearsome it can be––literally and figuratively.

The Vine That Ate the South is not only suspenseful, but also uproariously funny. Whether he’s recounting a run-in with a lisping, overly eager pastor or remembering the day his girlfriend-stealing nemesis found his family’s “shit knife,” our protagonist is like that hilarious uncle who always tells the best stories, genuinely unaware of his natural talent for comedy.

The style and tone of the novel, as well as its deft storytelling, mirrors the music of the band The Legendary Shack Shakers, of which Wilkes is the frontman. With the band’s punk, blues, and rockabilly tunes, lyrics rife with apocalyptic Biblical references and Wilkes’ onstage persona as a Southern gothic preacher, The Vine That Ate the South is like a Legendary Shack Shakers show contained between two French flaps.

I talked to Wilkes about his writing process, his influences and his varied artistic talents.

Shunnarah: I so enjoyed The Vine That Ate the South. The story kept me turning pages well after I probably should’ve gone to bed. The novel reads like a bard finally wrote down the South’s oral mythic history. Were you conscious of that bard-like quality as you were writing? How do you think the oral tradition plays into Southern culture?

Wilkes: I wanted the book to read in a “high prose,” florid manner that mirrored the lushness of the Kudzu. The words needed to overwhelm you at times. But I also tried to cut it back and clear room––much like the characters do with their machetes––by allowing plain speech in spots. That way you hopefully get a nice balance of old-school verbosity and simple Southern humor and wisdom.

Shunnarah: I know The Vine That Ate the South wouldn’t be considered a humor book, but there were parts where I laughed so hard I couldn’t breathe. I’m curious to hear more about your thoughts on how humor factors into Southern culture and storytelling.

Wilkes: I think humor is or should be a part of Southern writing. Flannery O’Connor was satirical and humorous, of course. John Faulkner is a bigger influence on me than his brother William.

Irvin S. Cobb, from Paducah, Kentucky, is too. To write about a place with such an intense history, one must occasionally pop air into it. Levity is what keeps novels like mine from descending into depressing historical fiction or even horror.

Shunnarah: It seems like going exploring in the woods and seeing at least one big cat or mythical creature is a Southern rite of passage. I say that having explored some creepy shacks and seen a big cat or two myself. I’m curious to know if your own explorations and otherworldly encounters fueled some of the scenes in The Vine That Ate the South.

Wilkes: Yes, I also enjoy walking around in abandoned places in the woods, ha! Careful we don’t get shot!

One place nearby is an actual ghost town in the woods along Clarks River. It’s called Carter Mill (it’s talked about in the novel) and there’s nothing like letting your imagination run wild through all those old dilapidated timbers and tar paper. You can even make up your own stories about what happened there… mix it in with the truth a little. Let the storytelling take on a life of its own. It’s something I did as a kid and still do.

Shunnarah: I noticed that the unnamed protagonist calls his companion in adventure, Carver, “crazy” on several occasions. Though Carver is his best friend, he’s self-aware enough to know Carver has a few screws loose. As someone who calls the South home––but who has left, traveled the world, and come back––are there times when you feel like an outsider like the protagonist, too?

Wilkes: I think I’m secretly jealous of people like Carver, a simple redneck who can handle himself in any situation. He’s not that nuanced and he’s the absolute opposite of an intellectual. But it’s his ability to blend into the wild that makes the main character wonder if he’s just crazy… Carver even seems to be an extension of the terrible forest itself. But I see the character as less crazy and more visceral, even feral. A man in complete union with nature at its deadliest.

Shunnarah: Your first book, Barn Dances and Jamborees Across Kentucky, was a work of nonfiction published by History Press. Did you always know you wanted to write a novel at some point or was there something about writing Barn Dances and Jamborees that inspired you in that direction?

Wilkes: I never dreamed of really writing a novel. It was really all just a lark.

While on tour with my band in Norway, I cracked a laptop open for a light source while riding through a long tunnel in the mountains. I was homesick so I figured, “Hell… Why not start waxing poetic about Kentucky?” Those Arctic Circle surroundings might’ve inspired my slightly-Tolkienesque approach, though. It really looks like Middle Earth up there!

So I reckon I just started thinking about the lore of the South, as opposed to the Anglo-Saxon stuff that Tolkien studied. Thinking about how we have stories, too.

Shunnarah: In addition to writing the novel, you drew all the illustrations. And on top of that you’re an accomplished musician, both as a solo artist and as a member of multiple bands, most famously The Legendary Shack Shakers, and a filmmaker. How does your love of one inspire and influence the others?

Wilkes: All my pursuits are aimed at telling the same kind of story: epic southern mythology. So there’s always this overarching theme despite the varied media I dabble in. Each medium is just a different discipline that I have learned “good enough” to get the stories across to the public. The hope is that each and every creation will combine to form my own little universe, one that people will enjoy visiting from time to time.

Shunnarah: What’s next for you? I’m interested in any creative projects you’re working on, though I’m especially curious to know if there are more books in the works.

Wilkes: There’s a solo record in the works with some of the Squirrel Nut Zippers guesting. There will be another mural project or two––I just did a large painting for the historic Coke Plant in Paducah. And I’m always writing tunes for The Legendary Shack Shakers. New album comes out in April!

Despite the workload, I’m still vaguely entertaining Carver’s next move, way in the back of my brain. Wonder what he’ll do next …

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Mandy Shunnarah is a writer based in Columbus, Ohio, though Birmingham, Alabama, will always have her heart. Her creative nonfiction essays and book reviews have appeared in The Missing Slate, Entropy Magazine, Deep South Magazine, and The New Southerner Magazine, where she won Honorable Mention in their 2016 contest. You can read more of her work at her website, OffTheBeatenShelf.com.

[REVIEW] Human Acts by Han Kang

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Hogarth Books, 2017

REVIEWED BY MATT E. LEWIS

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Can something be called a war crime, if there was no war? If a government truly wishes to obliterate the occurrence of a despicable act they committed, can they do so with only a well-placed bullet or torture or destruction of physical evidence? Or do they accidentally create something immortal – a memory of a person that is lodged in the minds of family and witnesses forever, like shrapnel that burrows into the body and aches in cold weather? These are the kinds of questions asked by the people in Han Kang’s newly translated book, Human Acts, which focuses on the connection between multiple people surrounding the death of a teenage boy during the South Korean “Gwangju Uprising” of 1980. It was during this time that a South Korean president, Park Chung-hee, was installed in power via a coup d’etat, declared martial law, and used lethal force against unarmed civilians and unspeakable torture on those deemed to be enemies of the state. Kang uses several perspectives in her writing to capture this snapshot in time, this all-too-recent authoritarian massacre, and the lasting effects on the people that survived it. Best known for her bestselling book, The Vegetarian, which examines the brutality in which gender roles can be enforced, Human Acts looks at another aspect in which humanity reveals its ugly, violent, primal nature – when those in power seek control, by any means necessary.

The books starts with a teenage boy, Dong-ho, searching for his friend in a gymnasium converted into a morgue. He is soon conscripted into service in the task of recording data about the corpses of those killed in the protests. In this way Kang begins a conversation repeated throughout the novel, the question of when exactly a soul leaves a body, what separates a human being from a rotting corpse, and how one can grapple with a person you once knew putrefying in front of you. During the course of his work, the banality of Dong-ho’s work – cataloging things like the height, gender, clothes, and shoe brand on the corpse – demonstrates the parallel with the banality of the evil that put them there, the indiscriminate and merciless killing of unarmed protesters, whose only crime was to intellectually oppose a government run by brutal thugs. Dong-ho hopes to find Jeong-dae and his disappeared sister, Jeong-mi, alive, despite the fact that he watched a bullet cut down Jeong-dae at the beginning of the protest. Without the confirmation of the physical body of his friend, he continues to engage in magical thinking, a way of coping with such a brutal loss at such a young age. As if in response to this, Kang begins the next section with the narrative of Jeong-dae’s spirit, still stuck to his rotting body as soldiers dump him and others in a field to be burned. Jeong-dae’s spirit mourns for the loss of his potential life, and seethes with the anger of his mindless execution. He meditates on the lives of the soldiers that killed him:

“I want to see their faces, to hover above their sleeping eyelids like a guttering flame, to slip inside their dreams, spend the nights flaring in through their forehead, their eyelids. Until their nightmares are filled with my eyes, my eyes as blood drains out. Until they hear my voice asking, demanding, why.”

It’s not just the dead who ask these questions, but the living as well. One of the women working at the gymnasium, Eun-sook, sees things in Gwangju that attempt to normalize the landscape of the town. Specifically, the water fountain at the center square is turned back on again, which is the government’s subtle way of disregarding the sacrifice of the protesters. Instead of going along with this underhanded legitimization of the corrupt ruler, she complains to her town provincial office: “What I mean is, how can it have started operating again already? It’s been dry ever since the uprising began and now it’s back on again, as though everything’s back to normal. How can that be possible?” Eun-sook soon learns that in times of martial law and authoritarian control, even such benign protests can have serious repercussions. When working as an editor, she witnesses mass censorship of texts that disagree with the government, and she herself is viciously questioned and beaten in her connection to it. Kang finds beautiful ways in which to respond to these fascist tactics, such as when Eun-sook attends a play with the censored language that she worked on, only to find that the actors soundlessly mouth the forbidden words instead of actually speaking them. It is in this dialogue that a quote is made that reverberates for nearly every character in the book, a kind of elegy for those who survived this horror: “After you died I couldn’t hold a funeral, so my life became a funeral.”

Human Acts has moments when it gorgeously exemplifies the spirit of dissent, and the characters who choose to stand, even when faced with death and torture. The mothers of children killed in the protest risk their own life to demonstrate at the president’s parade through Gwangju, thrown in jail again and again for the crime of their morning. The account of a prisoner who, though savaged by the guards and conditions of his political imprisonment, looks at his actions with pride rather than regret.

“I remember feeling that it was all right to die; I felt the blood of a hundred thousand hearts surging together into one enormous artery, fresh and clean…the sublime enormity of a single heart, pulsing blood through that vessel and into my own. I dared to feel a part of it.”

While such a triumph of hope is possible in the face of this dark time, the core focus of Human Acts is the remembrance of the pain of loss, which in itself is an act of dissonance against fascist revisionism. The last part of the book is Kang’s own account of her experience during the uprising, and of the later discovery of the story of Dong-ho, which moved her to write the book. After pouring over stacks of documents relating to the uprising and interviewing those that knew him, Kang finds herself haunted by what she has learned – she becomes plagued by nightmares of being bayoneted by soldiers, finding herself in dreamlike recreations of the situations these people had faced. Even at a friend’s wedding, surrounded by happy, well-dressed peers, she finds herself plagued by the survivor’s guilt that the research has inflicted on her. “How was such a scene possible, when so many people had died?” she asks herself, still shaken by the connection of the horrors her research has to reality. But she finds solace in the fact that “Human Acts” accomplishes the goal of any account of a crime against humanity seeks to achieve – the fact that these events, these people, these names are not forgotten or lost to history. To do so disrespects the memory of their sacrifice and the eternal ache of loss felt by their loved ones. Perhaps most timely is the lesson that the threat of fascism is not a distant nightmare, but a very real threat, waiting only for an ideal series of events to wedge its way into our lives and cause havoc once again. As such, we as readers must absorb the stories of these people and their lives, allowing their sacrifice to embolden our vigilance and our resolve.