10 FAVORITE BOOKS I READ IN THE SECOND HALF OF THE YEAR. 2011

10 FAVORITE FROM FIRST HALF OF THE YEAR

(without commentary or justification and maybe not in order)

1. The Lone Surfer of Montana, Kansas - Davy Rothbart (reread)

2. The Sisters Brothers - Patrick DeWitt

3. The Singular Exploits of Wonder Mom & Party Girl - Marc Schuster

4. The Virgin Suicides - Jeffrey Eugenides

5. The Lover's Dictionary: A Novel - David Levithan

6. Waiting - Ha Jin

7. The White Boy Shuffle - Paul Beatty (reread)

8. Rule of the Bone - Russell Banks (reread)

9. You Can Make Him Like You - Ben Tanzer

10. I AM THINKING I WILL RUIN IT AHEAD OF TIME AND TELL YOU WHAT I AM THINKING WHICH IS PARK IT YOURSELF. METALLICA BREATH. I AM THINKING I STOOD WITH MY PEN BUT YOU WERE NOWHERE - Nicolle Elizabeth

Honorable Mentions

Yellow Medicine - Anthony Neil Smith

The Dead Man - Georges Bataille

BOOKS I COULDN'T WAIT TO READ BUT ENDED UP BEING A BIG TIME LET DOWN

Lost Memory of Skin - Russell Banks

American Pastoral - Phillip Roth

Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides

DOGZPLOT FLASH FICTION ANTHOLOGY 2012

artwork courtesy of Amy Crockett

photograph courtesy of Chari Crockett

DOGZPLOT FLASH FICTION ANTHOLOGY 2012

Coming soon...

ML PRESS. STAMP STORIES ANTHOLOGY

[ C. ] An MLP Stamp Stories Anthology is shipping now & to celebrate, we've done two things: First, we hooked up with the wonderful & freakishly good Scott Garson to create a special edition of Wigleaf, including thirteen original Stamp Stories by thirteen of our [ C. ] authors, all online & free here. Second, we are putting [ C. ] on sale for the next few days, giving you one-hundred Stamp Stories by one-hundred of the greatest contemporary writers, all for $10 with free shipping here. Good right? We thought you'd like it. So, read the special Wigleaf, order a sale copy before our deal expires, & then wait hummingly at your mailbox for the likes of some beautiful new Mud Luscious.

Stamp Stories are texts of 50 words or less, printed on 1×1 cardstock, & shipped free from participating presses. We wanted to tie together the indie press community in a vibrant yet viable way, & so this venture was born. Through 2010, we solicited stamp-sized texts from 100 authors & distributed the physical Stamp Stories through more than 40 participating presses. [ C. ] collects all of these texts into one perfect-bound edition.

Participating Authors James Tadd Adcox, Jesse Ball, Ken Baumann, Lauren Becker, Matt Bell, Kate Bernheimer, Michael Bible, Jack Boettcher, Harold Bowes, Jesse Bradley, Donald Breckenridge, Melissa Broder, Blake Butler, James Chapman, Jimmy Chen, Joshua Cohen, Peter Conners, Shome Dasgupta, Andy Devine, Giancarlo DiTrapano, Claire Donato, Elizabeth Ellen, Raymond Federman, Kathy Fish, Scott Garson, Molly Gaudry, Roxane Gay, Steven Gillis, Rachel B. Glaser, Amanda Goldblatt, Barry Graham, Amelia Gray, Sara Greenslit, Tina May Hall, Christopher Higgs, Lily Hoang, Tim Horvath, Joanna Howard, Laird Hunt, Jamie Iredell, Harold Jaffe, A D Jameson, Jac Jemc, Stephanie Johnson, Shane Jones, Drew Kalbach, Roy Kesey, Sean Kilpatrick, Michael Kimball, M. Kitchell, Robert Kloss, Darby Larson, Charles Lennox, Eugene Lim, Matthew Lippman, Norman Lock, Robert Lopez, Sean Lovelace, Josh Maday, Dave Madden, JohnMadera, Kendra Grant Malone, Tony Mancus, Peter Markus, Chelsea Martin, Zachary Mason, Hosho McCreesh, Alissa Nutting, Riley Michael Parker, Aimee Parkison, David Peak, Ted Pelton, Adam Peterson, Ryan Ridge, Joseph Riippi, Adam Robinson, Ethel Rohan, Joanna Ruocco, Kevin Sampsell, Selah Saterstrom, Davis Schneiderman, Zachary Schomburg, Todd Seabrook, Ben Segal, Gregory Sherl, Lydia Ship, Matthew Simmons, Justin Sirois, Amber Sparks, Ken Sparling, Ben Spivey, Michael Stewart, Terese Svoboda, Sean Ulman, Deb Olin Unferth, Timmy Waldron, William Walsh, Rupert Wondolowski, James Yeh, & Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé.

Participating Presses Artifice Magazine, Artistically Declined Press, Atticus Books,Barge, Blood Pudding Press, Blue Square Books, Calamari Press, Cow Heavy, The Cupboard, Dark Sky Books, Dzanc Books, Ellipsis Press, Fairy Tale Review,Featherproof Books, Gigantic, Greying Ghost, Hobart, The Iron Rail, Ink Monkey Mag,Keyhole Books, Kitty Snacks, Lazy Fascist Press, Magic Helicopter Press,Monkeybicycle, Narrow House, Opium, Outside Writer’s Collective, Pank, Paper Hero Press, Pear Noir!, Pilot Books, Publishing Genius Press, Quick Fiction, Ravenna Books,Scrambler Books, Starcherone Books, Typecast Publishing, Tyrant Books, Word Riot Press, & Yes Yes Books

AUTHOR INTERVIEW: MARC SCHUSTER

Marc Schuster is a teacher and author whose debut novel The Singular Exploits of Wonder Mom and Party Girl offers what author Steve Almond has referred to as “a terrific and unconventional look at motherhood.” In a recent interview with the Miami Herald, Almond went on to praise the novel by saying, “It’s about a divorced mom of two who sort of goes nuts and becomes a giant cokehead. It’s very funny and very sad, two qualities that travel well together. Schuster has a great ear for dialogue, and he’s both tender and ruthless with his heroine. I love books like this, ones that take big emotional risks.”

When he’s not writing, Schuster is the editor of Small Press Reviews, and he teaches English at Montgomery County Community College in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania. His second novel, The Grievers, is due from The Permanent Press in May of 2012.

PS: Have you ever tried cocaine?

MS: No, I've never tried cocaine, but I did a lot of research on the subject to make Audrey's descent into addiction feel realistic to readers. The idea for the novel itself started with some reading I was doing for another project altogether. I was writing a paper on drug imagery in the poetry of TS Eliot, and the section of library where all of my sources were located included a lot of contemporary books on the issues of drugs and addiction. I started paging through one of them, and though it was fairly dry, a case study caught my eye. This was back in 1997, so I'm a little fuzzy on the exact details, but what I remember is a description of a divorced mother of two who had tried cocaine for the first time when her boyfriend offered it to her. She reported that she liked the drug because it made her come out of her shell. When asked, the respondent said she would probably try it again. That case study stayed with me for a long time, and, in my mind, anyway, the woman in the study eventually evolved into Audrey.

PS: Ah, Audrey. From the very first opening line I knew I liked her. Then just a few pages in, I became infatuated with her. She's so perfect in her imperfections, so deliciously feminine. Being a man, how were you so able to capture the mindset of a woman? Surely this is beyond the scope of research?

MS: Oddly enough, I did do a little bit of research—not into the character of Audrey so much as the kinds of messages our culture is always sending out to women in general and mothers in particular. This research consisted largely of paging through parenting and women’s magazines and making notes about the kinds of articles and advertisements I saw. I give a slight nod to my sources when Audrey and Melinda head off to procure some cocaine from a new, sketchy source and Audrey pages through a magazine called Pretty Easy to take her mind off the neighborhood they’re driving through. I don’t think there’s actually a magazine called Pretty Easy, but the ad copy that Audrey reads, and which makes her feel guilty for not being a perfect mom, comes directly from real-life advertisements. One of my favorites is “Having sexy underarms is no sweat.” I wish I could have made that up, but it was pure Madison Avenue. The same goes for “Me time should come drizzled in chocolate.” The only difference for Audrey is that her vice of choice when she gets some “me time” isn’t chocolate.

As for capturing the mindset of a woman, I never sat down and thought to myself, “I’m writing from the perspective of a female character.” Instead, I tried to think about all of the things that make Audrey tick, all of the things she wants, all of the insecurities that might motivate her. Personally, I have plenty of insecurities to draw on, so it was easy to get into Audrey’s head. The biggest one, at least as far as her character is concerned, is loneliness. I’m not quite the loner I was in my youth, but there was a time when I felt incredibly isolated, and that’s what Audrey’s going through in the wake of her divorce. She’d met all of her old friends through her ex-husband, Roger, and the only adults she knows are her coworkers. When Owen Little shows up and pays a bit of attention to her, it’s her loneliness—her fear of never really connecting with another adult again—that makes her take risks that she might not normally take.

PS: God, you make me want to menstruate, but towards the end of the novel, you outright broke my heart. Owen gets rough with Audrey and demands that she admit being attacked by "goat-boy" turned her on. And that she made her kids watch them have sex and threatened to have their father killed if they ever told. At any point did you worry you went too far there?

MS: A lot of people are disturbed by that passage, and rightly so, I would say. But I never thought I went too far. I generally don't go into writing thinking, "Is this going to upset people?" Life upsets people, and life is what I'd like to think I'm writing about, so I assume that some of what I write is going to be disturbing. In this sense, I'm glad I broke your heart with that passage. It lets me know you're not a sociopath! As far as writing goes, though, I also don't start out trying offend or disturb people just for the sake of doing so. I'm not into gratuitous sex or violence. Or gratuitous anything, for that matter. I usually try to make sure everything I put into a story or novel is there for a reason.

PS: Yes, later I realized it's a key scene to the entire story. Any scenes that didn't make the final version you want to tell us about?

MS: There were plenty of dead-ends when I wrote the first draft of the novel, and even characters that ended up getting cut completely. Early on, I had Audrey working at a commercial real-estate company. There was a sub-plot where she was selling drugs out of unused office spaces. At that point, I actually had two different characters that I eventually merged into Melinda. One was a hairdresser named Deirdre, and the other was a co-worker named Melinda who encouraged Audrey to have a little fun once in a while. It wasn't until draft three or four that I remembered I knew nothing about commercial real estate and that my actual background was in editing the kind of rag that Audrey works for in the final version of the novel. At the very least, this gave me the opportunity to create a believable livelihood for Audrey--or one that I understood, anyway.

A scene that got dropped later in the revision process involved Audrey's first experience with cocaine. The research I had done suggested that many first-time cocaine users don't get much of a buzz. As a result, most of the early drafts of the novel have Audrey trying cocaine once and not feeling much of anything. The experience, however, is enough to make her curious to try it again, and it isn't until the second time that she falls in love with the feeling the drug gives her. One of the ideas that I was trying to convey was that she was effectively addicted before the drug even got her high--that just the idea of cocaine, the allure of the drug, the fact that using it makes her someone other than the woman her ex-husband rejected, is what gets her hooked. As much as I liked this idea, it slowed the story down a bit, and my editor didn't feel that it matched up with popular mythology regarding the drug. Ironically, my attempt at realism made the editor think my portrayal of Audrey's first experience with cocaine was unrealistic.

PS: Haha, I guess sometimes realism isn't so realistic. Has your editor ever done coke?

MS: That thought did occur to me, but I never had the courage to ask. And, of course, I can't tell you which editor it was.

PS: Fair enough. I understand there's a second version of your novel. Can you talk about why that is and the differences between the two?

MS: The novel was originally published by PS Books, which is the books division of Philadelphia Stories magazine. The run was about 500 books, and there was never a plan to do a second run. At about the time their stock was running low, Martin Shepard of The Permanent Press started reading some of the reviews I'd written at Small Press Reviews and called to ask if I ever did any writing. Though I was working on another project at the time, it wasn't even close to being finished, so I asked if I could send him a copy of Wonder Mom. He read it and liked it, and said he'd publish it if I could cut it down a bit. Since I've always respected The Permanent Press and loved its titles, I jumped at the chance. In the cutting process, though, I started realizing that the structure of the book as a whole would have to change. As a result, the two editions are very different from each other.

What I call the pink edition is the paperback version that PS Books published in 2009. It's a bit longer than the later edition, but the bigger difference is that it jumps back and forth in time. The blue edition, by way of contrast, is the hardback version from The Permanent Press. I cut a lot of backstory from that version--mainly information having to do with Audrey's divorce, because I didn't think I was doing anything especially new with that material. Fifty years ago, describing an ugly divorce might have been groundbreaking, but today, it's just part of the furniture, so I was okay with cutting it. But the novel started feeling a little lopsided when I started cutting, so I reshuffled the chapters and put them in chronological order. To me, the whole experience underscores the performativity of writing. We tend to think of a text as a single, unbending, unchanging thing in our culture, but my experience moving from one publisher to the next allowed me to play with the book and, in turn, allowed the book to evolve. In this sense, I see it as akin to a jazz performance. The basic themes are all present in both editions, but I do something different with them in each. I'm really happy with both editions.

PS: As you should be. Next I'd like to discuss the good guy of the story: Captain Panther, who perhaps seems pathetic in his ambition to be America's #1 anti-drug superhero, but really proves himself as a true friend and support to Audrey by the end. He's so unique yet real. I think the last time I saw a character like that was in a Tom Robbins novel. Where'd he come from?

MS: Captain Panther is a case of truth being stranger than fiction. I used to live near a nursery school, and one day when I was struggling with writer's block, I heard a drum machine and someone yelling into a microphone: "Come on out, Tigerman!" Then I heard a few dozen preschoolers chanting, "Come on out, Tigerman!" I looked out my back window and saw a man dressed like a tiger rapping about saying no to drugs and bullying. Initially, I was really annoyed. I was trying to write a novel, after all, and this guy was a bit of a distraction. But then it hit me that this might be the key to breaking my writer's block. A new character. A new direction for the story. So I started imaging what a guy like this would be like and why he'd do what he does--the origin story, as it were. It really helped me find a balance in terms of the characters in the novel. So many of them are just slimy and selfish. It was nice to be able add a decent, if somewhat off-kilter, human being to the mix. The only problem is that a few readers have complained that Captain Panther is just too ridiculous of a character, completely unrealistic. It's a problem I run into a lot, I suppose--reporting what I see and being told that it's not realistic.

PS: Do you think those readers have ever done coke?

MS: Definitely.

PS: Ah, that explains a lot. Everyone knows you can't trust cokeheads. I used it for a while in college and found it totally un-heady; it affected only the lowest, most base parts of me: my id and ego. I did dumb, cliché things like snort lines off women's tits while thinking I was so cool. You've spent a lot of time with cocaine, even if indirectly, what are your thoughts about the drug now? How did your views change from the time you started until the time you finished?

MS: When I started working on the book, I was thinking of cocaine as a metaphor for consumerism writ large. We live in a culture where we're always encouraged to spend loads of money on useless shit we don't need. And we're supposed to do it quickly--probably because if we think too much about our purchases, we might be less likely to make them. We're really into immediate gratification, and that, from all I'd read, was also what cocaine was about. Feeding the id and ego, as your experience suggests.

As I continued to work on the book, though, I started thinking about addiction more broadly. Everybody, I think, has a void that needs to be filled in one way or another. We all feel pain, existential angst. Everybody hurts, to quote Michael Stipe. Some people discover that getting high is a way to quiet that angst, to quell those fears. Other people turn to things like shopping or gambling. Still others eat or love or pray. Or they starve themselves. Or cut themselves. Personally, I can't go five minutes without checking my email. It's not that I'm expecting anything. I just keep checking it on the off-chance that someone wrote to say something nice to me. It's like playing a really lame slot machine. It's also why I had to get off Facebook. I was on there all the time, seeing what people had to say.

I mention all of this because when I was meeting with book clubs and doing readings, some people would comment and say that Audrey was weak--weak for trying cocaine in the first place, and weak for succumbing to addiction. My response was always to say that everyone has a weakness, but this doesn't make everyone weak. It's how we respond to our weaknesses, how we deal with our angst and the mistakes we make that matters. For me, that's the whole point of the novel.

PS: Amen. I feel the same way about America which is why I hope everyone reads The Singular Exploits of Wonder Mom and Party Girl which can be purchased HERE:

Thank you so much for taking the time to do this, Marc.

MS: Thank you, Peter. The pleasure was all mine.

CHICAGO BOOK EXPO. NOV. 19 - 20

Uptown Goldblatt's Building (former Borders Books)

4720 N. Broadway location

Uptown Broadway Building

4701 N. Broadway

Hours:

Saturday 10am-6pm

Sunday 12pm-6pm

Over 40 participating Chicago fiction and poetry presses in a pop-up bookstore!

CLICK HERE to see which presses

Impressive list of publishers, magazines, presses, etc. And some pretty great panels, readings, and other events. If you're anywhere near Chicago, peep the CHICAGO BOOK EXPO.

FAB 5. RANDALL BROWN & LAUREN BECKER

RANDALL BROWN

"It Doesn't," from Quick Fiction

http://quickfiction.org/read/315/it-doesn%E2%80%99t/

"Morton Bonsey," from 3:AM Magazine

http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/morton-bonsey/

"Eight Micros," from FRiGG Magazine

http://www.friggmagazine.com/issuetwentyfour/poemsstories/fiction/brown/eightmicros.htm

"Set in Stone," from Night Train

http://www.nighttrainmagazine.com/contents/rbrown_fb.php

"Being Frank," from SmokeLong Quarterly

http://www.smokelong.com/flash/1107.asp--

LAUREN BECKER

Independent Living (Pedestal Magazine):

http://www.thepedestalmagazine.com/gallery.php?item=9564

A Simple Explanation (Storyglossia):

http://www.storyglossia.com/33/lb_simple.html

Erase (Mud Luscious):

http://www.mudlusciouspress.com/online_issues/Mud%20Luscious%20Issue%20Six.pdf

His Days (Necessary Fiction):

http://necessaryfiction.com/writerinres/HisDaysbyLaurenBecker

A Boy (Monkeybicycle):

http://monkeybicycle.net/old-archive/Becker/boy.html

MORE AWP GOODNESS. MUD LUSCIOUS. ANNALEMMA. PANK

AWP 2012 CHICAGO KICK-OFF PARTY

Kick-off AWP 2012, Chicago-style, at the Empty Bottle with readings, party, mayhem, bands, DJs, more details to follow... Hosted by: Harold Ray, a ruinous West Virginian janitor who secretly longs to become a famous country singer but has no discernible talents other than an ability to drunkenly croon. Music by: James Greer (of GBV) and peeps Mutts more TBA Presented by: Dogzplot Curbside Splendor Orange Alert TZWCYL Artistically Declined Other Voices Books (OVB) Featherproof Books Empty Bottle Readers include: xTx Sarah Rose Etter Jesus Angel Garcia Jeff Parker Michael Czyzniejewski James Greer Lindsay Hunter Jamie Iredell Michael Kimball Sam Pink Lara Konesky Mary Miller Craig Renfroe Rebecca Roberts Peter Schwartz Amber Sparks Sarah Sweeney Ben Tanzer Mike Young More info coming soon...

THE RETURN OF PETER 'P DIDDY' SCHWARTZ

We would like to welcome Peter Schwartz back on to the editorial team at DOGZPLOT, where he's served proudly almost since the begin. True soldier, artist, poet, writer, comedian, photographer, editor, and friend.

And to welcome him back proper we've feature one of his kick ass flashes in the new issue of DOGZPLOT and he's also going to be guest editing the next issue. So get those flashes out and send them along.

As always thanks to everyone who continues to read, encourage, support, subscribe, and submit their brilliant flash fiction and art work to DOGZPLOT.

Love.

AUTHOR INTERVIEW. VICTOR DAVID GIRON

Victor David Giron is the son of immigrants from Mexico and Guatemala. He's a CPA, bar owner, and runs Curbside Splendor Publishing, a small press that showcases art and literature celebrating urbanism. In addition to publishing works by local writers, he puts on literary events and sell books by Chicago-based publishers and authors at the Logan Square Farmers Market. His work has appeared in Rougarou, Umbrella Factory Magazine, Jersey Devil Press, and Diverse Voices Quarterly, among others, and his first novel Sophomoric Philosophy came out in November 2010. He lives in Chicago.

http://chicagoartistsresource.org/literary/node/34651

Your protagonist, Alex, seems to have lived a pretty average, middle-America, Mid-Western life. As a young man he seemed preoccupied with the same things that all of us are; music, girls, beer, and being cool. He then chose a stable career path through a Big Ten university and settled into his life as an accountant where his interests haven’t changed much from that of his youth. What do you see as the primary correlation between Alex’s middle of the road life path and his desire to be an artist / philosopher?

Alex is a hyper-contemplative person, highly aware of his surroundings to a point where it drives his insecurity. And though this is only touched on briefly in the novel, his parents are originally illegal immigrants from Mexico. Alex initially grows up in a predominantly Latino area of Chicago and his parents work hard to move their family to a middle-America suburb so that he and his sister live an ordinary life. To their parents this is success. Although Alex embraces this, and indeed cherishes the things living in a middle-American suburb affords, he also discovers he has interests that his immediate friends don’t—reading books, writing, really listening to music, drawing. Or rather, they might share them, but being hyper-aware, Alex begins to see these interests in his friends are disappearing as they get older and start to be consumed by the hardships that their indulgences bring them. So he feels this pull to not let go of these interests, because it scares him, the idea of completely letting go. But he’s also pulled back because he knows his parents worked so hard to allow him to indulge in every day comforts, something they themselves never had. It’s the tipping point of this struggle that fuels him to want to be some sort of artist.

What does it mean to you to "become an artist?"

In my opinion, to be an artist is simply to be that. To create. Whatever it is you like to create. Essentially (and here is the sophomoric philosopher in me), to be human. I’m a firm believer that our best quality is our desire to express ourselves creatively and we’re at our worst when this creative energy is suffocated and the energy that is lost is released in a much more destructive fashion (i.e. intolerance, frustration, boredom). I’m sort of a late bloomer when it comes to being creative. Like the character Alex, I’ve struggled with navigating the need to be secure and the yearning to create. I’ve always been attracted to folks that are outwardly artistic because I admire their ability to be so. Most of my ‘artistic’ friends, however, tend to believe that to truly be artistic one must always strive to create something ‘unique.’ While I appreciate that drive, to me there are various forms of art, and I’m of the opinion that to be artful and to be unique are not mutually exclusive, and again, the act of creating alone is artful and if it happens to be unique, then great (but I’m also not really convinced how ‘unique’ anything can really be).

Sophomoric Philosophy is told non-chronologically. Alex leaps from youth to adulthood then back again and back and again and back and… At times there seems to be a method to the madness and at other times it seems he is relating the facts to the reader as he is remembering them. What does the reader need to know or what should the reader know about the order of events? Is there a hidden meaning or message in the way he arranged his life for us? Are events listed in order of importance/significance? Like so much of Alex’s day to day thinking, is the arrangement musical?

The funny thing is the first drafts of SP were much more scattered. Thanks to my editor R.A. Miller who really guided me in rearranging chapters, deleting some, writing new ones, the final order of SP does have a rhyme and reason. The first chapter starts in the present, establishing that Alex is telling his story in the present (or really in the middle 00’s), and it then proceeds to flash back to his youth growing up in Chicago and his family moving to Des Plaines, a blue-collar suburb of Chicago. The chapters go on from there following Alex grow as a youth and as an adult. The back and forth is mostly between Alex as a youth and as an adult, mostly at a whim, as the memories hit him, but I it as his comparing and contrasting himself, his troubles he’s having with relationships and identity as an adult versus how he handled similar problems as a youth, and how there’s some troubling similarities. In the end Alex focuses more on his late teenage years, almost forgetting some of the adult problems he was having that drove to want to write his story because he kind of stumbles on something that, in the end, provides him with the energy to go forward as an adult. Other aspects of Alex sprinkled in throughout is that of him being Mexican-American and his relationship with his abusive father. You can see it’s something he’s thinking about but not quite ready to fully explore (more because I as an author wasn’t quite ready to delve fully into that). Your question about whether the arrangement is musical is interesting as it’s been asked a few times. I reference over 70-something songs in SP, and that’s because I’m interested in how music plays a role in our development (and I just really like music). I’ve had people try to decipher whether there was some kind of arrangement of the songs, or have had people remark that I was just really writing about songs (like each chapter was supposed to be an interpretation of a song or set of songs). Truth is there was no such arrangement or purpose – at least not intentional.

Alex seems to have some pretty great insights into Generation X and what it meant to be young and alive during the 80s and 90s. He understands complicated social networks that high school and popularity, socioeconomic status, and beauty inevitably create for us. He also understands music and film and the way they create social groups that bind us to our peers. It isn’t necessarily easy to decipher form the text itself, so I have to ask; are those insights that Alex was able to perceive as a young man, while he was experiencing them in real time, or is that Alex speaking in hindsight as a little-bit-older and a little-bit-wiser thirty-something?

As I explained before, Alex is this hyper-aware individual who’s always analyzing his status in social circles, friends, what he’s into and what he’s not into. So the perceptions are ones that Alex as a youth was aware of, but certainly they’re now refined or acute from his perspective as adult, even more so because Alex is aware that these same sort of social cliques exist, and in certain cases are stronger among adults. Because of this he’s a person who’s drifting between different groups, always weary of being too immersed in any one of them, like he’s always worried about not completely fitting in so he doesn’t totally try. Therefore he looks very middle of the road, ordinary, and so you’d never know that he’s listening to something like death metal or techno at the present, you know?

As keen as Alex’s observations into Generation X seem, he implies that ther is a generation gap that exists between his generation and the youth of today that makes it hard for him to understand them, collectively. What do you think causes a generation gap like that, and what do you see as the primary difference between Generation X and the youth of today? What are some of their similarities? After all, don’t all boys from all generations just want bong hits and blow jobs while listening to their favorite albums? Or there something else that sets today’s youth apart from their predecessors?

Growing up, I was always interested in how adults would complain that we were not like them when they were young, that the music was so much better when they were growing up, etc. I would tell myself they believed that because they had just lost touched, weren’t really listening to Motley Cru or Guns N’ Roses like we were and therefore just didn’t get how kickass they were. So I promised myself that I would not lose touch like that. I like to think that I do well in terms of keeping up with music and trends, but I know that I am beginning to lose touch with today’s youth. The biggest driver behind that is technology. Also, as an adult, you just don’t have the same kind of time to get immersed in such things (at least for most adults). As a child I had access to telephone, cars, cable television, all which now seems outdated but back then was really new to my parents. And now my children will grow up with small devices much more powerful than our “smart-phones” where they can access all the information they need, at some point the devices will probably be ingrained them. They’ll not know books or albums how I did, but what they’ll be into will be so much more different than what I experienced that I can’t say whether it will be better or worse. In the book Alex misses how when he was young he and his friends would be able to scream out loud the verses to their favorite songs, how they loved entire albums. I think today’s youth still do that, but just in different ways.

Alex’s high school AP English teacher say that “the purpose of all different forms of writing is ultimately the same – to make sense of our existence.” I always thought of the written language in a less romantic sense. I believe the primary function of writing is to communicate. How would you answer that question? What is the primary purpose of writing?

Well, writing certainly is a form of communication, I agree, but it’s one of many forms of communication, as is speech, audio / visual recording and sharing. I think what’s different about writing is that it’s not just a form of communication, but it’s a form of documentation. And that’s an important difference to me. We communicate by talking to each other or through physical gestures, etc., but when we want to communicate something in a way that it can be shared with others because we want it to be a historical record, an artistic statement, a fact to be analyzed in business or social settings, we write it down (or now record it somehow). So what the teacher in SP was getting at is that the act of writing a history, a story, a philosophy, the reason we want to do any of that at all, is to try and document our histories, perspectives, capture our imaginations, ultimately for the purpose of making sense of our existence. It’s like we’re these self-aware beings, we know we are doing things, but not always immediately sure why or whether what we’re doing is ‘right’. And so we are driven to document our actions, almost so others after us can try and make sense of what happened. So yes, the basic form of writing or communication facilitates are interactions socially, but the act of writing to document a story or history or a law, I think, is to try and convey with others what the hell is happening.

How much of your own life and experience and philosophy do we find in your protagonist Alejandro “Alex” Lopez?

A lot, most of it, well more like 60% of it based on real people and events, and the rest made-up or based on real people and events but embellished. The idea of who Alex is, though, for sure is all me (for better or worse).

FAB 5. MIKE YOUNG & FRIENDS OF MIKE YOUNG

MIKE YOUNG

1) "The Peaches Are Cheap"

http://www.hobartpulp.com/website/december/young.html

2) "The Fire Hazard"

http://www.alicebluereview.org/eight/prose/young.html

3) "None Of It Grace"

http://www.pindeldyboz.com/mygrace.htm

4) "Burk's Nub"

http://route9litmag.com/post/6766361873/burks-nub

5) "None Of Us Would Meet Her In the House of Mystery"

http://allthingsburn.tumblr.com/post/3102376063/new-fiction-from-mike-youngandmaurice-burford

FRIENDS

1) "The Kid" by Rachel B Glaser:

http://www.elimae.com/2007/December/Kid.html

2) "Eight Times In the Everywhere" by Gabe Durham:

http://www.thievesjargon.com/workview.php?work=1195

3) "Life Would Be This Way" by Jimmy Chen:

http://www.necessaryfiction.com/stories/jimmy-chen-life-would-be-this-way-

4) "'Eat or Die' Is Only an Unpleasant Threat" by Ofelia Hunt:

http://elimae.com/2007/April/Eat.html

5) "Babyfat" by Claudia Smith:

http://www.noojournal.com/view.php?mode=1&issue=eight&id=153 (cheating a little because this is in NOÖ, and really I could pick anything from NOÖ, but it's so good)

AUTHOR INTERVIEW. JOSH OLSEN

JOSH OLSEN

SIX MONTHS

TAINTED COFFEE PRESS

SHORT FICTION

http://zygoteinmycoffee.com/taintedcoffeepress/sixmonths.html

1. You speak so openly and honestly about your life, your childhood, parents, wife and children, your fears and insecurities, that this collection of short fictions often feels like a memoir told in tiny vignettes. Is that an accurate way to approach this?

Sure, you could approach my book as if it's a memoir, and if a reader did so I would take that as a compliment, because I love to read memoirs, such as those written by David Sedaris and Augusten Burroughs, and I love writing that's in the style of memoirs, such as Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried, but I would would never refer to my book as a memoir because the first word that comes to mind when I think of the genre is "nonfiction," and no matter how much of what I write is inspired by moments that I actually experienced, or at the very least witnessed, I cannot say with a straight face that any of what I write is nonfiction. I take liberties with the truth. I exagerrate. I speculate. I lie. And I do so for the sake of the story. To make it more entertaining. To make it a better read. But I suppose that's not to say that what I write isn't "true." Is that too much of a contradiction?

2. There is a level of honesty to your writing that is very very rare, even amongst so many contemporary writers whose intentions are to be "edgy" or "gritty" or whatever other label you wanna slap on it. Do you ever have any hesitations about putting the private lives of you and your loved ones on display for public consumption? Do you ever fear the repercussions of discussing you and your wife's sexual practices, your young son's seemingly feminine bathroom habits, your mother's bulimia, your personal feelings of shame and guilt? How does your family feel about being publicly dissected? As a father of two girls I am always curious about other writer's opinions on this subject, so please feel free to riff for awhile. I'm sure there are plenty of people interested in this subject, but I dont hear it discussed very often. Please dig in.

I suppose I lack something that could be considered a basic self-censoring function. I'm generally a pretty shy and restrained person, but once I open up I have difficulty holding back, and when it comes to my writing process I suppose I don't really try to think about how revealing I'm being, at any given time. If something happens, and I think it'll make for a good story, I'll write about it, no matter how personal it may be. No matter how unflattering it may be. And I think, for the most part, I don't write anything that's mean. My goal isn't to insult or offend anyone. And if there's anyone in my stories who's being made fun of its usually me. I have a pretty self-deprecating sense of humor.

My intention is never to be edgy or gritty, because I really don't think anything I write about is either of those things, I just aim for honesty, and I think it generally works in my favor. I seem to get a generally positive response from those who've read my stories. Even my firends and loved ones, who I tend to often incorporate into my stories, they love it when I write about them. I actually have a couple firends who recently notified me that they were dissapointed that they didn't end up in my book. (So maybe I'll take a second now to acknowledge Say Moua and all my other Asian brethren.) My significant other/lady friend/partner, Katie, enjoys my stories...I think. My mom enjoys my stories. Maybe that's a problem, but I don't see it as one. I remember a Bukowski quote of one sort that stated, in so many words, that if your parents like your writing then its gotta be bad, but I don't think that has to be the case.

My kids, on the other hand, they're still far too young to read just about anything I write, though they know that I do write, and I don't know how I feel about them eventually reading my stuff. Perhaps they won't ever. Maybe they just won't care. But if they do, I'm concerned about what they might think. Because I think some of what I write about could be taken in the wrong light. But I have to admit, my children make me nervous. They scare me, to an extent. And now they're growing and changing in front of me and it seems so alien. Like they're these weird, radioactive, mutating things. And its not like I wasn't disgusted with my own changing body, because I was, and still sort of am, but now I have these things in my house, and they're changing in front of me, rather quickly, and somehow I'm supposed to pretend like it doesn't freak me out. But it does! It makes me nervous. Very, very nervous.

And so I write about it, and I think that maybe that's connecting with some readers, as well. I get responses from parents who compliment me on how I write about having to wipe my son's ass, and they've never seen that in a story or poem before, and they like that, and then I'll get a response from someone who liked the exact same story, but they don't have kids, and their response is, like, "Wow, I'm so glad I don't have kids!" It works on different levels, but I'm glad there's some flexibility in there. Maybe there isn't much to interpret or analyze in the story, itself, but those varying reactions fascinate me, even if I feel someone has read the story incorrectly. If that's possible. But still, I do not attempt to correct them. That's not my job.

3. There are a lot of things that happen in these stories that would make most people say "that was pretty fucked up." But your narrator rarely, if ever, condemns, critizes, or passes judgement on people or situations (except on himself). Your general attitude seems to be that of a journalist, stating what happened and moving on to another significant event in your life. Is that a fair statement or am I off the mark? Did you make a conscious effort not to overanalyze too much for the reader or is that your own personality finding its way into the pages?

Over the years, I've really struggled with the amount of commentary, or lack there of, in my writing. When I first began writing, I received a comment from a professor I looked up to that my writing was didactic. That I used to tell my readers how to feel. And that struck a nerve with me, because I wanted the reactions to be natural. I wanted them to react how they might naturally react, had they witnessed or experienced a similar situation. And so I consciously stepped back, as a narrator.

But then, oddly enough, several years later, I was in a manuscript workshop with the poet Tony Hoagland and he said that my writing seemed unorchestrated. There didn't seem to be any clear sense of rhyme or reason, which I thought was pretty ironic considering that I had previously been called didactic. And so, since then, I think I've tried to strike a balance between the two, but maybe I still lean more towards Hoagland's comment. Maybe I'm still a bit too unorchestrated. But really, I don't want to tell my readers how or what to think about my stories, so maybe that's why I tend to get varying responses.

In my opinion, it just seems more natural that way.

And when it comes down to the more "fucked up" moments that I write about, I guess I'm just not that shocked by them. I react to them, and I'm moved by them enough to the point that I feel that they're worth writing about, but to me they just don't seem that fucked up.

Its not that I'm jaded or calloused or emotionally stunted or anything like that, I just think I have a higher tolerance for shit than most people, and I have a rather twisted sense of humor, and so I try to make those moments as entertaining and engaging as I can.

4. When most writers deal with childhood in short fiction, it is done in one of three ways: 1) My childhood was great and I miss it and wish I could be young again. 2) I wish I could go back and do things different, make things right, not make the same mistakes, etc etc. 3) My childhood was more fucked up than yours, blah blah blah... But you manage to avoid those three avenues. You seem to say, "ok, this happened... then this happened... and this happened..." You don't point out correlations between childhood and adulthood for the reader. You don't try to offer any cause and effect. Any that might be found is done so by the reader drawing their own conclusions. How have you managed to avoid the first three pitfalls (maybe not pitfalls but I can't think of a better word) and adopt this very matter of fact way of telling the reader about your childhood?

I guess how I manage to avoid those three pitfalls is that I really don't feel that way about my childhood. I don't miss my childhood. I don't really have any regrets about what I did or how I did them. I really don't think my childhood was that fucked up. Of course I'm nostalgic about certain things, but I don't think I've ever wanted to relive my childhood. Ever. And it wasn't because it was that bad, but I had a hard time with many things, and so I always looked forward to growing up and experiencing newer, better things. And I still do. I sort of look forward to aging. I don't have any regrets, though I've definitely made some mistakes, big mistakes, in my life, but those mistakes eventually lead me to where I am now. And I would never get into a pissing contest with anyone about how fucked up my childhood was because I know some people, people I'm very close with, that have had legitimately fucked up childhoods and mine doesn't even come close. My childhood really wasn't that fucked up, it wasn't hard, per se, but it may have been nontraditional. And, of course, for the sake of my stories, I emphasize those nontraditional aspects. And I guess maybe why I seem so matter of fact is because I'm still not quite too sure about how I should react to some of things I've experienced and written about. My reactions to various memories have changed as I've gotten older. Some things in my life that I used to really kind of mourn over I think I've gotten past. For me, its about moving on, and writing really does help me move on.

I think I've psychoanalyzed myself to death.

5. There is a tenderness to your prose. You treat many of your characters with care and fragility despite their flaws. Was that deliberate? Were you making a greater statement about all of humanity being worthy of love and redemption? Is this the narrator's subconscious balancing out his own sense of shame and guilt? Are my psychoanalytic lines of questioning getting annoying? Give us your own analysis.

Oh, its absolutely deliberate.

I mean, I'm writing about my family and my friends, for the most part, so I do care for them, I care for my characters, I care immensely, and in life its never my intention to be cruel to them, though that's not to say that I haven't been known to be an asshole, on the occasion, but I don't see my writing about them, or characters based upon them, as an opportunity to mock or insult them. For me, that wouldn't be honest. That wouldn't be who I am. I wouldn't use my writing as a way to stab them in the back, even if they didn't eventually read it. Even if, say, I used a pseudonym. I wouldn't change what I say about them. And the flaws are what make them beautiful, you know? It gives them character and substance and depth.

Who wants to be friends or lovers with a "flawless" man or woman? For one, I don't think there is such a thing, but if there was they would be fucking boring!

And is this some sort of grand statement about human nature? About loving your neighbor and all that jazz? Not intentionally, no. When I write, I really don't have any sort of grand idea in mind, I just try to be as specific, and as precise, as possible. I'm not aiming for a message of any sort. Do I think that all of humanity is worthy of love and redemption, as you asked? For the most part, I do. But I don't have that goal in mind while I'm writing. And until you mentioned it I wouldn't have said anything like that in regard to my stories. But that's the great thing about literature (and I sincerely apologize for just referring to my writing as literature), that the reader can take something away from it that the author didn't intend. To hell with authorial intention, you know what I mean? It gets in the way. If that's what you take away from my book, that's fantastic! Who am I to say otherwise? Someone else might just like it that I like to talk about masturbation.

And maybe my, or the narrator's, shame and guilt does have something to do with it, but who among us has no shame, no guilt? So maybe that's how we should all behave?

I think the world could do with a little more love and redemption.

And masturbation, too.

6. Quite a few of these stories, including the collection's opener, "On a Train Back to Michigan" make reference to states from the Great Lakes region. Being a native of this area, how have the Great Lake states influenced not only your writing, but you as a human being?

I'm not really too sure about how the Great Lake states have influenced me as a human being, because I really don't have any basis for comparison. Its really just a matter of the fact that that's where I've lived my whole life. I was born in Wisconsin. Spent my first four or so years there. Moved to Iowa for about six months. Moved back to Wisconsin and stayed there until I was 23, but moved within the state, on average, about once a year, then lived in Minnesota for a couple years, then shipped out where I've lived for the past six years, in Michigan. I would have to say that more than where I've lived, geographically, what's influenced me even more is how often I've had to move. There were times, such as when I was in the first grade, that I moved three or four times in one year, and attended three different elementary schools. So I would have to say that that influenced me more than where I actualy lived.

7. Do you think prose from the Great Lakes has any unique qualities of its own that differentiates its from prose from other more established, recognizeable cultural regions? Who are its authors?

But maybe, to follow along with general ideas about the Midwest, or the Great Lake states, there's a sense of politeness that doesn't seem to be so prevelant in other areas. And I don't think there's nearly as much of a sense of privelege or entitlement. But, then again, I've met plenty of self-entitled assholes from the Midwest, so I hate to generalize.

When I think of Great Lakes/Midwest authors, the first names that come to mind are Tim O'Brien, Philip Levine, Carl Sandburg. The working man's writer. The working man's poets.

David Blair was/is an incredible poet/songwriter/performer from Detroit (born in New Jersey) that just passed a couple weeks ago. An absolutely mind-blowing talent.

A voice of the people.

8. If this book were a movie, what actor would play the narrator? KT? What about some of the other characters, who would play these folks?

Haha!...You have no idea how many different people I've been told I resemble over the years. Scott Baio. Corey Feldman. Tony Danza. Charlie Sheen. Michael Madsen. James Gandolfini. But, Jesus, who would I have play me/the narrator in a movie? Not that I look like him or anything, but maybe Mark Ruffalo? Or Seth Rogan, if he shaved his head. KT could be played by Cate Blanchett or Uma Thurman. Jack could be played by, I don't know, some unknown child actor. And Bella could be Elle Fanning (Dakota's younger sister). Ellen Burstyn could play my mom. I see her receiving a Best Supporting Actress Oscar.

9. Who or what were you reading / watching / listening to at the time you crafted this collection? How long did it take you to complete, start to finish?

What was I reading, watching, and listening to while I wrote this book?

Everything.

Is that vague enough?

It took a rather long time to get this thing out, probably much longer than it should have taken me, and so I couldn't even begin to say what, exactly, I was taking in at the time. I would say, though, that during that time I discovered Raymond Carver and James Baldwin. Yes, I know I found them kind of late in life. Sharon Olds, too. A lot of comic books. Alternative comic books, like Johnny Ryan, Ivan Brunetti, Charles Burns, and Daniel Clowes. I love the Walking Dead and have been reading it for about five years now.

I listen to a lot of stand-up comedy albums. I'm a big comedy nerd. Louis CK, David Cross, Patton Oswalt, Bill Hicks. Lenny Bruce, of course.

I spend a lot of free time wathcing documentaries. Profiles on odd and eccentric personalities like in American Movie, Crumb, and Grizzly Man.

I tend to stray to more character driven work. In movies and books and other creative outlets, I'm atttracted to characters, and so that's what I tend to absorb.

The oldest story in SIX MONTHS is about five years old, but I feel like I've been writing this book since about 1999, when I first began to write with serious intentions. Ever since then, I've been working towards something, and this one book is the culmination of all that time and ink.

Its a rather short book, I know, but I kind of like the fact that you can read it in one sitting, in an hour or two, which is fine with me.

Its like, how long does it take to listen to your favorite album or watch your favorite movie?

You can have a damn good time in an hour or two, and I hope that's what this book will accomplish.

And I just want to say thanks for writing this book. Much much respect. Very well done, sir.

Thanks for reading. Thanks for your support. And thanks for the questions!