Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Exes
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
CITY: Providence
STATE: RI
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
http://www.npr.org/2017/04/12/522778152/in-exes-the-losses-pile-up-like-new-england-snowdrifts
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: n 2007002870
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/n2007002870
HEADING: Winter, Max
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670 __ |a The pictures, 2007: |b t.p. (Max Winter) about the author (poetry editor of Fence)
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PERSONAL
Married; children: son.
EDUCATION:University of California, Irvine, M.F.A.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Fence, poetry editor.
AWARDS:Rhode Island State Council on the Arts Fellowship in Fiction.
WRITINGS
Contributor to Day One and Diner Journal.
SIDELIGHTS
Providence, Rhode Island-based Max Winter is the poetry editor of Fence and writes books on history, geography, and artificial intelligence. He also contributes to Day One and Diner Journal. He holds an M.F.A. from University of California, Irvine and has received two Rhode Island State Council on the Arts Fellowships in Fiction.
The Pictures
In 2007, Winter published his debut collection of poems, The Pictures. Divided into two sections—still photos and moving pictures—he explores themes of war, death, decay, and boredom in the poems, with one centering on a soldier in a barren landscape awaiting destruction. In another, a defiant woman stands with her mouth open and fists clenched. However, Winter also addresses love, happiness, family, and worship. He declares in several poems the wonders of sight, in which to see something means to have experienced it.
Writing in Publishers Weekly, a reviewer praised the collection as a long-awaited debut by a promising poet. The reviewer added that each of the images and unsparing descriptions in Winter’s poems “is described in relation to the reader, demanding a passive agreement with the poem’s judgments.”
Civil Rights Movement and The Afghanistan War
Winter wrote several books for children in various history and geography series. In 2014, he published Civil Rights Movement in the “African-American History” series. The book describes the civil rights movement, its cultural effects on society, and its historical and political impact on the United States. Books in the series draw on primary sources, and include follow-up questions and “Stop and Think” writing assignments. While praising the series’ historical content, School Library Journal was disappointed with the repetitive use of illustrations, oversimplification, and lack of nuance and depth in describing African-American culture.
For the “Wars in U.S. History” series, Winter wrote The Afghanistan War in 2015. The book offers an overview of the war, its history, important people and battles, economic and social challenges facing the current regime, and a timeline of events. While Winter does not address the complexities of the region’s history, according to Erin Anderson in Booklist, he “offers a straightforward explanation of the major events of the conflict” and emphasizes the desire for stability in the region.
Japan, Vietnam, and Powering Up a Career in Artificial Intelligence
In 2015, Winter wrote two books in the “One World, Many Countries” series for children: Japan and Vietnam. The books present the countries’ geography, culture, people, and politics and government. The “Daily Life” chapters include information on family life, food, holidays, religious beliefs, and children’s lives. Books in this series have sidebars, maps, color photographs, glossary of key words, fast-fact section, and a list of sources for more research. School Library Journal finds the series of books informative with much detail, discussion of problems and political challenges, with attractive photos and sidebars with unique places, animals, and culture.
In the “Preparing for Tomorrow’s Careers” series, Winter published the 2016 Powering Up a Career in Artificial Intelligence, which introduces young readers to careers in the STEM field. The book offers information on educational requirements for working in artificial intelligence, classes needed, after-school activities, resources, and a range of careers within the field, such as creating robots and programming virtual AI. Winter also describes limitations and issues in the field.
Exes
Winter published his debut novel, Exes, in 2017. With humor and insight, the story addresses grief and questionable coping mechanisms as Clay Blackall investigates the reasons his estranged brother, Eli, committed suicide. Blackall equally blames their hometown, Providence, Rhode Island, as much as the quirky neighbors, acquaintances, ex-cons, and ex-friends in the city. He compiles a series of stories about them who are all connected to Eli in some way. There’s the disappointed salutatorian who exposes his school’s transgressions, a failed actor who impersonates a movie star, an ex-con who is housesitting, a widower with a grudge against destructive Canada geese, and the ex-lovers of Eli’s girlfriend, Alix. For each person and story, Blackall writes a “Caretaker’s Log” consisting of footnotes, added information, local facts about Providence, and connections between the people and to Eli.
In an interview on the Flavorwire Website with Sarah Seltzer, Winter described the idea for the book: “As a teenager, I used to walk … up and down the old-moneyed streets of my hometown of Providence, Rhode Island, and wonder where the hell everyone was. All these crumbling mansions and sagging Victorians looked as though they hadn’t been lived-in in decades, if even that recently…Exes is my best guess, as told from the perspectives of my most difficult video store customers—customers with made-up names.”
Calling the book immersive and accomplished, a contributor to Publishers Weekly praised Winter’s use of local lore that brought Providence to life, and choice of characters that are “brilliantly unique and incisive. Each character navigates the complex territories of family, grief, and human attachment.” In a mixed review, a writer in Kirkus Reviews thought the scheme of writing about various eclectic characters allowed Winter to write in many different voices and explore different relationships among people, however, “the novel is also hobbled by its structural complexity, creating a series of overlapping voices that dampens the core story of Eli’s fate and Clay’s reckoning with it.”
In Booklist, Courtney Eathorne likened the irreverence and absurd cast of characters in Winter’s book to the technique used in David Foster Wallace’s The Broom of the System. Eathorne noted the way the book reads like a collection of real research, even though the protagonist is distraught and links the stories in confusing ways. Overall, in the book, “power comes in this compilation style: it begs readers to ask what seemingly futile details mean,” according to Eathorne.
Writing at NPR, Heller McAlpin called the book “an amazing feat of plotting and engineering, an elaborate puzzle of a book that brings to mind Alan Ayckbourn’s Norman Conquests for the intricacy of its carefully calibrated interlocking connections.” McAlpin added that “Exes, while studded with moments of levity…isn’t the place to turn if you’re looking for cheer,” and noted that “one could easily see the Affleck brothers starring in a film adaptation of this often heartbreaking novel about the devastations of severed attachments.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, April 1, 2015, Erin Anderson, review of The Afghanistan War, p. 59; March 1, 2017, Courtney Eathorne, review of Exes, p. 38.
Kirkus Reviews, February 1, 2017, review of Exes.
Publishers Weekly, January 22, 2007, review of The Pictures, p. 164; December 5, 2016, review of Exes, p. 43.
ONLINE
Flavorwire, http://flavorwire.com/ (April 20, 2017), Sarah Seltzer, review of Exes.
NPR, http://www.npr.org/ (April 12, 2017), review of Exes.
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Print Marked Items
Winter, Max: EXES
Kirkus Reviews.
(Feb. 1, 2017):
COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Winter, Max EXES Catapult (Adult Fiction) $16.95 4, 11 ISBN: 978-1-936787-40-1
A man processes his brother's death by annotating the memories of the quirky people who knew him.Clay, the lead
narrator of Winter's debut novel, has spent five years contemplating the death of his brother, Eli, who crashed his car
into a house in Providence, Rhode Island. His contemplation process is a little contrived, though: he's reading through
and annotating documents by "exes, friends, and neighbors" in Eli's circle. But the scheme does allow Winter to display
his skill at writing in a variety of voices and reveals how relationships among people coalesce and divide. Some
characters are hard-luck cases, like Vince, who pretends to be actor Judge Reinhold to pick up women in bars, or Rob, a
habitue of Providence's heroin subculture. Other characters are broader and brighter, like Alix, who had conflicted
feelings about dating Eli when he was her high school teacher ("it immediately felt like I had vomited my heart"), or
Hank, a widower consumed by a young boy he suddenly finds himself caring for along with the geese he's trying to run
off his lawn. Clay footnotes every document with rebuttals or tidbits of local lore, and his comments help give the
novel an interconnected feel, a kind of Winesburg, Ohio with more drugs and bad blood. ("Providence is small;
avoiding one another isn't easy," Alix says.) But the novel is also hobbled by its structural complexity, creating a series
of overlapping voices that dampens the core story of Eli's fate and Clay's reckoning with it. Clay's footnotes often have
footnotes, and his matryoshka dolls of commentary about family properties and former neighborhood IHOPs often feel
like stifling digressions. Winter is a writer with talent and wit to burn, though it's often undermined by this story's
knotty structure.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Winter, Max: EXES." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Feb. 2017. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA479234723&it=r&asid=e5b73d1a15475e65791e0f7173833d8d.
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Exes
Courtney Eathorne
Booklist.
113.13 (Mar. 1, 2017): p38.
COPYRIGHT 2017 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Full Text:
Exes.
By Max Winter.
Apr. 2017. 224p. Catapult, paper, $16.95 (9781936787401); e-book, $10.99 (9781936787456).
Fans of David Foster Wallace's The Broom of the System (1987) will find this novel-in-fragments to be equally
irreverent and peppered with a similarly absurd cast of characters. Clay Blackall has lived in Providence, Rhode Island,
his entire life, which is a biographical detail that inspires many a moment of irony in this book. Clay is well into
adulthood when he begins piecing together the puzzle of his brother Eli's life before Eli committed suicide. Clay's
investigation is composed of many different, sometimes contradictory, narratives that stop and start in confusing places.
These accounts are separated by Clay's messy notes; readers follow his stream of consciousness as he makes sense of
the information coming to light. Overall, the book reads like an honest collection of research. It is organized in a
fashion that only makes sense to the desperate, grieving protagonist, and contains elements with varying degrees of
importance. The book's power comes in this compilation style: it begs readers to ask what seemingly futile details mean
in the context of life and suicide.--Courtney Eathorne
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Eathorne, Courtney. "Exes." Booklist, 1 Mar. 2017, p. 38. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA488689482&it=r&asid=5e13be622d8ccbefc98e94bf68096548.
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The Pictures
Publishers Weekly.
254.4 (Jan. 22, 2007): p164.
COPYRIGHT 2007 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
The Pictures MAX WINTER. Tarpaulin Sky Press (SPD, dist.), $12 (76p) ISBN 978-0-9779019-2-0
The images in Fence editor Winter's first collection have been rendered twice, from 30 unnamed photos and short
movies into 30 poems. Arranged in two sections, "Still" and "Moving," the poems are ordered and titled according to
picture size or film length. Unlike traditional ekphrastic work, these poems are noticeably devoid of any overt
attribution to the source images; there is only the poet's unsparing description. Each of the images, from family portraits
to clips of warfare, is described in relation to the reader, demanding a passive agreement with the poem's judgments, as
in "11 by 11": "Her skin is rough/ and her face indicates/ that the emotion we see/ has been her only emotion,/ with
occasional deviations, for several weeks." As these images and conclusions mount, they develop into a composite
picture of the speaker himself. The centerpiece is "9 by 9," a dense, contemplative two-page prose poem describing a
portrait of a woman posing in a subway station: "No use in worrying, here, about what the hair is all about, because that
never really comes forward in a purely two-dimensional medium." This is a long-awaited debut by a promising
younger poet. (Feb.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"The Pictures." Publishers Weekly, 22 Jan. 2007, p. 164. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA158576957&it=r&asid=64c8f731f1a985167d84a5838441394a.
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Exes
Publishers Weekly.
263.50 (Dec. 5, 2016): p43.
COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Exes
Max Winter. Catapult, $16.95 trade paper (224p) ISBN 978-1-936787-40-1
The immersive and accomplished debut novel by Winter is haunted as much by the city of Providence, R.I., as it is by
the suicide of Eli, brother of Clay Blackall, one of several narrators in this novel in fragments who each provide insight
into why Eli might have ended his life. Providence serves as the backdrop for Clay's doomed search for answers, and
the novel is peppered with local lore that subtly intersects Clay and Eli's family history. Both an appreciation and
evisceration of Providence and its residents, the novel straddles the line between humor and tragedy in each of its
disparate parts. The voice of each narrator--whether an ex and former student of Eli's, Alix; Eli's former cell mate and
also Alix's other doomed ex, Rob; fallen hockey hero and Rob's estranged father, Hank LaChance; Mark, Alix's high
school classmate, who narrates the novel's most beautiful and heartbreaking chapter; or any of several others--is
brilliantly unique and incisive. Each character navigates the complex territories of family, grief, and human attachment
with sharp intelligence and wit. Agent: Shewn Dolan, Union Literary. (Apr.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Exes." Publishers Weekly, 5 Dec. 2016, p. 43. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA475224825&it=r&asid=0b3b1f35de90aa3db3921ad4ac450f2f.
Accessed 2 Oct. 2017.
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The Afghanistan War
Erin Anderson
Booklist.
111.15 (Apr. 1, 2015): p59.
COPYRIGHT 2015 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Full Text:
The Afghanistan War. By Max Winter. 2015. 32p. illus. Child's World, lib. ed., $28.50 (9781631437120). 958.1045. Gr.
3-6.
Enough time has passed since the start of the Afghanistan War that some of its initial impact can be considered through
the lens of history. In clear sentences interspersed with full-color photos, Winter offers a straightforward explanation of
the major events of the conflict in this volume of the Wars in U.S. History series. Though the book does not delve into
the myriad complexities of the region's history, economic and social challenges facing the current regime of the country
are explored, emphasizing the arduous quest for stability in the region. The "Another View" feature in the sidebars
encourages readers to empathize with others who play a role in the events. Winter wisely suspends a final assessment of
the war until its ramifications have fully played out. Students eager to learn about this newsworthy topic will find plenty
to ponder here.--Erin Anderson
Anderson, Erin
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Anderson, Erin. "The Afghanistan War." Booklist, 1 Apr. 2015, p. 59. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA410769712&it=r&asid=54c465ea05d4a12de65e78e20f35a967.
Accessed 2 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A410769712
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In 'Exes,' The Losses Pile Up Like New England Snowdrifts
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April 12, 201710:00 AM ET
HELLER MCALPIN
Exes
Exes
by Max Winter
Paperback, 212 pages purchase
Max Winter's powerful but bleak debut novel is about missing people: people who are missing, and the sons, brothers, friends, lovers, and classmates who feel their absence and miss them. Exes is propelled by the efforts of its troubled principal narrator, Clay Blackall, to piece together the last ten years of his younger brother Eli's life — which he missed because they were estranged. Launching his investigation five years after Eli's vehicular suicide, Clay discovers that he's always missed a lot, either because he's "held on to all the wrong things over the years" or not paid attention the first time around.
Firmly rooted in Providence, R.I., the brothers' hometown, Exes is narrated in fragments by former lovers, buddies, and others tangentially connected to Eli — whose stories are annotated and commented upon by Clay in alternating chapters. Winter's book is about losses, and they pile up like — well, New England snow.
Clay and Eli — and their older sister Libby, from whom Clay is also estranged — lost their parents in 1974 while still in grade school, when their frequently-inebriated father crashed his private plane. Descended from Rhode Island founder Roger Williams on their father's side, the orphaned children are taken in by their mother's Russian Jewish parents, who have made a fortune renting triple-decker tenements in not-yet-gentrified Providence. But something goes awry for Clay and Eli, and paralleling their story of downward mobility is the changing face of Providence, which captures another kind of loss — of familiar landmarks like former IHOPs, corner gas stations, and other "franchise ghosts" by which long-term residents find their bearings.
We learn about the Blackall brothers in snippets, from a broad range of often surprising sources — though Clay's history remains frustratingly murky. Twinrock, a century-old summer manse built atop a rock in Narragansett Bay by the forebears of Eli's last love, Alix Mays, plays a recurring role. Scandalously, Alix was one of Eli's students when they started dating, but he took their relationship more seriously than she ever did. Her family's fortunes, like the Blackalls', have declined precipitously; Winter's characters occupy a world going inexorably downhill.
'Exes,' while studded with moments of levity ... isn't the place to turn if you're looking for cheer.
We hear from two of Alix's other exes, including Rob Nolan, who, after she kicked him out, found refuge at Twinrock one winter. His Caretaker's Log, written in the final months before he started using again — and died of a drug overdose within weeks of Eli's death — is a poignant mix of chores (sanded deck, cleaned all 65 windows, oiled screen doors) and his tragic life story — beginning with his absent father, a disgraced local hockey star who split before Rob was born.
Exes, among other things, is an amazing feat of plotting and engineering, an elaborate puzzle of a book that brings to mind Alan Ayckbourn's Norman Conquests for the intricacy of its carefully calibrated interlocking connections. Without giving away too much, I can say that many links in the ingenious chain of associations involve various members of the Amos Fox School's class of 1989, and that an unusual graduation day address by the class president, scholarship student Jake Deinhardt, provides a pivotal fulcrum for Winter's cleverly contrived web of influence.
Several of the chapters work as powerful standalone stories. In "Jubilee," Jake's self-consciously unhappy, less successful classmate, Mark Slepkow, recounts a surprise birthday visit to Baltimore meant to cheer up his old high school buddy, whose first son has been born with an upsetting physical defect. What starts as just an awkward visit goes horribly, tragically awry. On a lighter note, "The Quaker Guns" involves a wacky, redemptive connection over Canada geese between an at-risk Fox scholarship student displaced by Eli's fatal crash and the bereft widower who "fosters" him temporarily. I'll leave it for readers to discover the identity of this rueful widower.
Exes, while studded with moments of levity, including a burlesque dance performance involving seven-foot tampons and the lyrics "I've got the world on a string," isn't the place to turn if you're looking for cheer. The novel's overall mood is more akin to that of Kenneth Lonergan's recent movie, Manchester By The Sea. In fact, one could easily see the Affleck brothers starring in a film adaptation of this often heartbreaking novel about the devastations of severed attachments.
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ARTBOOKSFILMMUSICTV
The Sweetest Debut: ‘Exes’ Author Max Winter on Crumbling Mansions, Francesca Woodman, and Why the Bible’s Both Over- and Underrated
Books | By Sarah Seltzer | April 20, 2017
Welcome to The Sweetest Debut, a new and regular installment in which we reach out to debut (or near-debut, we’re flexible!) fiction, poetry and nonfiction authors working with presses of all sizes and find out about their pop culture diets, their writing habits, and how they explain their books to different people in their lives.
Today, we hear from Exes scribe Max Winter, whose debut novel NPR deemed “an amazing feat of plotting and engineering, an elaborate puzzle of a book that brings to mind Alan Ayckbourn’s Norman Conquests for the intricacy of its carefully calibrated interlocking connections.” The Exes is a collection of fractured narratives and perspectives, and sees a man searching for traces of his brother — who committed suicide — in other Providence residents’ stories. Winter answered our questions about everything from his writing habits (he wrote a good part of the book in playgrounds with his kid son, “in a folding beach chair with a kidney shaped piece of plywood for a desktop”) to the influence of photographer Francesca Woodman, to being a “compulsive rereader,’ and returning to the likes of Pale Fire, Jesus’ Son, and Giovanni’s Room while writing Exes.
Max Winter Author Photo cred Olivia Sauerwein
What is your elevator pitch to folks in the industry describing your book?
I am not an exception to what just has to be the rule of no author being even slightly good at this. As evidence, I now provide you with
“EXES:
“Fifty Shades of Grey Gardens!”
OR
“Ulysses CK!”
What do you tell your relatives it’s about?
Again, I’m not alone, here. So, like pretty much everybody else, I say a guy—who’s not ME, and whose family is NOTHING like you, I swear—who gets in his own and everybody else’s way while trying to account for the last ten years of his estranged kid brother’s life. Mind you, in my case this description has the added virtue of being true, but try telling them that…
(Ha! I’m kidding! They believe me! But luckily and not surprisingly, only the Jews and in-laws ask.)
How long was this project marinating in a draft or in your head before it became a book deal?
In draft form? Ten years, at least. But the oldest recognizable part of the book just missed its chance to vote in the most recent election. Like the rest us, it’s pretty goddamned pissed.
In my head, though? Jeez… Nearly three times that.
As a teenager, I used to walk across town, and up and down the old-moneyed streets of my hometown of Providence, Rhode Island, and wonder where the hell everyone was. All these crumbling mansions and sagging Victorians looked as though they hadn’t been lived-in in decades, if even that recently. Whose houses were these? I wondered. Why weren’t they ever home? Just who were these local Ushers, Havishams, lesser-Bouviers?
And Exes is my best guess, as told from the perspectives of my most difficult video store customers—customers with made-up names or (as often as not, and not for nothing) whose names were identical to those of the streets where they lived. “Do you have any coming-of-age films featuring redheads,” they’d ask, neither removing their dark glasses nor paying their shocking late fees.
Name a canonical book you think is totally overrated.
My first instinct is to say the Bible, because Jesus fucking Christ, enough already, but that’s exactly why, if anything, it’s underrated by people like me. As is so often the case with for-better-and-worse genre-creators—Black Sabbath, Duchamp, Hemingway—the Bible manages to be both overrated and underrated, because, above all else, it is misunderstood by believers and heretics alike. We, the latter, cannot grasp the extent to which the Bible continues to be commensurately cherished and misinterpreted to the seeming exclusion of literally all other literature. Pretty clearly, a just-sizable-enough chunk of America is that 63 year-old dude from work who only listens to, like, The Steve Miller Band. And even then only the hits—when they come on the radio, that is, which, of course, he still listens to. But these days he mostly just tunes in for right wing talk, and thinks whatever music the young guys like lacks the pure emotion and raw musicianship and just plain old balls of these greatest hits he lost, or nearly lost, his virginity to.
A book you’ve read more than two times.
To paraphrase Nabokov and James Brown: there ain’t no hell such name thing as reading, only rereading, so any book that I haven’t reread at least once probably doesn’t mean all that much to me. So I am a compulsive rereader.
As for what books I reread extra attentively while working on Exes, while even then there are too many titles to list here, I will say they ranged from the mostly obvious—I Would’ve Saved Them if I Could (Leonard Michaels), Pale Fire (Vladimir Nabokov), Jesus’ Son (Denis Johnson), A Fan’s Notes (Frederick Exley), The Mezzanine (Nicholson Baker)—to the perhaps less so—Bad Behavior (Mary Gaitskill), Joe Gould’s Secret (Joseph Mitchell), Enormous Changes at the Last Minute (Grace Paley), Giovanni’s Room (James Baldwin), and Labyrinths (Jorge Luis Borges).
But most meaningfully of all, I’ve reread countless times the work of my former workshop mate and current writing husband, Matt Sumell, whose Making Nice is, without exaggeration, the absolute funniest book I’ve ever read. And as if that weren’t enough, it also happens to be positively heart wrecking. We’ve rendered “I laughed. I cried” virtually meaningless, but still. I actually did, and in more or less equal measure. Jesus Christ. If you’re reading this but you haven’t read Making Nice, then you should.
A book or other piece of art that influenced your writing for this particular project.
In 2003, while visiting Cornell, whose MFA program had waitlisted me the previous spring, my wife and I stumbled upon a Francesca Woodman retrospective and, without knowing the first thing about either her or her work, immediately recognized her Providence. We both knew these dusty, haunted spaces intimately. I suddenly had what was at that point the first — but would later become the sixth — chapter of my book, then-clumsily-reverse-engineered from its climax, which unfolded, Woodmanesquely, in the unlit fireplace of an abandoned tenement. And that part remains, virtually intact.
What’s your favorite show to binge watch when you’re not writing?
While I’m pretty mad at TV right now, I’m feeling cautious pessimistic about the new season of Twin Peaks. But that and the upcoming impeachment hearings are literally the only reasons I haven’t cancelled my cable.
What’s the last movie you saw in theaters?
This is making me sad, given how much moviegoing means—or, should I say, once meant—to me. Because, if I’m being honest, it was the most recent Star War. We went for Jewish Christmas. It was fine, I guess. I mean, who cares? All I know is that my son loved it, which is all that matters, because we both know that what really matters about Jewish Christmas is what comes next: the spicy Chengdu dumplings and smashed cucumbers with garlic, and the tripe and pig’s blood in chili oil, and a couple two-three perfectly crappy beers for Papa. We linger at the table, flushed, numbed, the restaurant buzzing happily and non-Xmasly around us. It’s like Thanksgiving, but with better food and less hypocrisy.
Do you listen to music while you’re writing? If so, what kind?
Oh, man, all the time—have to, to block out the home and playground sounds. But, as you know, it’s hard to find the right soundtrack, because if you’re not careful, whatever you’re listening to, no matter how subtle, winds up being incorporated into your fiction, like an alarm clock into a dream. So I keep on mixing it up—Fahey, Coltrane, Bill Evans, music I know so well I hardly hear it anymore, like Dylan. Hell, for a while there I was even voluntarily listening to the Grateful Dead, ostensibly because it was what a minor character that I wound up cutting would’ve listened to, but really because doing so forced me to actively ignore so much of what I was hearing (as far as the Dead go, I’ve really only ever enjoyed Jerry Garcia’s fucked-up playing and singing, and even then far from always) along with whatever else happened to be going on all around me, that it enabled a deep focus—sort of like a musical IUD, or that thing where the Zen master beats you with his stick. Only he’s wearing cut-offs and singing cowboy songs and the stick is made out of patchouli.
Who is your fashion icon?
I have too little—or I should say too much stretched-too-thin—skin in this game to even care. Clothes increasingly refuse to look as they are meant to on my ever-weirder body. I guess I used to like it when people told me I looked like John Lurie, who for a while I also kind of dressed like. But right now I’m okay with occupying some mostly invisible spot between Louis CK and James Murphy on the schlubby white dude matrix. You’ll find me in the corner, over by the dip, pulling up my pants.
If you could buy a house anywhere in the world just to write in, where would it be?
If it’s really about getting writing done, then someplace boring, like the mountains. I like writing in places where nothing remotely cool is going on, so I have no reason to ever leave my house, to ever do anything but live inside my mind, or sit and think beside the fire. I like the idea of the woods better than the actual woods—like in those painted cityscapes you see out the window in ‘70s sitcoms or late night talk shows. Except way less enticing.
What did you initially want to be when you grew up?
Back then, I would’ve said actor, but, in retrospect, what I meant by actor was Gene Kelly as Don Lockwood in Singin’ in the Rain. I wanted his house, his best pal, his lady friends, his moves, his pants, his kitchen, his seldom-used bar. All of it. I even wanted his milkman, even though, like most Jews, I’ve always hated milk. But Don Lockwood’s milk I would drink straight from the bottle and watch the sun come up. “Good Morning!” my friends and I would sing.
That said, I have no interest in seeing La-La Land. Nostalgia is poisonous.
Did you have a new years resolution for 2017? If so, what?
To resist the Trump Administration.
Do you prefer a buzzing coffee shop or silent library?
Silent library, though if I have my headphones on, as I often do, I can work anywhere. I wrote, without exaggeration, maybe a quarter of this book in playgrounds—in a folding beach chair with a kidney shaped piece of plywood for a desktop—watching my son play with his friends. I’d look up now and then to make sure no one was crying.
Is morning writing or late-night writing your go-to-time?
Morning’s best for me—fewer off-the-page voices competing with all those on-the-page-voices, of which I clearly have more than my share.
Do you tend towards writing it all out in one big messy draft and then editing, or perfecting as you go (or something in between)?
Both? Or, in other words, as inefficiently as possible.
Initially, I totally need to make a huge mess. All these fucked-up, overwritten, digressive pages eventually provide me with the dense mound of clay out of which I can, with luck, eventually shape something vaguely human. Preconceptive modes—outlines and log lines and beat sheets and the like—make it hurt when I swallow. I can only approach writing from a place of not-knowing, of not-understanding.
But, at the same time, as I’m writing all these messy pages, I just can’t help but revise every single sentence—the vast majority of which will never make the cut. Every day I start over at the beginning and not where I left off the day before.
Yeah…
Did I mention that it took me 15 years to write?
How do you pay the bills, if not solely by your pen and your wit?
I’m an adjunct. But you’ve read all the articles, so you know that I need something else, which these days means substitute teaching, audio book narration, tutoring, one-off workshops here and there, assorted pedagogical hustles, movie-prop food cookery, leaf-raking, you name it. I will walk your dog and feed your cat. I will mow your lawn and drive your grandma places and cater your departmental retreat.
What is your trick to finding time to write your book while also doing the above?
Oh man, am I ever the wrong person to ask. (See again those 15 years it took.) My wife and I kind of do tag teams, where she’ll overwork while I scale things back to make more time for writing, and vice-versa when she’s working on a body of work. She’s a visual artist, among many other things—and an exceptionally quick one at that, thanks in part to her movie/theater background—and can accomplish in a single week what takes me, without exaggeration, a full year. (When we first met, we used to argue about which artistic discipline was hardest. “They’re all the same,” she said. “Nuh-uh,” I said. But it’s been at least thirteen years since we’ve had this argument. I won?)
But mostly I try to get evening classes at which point I’m mostly useless at the keyboard, anyway. Also, substitute teaching gigs—which are, as often as not, a matter of tests/study halls/in-class writing/etc.—are also great for getting writing done. If I squint, it’s like I’m actually getting paid to write.
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