Author Charles Blackstone drops in to talk about his new novel Vintage Attraction! Along the way, we talk about his managing editor role at Bookslut, what it's like to be married to a Master Sommelier, how deconstruction resembles molecular gastronomy, and more!
The Virtual Memories Show
Season 3, Episode 23 - Wine, Women and Novel-Writing
[music] Welcome to The Virtual Memories Show. I'm your host, Gil Roth, and you are listening to a podcast about books and life, not necessarily in that order. You can subscribe to The Virtual Memories Show on iTunes by searching for virtual memories and clicking through to the show's page. You can find past episodes there and you can also find them at our archives on my website chimeraobscura.com/vm. If you visit the site, you can add yourself to the email list for the show, as well as make a donation via PayPal, which should help offset my web hosting and travel costs and equipment and things of that ilk. The show is also on Twitter @vmspod on Facebook @virtualmemoriesshow and Tumblr @virtualmemoriespodcast.tumbler.com. Speaking of travel, I am currently in Frankfurt, which is not somewhere I like to be. I was here two years ago for a pharmaceutical conference. I'm back for the same reason. I decided to come early to the show this year and I just spent a few days in Nuremberg, which was interesting. It's a gorgeous old town area, but of course it has a really, really horrible history with the Nazi party and the rally grounds there and a long history of pogroms. Anyway, it was an interesting but sort of difficult trip for me by the end. Frankfurt will be much easier because it's just one of the most boring cities I've ever visited, really just a bureaucratic Euro-administration zone and a big convention center, not a lot of culture, kind of burned out urban vibes. What I'm saying is don't visit Frankfurt if you have a chance. This conference will be in Paris next year, so I'll be much happier as will my wife. Anyway, on with the show. I hate this, bracelets, I'm tired, I'm crazy. Our guest this episode is Charles Blackstone, the managing editor of Bookslut and author of the brand new novel, Vintage Attraction. By brand new, I mean the release date is today, October 22, 2013. Although he's been posting pictures of it appearing in various bookstores, that's still the Amazon listed date for when it's available. Charles and I recorded last April in Chicago when I was traveling for yet another trade show. He wasn't exactly in book publicity mode and the conversation really veers all over the darn place. I think it's a lot of fun, a lot of talk about books, about wine, about writing, about gin. There was about a 15 to 20 minute segment on menswear and my particular habits when it comes to shopping for that stuff, but I decided one hour episode was quite enough for you guys, so that's in the director's cut. Vintage Attraction is available from Pegasus Books and distributed by Norton. You can find Charles Blackstone at CharlesBlackstone.com as well as bookslut.com, the great online literary magazine. And now the virtual memories conversation with Charles Blackstone. Speaking of here, let's actually get this part of the interview going. You have a gesture to things on there. Yeah, that's a very visual medium, the podcast. I always remember you can't nod also. Yeah, that's one of those. I give the occasional bump wave when I'm editing the sound file, but you have a novel coming out this October, October and November, October, Vintage Attraction from Pegasus Books. Tell me about the novel first, what it is and where it comes from. So the novel, in my one sentence, is the guy, he's an academic and he falls. He falls glass first into the world of wine and love when he meets the Soleilier that he's seen on TV. And where does it come from? I did that, more or less. You are married to a Soleilier, the TV personality here in Chicago. I wasn't at that point, I wasn't an academic quote unquote anymore, but it never leaves you. But it never leaves you. So I mean, you care about that stuff, but this guy is one of those people. You leave grad school, most people, I did this. You leave grad school, you do a little adjunct in. And then I don't think a lot of people stay with that. I didn't keep it very long, but this guy, I don't know, 10 plus years after grad school, he's still doing that. So he has this job, no security, no benefits really, maybe some of these universities now give you a little health insurance, but practically no benefits and no options for life. Then he emails the Soleilier, she finds him amusing and then he quickly enters her world. And it basically confronts her with everything that adjuncting academic life, that sublet life doesn't have, where she has a real job and is sought after and he's taken to events and things. And it brings him really the first time and probably the only time that he would be able to really extricate himself from that life just wasn't thrilling him via this person. He's able to become an adult, that's one of the themes I think, like he's this 37 year old kid which I've longed through. I was a little younger, now I'm getting, I was always worried that I would become older than the character by the time I actually finished the thing, but slightly, well I'm 36 now. Closing in. I was like, I don't know. But a happier marriage than the character has? Yeah, so I didn't have, well you know, so they move into, they buy real estate very quickly. So they decide very rapidly that they're in love, which I think happens, and they end up in a, you know, like this condo building with these annoying neighbors and so it tests the relationship early on, you know, in almost an absurd way, because you would think most people would, you know, this would take a long time to percolate and yeah, there'd be their need love for a long time or, you know, it'd be blissful for a long time and then gradually, you know, if they did end up stumbling into trouble, it would take a lot longer. But everything about them is just very rapid. Yeah, they move this building and then, you know, the, the complication and then another thing too, I thought was interesting about characters or people really that enter into some kind of relationship very quickly is you're so, you're so, you know, swept up in the thing, you, and you have, you have no interest in seeing any of the life that existed before. You don't even want it nearby. But then what if it doesn't, what if it doesn't leave you alone? So when those, so these, these elements, both of their pasts come back in for some to have to, you know, I don't want to say confront them, that's on, so after school special. But, you know, they're, they're, they're, they're back. And so that, that was something I thought was also kind of fascinating that, you know, despite your best intentions of, and, and this, this, this didn't come from life. I was just, I was going to ask you, your wife's good with all this. I was in the cola. You know, she, you know, she said, you know, people will read this as me, they're gonna think, you know, I'm, I don't know, but whatever is going, as, you know, I don't know, it's, it's impossible for somebody. I think she understands, I mean, she understands the process. She said, you know, what she's learned from me is, you know, there's no fiction, fiction. Sometimes we'll say, you know, we'll read something or we'll, I'll refer to something. I have her hairstylist in there. His name is Ingrid. And I was like, well, of course, the character is going to be a hairstylist named Ingrid. And she's like, did you make up anything? I was like, I don't, I don't see it that way. I never have. You know, so fiction to me is, is the process of taking whatever from wherever, either imagine or from life and representing it. You know, so that, so I don't even look at the, I don't look at, you know, this thing is, is something like something I did. I know people like, you know, like that and it's, I don't know, it's a good or bad that people read that way. I mean, I can't say I don't read that way. I mean, you know, you're always, yeah, you're always seeing, you know, where did something come from? I mean, even even the farthest removed from what you imagined the author to be, you're still saying, you know, where did this, you know, where did this image come from? What did you study or what did you actually teach when you were a adjuncting? Oh, well, when I, well, after grads, I talked, you know, creative writing and grad school. And then, but the adjuncting was sort of a bizarre situation where, you know, they, you know, they don't, because there's no, you know, there's no career services in a, an English lit, well, my mind was creative writing, but, you know, in the English department in a university, there's no, maybe some have the journalism stuff, but there's no, you know, for the lit people on the creative writing people, there's no career counseling. Yeah. And so. There's no career. Why would they even have somebody sitting at the desk? So, but, you know, you, it was sort of like, you know, brought into the fantasy of where I could apply to these jobs where it said that, you know, the minimum requirement was an MA, you know, these tenure track positions for universities. And I don't know. I, I was, I guess I was so, you know, been two years and bolder as, you know, apply and of course, obviously nothing comes to that. So you start, you know, gradually descending in the expectations and then I was, I panicked and I moved back here, because, you know, it's like, well, if there's ever to be, you know, work to be had, I'm going to have to do it in a city and where also I live, you know, where else it makes sense. So, you know, I moved back and I remember going in to one of the Chicago city colleges, you know, the adjunct coordinator said, you know, you, you know, obviously read my cover letter or whatever and said, you know, here's this one comp class, I think it was. And, and then she's like, you know, I have this developmental reading slot open. And I was like, you know, I was like, no, she gave me, she's like, yeah, don't worry about it. Here's the book. I was teaching, like, really remedial stuff and, you know, I wasn't even that passionate about it. You know, really just faking my way, you know, it was a, that cliche about, you know, your one chapter head of the class, I mean, I really was just kind of reading the stuff and then going in there and when, I don't know what the end result was. For instance, I never ran into any of the students, so I don't know how, how traumatizing that experience was. And the comp class was weird. It was on a Saturday morning and I mean, now I get a early, you know, pretty easily. But then it was just, you know, it was like, that was eight or 30 in the morning and it was just a, it was this torture of like, how do I even, I mean, you know, you're lifting an arm from it, you needed the reanimator. And I'm on there. That's okay. I'll be editing. I'll be talking about all the sirens in the background, but somehow I'll pull it off. Silly, I should turn off this beeping thing. I did it again. So, but don't be self-conscious. I know. Yes. It makes it worse. Because when you forget, it's not that. So, did a comp class and then, you know, it lasted less semester or two and then I did a continuing ed fiction workshop for a couple of quarters, it was essentially talking, you weren't applying a lot of the literary studies that you've done in your college or grad school years. No. Did you feel any way of exercising those skills at all or not or are you just like in the classroom or? No, no, just in life in general. No. Did you find, what did you find? I found that I really, I don't know how, how equipped I was to be a good teacher, you know, because these people I know are the ones I know who still do it. You know, they're spending hours and hours and hours grading and I can only think of how relevant it was to me as a student because the experience was what meant some of me. The class, you know, that was a margin notes essay, you know, can I read an essay now? I'm probably not. You know, a lot of people have resumes now. And I just, I couldn't, I just found I was incapable of committing to it in the way that would have made me, I felt like as a grad student teacher, I felt I was good at it for a little while. But, you know, you're closer in age, the students or your students still and I, I just, I got farther and farther away from that. Fortunately, they just sort of, uh, the pushed me out of it. We don't want to hear anymore. Basically. And now I was able to draw on all of that for this character. Yeah. So he has a, an adjunct coordinator. I liked mine at the, uh, the city college, but this one, uh, he has their, you know, have an adversarial relationship and it becomes combustible eventually, which is nice. What were your influences leading into the novel besides your incredibly messed up teaching experiences? I really, for this, you know, I've always said that, you know, style, you know, they earlier book people, you know, it was called experimental, I guess. And maybe at some point, that's the book you weren't here. Yes. Closely related to the grad school life. I thought maybe I was interested in that as reading, I was, you know, I was reading Sukenik and Federman and, and, um, you know, all those FCT people and it, it, it spoke to me at the time and, but from that, you're, you're kind of, well, if, if you assume that, that style would then lead to story, which I don't, but if you did, then you would be locked into a very specific, very tiny realm of possibility, you know, story possibilities. And I worked the opposite. So I took my, my very small range of story possibilities and said, uh, what would be the formed, you know, in which I'd be able to tell this. And so for the other thing, because it was this story about a guy, uh, what I've referred to as a, uh, like a ticker tape, you know, sort of like you could attach a connector that would try a transcription service for the brain. So it's, it's his just brain stuff, slightly paragraph, and follows him through the, you know, these six weeks or whatever that he's about to graduate college and is freaked out because he's so minor in theory and being a student that the prospects of the world, you know, is, is very daunting. I think it was, you know, it seemed the form to, to tell that story in, and, but I wasn't interested in the form as it's, yeah, like, you know, like, you know, contrary, or, you know, just sort of like separated from experience. And so this being, being a, you know, comic, comic novel, not interested in, you know, it's not metafictional at all. I mean, I, I feel like there's some sort of maybe, you know, like self-reflexive references thrown in, but nothing that's, I mean, it's a conventional telling. And so, but that, because the story I wanted to tell was, was a conventional story. I wanted to tell a love story, a rom-com, they call it. I wanted that a little. Why not? It's a movie option for a, for a reason whether spoon or something. Yeah. Well, it'd be nice, actually. Yeah. You know. Well, she just got busted for, uh, uh, acting up in front of a cop I read this morning online. It's funny to me. An election was on not too long ago. That's a great movie. Which makes me think, I mean, you can sort of see that in, in her eyes in that movie, which is capable of. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just tearing up posters or, or I hope you see cops, Tracy Flick, uh, I mean, now, one Well, your other job is managing editor of book slot, the online literary magazine, I guess, is a good way of describing it. Yes. What's your role in "Tale" actually? What do you do? I do a lot of the administrative stuff. I sort of, you know, sometimes recruit reviewers. I kind of shepherd them. You know, I get them review copies of things. I sometimes go over whatever issues they're having in their processes. And then once they submit things, then I sort of, now I have an intern now, actually. But so, before recently, I was then in charge of doing all the copy editing and formatting, which makes that a sense to me. You know, I feel sometimes, like, the managing editor might want, you know, more sort of, you know, creative input for me. And I just don't, I don't know. I don't know. I, you know, don't get shit, you have to, yeah. I mean, these duties make a lot of sense to me. And, you know, as I was telling you earlier, there are things that I think others would have more of a problem doing. And I just, I do them. I've been told I give good email. So these publicists, you know, I get along with them. I'm able, you know, sometimes those general inboxes, nobody answers them. I feel like I have a little good detective, Google stalking thing going on. So I'm able to find, like, the people I need. And then they respond to me. I don't know why. I don't go out of my way to be charming in an email. But somehow I, and the contributors I do like working with and, and, you know, kind of helping this publication along that, you know, stepped into when it was in 2011, I think. And then, you know, it's been around for, it just had its 11th year of business. And so launch the sister publication. That's now Spolio, SpolioMag.com. Yeah, what's the thrush behind that one? That's, it's a digital, downloadable, and eventually something that one could subscribe to, publication, you know, where you go, you go right on, on to the iPad. It's fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, commentary, art, some art too. I think, I think, you know, just book slut, I think, has always been sort of an interesting phenomenon, I think, because it began so early on before we really knew these conventions of the online medium. True. And so, and as a, and it hasn't done much changing around these new conventions we have, and it's sort of the diminishing attention span and what something must look like on the screen. It's still very much looks like, and I think that's one of the strengths. Yeah, so we'll get, we'll get submissions that are three thousand five. And I always tell people as a fifteen hundred is, is, in my head, the maximum for something that could read on a screen. You know, the New York review of books, you know, those are really, yeah, but you can't read that one sitting. No, that's just the insta paper or you ever use insta placebo? No, but it's great. You click it on it. You know, insta paper saves a text version of what you're reading online, so you can just go to insta paper, you look at your, your list of things, you can just click it. Okay, go back to something. But most people never get around to that once they've actually clicked read later. For insta paper, so someone created insta placebo, where you click the button, it says saving the insta paper, but doesn't actually save it anywhere, but that way you feel like, oh, I'll get to that sometime, but really, it's just gone. I used to do like bookmarking web pages. Yeah, from like five years ago. Yeah. And I was like, I never went back to that. But so, but the spolia is, I think the closest thing, you know, the equivalent to a print publication now, where it is, you know, it's either in a PDF or a Moby or whatever, and what I think will be interesting about it, and it's just had one issue so far. So who knows if this is just me imagining how things will go, but I imagine that it will be able to kind of accommodate longer, more, you know, in depth work and cover more things like the original creative prose, which we don't do. I'm book slut. Yeah, I'm excited to see where it goes. It's just started. Now, what have you learned from book slut about the promotion of books, and how you're planning on promoting vintage trash and when it's out? I've learned the horrible things. It's like all quite on the Western front, you know, seeing things I've never seen, or going after Kachiato. Like, I just should not have been exposed to how publicity, you know, really works. A lot of it is good. You know, but I think the thing that strikes you the most is just how many books there are, you know, being published every day. Every day, and not to even mention the individual authors that email us about stuff, which I don't recommend. Because, you know, we just, you know, I can only, well, actually part of it is an ethical thing, too. You know, I can't, I can't, I always think, I can't broker a review with an author because that's almost like pay to play a little. So I only go through, we only go through publicists. And then there's that, you know, the competition for attention. So, you know, the ones that I've worked with that I know, or, you know, there's like, you know, author name recognition, then, you know, you kind of are drawn toward those. But just the surplus of things coming in, even the things you want, even the, you know, how you put it politely, the top shelf stuff, you know, you're just, there's just so much of it. And as, you know, as we talked before, you know, I have one contributor who can produce three reviews in a month. I would be lucky to get one in every six months if I were reviewing. Yeah, I marvel over, like reading Orwell's take on book reviewing, and you realize how many books you're turning around and not just half-assing. Yeah. The great book about the, the recognitions. Do you ever read that fire's masters? No, I was thinking the recognitions. Oh, yeah. A book about the reviewers and how badly they mangled reviewing the recognitions. Oh, well, I think I read something about that. Yeah, a guy named Jack Green was the nom de plume of the author who put this together. He grabbed every review that came out of the recognitions back in the '50s and just showed exactly where you could tell that the reviewer had never read this book, and it was interesting in those terms. But yeah, it's... It's something I've never asked any of the contributors. Did you finish really with all that? But I imagine, because I know I can't even discuss a book. Not that I'm so attached to that. I must read all the way through. I guess probably I have discussed some books with people that I haven't finished. And I've gotten better at not finishing books. In terms of allowing yourself not to finish? Yeah, you know, I just... It's too short for crappy novels. It's too short. And you should be able to... But, you know, there was that book I forgot the French guy that wrote it about the title was, you know, how to talk about books you haven't read. Which I didn't finish. Oh good. I always mean to. I really liked what I got out of it. But, you know, you get enough or you just know the conversation around something that, you know, it's never this... Jeopardy game of where somebody's going to ask you. And even if you do finish these books, I forget the statistic about how quickly the book falls out of your head after you finish it. Things you loved even. So I'll look at something and you don't remember it. Now this is the new sign to me of when it really reminds you of that... When reading, you know, it takes you back to where you were reading as a kid where those things did stick. The character names and the really vivid images. And once you encounter a book like that, it's thrilling. Because you're so used to reading... Not reading at a distance. Reading... Supposedly. But you're just aware of that the thing will drop. It's living in its moment. Really, it's probably like watching a movie. You know, you don't remember shots unless you've watched something, you know, 32 times. But it's that experience for that duration. So maybe, you know, maybe we assumed incorrectly that we're supposed to hold these books for... But some do stay and some filming images stay. Well, it's funny. In my day job editing a Pharmaceutical Trade magazine, I include in my editorial a little "What I'm Reading" section. I include some pharma related stuff and then put in something to just let my brain out a little bit. And one of the first ones I did was a novel that I'd mentioned before we turn the tape on. Giuseppe de Lepaduce's novel, "The Leopard." People have come up to me at trade shows to tell me A, that they read it. B, they always cite the final scene in the book, which I think is either because it's incredibly beautiful or to prove to me that they actually read the whole thing. And it's not like the people who bring up proofs to Don Quixote and the Madeline or the windmills and clearly have never read beyond the first 50 pages. Or they're just going to the very end. I'm going to show Gil next time I'm at the bio show. How are you afraid to do that? Even a book I know I'm not going to read, I can't go anywhere near the last page. It seems silly and pointless. But we treat books with a certain reference. There is that reference. I mean the rule about the Torahs and they couldn't be destroyed, had to be buried. Something falls on. I feel that, not that I was very religious or even anything. But that's the spirituality of the book. If you drop a Torah, that's 40 days of fasting. I would be a good weight loss program. Yeah, I mean Bobby Sandstock, oh never mind, that's a horrible reference for my youth. But you know I have something and I never, you know, book falls on the floor. I'm just a little frightened by that and don't, but even the stuff I'm not even. And this is the funny thing about the books that come. You know, there are things that I haven't purchased, I don't care about, I'm never going to see again. I'd like to donate, you know, because obviously there would be no apartment left if I kept everything I wanted to. But it's just, you know, you revere these objects. Regardless of the content, if you've been able to get rid of books that you bought that you'll never read. Truthfully, no. Okay, no. That's the sign that you're going to have your mid-life crisis. Because that's the form of mind to it. And I like to think we have some sympathy like that. That realization that I will never get around to reading X, Y, or Z and just putting it in a stack and taking it to donate somewhere. I can do that with the new stuff that comes. But the things that you actually bought. But if I bought something then I'm going to nostalgiaize that transaction at a time. You can say nostalgiaize, I say fetishize. That holds up to a lot more respect. Now, it's true, though. I mean, that's what you're holding on to and the people don't understand. Like, oh, somebody wants a non-reader friend once said to me, why would you ever buy a book or keep a book? Yeah. And I said, you're ready, you're done with it. I said, you're holding on to that moment, the time you're with it. And even just the buying, that was still a time. I'm actually thinking right now of, well, a few examples. One was just an addition of nine stories that I didn't physically read that one, but obviously I'd read it. And I remember where I bought it. It was a tattered cover in Cherry Creek in Denver. And on a bad date, which is weird. No, I think it was good. The date was bad, but the book by me. But it was one of those, you know, where you met a blind date, internet date. The sky in the new novel also internet dates a little before the thing starts. And, you know, one of those things where it was, you know, was a coffee? You know, you do the one and then, you know, you're kind of itching to go. And this date was like, so where we have in dinner? I think we're in a sushi restaurant. So I had to tell her, okay, 'cause he can't be rude. Even somebody you're never going to see again. And so somehow after the food, then we ended up in the, you know, in the tattered, is it? The tattered cover is extraordinary in Colorado. That's the one. Yes. It's pretty much two floors and carpets and things. And a very warm place. And so I remember buying, and it was one of those, you see them occasionally, maybe you don't need more. But, you know, it was the hardcover, I mean, a new one, but very inexpensively priced. Of course, I need one more. Now in my new life, I've given up the compulsions. If they come, you know, 'cause now things will come in galley and then they come in the finish sometimes. Yeah. I don't know. Do I keep them all? Do I keep Benny? It depends on the book, probably. You buy extras of books to give to people. Well, now I like this. If two sets come of something I want, then I could give away. So, you know that Icelandic, were they old and recently translated? There were like three of them. Some Icelandic novelists. So it came in two, it came in a set of three in galley and I was like, "I'll hold on to that." And I shelved them actually. And then the new ones came in. And I was talking to a friend who likes Bjork a lot and also a brilliant reader. And so I wanted to give her the other ones. But of course, keeping the one, 'cause in case, yeah. And so, yeah, you learn, you know, the time of life where you can only love a few books, you know, and then want as many copies as possible. I mean, I feel I've gone out of that. Okay. I get like newer things. I'm just saying, once you start to reconcile that you will never read certain books, that's, I think, your initial acceptance of death, which I'm totally down with at this point, 'cause, you know, it's just around the corner. I'm only 42, but I'm still convinced. It's a dirty game, you know. It's all downhill from here. Well, if you're Fitzgerald, it would be fairly pretty soon. No, no. Isn't that weird? And why do they keep remaking it? That's only been made twice. Twice. Like 15, right? 11 remakes? I don't know. I feel like they're the Redford and this one. I think there's something, I mean, it looks horrific, but then I think that every generation gets the crappy Fitzgerald adaptation it deserves. Now, maybe because, I don't know, are they still teaching? Are those kids still reading school? I think they've read. What we think about society is true, or American society, that reading and carrying a part. You know, it's totally eroded. Maybe the movie will finally have more of a chance, although now I feel maybe popular film has also gone the way of the book a little bit. Largely. I mean, it's just game for, you know, the big mega hit, or in this case, I guess. But do people even still go see movies as much? I feel now it's all... Not me, but... Digital, because the last time I went to a movie was no country for old men. It was a matinee. There were five people in it. And two old people behind me, their phone went off during Tommy Lee Jones closing monologue. At that point, I was like, I can't go to a two o'clock in the afternoon show. I get to follow this movie. That's hilarious. So I gave up from there on. Being divorced from pop culture, I don't have to keep up with whatever's coming out. As it comes out, I can watch it six months later and have the conversation with myself, if not, you know. I still... Anyone else? My film extensibility is I still adhere to the O2R theory. Like, if I can't name the director, who's also the writer, director, and maybe producer, I'm just not interested. So I only have like five directors... And what stillman's only going to come out every five years? There you go. And Edward Burns and Nicole Olaf Center. And... And Wes Anderson, of course. Yeah. And I was going to say Spike Lee, but really I gave up on him after three movies. And this would be another case of what I still don't have any... I got through most of she's got to have it recently. So it was on the cable? I haven't watched that since it was 1980. I couldn't finish it. But I admire the story behind it. House party on the other hand. House party was on actually pretty recently. Awesome. And the same thing. They were writers, directors, producers. They're just a time of my life, a young time, obviously, where I watched that... Watched House party daily. You're on grape or red? I don't know what was so compelling about the movie. And a few John Hughes movies I did the same... Also, that's what's compelling. It's so good. It's great. It's a team comedy. But, you know, they're just not team-free. Is it smart about it or not smart about it? Oh, yeah, no, no. It's a smart movie. But I can sit with it right now. And our aspects of it were full forces, you know. Yeah. They're rants. And you could see them catching themselves and realizing what they're saying is completely absurd. It's a smart movie. I think like Robin Harris. The team movies with parties in them, I always liked a lot, I think. Because I just always wanted to throw a party like that. But do you remember that kid? I threw a few, but... The literary team parties instead. We call them the Pepsi parties. And I gave these people so much soda. It was ridiculous. But so, you know, maybe, I don't know, were they legendary like those, maybe not. Blow the house off. Yeah. How about the roof off? I still like to throw a good party. I mean, now even now that there's a Pepsi, but I like, you know... But you have gin. So you do a little gin. I like to have a, you know, you go to these people's houses where they don't have something ready to go. You know, I don't know why. Because the Barefoot Contessa says, have something ready to go. And so when I throw up, when I have people over, I'm always torn between, how do you balance taking the coat and getting the beverage? Because people don't want to be with a coat and they don't want an empty hand. So you really need a backup person. Is this something your wife's got the great skill in with the whole money? Well, she taught me about how you just present somebody with sparkling wine at the door. You know, you don't even wait around for this because it's agony. Not for you anyway. You know, it's, but I'm a party. You know, everyone's not happy and it's like, just get me something. I've been on the wagon for a year now, almost. If I were going to pick one bottle of wine to, you know, fall off the wagon with, you know, do you have any recommendations or do we need to contact your bride? You need to contact that story because the characters go off to Greece on this one trip. And it's the first, now I've been on a couple of them, but the character, it's his very first, and it also was my very first, you know, outside of the, actually really, I didn't even do any in the US, but sort of first international trip like that. And these things go on all the time. Either a government institution, you know, trade commission that's interested in getting export business going. Sure. We'll send professionals off to these regions to meet winemakers, eat the food, and, and with any law tourism. Yeah, right, you know, because they'll send journalists, maybe they'll write something about it. When they send, you know, wine buyers and only restaurant people, then the hope is you like it so much, you want to bring it, put it on a list, and then they have some business going on. And so, but every so often, a non-trade person will get to sneak in, like a spouse. And so I got to do that, and then this character gets to do it. But it inspires him to then want to move back into this, this world of imagining restaurants that he does, you know, that he's always, it's, this, this faux career that he's had while he's been adjuncting. But the wine would be a Greek wine, and it would be, right now, I don't know if it'll be the one, when the air date goes, maybe it'll have to bleep this out. But Costco has this, this one, Alpha State, Xeno Mavro, it's the grave. And they go to the swiner in the story. And I was just so, I've seen it on a couple of lists in Chicago. The purple pig has, when they opened, like, I don't know, two or three, four years ago, they had this really interesting Greek wine list, which made no sense because the, I don't know what the connection is, the people that owned it had had Cajun restaurant. And the Italians that had, like, heaven on seven, I don't know if you remember that. So I'm not really sure what the interest was in Greek, but I was so happy to see it. And then, so for a while, you can get it there. And now, my wife opened this restaurant. She has a pretty good Greek list. And what's the name of her restaurant? It's called the boarding house. Because it was once a boarding house, this building, which we discovered. The historical society, but better than a smallpox asylum or something like that. Restaurants probably follow the opposite direction of stories, or at least how I think a story should be told, where it's almost like, if you said, with a book, I want to fill, like, you bound a book of blank pages. And you said, I want to fill it. And then you tried to find something that fit the space. It's not how it goes. Like, you have a story, and you see how it goes, you shape it and make it the shape. And I guess a shape could be kind of, you could take that in different metaphoric directions. So maybe the story is round. And the book happened to have been rectangular. Not that anybody has done a circular book lately, but-- Martin Yoluski probably will. But again, metaphorically speaking, the round thing, you couldn't have fit it into this box. Sure. Had you not known what it was going to look like. But in restaurants, they do start with a building. Or they start with investors that say, we want to open a place. So it seems totally counterintuitive to what I know, where they start with the end of product and try to retroactively build it. And so one of the concepts, the demo concepts, the working concepts, I guess you could say, at one point, was to do something like 1890s. And a restaurant scooped them and opened up, and it was met terribly. So the comments that came in were like, well, there was no refrigeration. And so we're eating, and it didn't seem like it would have any kind of power beyond that initial sort of novelty idea. So they got away from that, which was nice. And the other place, I don't know how they're doing, but somebody else failed for shit. The scoop and the blog culture is just crazy, because in terms of local dining. Yeah, journalists trying to find stories. You know, they hadn't announced anything, and some journalist, not on the internet, a print journalist actually discovered that they had filed for whatever, to get the platinum, I don't know if the restaurant equivalent would like a platinum, or something that related to some, they needed some public record information that they're building. And somehow this journalist found out and went and said, I'm going to break this story. You're opening a restaurant. You're opening a restaurant, and, you know, it's stronger. Of course, in Chicago, it has to be. Again, everything has got to be something sort of racking around here. So they're crawling around, looking for information. Bloggers are after things. You have now, you have informants in the restaurant. Whether it's staff, you know, they somehow found one of the wait staff, a blogger did, and got to get some lines. Interested in what the motif's going to be, the menu? Well, no, they're after gossipy stuff. So they went through a chef change already, and, you know, it was odd that it stayed quiet until the actual day when they, you know, when the one chef left. But then immediately, you know, somehow this one blogger got the story, and we all said, how? You know, who told her? And the chef, you know, he didn't strike me as the kind of like online guy. I was like, would he even know she'd interviewed him once? I was like, would he even know how to contact her again? And then was it a waiter that? And, you know, not that it matters, but it's kind of funny that, yeah, there are these people dialed in. Devoted to financial. People, a lot of free time on their hands. I'm telling, and I'm a guy who does a literary podcast every two weeks, and I still find people to be too, too focused on oddball pursuits, I guess. I don't know. I think the same thing plagues, you know, the books, because, you know, people will want to hear, it's true. Yeah, yeah, what they sell. Yeah, well, well, that business side, definitely. But then even in the story, you know, wide, you know, it was fine. But the editor was actually trying to point me nothing with the content. But, you know, there were, like, we were discussing, like, a bio, and she wanted me to leave out some of the, like, alpinist details that... Your wife? Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, some of the things, you know, that sort of, like, were too parallel, and she's like, she's trying to be protected. I was like, I was like, why not? Yeah. I guess, you know, get up here. Thank you. They're both comfortable with it. It draws you to the book, why not? Turns into a selling point. Speaking of, how do you promote a book nowadays, besides going on the premier literary, cultural podcast recorded by me? Which is wonderful. There are other ones. But yeah, how do you go about promoting nowadays, and what have you learned from your book select experience to promote your own work? I think so much of it is now tied to social media. Mm-hmm. You know, these people with huge Twitter followings, real ones, are, they, people like that. You know, the readers can interact with you. It's, I don't remember that perfectly cleary book. The Dear Mr. Henshaw. No, it didn't read it, but... Well, so it was about this little, you know, this little kid who just tried sending us a letter to an author that writes back once, and then, never again. But what the boy discovers is journaling. So you're talking to somebody that actually talking to anybody. So he transitions from the fan letter to a life in prose. Oh, no, but you're going towards assassinating John Lennon or something. No, he does not show up with a Dear Mr. Henshaw in a pocket. Yeah. Yeah. So, but what's, what, I just, you know, there was that time before the Internet where you had no interaction with authors. You didn't know them. Maybe there was a picture. Maybe not. And now we're seeing their lives and, you know, in the cases when people respond, you can actually talk to these people. You know, I mean, how many people on Facebook? I mean, I'll, you know, I like, I like everybody. I'll write back, you know, but, you know, you have others that won't do it. And we get there still around. So Twitter gives you, I'm thinking, like, Joyce Caroloads is new Twitter feed, which is fascinating. Yeah. And so pedestrian and a little sloppy, you know, like... You see these real things that you wouldn't be exposed to. You see typos and... Yeah. Or just, or just that idea that, you know, this was logged, you know, today two hours ago. And so I think that the social media is really the... I'm always shocked when I hear a writer I know isn't doing it. Or, or, and you can't fake it, which is the other interesting thing. Just in terms of only plugging your stuff and not really... Or once in a while. I know. Yeah. So, I mean, that's your work in that thing every day in a real way. So not just, because if you try to advertise everyday, people will be turned off by that. But you really have to have some kind of persona on this thing where you are, you know, letting people in on... And again, it's all about balance. So it can't be too much process because nobody... I don't know, I unfollow those people that are talking about writing all the time. So it's like, it's the worst topic. Because I got to do this myself. It's a terrible topic. Because, you know, it's just, it's so... It's so, it's a weird time out, like, with habits. I mean, they're so... They're so specific to the person that... I'm fascinated to hear them. Like, I'll sit and listen to anybody talk about any of that stuff all day long. But I just wanted to do a reader. Like, what is, what, you know... Can the beach? So, the people that do Twitter well and somehow find the way to bridge the craft and just the life. You know, I think they want to see a shopping cart occasionally. They want to see a dinner table. Jim Agonary does really well. And it plays into, you know, what he's writing these days. And if anything that I've just discovered... And maybe this also helps promotion. It's just how apolitical you really should be. Like, you know, I couldn't do that kind of incendiary Twitter thing. One of the worst aspects of the Bush administration to me, beyond the trillion dollar wars, torture and everything else, was a sheer amount of incredibly shitty art. It generated from people who protested the Bush administration. Artists who'd otherwise think had perfectly good instincts and were great writers produced awful, awful work because they were so incensed by this administration. So, yeah. That ties into what I'm thinking about how you can't... You know, you think, like, I have this power. It was an interesting Philip Roth line. And I married a Communist that I was looking at recently about, you know, something that was like, that art... It was, it was, I remember it well. And it was the Zuckerman with the teacher that inspired him. He just did a profile about him in the New York Times yesterday. Yeah. Oh, you know, Roth wrote about the teacher who inspired him, who was the model for the character in "I Married a Communist." It's so weird. Yeah, I thought that's where you were leading to that. No, I did a thing. As they had a Columbia College, they'd do "Story a Week." And they had... They recruited a bunch of writers to go in on last night and read Chicago stuff. And I chose that because, you know, that character goes to the universe of Chicago. And, you know, nobody thinks of Philip Roth as a Chicago writer, but a couple of the books do have really quality bits here. Scenes, bits, sounds like a stand-up thing. And so I did, I did it something out of that, because everybody else came with whatever, stored dieback or whatever. And I thought it was... I actually thought somebody else would beat me to it, and nobody else did a Roth. And so I did that. So I remember... So I was working this a couple of paragraphs from that section over and over to rehearse them. So that's only why it's so present in mind. But the teacher goes... So the Roth character, Zuckermann. It has done these political radio plays and brings one to the teacher. And the teacher is outraged that a writer would think that the art would be some kind of... I don't know, voice for something else. So he says, "Art is in the service of art." And that reminded me of just how much I... Probably exactly that problem that these people wanted to speak about something. It wasn't, but then maybe the work rejects it. As it happened with Roth, he wrote Exit and Ghost, which hands down is one of the worst novels he'd ever written. And I think that's because he was trying to tackle something about the Bush regime. He just is a work of fiction. He just couldn't grasp. It's a terrible book. I could say this because, you know, I'm a big Philip Roth geek myself. But, you know... Yeah, it was truly amazing how we let, you know, bad politics, in fact, art that way. But I'm not sure where it goes now. As Philip Roth, you also cite Saul Bello in the epigrams for vintage attraction. Any other Jews that are really influential on you or are the writers I should ask? I mean, you know, more contemporary. I mean, Jonathan Saffron for, I was thought... I got him to contribute to main theology, in fact. You know, always, I mean, those are some good... I like, you know, I was... I sort of had a, you know, a circuitous route into the religion. You know, obviously brought up in Bar Mitzvah and everything. But, I mean, it took a while in between, say, like, Bar Mitzvah and, I don't know, mid-20s to really want to have, to identify with it. And I think, you know, those... Did the literature push you in that direction? I think the literature really helped. And, you know, for what it's worth. Because I think, I think, you know, religion probably has no place in literature. But yet, cultural pieces. Yeah, again, cultural religion as opposed to... Really, really pop, yeah, trying to present something. Which is nice about the Jewish religion, that it's not interested in. It doesn't need any extra people. So, where the literature may, you know, in some cases, be, I don't know, something that's sort of proselytizing. We just don't... we don't have that. But it was really... it was really realizing that it was cultural versus... It hasn't been recorded at all. It was really realizing that there was a culture to it that then made me okay with it. Like, these are aspects that inform some decisions. I've tried to give this character some odd stuff. But it's all, you know, really that... What I always called myself the atheistic Jew. I had Zen Judaism as my great one. But really what that just means is that you're culturally attached to it. So you get some of it, but you're not... The anxiety and the rosis, but not the sense of being chosen. Or letting everybody down because you were chosen. And if you don't, it's both novel characters. The first one doesn't really... It refers to some Jewish things so you can, you know, interpolate. This one, you know, more explicitly. And not really analysis it, but you know, it's more explicit to the character that he's a member of the tribe. But, you know, it does... it does... you kind of almost need that because if you do have this neurotic, you know, self-douder... It just makes sense. Well, this is going to be. So if you don't say it, then somebody's going to just assume it anyway. You know, then maybe you're... I think that's one of those cases where we tend to see things in characters that, you know, other people just don't get. Why would you say he's Jewish? Because he's obviously... You know, maybe we're overeating into these things. But who else do you read who's not Jewish? What Goish writers do you dig? I just... I really try to read a lot of contemporary... I try to read my peers, you know, I'm not peers. I'm sorry. You know, 'cause I just... I find it necessary and comforting just to see what else is going on. You know, I mean, you make these choices and the thing until, like, this, you know, obviously hasn't really entered the world yet, the new book, but I don't know. I don't, you know, I don't go to a lot of different people early on. And so you're just, you know, you're kind of... I always... I'm trying to look in contemporary literature. I mean, but I mean, like, extremely contemporary. Like, the thing is also coming out this year. Just to see, like, look for some kind of... I don't know, a little, like, just a little justification. You know, so I see a move that reminds me of something I did that at least safety numbers may be. You can say, like, that wasn't a bad choice to make. So, I don't know if you've read about Alyssa Nutting. I have no idea who that is. She won... I'm sure which prize, but for a short story collection. Now, it has this novel that was going to come out in July and may, you know, it's like into Lolita. It's... It's... To sell it to give a quote on Woody Allen character. It's very racy. And what... I mean, absolutely amazing. It's so... The kind of thing. I mean, so it's about this 26-year-old, very beautiful middle school teacher that happens to, like, to sleep with her male students. Sometimes. Which is happening an awful lot in the courts and news. But it is just absolutely brilliant. So, I mean, this is the only book in a category recently where I am so... I was so brought into it, kept in it, and it, you know, it reverberated afterward. And in these ways that other things, you know, may be hugely meaningful at the time. But then you close and put them on the shelf and, you know, pieces may remain with you. But also not... So, you know, it was just... This is where I go. You know, people say, "What should I read?" You know, you want to read what's... I think... Well, now, for this is a writerly piece of advice. I mean, read what... Read your comp titles to use a trade term. Otherwise, how do you know them? So, I get... And so, back into the book slot stuff, you know, you get these emails sometimes directly from the writers and say, "You know, this... It's almost as... It's almost as though they're, like, pitching agents, then, you know, these things have been out there. They've self-published them or whatever. But then you're pitching book review sites. Same thing. It never stops. It's the same... Yeah. And, you know, from the agent goes to then pitching editors, same sort of, you know, things required. And so, once in a while, you know, I got an email the other day where this guy was like, you know, it's like... I mean, you know, just named five, you know, canonical texts. And I wanted to write back and say, "Those are not your comp titles." 'Cause you can't say, "I loved..." Well, he did reference Moby Dick, actually. Yeah, it's not 'cause you're not selling to... That's different, sir. You're not going to be on the back list, sir. You said, "It's like Melville and Hawthorne." But now you can't because that's just delusional. 'Cause it's a marketplace delusional. Maybe there are even, you know... Oh, artistic beliefs. Probably delusional, too. Yeah, 'cause if you're going... And so, you know, there couldn't be, like, five of them. I mean, you could say, "I rewrote..." Actually, a colleague of mine, an old teacher at Boulder, rewrote Pierre, which, you know, speaking of the books that are terrible. I mean, no Melville book got worse. Wasn't that kind of... The Confidence Man is one of the all-time worst novels I've ever read, so I'm sure Pierre is terrible. But this was the good novel that got the horrible reviews. Yeah. And so... But so he rewrote a... Jeffrey Deshelde into a book called Peter. And... So you can get away with that for one. I mean, if it's that kind of allegory, or it's... The Directory of Britain. Yeah, what did Lance Olson rewrote? These were all my old, you know... What were they? The experimental writers? The avant-garde? Yeah. Avant-pop, I think they called them as level and point. Okay. And, you know, I'm not as tied to their work or... Well, you know, I'm not as tied to that anymore. Just because, you know, I'm... My stories, the stories I want to tell are not those, you know? I don't want to rewrite something else. Okay. It actually sounds like it'd be a fun project for somebody's, you know, not doing anything, like to start rewriting. Yeah, it starts getting... Like, doing amissus of something. Oh, it's going to say you're getting a boar-haste territory there. Yeah. But I'm not, you know, I didn't need that... I don't need to play with form right now. If anything, I just think that the book's more challenging than it is not worrying about that, because then you really only have the story to, you know, float the whole thing, whereas, you know, something, you know, a deconstruction of something. I think a good analogy would be maybe, like, like, you know, restaurants do this, molecular gastronomy. You know, you can... So it's not necessarily going to be delicious, but you can... You can hope, maybe, part of it is, and also then somebody is really interested in the package. But if you just make a normal thing, it can only be... It has to be just edible and understandable. So, I don't know, maybe... Yeah, it's sort of... Yeah, I think it was more of an interesting challenge to me. So, like, how do you tell the story? Yeah, I don't know. Short vignette. You know, I don't... I don't like to be just... I think I maybe tell the story of the way I like to read a story, which is how everybody should, which is that is John Gardner. I was referencing this earlier. With the vivid, continuous dream, you know? I don't want to call attention to the machinery anymore. I don't know that I even did the first thing. You know, even some people read that book and said... That it wasn't so experimental. It's other than being an internal monologue that had no punctuation. And no punctuation in the very earliest draft of maybe all one paragraph. I had to make some concession. And there was the readability aspect of this stuff. But what I thought was so interesting about that... And it, you know, it came from, obviously... I mean, Su-Connect did a little, but I mean, certainly, you know, the joys... You know, Ulysses, at least the first instance I can think of... Stream of Consciousness with no punctuation. What I thought was so interesting about it was that it looked like, you know, like one of those stand in front of the thing and eventually see the sailboat, which I can never get to work. But, you know, you stare at it initially and you start initially. You know, like, I can't read this and then suddenly... And it's happened to a lot of readers. I mean, I was able to do this, obviously. And I've had other readers that aren't even, you know, die-hard readers. Just eventually, just say, "Oh, my God, this moment happened." And I was able to read that cryptic-looking. Because I see the punctuation in it. And what's interesting, too, is anyway, if I went and, you know, when I'd, you know, read stuff aloud, people always were surprised that I read it in a normal pace with punctuation. They thought it was just me racing through it. That I'd be racing through it. And you also, you know, there's almost kind of a poetic, like an enjambment going on where you would enjamb things in different ways, like without the punctuation, to tell you where to stop. That conventional stuff has, where you could, you know, sort of do, you know, a little magnetic poetry of sentences within, you know, sentences and find some of those. I think, like, where you'd emphasize something where you wouldn't have, again, if the punctuation was there to dictate, this is parenthetical by the, you know, this is a non-restrictive clause. Without that, you know, you're just, the brain has to just do it or not do it. And then maybe different, completely different readings are available within one text. But that's not a form in which you're interested in that. Now that we talk about it, I would have to go back to it. Not interested in it all anymore. Yeah. Because I'm just, now I'm, now I just consider myself a storyteller. So I don't need to make things happen on the page other than within the story. And there are some, there are still effects, right? I mean, you know... I have to learn that craft as opposed to the... Yeah. ...that stream of consciousness dominating, or that form dominating everything else you're trying to achieve. Yeah. And there's, you know, and that's the challenge, too. Like, I can do a guy's head, you know, I can do a person living in an internal monologue. But then how do you, how do you, what do you do? You kind of want a character that then isn't doing that for the next thing. And this guy is, you know, he, he doesn't obsess really, I don't think. But he's, the story, again, the story dictating all these concerns, dictating character, too. The story doesn't really allow him a lot of time to sit around. He doesn't have four weeks, too. I don't like that ugly, navel-gazing term. But, you know, he's, he's, he's in a busy world. So, and again, so that's, that's what's interesting to me. I'm just operating, I'm operating in the service of the story, and then the characters, I used to start with character. Maybe I did in this case, I don't really remember anymore. But I would always say it all starts with character, and then character dictates a story, dictates a style, dictates, you know, the end result. This, yeah, must have started with character. I don't know, it was a long time ago. And what are you working on next without jinxing yourself? I have been in this project that I don't know what I'll ever be able to make anything out of. But it began with these characters that I started writing as a high schooler. And so I did a substantial amount of, of work with, with these characters and their routines. And then I kept trying to rework that, you know, as I was older, I actually, I think they turned in a version of it as, as my grad school thesis. And then I was trying to sell it for a while and, you know, nobody's into it. Because they were, it was kind of like our way of discussion. They were two, they were, they were 20 at the time in the story. So they were too old, too young as for me, you know, like a, like a serious adult book, and too old for YA. So, and, and the, and the entire voice was off, but I didn't know that part yet. So, and there were, you know, three characters. And so I, I eventually, you know, tried a version where I dumped one of them and had the other two absorb his stuff. And then made them a little younger thinking that maybe there was, maybe there was, you know, truly like 17-year-olds up. So, so, but nothing really happened with that. It just kind of sits, but I like the time period and it's almost 20 years ago. And so I thought, and then I ended up returning to the female character at other points when I just wasn't doing anything else. And at one point, like, generated like a number of, set like several hundred pages of this female character when she was like in her early 30s. I don't, I, I just haven't been able to like sit with it to see what's going on it, but I thought what would be interesting would be to somehow see if I could combine the version of this character when she was in her teens, you know, maybe at this like 20-year-letter point. And see what I can do, but I have, you know, I just, it had, it's, it's sitting and I haven't really gone to it. And I don't know, maybe the, maybe the answer is just go to something completely new. But I, we always hear these stories about, you know, whatever writers have kind of banging around their heads. And so, if anything did come with that, I would be able to say is sort of banging around in some like, in co-at state for a very long time. A lot of things need to get, you know, it's, it's, just station is weird, isn't it? Because some things come together so quickly and for no good reason. And other things spent 20 years avoiding it. And then last night I sat down and wrote two thousand words. So, you know, it, it happened. Jamie Attenberg described the middle scenes recently as coming that way where it was a story that was in her head for, I don't know if it was 20 years, but I mean, like, a decade at least, I forgot. And then sat down, whatever summer she did it, like had the, you know, had a draft in summer and, and has gone on to be, I think she called like her favorite of her books. Certainly, as far as I can see from the reviewer side of things, like the most successful, is it is it legal to say success? I think you guys don't want to be successful. Everybody's afraid of the word, you know, like it's a, oh, I just think there's no successful writers. I assume. Right. That's, that's, you know, again, it's won't be selling vintage attraction in a few months. We'll make a successful writer out of it. I think it's possible. Yeah. I think it, let's see. It looks, it looks like something I purchased. It's a beautiful cover. It's a beautiful book. We'll tell people when it's out. You'll, you'll see. Charles Blackstone, author of vintage attraction and the week you weren't here. Thank you so much for coming on the virtual memory show. Thank you so much for having me. And that was Charles Blackstone. You can find vintage attraction in your favorite bookstore now. We should all have a favorite bookstore and more info on Charles at CharlesBlackstone.com. I will be back next week with a great conversation with Roger Langridge, a cartoonist who sort of became a poster boy for creators rights and comics recently. We have a really fun conversation about his history and how he became an all ages cartoonist when that wasn't exactly where he started. We also talk about how we got the job of illustrating the Muppets comic, which is an absolute blast. Until next time, I am Gil Roth and you are awesome. Keep it that way. [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC ENDS] [BLANK_AUDIO]