Author of SAINT OF THE NARROWS STREET, SHOOT THE MOONLIGHT OUT, CITY OF MARGINS, A FRIEND IS A GIFT YOU GIVE YOURSELF, THE LONELY WITNESS, EVERYTHING IS BROKEN, DEATH DON'T HAVE NO MERCY, and GRAVESEND
I made a playlist for my novel Gravesend and it’s up at Largehearted Boy, my favorite site around. I love the Book Notes series, and I’m really honored to be included.
Currently listening to: Jesse Winchester, s/t; Reigning Sound, Live at Goner Records; Rachel’s, Music for Egon Schiele; The Afghan Whigs, Do the Beast; Mirah, Changing Light.
Watching: Caught up on Mad Men season 6 and think it’s my favorite so far, which is saying a hell of a lot. Saw Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel and thought it was goddamn perfect. Love the review on Letterboxd that starts this way: “The Grand Budapest Hotel is the film with which Wes Anderson finally answers his critics, and the message could not be clearer or more immaculately embossed in Futura on an insert shot of the most delicate stationary: ‘Go fuck yourselves.'” Nails it.
Really excited that my story, “Shoveling Out,” won Memphis Magazine’s Fiction Contest. Here’s the announcement on their 901 blog. The story will be in the June issue.
Here’s Kevin Young talking about Book of Hourson NPR recently.
And here’s his “Ode to Ol’ Dirty Bastard,” one of my favorite poems of his.
2. The Southern Literary Festival starts tomorrow. Lots of good stuff lined up for that, too. I’m teaching a fiction master class on Saturday morning at 9. I’ll be talking about writing advice from Richard Price, David Milch, Don Carpenter, Flannery O’Connor, Nelson Algren, and a bunch of other stuff. The Isom Student Gender Conference is happening simultaneously, and I can’t wait for Laura Lippman’s Friday keynote: “When Harriet the Spy Grew up: Feminism and the Second Golden Age of American Crime Fiction.” And the great Megan Abbott is giving the Southern Literary Festival’s keynote right after that.
4. That ’80s Dylan tribute is out. Hit or miss but worth it for these tracks: Craig Finn, “Sweetheart Like You”; Built to Spill, “Jokerman”; Hannah Cohen, “Covenant Woman”; and Elvis Perkins, “Congratulations.”
5. Angel Olsen – Live on KEXP. Man.
6. Spent Saturday at The End of All Music spinning the Merge reissue of one of my all-time favorite records, Richard Buckner’s Bloomed.
9. Joe Hill said this about The Fall on Twitter the other day: “In a golden age of TV, Gillian Anderson drops a steely, quietly commanding performance [. . .] to match the very best of the day.” Completely agree. Easily one of the best things I’ve watched lately. Anderson is fucking incredible. It’s streaming on Netflix.
10. Rectify is also streaming on Netflix now. One of my top two or three shows from the last few years. Ray McKinnon rules.
11. Haven’t read much Harlan Coben – this TimesBy the Book feature really makes me like him.
13. Got to see David Gordon-Green’s Joe at a screening here in Oxford last week. Thought it was top-notch. His best movie since George Washington. Nic Cage and Tye Sheridan were damn good, but the non-actors stole it. Just a great take on one of my favorite books.
16. Other things I’m listening to: New one from The Hold Steady, Teeth Dreams, is killer. I was pretty lukewarm on Heaven is Whenever, so I’m glad to have them back. Paradise of Bachelors just reissued Lavender Country – So damn good. Can’t stop spinning Bob Mould’s Workbook 25 from Omnivore. Got it on CD for the bonus stuff on the second disc. Been listening to Crooked Fingers’s Dignity and Shame for the first time in a long time. Almost forgot how goddamn perfect this song is:
17. Finally watched The Counselor last night. Thought it was way better than most folks said but also felt pretty let down. Couldn’t sleep and watched West of Memphis, too. A brutal and beautiful documentary. Finished it around 3 in the morning and got into bed next to my wife and son and just held them.
Some of my favorite Dylan records – Oh Mercy, Infidels, Shot of Love, Saved, and Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1 – are from the ’80s and I’ve been listening lately to a lot of stuff I’ve neglected for too long (aside from a few tracks here and there) – Empire Burlesque, Knocked Out Loaded, Down in the Groove, and Under the Red Sky. Looking forward to this tribute. Jonathan Lethem’s liner notes are killer.
“Most of these choices were likely to disenchant a thousand fans for every one they enchanted – specifically, of course, these gestures were destined to disenchant those who’d begun listening to Dylan in the ’60s and hung on through at least the first half of the ’70s. In retrospect, they were gestures of freedom as well as confusion, gestures of self-possession and self-reinvention, explorations of what exactly it meant to be an Icarus who’d survived and now had to become part of a small tribe inventing what it was to be an aging rock ‘n’ roller.” -Lethem on ’80s Dylan
1. Read at Nightbird Books in Fayetteville last weekend. Hell of a good town. Had a great time. Thanks to Rachael, Cale, Katy, and everyone who came out. Thanks especially to Lisa at Nightbird. Also got to spend a little time at Dickson Street Bookshop. What a bookstore! Only had about fifteen minutes, but I found some great stuff. Impossible not to in that joint. Can’t wait to go back and spend a few hours there.
“You get beat up in life, and you get sucker-punched, and bad things happen. If you keep an open heart and don’t get bitter and you keep trying, then shit will break your way once in a while. I really try to believe that all the time. So I think the characters kind of reflect that.”
“And I tend to try to write as a fan. I’m a firm believer in being a fan of things. I try to write with blood, you know, with the things that haunt me the most.”
7. Jason Molina passed away a year ago yesterday. Still tears out my guts that he’s gone. Here’s an essay I wrote for The Rumpusabout how much his work has meant to me.
8. Happy St. Paddy’s Day. This is just about my favorite song/poem ever. And this performance drops me every damn time.
9. Recently picked up one of my favorite movies, Rolling Thunder, on Blu-Ray. Watched it with pals Ace Atkins, Jack Pendarvis, and Megan Abbott for our movie night on Saturday. Ace’s wife, Angela, shared some North Carolina moonshine with us. Best thing I’ve ever had. No kidding. Was having some killer wisdom tooth pain and it got cured. After a killer dinner and the moonshine, we rewatched the Root Beer Guy episode of Adventure Time (Jack writes for the show and voices RBG). Then we settled in for Rolling Thunder – I think I was the only one who’d seen it before – and it was goddamn wonderful. Shout!Factory did a great job with the Blu-Ray. John Flynn is a hell of a good director but there were times when the movie looked as beautiful as a William Eggleston photo. And Linda Haynes, well, we all got a little obsessed with Linda Haynes.
Moonshine.
Linda Haynes and William Devane in ROLLING THUNDER.
Hosho McCreesh’s A Deep & Gorgeous Thirst was one of my favorite books of 2013, the kind of poetry collection I don’t stumble across that often, the kind that hits like a freight train and makes me want to drink and drink and be alive forever. It’s a book that feels a lot like being bombed with pals on a night when nothing can go wrong. These poems pass in a wonderful blur: glasses and bottles are lifted, good times are had, rough times are dealt with, the world is pieced together.
Here’s a favorite passage from an early poem: “It’s a slow, easy night, / a safe night even, / and the lights of the city / glister like remnant embers / of all you’ve burned away / in your mad and / drunken joy.”
And here’s another one: “You’re all righteously / shit-faced, and even though / you all have jobs and school / and responsibilities tomorrow, / no one gives a shit tonight, / tonight you’ve all said / to hell with worrying / and even if you’re / hungover, you figure / you’ll just deal with it / tomorrow.” These poems get inside exactly what it means to feel like that.
I could go on and on, just picking lines and passages that I fucking love. It’s hard to read these poems without a bottle in front of me. It’s like knowing my friends are out at the bar and I’m stuck at work. Okay, shit, here’s one more: “And the truth is / things just made more sense when, years ago, / everyone kept a bottle / in their desk, or they / carried a little flask, or / had a couple cocktails / at lunch, or, on a hot / afternoon they’d / order a beer / if they needed one, / or a Tom Collins, / or maybe a salty dog, / just something to / take the stink of / goddamned work / off the day, / just to put the / shine back on the / afternoon, / and just to feel like they were alive / again amidst all / the dull and / incessant / doom.”
It’s not that there’s no pain in these poems. The loss of a close friend haunts the narrator and and he’s filled with regret about all that he’s missed, but it’s a relief to have someone write an extended ode to booze like this. It’s not about the narrator’s life going down the crapper. It’s about love, about the wonder and mystery of drunkenness, and it gets it right. Sure, I’ve had some dark days under the bottle – and so does the narrator – but mostly drinking is about joy and hope and communion.
A Deep & Gorgeous Thirst is a beautiful book about something we too often see portrayed as the source of all bad luck and trouble. It’s goddamn uplifting. Now, fuck it, I’m going to the bar and I’m bringing these poems with me and I’m letting them sing straight to my drunken heart.
****
Also, in honor of A Deep & Gorgeous Thirst and this blog tour, McCreesh and I kept track of everything we drank this past weekend:
And McCreesh is giving away a DrunkSkull Survival Kit (50 bucks worth of prizes). The Kit includes:
-a copy of the book
-a recycled wine-bottle glass with the DrunkSkull logo on it
-a jar of Fiery Gardens Artisan Jams & Jellies,
-a DrunkSkull fridge magnet,
-some stickers
-temporary tattoos
-a coaster
-a patch
I’m going to be in Fayetteville, Arkansas this weekend. I’m giving a keynote, “Seeking With Groans: Revival and Redemption in Walter Mosley’s RL’s Dream,” on Saturday afternoon at the University of Arkansas’s Annual GSE Conference. And I’m reading from Gravesend at 6:30 at Nightbird Books. Really pumped for this. Thanks to old pal Rachael Price for making it happen. If you’re nearby, it’d be swell to see you.
A few other things I’ve been meaning to post:
1. Here’s Gravesend in the window at Square Books. So fucking cool to see (and to have the best cover).
2. Here’s a noir bookmark the Oxford Public Library made up. Ha. Not sure how I wound up on this list but I’ll take the hell out of it.
3. Bummed to miss AWP, especially the reading I was supposed to do at Left Bank Books with Scott McClanahan, Noah Cicero, Patrick Wensink, Stephen Graham Jones, J. David Osborne, and a bunch of other great writers. But it was nice to see this shot of David at the book fair pop up on Facebook over the weekend.
Yusuf Hawkins was killed twenty-five years ago in Bensonhurst. “The N Train,” an essay I wrote about discovering evil through that tragedy, is up today at TROP.
And, on a not altogether unrelated note, my review of Willy Vlautin’s The Free, a beautiful novel that tries to make sense of injustice, is up at Los Angeles Review of Books.
1. Thanks to Will Byrnes for this kind & thoughtful review of GRAVESEND. Made my day.
Especially appreciated this part:
“While the bulk of the story is dark, there are some rays of light. Good can be found, although more in thought than deed. Hope digs its way back up to the surface, allowing for some second chances. Alessandra’s affection for a particular painting at the Met can be seen both as an artistic inspiration and an omen. Her participation in various forms of Manhattan life lifts her spirits. After all, she did manage to make it out to the west coast. But hope had better move quickly before another body lands on it.”
(And thanks so much to everyone who has taken time to write a review.)
2. My favorite writer in the world, Willy Vlautin, read here in Oxford on Thursday night. Got to meet him finally – I’ve been a huge fan since I found The Motel Life and Northline at a bookstore in the Bronx in 2008, and we’ve e-mailed back and forth over the last few years, ever since I interviewed him for the Yalobusha Review. Goddamn, he’s the greatest guy I ever met, and I was trying not to geek out on him too much. He read on Thacker Mountain Radio, which was great, but I selfishly wish he’d done a solo reading, so he could’ve read longer and played a few songs and done a Q&A. But he read one of my favorite scenes from The Free, Jo opening up to Pauline in the hospital, and he played “The Kid from Belmont Street,” (the first song he plays here), which is about Jo. (Also check out “43”and “A Letter to the Patron Saint of Nurses” from We Used to Think the Freeway Sounded Like a River, songs that reveal where ideas for The Free originated.) We hung out after the reading at City Grocery with Willy – pals Tom & Beth Ann, Jimmy, Andy, Brendan, Cody were there too – and then a few of us went to dinner at Bouré. Man, what a great night. We talked about Jim Thompson and David Goodis and Charles Willeford and Ann Patchett and Pink Floyd and Tom Petty and The Motel Life movie and so mu ch great stuff it’s hard to call it all back up. Jimmy, Andy, Brendan and I walked Willy back to his hotel around midnight, and one of my favorite things was Jimmy asking Willy if Jo was alright. “No, man,” Willy said. “I don’t think she is. I’m sorry.”
Here’s a picture that Jimmy snapped at Bouré of Willy, Brendan, and me:
3. I read at the public library here in Oxford on Thursday. Thanks to Laura Beth, Sarah, Andy, and everyone who came out – I had such a great time. I was nervous as hell about doing my first Q&A, but I think it went pretty well. Here are some pictures the library posted (my son, Eamon, was the real attraction as usual.)
4. I made a soundtrack for Gravesend on Spotify a while ago. You can find it here.
William Boyle 