By drawing events and feelings directly from your own real life, how much of the character of Gabe is you, and how much of him is fiction?

His obsession with women, his masturbatory issues, his thinking God was going to kill him at Armageddon, that’s all me, I went through all that. After doing draft after draft though Gabe became his own person. He’s real to me, but he’s an entity now. What people read now is their interpretation, but when I was writing it he was my bro—if we were in a fight I’d have to throw down to protect Gabe.

Having a story told through the eyes of a teenage protagonist, did you feel the book would be received as a young adults’ title, or does it have certain elements you feel would transcend and connect with broader audiences?

I just think it’s the overall theme of repression. There were some epiphanies in my life where I was like, “We all felt fucked up as kids, and it wasn’t just cause I was a Jehovah’s Witness, it’s cause we were teenagers!” And knowing that I wasn’t alone in this, and getting out and having friends that were outside the Jehovah’s Witness to talk to. So that really helped me, and I workshopped the book with a lot of other writers that have nothing to do with Jehovah’s Witness to make sure it was a compelling story with real characters.

When did writing become an outlet in your life? When did it hit that you felt right doing it?

I would write poetry and short stories when I was younger but it was secular and I was still a Jehovah’s Witness so I didn’t feel writing was right for me then, I felt like I was being a little secretive about it. When I was twenty-one, broke, and living alone I started going to the library and started looking up psychology books to get a grip on what was happening in my life. It was pretty close to the poetry section and I would end up in there reading anthologies of Black jazz poets, and then I found out about the Beat Generation and I found all this stuff that just bypassed me.

I remember the day I called the main library in Burlingame asking for a copy of On The Road. They didn’t have it but another branch did, but they were closing in fifteen minutes. I didn’t have a car so I literally ran across town to check it out cause I knew I had to read it, and that was a breakthrough, it just talked to me like nothing else.

What about it struck a chord?

The authenticity. I think it saved my life to know there’s more to our world than what I had in my limited experience. I knew about punk and music, but man, when words came, when they spoke to me, I was like “Yeah!” They were just hitting me in my heart. It was better than the first time I had sex…and the second time. And actually a lot of times I had sex.

You touched on it at the reading, going to Gilman, watching bands like Operation Ivy, how did punk music and culture have an influence on you?

To be honest, I wasn’t in any way a cool punk. I was always the scared Jehovah’s Witness kid standing in the corner while everyone else was throwing each other, but I kind of liked that scared feeling. I’d thrive off the energy. I used to listen to bands like that all the time on my headphones all through the night, and we were advised as Jehovah’s Witness not to listen to the radio at night because some of “Satan’s music” could get into your head. But I would listen to college radio, and KFJC came in really good when I lived in Millbrae, and I’d just listen to that. And you know what? They were right, satanic music will totally get you out of the Jehovah’s Witness.

During the reading you mentioned there had been some backlash from the religious community, can you delve into that some more?

Unfortunately I think Jehovah’s Witnesses get scared of apostate literature. It’s drilled into you like a prison sodomy rape that you do not read apostate literature, and pretty much anything written about the Jehovah’s Witness that isn’t published by them. So it’s all grouped into this one thing, and they would label me now as an apostate, and that’s fine they can label me whatever they want, but I feel bad that they’re not looking at it and saying, “Let’s see what this book says,” and then afterwards just saying they didn’t agree with it.

But there are teenagers out there that were like me as a kid, and if I found this book as a kid it would be under my mattress along with that Sears lingerie page I pulled out. I wrote this book, and I don’t want to get all Oprah here, but I kind of wrote this book for the child inside, and I wish I could give it to my fourteen year-old self. There’s a lot of people really passionate about it, and I’ve gotten emails from people who say they really connected with it, that they got to laugh at experiences that were really painful.

So to wrap it up I have one more question. Would you consider Jesus your homeboy?

I think he had some good ideas, but he’d probably kick my ass.

Interview and photos by Sean Logic

—————

For information on upcoming readings and to get in touch, visit tonydushane.com.
To keep up on new releases and view their entire catalog, visit the Soft Skull website.

Related posts:

1. Teenage Bottlerocket | They Came From The Shadows
2. Book Release: Imperial, by W.T. Vollmann
3. The Dimatic Dou Club #4

Discussing their experiences in underground publishing, the panelists included veteran zinester John Marr of Murder Can Be Fun, Maximum Rock N’ Roll coordinator and columnist Layla Gibbon, the one woman force behind the long-running comic Bitter Pie, Tena Scalph, and Erick Lyle, best known for his work on SCAM and Turd Filled Donut, who’s new book On The Lower Frequencies collects some of his proudest work from the titles. Moderating the event that night was co-editor of Instant City, Eric Zassenhaus, who opened up the evening with questions of how they became involved in publishing zines. Marr recounted his fascination with strange and bizarre deaths, and how MCBF was created as a chance for him to talk about the gruesome reports he came across.  Lyle responded the zines he put out were the only venue for him to write, explaining, “I was a teenage runaway, I never thought I was going to become a writer.”

Another interesting point in the discussion was Gibbon’s transition in becoming a coordinator for MRR. “I just started off as a reviewer, then I got a column, and then I’m putting it together,” she jokes. “It’s hard to live up to this thing Tim [Yohannan] created.” Other highlights included a full group discussion of print versus web zines, crazy fan mail from county lock-up, and the joys of scamming copies from their local Kinko’s.

The second half of the evening consisted of each creator doing an individual reading. Gibbon had prepared a punk rock manifesto celebrating the likes of artists she’d been influenced by, while Marr relayed some of the essential basics of serial killing he’d come across in his years of research. Erick Lyle delved into the pages of his book, reading an excerpt composed of various fan letters he’d received while publishing his zines, which resulted in an eclectic mix of downtrodden aspirations and rebellious declarations. Scalph was the final reader and passed out copies of the latest issue of Bitter Pie so the audience could read along while she narrated, added sound effects, and on occasion, her own unique breed of comedic commentary. By the end of the night every person left with a zine in their hand and at least a few stories behind them, hopefully with a new appreciation for the art of the underground and its creators.

Words and photos by Sean Logic

MCBF Library
www.instantcity.org
www.bitterpiecomix.com
www.maximumrocknroll.com
www.onthelowerfrequencies.com

Related posts:

1. Goteblud; SF’s Premier Zine Archive
2. Bad Date Zine; Tales of Woe Issue No. 2
3. Ashcan Magazine at SF Zine Fest

BEST EVENTS I DIDN’T GO TO

Somehow I missed these in the program. Plus they were too early, in Phase One of Litcrawl (6 p.m. to 7 p.m.) so I probably would have been late anyway — I’m not quite sure why Litcrawl starts so early. After all, most of the venues are nightspots. At any rate, I missed Threepenny Review’s event at Creativity Explored. Author Louis B. Jones, whose Pushcart Prize-winning story “The Epicurean” is really fantastic, read at the event. I’m sorry I missed him. “The Epicurean” is one of those short stories that manages to feel so expansive, almost novelistic, without really being that long. The characters are fractured Californians, their dialogue acidic and convincing, all of them doubling back on themselves in contradictions.

I also missed “Instant City: A Literary Exploration of San Francisco” at Dalva. I’ve been enjoying this journal for a while. It is always stuffed with crisp anecdotes of life in the City, local lore, and stories using ‘Sucka Free’ as a backdrop. Among others, Jim Nelson read at the event. I ran into Jim later at The Elbo Room, and I suspect he was drinking because his fedora was tilted back.

BEST STREET VENDOR

Given the impressive Twitter address listing near the back of the Litquake brochure, I was expecting to finally catch a glimpse of the “Creme Brulee Guy,” “Sexy Soup Cart,” “Escargot Evangelist,” or the elusive “Mincemeat Mystery Man.” But alas, no exotic street food to speak of was around. The bacon-wrapped hot dogs were, as always, a contender, but best street vendor of the night had to be Lynn Gentry.

Name your price, said the sign, for a poem. Mr. Gentry typed up a dense paragraph of rambling stream of consciousness free verse, one which exists in no digital domain anywhere. He has a beautiful typewriter.

BEST “YOU MIGHT BE A REDNECK IF…” JOKE

Ok, so he didn’t actually tell any “you might be a redneck if…” jokes. But laughter-worthy meditations on the white working class (among them the probing of the similarity between the Bodhi Tree and The Couch) were made by one Bucky Sinister. Like a literate, urban incarnation of Jeff Foxworthy, Sinister riffed on NASCAR and fundamentalism. As someone coming from their ranks himself, but now living in San Francisco, Sinister commented on the cultural geography of coastal living: from a high place in the Bay Area, you can look east and see the Midwest, and baby, it doesn’t stop until you hit the Catskills (I’m paraphrasing, badly).

Other notable writers appeared at this event at the Make-Out Room, “The Rumpus Presents…” including Vendela Vida, Michelle Richmond, and a man named after a Bob Dylan album. It was hosted by Stephen Elliot, who edits the fine online publication called The Rumpus and is the author of The Adderall Diaries. I wanted to check out more of the readers, but Bucky was about all I saw. Arrived late and was barely able to swim to the bar and then people kept shoving me with polite looks on their faces.

BEST BEATNIK POET

I initially headed out to “Emerging and Established Latino Writers” at Sub-Mission Art Space (strange decor: Satanic neon, stenciled penises covering the walls) to check out playwright Octavio Solis, who was set to appear there. Solis couldn’t make it, unfortunately. As I sat and sipped a “Simpler Times” in my disappointment, poet Alejandro Murguia got onstage and, hands free of paper or notes, recited some hard-hitting freeverse, mixing it up in English and Spanish.

Murguia is a veteran of Bay Area poetry and, you can believe, a Chicano from the old school. He reminded me of the first readings I went to, seeing Max Schwartz or Jose Montoya read in Sacramento. Crusty old beatniks who seem a little like eccentric winos until they make obvious their deep relationship with language, one that comes from years of honing craft and drinking in the work of other poets and dreaming hard until it crystallizes.

Words by Justin Allen
Photos by Aurora King

Related posts:

1. Gimme Something Better Book Launch
2. Underground Exposed: A Zine Retrospective
3. Roadkill

The first speaker of the night was Bucky Sinister. As one of the founding members of Gilman Street’s spoken-word readings, he was more than at ease in front of a crowd of unruly lit patrons, delving into a morbid (albeit hilarious) recollection of graveyard rendezvous, dead baby corpses, and prison rap sheets. Negative Trend frontman Rozz Rezabeck gave a behind scenes tale of the Sex Pistol’s final show at Winterland, discussing the filth, fury, and ultimate embarrassment of why he was booked with the legendary group. Longtime homocore scenesters Lynn Breedlove and Anna Joy Springer were also in attendance, sharing some of their wildest experiences performing on stage and in the bedroom.

During the intermission a handful of audience members were invited on stage to give one of their own one minute punk rock confession. While some of the speakers garnered cheers and applause from the audience, such as one woman who gave a brief salute to former club mainstay The Sound of Music, others were unfortunately less than engaging, like the gentleman dressed like Mr. Rogers who painstakingly started breaking into horrible comedy gag. It wasn’t any discredit to the event though, and I think more than anything people were just excited to get a chance to share the limelight.

After the intermission wrapped up the second half of the evening began and once more went straight into the lucid world of the underground. Artist, writer, and former SF mayor candidate Chicken John went into the impact Gilman Street had on his life, while Jessie Luscious (pictured above) reminiscence about some of his favorite bands and the rules that went along with loving and hating them. Two members of the legendary Bay Area band Crime, Hank Rank and Johnny Strike (pictured right), closed the evening’s storytelling with a musical/spoken word ode to San Francisco’s illustrious punk rock past, present, and future, poignantly ending their speech with “Gabba gabba hey motherfuckers,” just to remind everyone in the building no matter how many years go by the city’s grittiest subculture will never be forgotten.

Words and photos by Alexander Zeddemore

——————-

www.litquake.org
www.gimmesomethingbetter.com

Related posts:

1. Litquake Literary Festival’s 10th Anniversary
2. Book Release: Imperial, by W.T. Vollmann
3. Underground Exposed: A Zine Retrospective

And yes, there is a kind of enjoyment in reading a book like this. I’ve read several of Vollmann’s books over the years, including The Royal Family, The Atlas, You Bright and Risen Angels, and The Rainbow Stories. They are each a time-consuming project to read, and are at times infuriating, but they are always uniquely rewarding. Critics often write that Vollmann’s outsize, sprawling length and florid style is in bad taste, that he could use editing. This would make life easier for critics, but I think it would go against what Vollmann is trying to do. In my view, the biggest hint is dropped in the title of one of his books: The Atlas.

Vollmann is not strictly a novelist, as his massive nonfiction books (including this one) attest. His interests go deep into human nature and his sensibility is highly visual, giving him the tendency to take expansive and detailed word-pictures whenever possible. This level of verbal description is something most writers, including myself, indulge in sparingly – I have no desire to imitate Vollmann in this, but at the same time it’s inspiring to see the completely reckless way he gives himself to the insane task of describing the world. I see him as a cartographer, a geographer, interested in mapping and cataloging as much of the globe as he can at a moment when it is changing rapidly and irrevocably. I once took a class in cultural geography, looking at people and place, migration patterns, the cultural and human impacts of macroeconomic shifts and environmental change. We spent long periods in class looking at aerial photos, then would move to a discussion of global pop music distribution. It is this cross-disciplinary spirit, one that harkens back to the scientists of a less specialized age, that Vollmann represents. And yet it is also very much a literary effort, one that seems to continue the ecstatic impulse of the Beats to cast the widest net possible and to pull everything in – to resist editing, to include the process in all its imperfections and uncertainties as part of the finished work. In another influence Vollmann draws from, the New Journalism of the 60s, he is willing to immerse himself in risky situations in order to get closer to the story he is trying to tell, in order to learn about people.

I’m more excited about Imperial, though, than I have been about reading any Vollmann book yet. The US – Mexico border is such an important question, and represents such a complicated relationship. In my own life and travels in Latin America, in conversations with migrants and with research I’ve done, I’ve attempted to better understand this relationship. At the reading, Vollmann read an excerpt from the book detailing a dangerous rafting trip down a toxic river on the border, one which migrants have used for crossings and one which many have died in. Vollmann has gone places few would go in order to write this book, that much is clear. Quantity does not equal quality, Vollmann’s critics usually say. This is very true. But in this case, quantity does certainly equal effort, and if the effort of Imperial is to help us understand the physical, cultural, moral, and maybe even spiritual implications of the US – Mexico border, it’s hard to imagine that this is effort wasted.

Note: After I read Imperial, I’ll review the book for Ashcan – so if you’re curious, check back. Though I’m making no promises, to myself or anyone, as to finishing it before the end of the year.

(Justin Allen)

Related posts:

1. Gimme Something Better Book Launch
2. Confessions Of A Teenage Jesus Jerk
3. Darlene Rock-N-Roll Fanzine #4