Letter

Thursday a surprise email arrives from the printers. The books are ready a week early. I immediately start to look for a car to rent. All the regular companies can’t accommodate on such short notice unless I’m willing to pay an arm and a leg. I’m not. So I try a site I’d never heard of called Kyte. They promise to deliver a car to my doorstep and pick it back up when I’m done with it. There’s no way I can make it to Saline, Michigan by 4pm EST today so I book the car for Friday.

The online form is mostly by-the-numbers except for the insurance part. They don’t seem to offer any basic liability insurance like every rent-a-car company does. Instead, there’s a blank where you put in your own, without any verification, then move on to the payment page. I hesitate, then type ‘State Farm’ and keep going.

McNaughton & Gunn printed my last four books but I picked them up in Wyoming, Michigan at Dekker Bindery. This time, since it’s a paperback, I’m going straight to the source. It’s a longer drive and I don’t know any weird family restaurants nearby to have my post-pickup lunch in Saline. Also, there are only four boxes rather twenty-plus as before. I listen to “Cat Person” and Other Stories on the way there; Ill Will on the way back.

Back home by mid-afternoon I pack and address preorders while I wait for the Kyte guy to pick up the Jeep SUV that I got instead of the “economy” car I’d booked. After I hand him the keys I get on my bike and pedal to Palette & Chisel to put in an appearance at the cityscape show opening.

Next morning I get on the Archer bus with a rolling suitcase full of books. The driver turns onto Polk as usual, not knowing Dearborn’s blocked for the book fair. I tell him as I get off. Hope he maneuvered his bus down Plymouth Court okay.

This year for some reason they’ve shunted the small press tent off to the outskirts of the fair rather than being in the thick of it on Dearborn as before. I joke with Jason about who he pissed off to get us banished this way. it’s good to have Mallory and Bulent here to shoot the shit with. I cover the table fee in a few hours so the dark feelings mostly keep at bay. It’s still not easy to smile at people for so many hours.

Crazy people come to street fairs. One clearly unhinged character insisted on my signing his petition to get on the ballot for Chicago mayor. I did so only after he bought a book. Quid pro quo. Toward the end of the day I saw Jerry Stahl stalk by, looking like a nervous dying vampire. I ate a couple of slices of pizza and took the bus home.

The forecast for Sunday is hard rain. Who knows how long I’ll last out there under that tent. Maybe I’ll update this letter tonight when I get back home but probably not. I’ll be too spent to write anymore by then.

Read an excerpt from my book at Maudlin House, then get yourself a copy.

—Here are some sketches from Joe Meno’s book launch at Book Cellar in Lincoln Square. His book’s well worth your time.

—Listen to my talk with Keefe Jackson then tune in Wednesday for one with forensics student and former mixologist Alicia Martinez.

—I made a new page for film clips and video ephemera on my site.

I love looking at foreign covers of books I know. They reimagine what’s inside. Oftentimes, they have little to do with the book at all. A book cover is advertising. There’s always some level of bait-and-switch involved.

‌Like candy wrappers, you can imagine and hope about what the thing will be like once opened.

‌I wonder what instructions the editor gives the illustrator. Do they bother reading the thing beforehand? This German edition of Man With the Golden Arm looks like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. 

‌The Polish Never Come Morning is a jazzy cartoon while the Spanish Walk on the Wild Side is film noir.

‌How does a shopper pick what book to buy? If these Spanish and Italian translations were side by side would anyone guess they come from the same source?

‌Some look like spaghetti westerns while others make me hear bossa nova. Some are hastily chosen paintings with some text slapped over them while others have been created especially for the occasion. Oftentimes the original art isn’t even credited. Book publishing can be as fly-by-night as any other disreputable business. I wonder whether some of these designers got paid for their work?

‌I haven’t had a book translated yet. I wonder what that would feel like? Whatever language it happens in they probably won’t mess with the covers since I made them too. Or maybe they will. The marketing department will have a meeting and decide they can’t sell the book with the art I made. 

Then they can make a movie and have it have nothing to do with the book.

I listen to Hari Kunzru’s Red Pill on the drive to Kansas. It’s about a writer losing his bearings on a fellowship at a vaguely cultish institute in Berlin. Set in the months leading up to the disasterous 2016 election it is full of conspiracy theories and paranoia. Passing giant poorly laid out signs wishing the monster’s return in fields by the highway should be disquieting but now feels disappointingly predictable and expected. On the bottom of one there’s a question: Do You Miss Me Yet?

I’m going to meet people that I only know on the internet. This is a common thing now. You can have regular interactions for years at a time and never be in the same room. This is the primary reason for my trip. Adam and Elizabeth invited me to take part in a zine fest in Lawrence. They’re letting me crash on their couch a couple nights. Beats the hell out of an email or conference call.

I pass both Kansas Citys en route to Tonganoxie. The house is painted cheerful bright colors. A couple donkeys graze in an enclosure along with a few sheep. Chickens wander to and fro around the porch. After Elizabeth lets me in, one of their four cats  makes herself comfortable crawling all over me. The talk is easy and I feel instantly at home here. Books, records, art, and curios decorate every surface. A toy horse rears up, guarding the passage between the living room and a little office. I’m guessing this is one of Adam’s writing spots.

He comes in with Jessie a short time later. She’s his ex-wife but that’s old news. They’re all family. He gives me a tour of the grounds and introduces me to Bear, a dog that makes the cat’s welcome seem restrained. Bear makes it his business to monopolize my attention most the time I spend in the house. He guards me as I sleep both nights.

Everybody’s hungry but we’re waiting for Nate to show up. I know him from the internet as well, having designed a book cover for his Colorado-based press. Nate and Adam go back years. I hear about their book and music tours and misadventures in Mexico. Elizabeth and Jessie roll their eyes at a lot of what the guys say but there’s a lived-in ease to their rapport. They give each other a lot of shit but with a lot of love.

After running a last minute errand to the small Catholic college where Elizabeth works, we eat heaping platefuls of vegan bolognese and keep the conversation going. Feels good to be among people as commited to art as me. They’re all younger but none are kids. They’ve all paid plenty to live unconventional lives.

It’s hot as hell outside the next morning as we set up our books and merch at the zine fest. There are tables inside as well but that means wearing a mask all day and being away from my friends, so I opt to sweat it out. I move some books and bookmarks and Nate asks me to design another book cover for a forthcoming story collection, so the day’s worthwhile if exhausting. We’re running on fumes as we pack up but there’s a reading still to do in Kansas City, Kansas, so we pick up a 24-pack of Modelo and head there.

Book readings are always awkward. There’s always a disconnect in that a book is made to be read silently to oneself so when the writer reads aloud from it standing or sitting among listeners he robs them in a way from experiencing the work in its intended context. It will never be a thing I enjoy or excell at but I’ve gotten passably competent at it over the years. I go first and get it over quick. Adam reads longest and engages the audience the most. He makes us turn our chairs and surround him as he sits on the floor, one foot under his butt, almost as if squatting by a campfire. He has everyone close their eyes to remember those we’ve lost these past few years, to reflect on the trying times and difficulty so many have faced and continue to face. It was a lot more meaningful than the typical pro forma ritual to move product.

There’s a fire pit late into the night. Whiskey, beer, and tacos. I hear many stories and tell a few of my own. There’s no way to approximate any of this online.

I drive out before 8am the next morning. I finish Red Pill and queue up another book on tape. I’ve only been gone a day and half but when I see the Chicago skyline early evening it feels like I’ve been gone a month. So glad I spent time with those people in real life.

—Friday night is the opening reception for CITYSCAPE CHICAGO. I have a painting in the show. Stop by. Then Saturday and Sunday I’ll be selling books and crap at Printers Row Lit Fest. Gonna be extra peopled out by the end of the weekend, no doubt.

—Listen to my talk with Sam Wagster, then tune in Wednesday for one with Keefe Jackson. Also, Mallory and I talked Blue Sunshine. It’s a 70s movie that features a creepy politician whose slogan is “Make America Good Again”.  But good isn’t good enough for us any more, I guess.