Letter

This may surprise you but I don’t like saying bad things. Going negative doesn’t make me happy. I never turn on a movie or open a book hoping to hate it. I may be a masochist sometimes but I don’t go looking for pain. That’s why reading Adam Levin’s horrible Mount Chicago opened such a can of worms.

The reviews I write these days primarily run in the Chicago Reader. The way it works is I look through lists and reviews of upcoming books, then pitch ones I’m interested in writing about to my editor. It’s a lot easier to get her to bite if the book has a local connection. Almost a slam-dunk if it actually has the word ‘Chicago’ in its title. This may smack of parochial homerism but I didn’t set these ground rules. I’ve just learned the hard way to live by them. The paper I write for is for locavores, so I must keep our toddling town front-of-mind if I want my byline to keep running.

Fortunately for my editor, any mention of Chicago is blood in the water to me. I’ll read or watch or listen to pretty much anything that mentions this city. It’s as close to home as I’ve ever had and I will never stop being grateful. There are times though when this blind love blows up in my face. Like this Levin book. I don’t know what possessed me to pitch a review other than that ‘Chicago’ in its title. I haven’t read Levin’s previous two novels and the short stories I did read left no impression one way or the other. What made me think I’d like this new one?

It went bad from the start. After my editor gave the green light, I spent a fruitless month trying to get anyone at Penguin Random House to answer an email, much less send a copy of the book to read. I’d given up and moved on when my editor forwarded a pdf she managed to pry loose from that monolith. So I was now stuck having to read and write about the book after thinking I’d been spared.

The first thing that struck me was a weird typographical flaw. Every few pages a word would have one or two letters missing. These could be in the beginning, middle, or end of the word and occurred in no discernible pattern. I thought perhaps it was some intentional avant-garde experimental technique, but when I forwarded the file to a writer friend who’s close with Levin, he was as puzzled as me. He assured me Levin would be horrified to know a marred copy of his manuscript had gotten out into the world. The more pages I read, the more I began to wish many more letters were missing.

Back when I wrote for the Trib, I had a couple reviews killed. The first, because the editor decided, after assigning me the book, that I had a conflict of interest by sharing its publisher with one of my own books; a second, because she judged it unnecessarily negative. I’ve never gotten pushback like that from any editor at the Reader. I’ve had the occasional disagreement and/or wrestling match over phrasing or reasoning, but that’s as it should be. The only two pieces of writing I’ve written for the paper that didn’t run were killed by me. The first, because of a threatened lawsuit from a lunatic; the second, because I hated the book and didn’t see any merit in shitting on a thing that was clearly a misguided labor of love put out by a tiny press and written by a debut author. There are so few venues left for book reviews of any kind that publishing a negative one has to be thought through carefully.

A hundred pages into this six-hundred-page atrocity I wanted out in the worst way. But I knew my editor had allocated space for the review in a forthcoming issue and I didn’t want her thinking I was a spoiled baby or a flake. I take the job of reviewing seriously. I can’t skim through books or skip ahead because I know what it takes to write the damn things. What kept me going was the knowledge that a major press paid a sum of money I won’t speculate about to put this thing out into the world and I’d been hired—for an infinitesimal fraction of said sum—to judge it.

I took the iPad to restaurants and coffeeshops, complaining to anyone who made the mistake of asking what I was reading. When they asked what was so bad about the book, I mentioned the riddle about why a dog sucks its own dick. This book is like a dog that grew seven dicks and seven mouths to suck each one dry. The unfortunate asker would laugh and carefully back away.

The thing that haunted me the whole time is not what I knew I’d write once I got through reading but what that mutual friend I asked about the weird typos would think. He’s a faithful friend and took exception to a bad review Levin’s first book got years ago. Is sharing an honest opinion worth losing a friend over?

The thing I wrote is out there now. We’ll see if there’s any fallout. I’m just glad not to be reading that damn book anymore.

Saturday’s the last day for my show at the Rainbo Club. It’s the second time I’ve shown the collages that’ve occupied much of my free time the last two years, but the first that felt right. It marks a new direction I plan to follow for awhile and thus seems more significant than some other shows I’ve had.

This is not to say that I’m disowning all the old work or plan to reuse and cut it all up (though now that I’ve typed that, it’s tempting.) For all the ways that it’s new, when I squint at it, the compositions are familiar. It’s like ripping up a deck of cards, then taping them back together and putting them back in their box. Still fifty-two cards, with all the same elements; just a little beat up with more seams showing.

When you do a thing for forty-plus years, it’s important to find ways to reset and renew it. The last thing any artist wants to do is repeat himself or go through the motions. That’s what the collage thing is for me: a way out of rote repetition.

People seem to like them, which is not necessarily a reason to keep going but doesn’t hurt. Talking about the collages is weird. They’re often made up of a lot of cut up autobiography. I wonder what a viewer that doesn’t get the references and doesn’t get answers when they ask the artist sees in them. Not that they are a puzzle that has one answer. That’s not how pictures work, at least as I see them or make them. A lot of times I’ve found artists’ explanations ruin my enjoyment or reaction. Art’s not for answers but for questions, I think. 

I’ll be at the Rainbo this Saturday (7/30/22) from 4 to 8pm to see the show out. Come by if you’re free.

—The printers tell me the new book should be ready sometime in September. Want one?

—Wednesday, my talk with Tom Shannon of the Cheater Slicks goes up. Before then you can listen to the one with Laura Park or a bunch of others. I’ve reposted most of the older ones now that got wiped out when I moved podcast hosts. I redid some of the descriptions and combined some of the pieces of audio. Hoping this can be their forever home but there’s no telling what I’ll get into my fool head week to week.

—Mallory and I talked about The Mist and reeled off a bunch of movies others like that we don’t.

—Listen to Ni un minuto más de dolor and you won’t be sad.

Thursday night I bring a table, folding chair, and rolling suitcase to Union Park on the Ashland bus. I get a wristband and am let in past security to a large tent set up where the tennis courts usually are. I put out my wares, tape a couple prints to the chainlink fence at the back of my assigned area, then take the bus back home.

It rains hard overnight. Friday morning when I return, the pieces taped to the fence are ruined and the pillow I’d brought to sit on is soaked through. 

I make it through all three days of Pitchfork but don’t hear much music. Aside from trips to the port-o-potty or for food, I stay in the tent. I watch young people walk by. 

I tell a twenty-year-old not to go to college. She looks through all my stuff, then asks if art school is worth it. I tell her higher-ed is a pyramid scheme. She thanks me, then asks my neighbor, who’s selling buttons, about one he’s wearing that says, “Don’t Ask Me About this Button” —What does that mean? She walks away without an answer that satisfied her.

A group of high school boys is very excited about a print of my Silver Jews sketch. They buy the two I have, then another kid comes by and wants one. I promise to print one for him the next day. To my surprise, he’s at my table promptly at noon to fork over his five bucks.

People of all ages ask me to explain the things I’m selling. “What is all this?” I’ve never successfully winnowed it down to an elevator pitch. If they pick up a book, I try to explain what it’s about. They put it back down, puzzled, nod maybe, then walk away. The branding isn’t apparent. The ones who get it, get it. It’s a lot easier to sell a beer than a book.

The fashions are a randomized remix of the last sixty years of American pop culture. An alien familiar with the twentieth century would never be able to tell this time period by what these fair goers wear. The technology’s the giveaway. Every hippie/punk/rave kid has an iPhone.

Saturday afternoon families with young children stroll by as CupcakKe is on the mic telling the crowd if they don’t deep-throat they should go home. My neighbor sells an eight-year-old a Garfield pin that says, “I’m Here For the Gay Sex”. He tells me he now gets by just making pins and selling them on Etsy. Says Morrissey has sent him multiple cease-and-desist letters. He’s proud.

I walk the whole grounds and don’t find a single vendor selling coffee. My old friend Mat, who runs the craft fair with his wife, who started it, scores a cold-brew for me from the VIP tent. All my neighbors are jealous. Helps to have friends in high places. Twenty-five years ago when Mat and I worked at Thai Lagoon on North Avenue, this would not be the future I’d have predicted for either of us.

It was worth it, I guess. I came home with a lot less stuff than I went there with. But it’s hard to smile at people for three days.