some dude at razorcake (a punkrock magazine) just wrote a review of fat on the vine in which he called me, among other things, a “loser,” “douche,” and “flat-out asshole”……he didn’t really review the actual book either, choosing instead to call me a bunch of names (like the character and I were the same person)…..so what was my reaction?.....well, first of all, the negative review did hurt my feelings to some degree…..i didn’t write fat on the vine to be anyone’s hero/antihero and I guess that comes through in the book, especially the 50 odd times that I insult my readers for feasting on my pain/blues/agony……my second reaction was that I was pleased that some outside reviewer actually took the time to read the text---like there were tiny reviews in both time out new york and time out chicago, but it was pretty obvious when the reviewer referred to me as “one of the crazy kids from the underground literary alliance” that he/she had only read the blurb on the back cover…..in retrospect, I’ll throw a shot out to the razorcake reviewer for actually reading (and hating) my book before selling it on e-bay for $1.50…..after worrying about the review for a while, I called one of my friends on the phone (a real live punkrocker who is familiar with both my book and the magazine) and asked for his opinion…..in a nutshell, he said that “if the author of fat on the vine had been into fugazi, then the razorcake reviewer would have loved it”…..however, since the author was into the grateful dead, the reviewer hated it---and that works for me, ya know----as close to objectivity as I can wrap my brain around……I do worry about fat on the vine floating around in cyberspace though and in some ways, I want to explain its content…..1997 was certainly an ugly year for me, but it’s 2008 now…..and all our heroes (sid vicious or jim morrison or whomever) that died-as-assholes weren’t given another 11 years to redeem themselves…..my karma is as good in 2008 as lilbigsexy’s was bad in 1997…..and if you give me a chance to prove it to you now, I will…..i think the best way I can start is with a top ten list of apologies…..i think it was fugazi who once said: if the thunder don’t git ya/ the lightning sure will/:
10) editing: for those of you that have read fat on the vine, can you imagine what it would be like to edit it?.....i’ll send a shot our right now to my publisher, jeff potter…..and I know I gave lip service to fighting-the-oprah-power in my afterword, but if the truth is known, I didn’t really have the computer skills to edit the motherfucker properly…..like maybe if the ula had sent their corporate jet to pick me up in iowa and drop me off at jeff’s house in michigan, we could have edited it together…..i edited my part in roughly 2 weeks and I just didn’t have the tech skills to do the text justice…..i guess I should also note that we were editing right after the virginia tech massacre and jeff wanted to change a few names to protect our innocence…..ultimately, I feel that I should apologize for my lack of computer skills----i am older than I look, plus I was at a party for 20 years while the rest of ya’ll were taking computer classes
9) while we’re on the subject of apologies, if I could apologize to one person/thing from fat, I think I would apologize to sports…..i was a lil hard on julie, but I think she’s still a big enough freak to appreciate the effort…..my mama really is like the character in the book, but she’s also tough….like if you went and told her what I had said, you wouldn’t break my family----she might still be calling me a piece-of-shit on her deathbed, but you wouldn’t break our family……in regards to sports: I still don’t like the meatheads in the gym who are clapping/screaming for their team while running on the treadmill, but I do like sports…..why?---because they’re live and there’s 90,000 people at the stadium getting hammered like they were at a rockshow---and in many respects, sports are the only things that are “real” in the brave new world of 2008 reality television
8) I guess I should also apologize to the big handsome for not (retroactively) putting him in fat on the vine…..the novel was written in 1997-1998 and I didn’t meet the big handsome until 2000…..i think the big handsome makes a fine foil for me----he’s the high joker to my low joker…..and when I write about him fucking up, it’s much easier for me to deal with the repercussions, both literally and figuratively…..for example, while he’s chasing the girls around the room begging them to punch him in the stomach, I’m the one stealing their panties---someone else gets the blame though, ya know…..and the same goes for my writing……why do I like the big handsome?----because as freaks go, I can always count on him to be the bigger freak…..and while you’re shaking your collective heads at his debauchery, I get to rest/shit mine out
7) no apologies for ohio….you want an example of ohio v. iowa?.....well, another professor at my school stopped me in the hall one day before break and said that he had ordered a copy of fat on the vine from amazon…..and I assume my face turned from red to white and he immediately said: “if it embarrasses you, I’ll put it on a shelf and read it in 20 years after I retire”……I said that I would appreciate it, knowing full well that 92% of the people in this world (and 100% of ohioans) would read it in its entirety the second the package arrived----hell, the last time I got something published ______ (no names, but a virgo and we all know what that means) had xeroxed it and was putting it under kent state profs’ doors the next day……anyway, when I got back to my school, his package from amazon with fat was sitting in my faculty mailbox unopened……and I immediately took the dude some virginia peanuts as a thank you….i told him that 1997 had been pretty ugly for me, but that I “hoped to become more like him and my father” in 2008 and beyond…..i know I already thanked the state in my afterword, but with dudes like this, the good people of iowa certainly deserve another tip-of-the-hat from me
6) maybe I should apologize to my body as well…..do you know that I go to the gym for 2 hours a day in 2008?.....and I’m not a mathematician, but 20 years of partying equals 1000’s of monkeys on my back.....like i’ve always exercised on saturday afternoons as friday night’s smorgasbord shot back out through every hole in my body……I didn’t stop partying because dr drew looks really kool in his designer eyeglasses……I stopped partying because it felt like one more vomit and my soul was gonna splatter on the sidewalk along with last night’s burrito……i was tired of the nose bleeds and the bloody shits and the devil spots on my brain----my mother’s religion didn’t get me, but father time ultimately did…..you want a hero?----well I say fuck everyone of those self-help fuckers on tv….they might want your confession for their infomercial, but they damn skippy don’t want you…..as for my hero: I’ll go with waylon jennings who did it without jesus, dr phil, or rehab…..ole weighmore just went home and locked the door----and he yelled at his wife and he sweated a lot and 3 months later he walked out clean/sober…..and i respect that
5) you think I should apologize to my fat-era friends?....this is a tricky one and comparable to my apology to the big handsome in #8…..and I’ll grant you that while in the haze of a blackout, I may have pissed on someone’s parents’ couch, or sling-shotted peanuts off a balcony at bikers, or taken a bite out of every single piece of food in a friend-of-a-friend’s refrigerator, but I don’t think that’s the point….i think part of it was the fact that I was (and am) a late bloomer and my friends were starting to grow up…..and if you’ve got a wife, mortgage, and a child on the way, someone needs to be the asshole---and that (symbolic) asshole became me…..the thing is, I would still be somewhat disappointed in old friends who would read fat on the vine and think the same thing of me as the razorcake dude did…..do you know who stuck with me?----the fat kids stuck with me because the pain is the pain is the pain….and I was me then and I’m me now and I don’t need to apologize to them because they already know what it’s like to be fat your whole life…..ultimately, the dedication at the beginning of fat still works for me: for the “ugly people who think they’re beautiful” and for the “beautiful people who think they’re ugly”
4) you think I should apologize to all the women out there for the faux-misogyny in fat?----I’ll grant you that many of the sections were sophomoric, so I guess it couldn’t hurt to cover my bases…..still, do you know many times I had sex with julie in 2 years?.....do you know many times I’ve had sex in my entire life?----like I’m not gonna break it down for you here, but geno prolly got more lovin’ that summer he spent with his nana on cape cod when he was 16 than I have in my entire life…….the point is: did your boyfriend apologize to you for the ex-wife and the 2 ugly stepkids?.....did he apologize to you for trading your car for a pair of karate pants and some magic beans?......dude, if you had sex with me, do you think I’d stop bringing you presents after 6 months?.....1997 or 2008: if you have sex with me, I’ll bring you a goddamn present every day for the rest of your life
3) I thought about apologizing to the freaks out there who keep waiting for the next naked lunch, but then I realized that fat on the vine is the next naked lunch (in the sense that it’s unreadable)…..the only real difference is that kids today are too busy decorating their myspace pages to read anything (and that’s not to say that burrough’s naked lunch wouldn’t be on a list of myspace readers’ top 100 books)…..the nut of my argument is that alternative kids will pretend to have read naked lunch because it is a counter-culture drug book…..maybe the apology here should go to my bookshelf because naked lunch is certainly front and center----I even gave it 4/5 stars on goodreads even though the only thing about the book I liked was the afterward……in truth, I gave naked lunch 4/5 stars because I was voting for burroughs, the rockstar-as-me……will everyone be a rockstar in the future?---yeah, I think they will….i was just vain enough to write a book about myself----that no one will ever read because they’re too busy blackberrying each other about buying a new blackberry
2) even though things are holding steady right now, I should prolly go ahead and apologize to my teaching career…..like I know professors are supposed to get published, but I can’t imagine any boss that I would ever have in academia being pleased with the content of fat on the vine…..my defenses are certainly valid: 1) professors are supposed to get published, 2) fat is on my resume, and 3) it’s FICTION, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t agonize over my choice to publish every single day….like 10 years ago I would have sold my soul to the devil to be published, but now I worry about my karma….i’m a good teacher too---no bullshitting, no yelling, and no ego trips…..i put on a fine show for the house every day and I make up for not paying attention/talking at the faculty meetings by going to every sporting event on campus and sitting between two 70-year-old nuns…..and if you’re marking my penance: that’s 1.5 years down and 18.5 years to go
1) I’m old and tired now and writing steals precious exercise time…..that’s why I’m going to the afterword from fat on the vine for #1: “tomorrow morning I have to get up at 8am to help the nuns move seats into the new theater…..on monday, I have an english search committee meeting in the morning and a handbook committee meeting in the afternoon…..i have short hair and am in bed most school nights by 9pm……[real ellipses]…….and 10 years removed from starting fat on the vine, I still think it’s stunning……ugliness and self-hatred fill every page and it reads like one, long, bloody scream…..i like to think of the crazycarl that wrote this as my alter ego---and if we ever met, I don’t think you’d ever believe that the narrator was actually me…..this is how I felt in 1997 though and I don’t wanna hide from what I was or am…..it’s possible to grow and heal…..[real ellipses]……..if you want some new age philosophy before I go: it’s ok to be yourself…..it’s ok to let your freak flag fly and it’s ok to bushwhack up the mountain the wrong way….i still don’t get laid that often, but that’s ok too…..the nuns still like me, as do my students, dogs, lesbians, fat kids, drug addicts, and a who’s who list of assorted freaks….there’s power to be gained and connections to be made even if your drug dealer thinks you’re a pussy”