God Bless Twitter. And not just any Twitter, but celebrity Twitter. If it weren’t for Neil Gaiman, @neilhimself – I know, we are still working on our relationship - I would never have discovered Jonathan Carroll, @JSCarroll. With a title like, The Ghost In Love, I was expecting an eerie, sad love story. Instead, The Ghost In Love proves itself as social commentary on how much we’ve taken control of our lives; how much we need to look at ourselves and our actions and how much, how very much, we need to forgive ourselves.

Mr. Carroll’s writing, along with Mr. Gaiman, falls into that magical realism/slipstream fiction that I so easily feel myself drawn to. Reading these kinds of books is like an awakening for me. I’m a believer. Reading The Ghost in Love was beautiful and validating and spooky. It is my number one book of 2009.

The plot is intricate and weird, however Mr. Carroll rewards his readers in the end. The story centers around two lovers, German and Ben. Ben hits his head and is supposed to die, but he doesn’t. However, since the business of Death is a huge whirling machine without stop, Ben’s ghost is sent up anyway because of a “glitch” in the system. Ben’s ghost, Ling, starts to fall for German, but Ben and German have split up. They do however share custody of their dog, Pilot. Pilot is the only one who knows that Ling is in love with German – since dogs and ghosts can talk to each other, which is why dogs act so damn weird sometimes. Pilot then begins talking to Ben (yeah, talking dogs), Ben starts talking to the ghost Ling…and they all go down the new road of life after not-death together.

Other nasties are released due to the glitch of Ben not dying, and I was struck with how hard we all are on ourselves. How our expectations of ourselves can have a negative effect, conjuring our worst fears. Thankfully, Mr. Carroll also supplies the power to banish the nasties, and shows the reader how salvation lies within our good memories and love for each other. There was a feeling of acceptance finishing The Ghost in Love; that who you are is enough, that your love is strong enough to save, that the happy memories of our life propel us forward, not hold us back. Absolutely delightful.

I know nothing of Kevin Sampsell. I’d never heard of him or his publishing house - Future Tense Publishing - before the Crybaby Publicist put me in touch with him. So I came into A Common Pornography a blank slate. I must say how grateful I am that Mr. Sampsell totes his book as a “memory experiment”. Memoir is a tricky genre, I usually shy away from it. Often times memories are presented as fact rather than an extremely opinionated view of events. Writers of memoir will say, all this happened, but I changed some of it. Bah! But reading A Common Pornography is like sitting on a couch with Kevin Sampsell and you only have an hour before someone walks in you, so he opens a photo album and starts flipping through the pictures at a rapid pace, giving the reader only the slightest context of each scene before moving on to the next shot.

What prompted the writing of A Common Pornography was the death of Mr. Sampsell’s father. During the time Mr. Sampsell returns home for the funeral he learns horrors about his father and one of his siblings. That’s all I’ll say about that because that seems to be the hook for the book. What I found however was that these atrocities were still so fresh for Mr. Sampsell that he can barely talk about them. And the events themselves take up very little time or energy in the book. Instead Mr. Sampsell frames his early life by these events and what he sticks in-between is the crappy, fluffy, filling you find in Twinkies or Oreos. His own story was not that out of the ordinary to write an entire book about. But I can understand why he wanted to try. What happens within Mr. Sampsell’s family is pure evil, but it’s not really his story to tell since he wasn’t remotely involved. So we just get mention of these horrible events and lots and lots of quick quirky little blurbs about being a teenager, liking girls, drinking, wanting to be in a band, and getting jacked-off by other guys. None of which is really outstanding or touching. Mr. Sampsell writes away from himself giving us only the memory - the picture - and then somehow removing all emotion from the telling of the tale. For a book written about his life, I still don’t feel like I know anything about him.

Because A Common Pornography was written as a memory experiment, the memories or snapshots aren’t that long, nor are they explored at any length. For lack of a better word you could say that this book was broken up into “chapters”, but I hesitate to say it that way. The titles of each chapter or memory seem more like words hastily written on the back of a photograph. Then you flip the picture over and see two kids playing air guitar or a young man getting a hand-job on a couch. And no matter how long you look at that photograph it only gives you a certain amount of information. There are no little clues or hidden meanings. It is what it is.

Make no mistake, Mr. Sampsell is a deft and talented writer. It takes an immeasurable amount of courage to put the best and worst of yourself down on paper; to pop open the secrets of your family like a can of new tennis balls. And the style in which A Common Pornography was written is quite fresh. But I feel that Mr. Sampsell keeps his readers at arms length, almost as a warning; as if to say,here is all the really bad stuff - if you still like me after this, then we’ll talk. Okay man, let’s talk.

Every year I participate in the Barnes and Noble Gift Wrap for charity. And every year I get about ten new book ideas and recommendations. Two years ago it was Christopher Moore’s Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal - you can listen to the BCB podcast here. Last year I only had two shifts and didn’t talk to anyone at length about what they were reading.

This year, I spoke with an older woman - a bookstore favorite of mine. She has longer grey hair, glasses, always has a pen and some kleenex and she probably is into pottery or owns a loom she brought back from Paraguay. I know you know the type. This year, she recommended Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones. She said, I’ve been in a bookclub for over twenty years and this book provided us with our best, most meaningful discussion, ever. I was sold. It was the first book I read in 2010.

Mister Pip is the story of thirteen-year old Matilda and her small village on a tropical island. Due to tribal/civil war most of the village has left, most of the boys have gone to war. Children roam with stray dogs with no school or teachers until one man steps up and decides to open the school again. This man happens to be the only white guy in the village, and the only thing he has to teach is a battered copy of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations.

What is so lovely about Mister Pip is that you don’t need to have previous experience with Dickens or Great Expectations. Part of the charm of Mr. Jones’s book is that Matilda discovers Pip’s story along with the reader. Having no experience with Charles Dickens myself, this was a huge relief. As a common reader, you shouldn’t have to read one book to enjoy another. In Mister Pip, Jones gives us a great example of basing a novel on a previous classic and having his work stand on its own merit (without zombies or sea-monsters).

At the core of Mister Pip is inspiration and imagination, and ultimately the dangers of both. Mr. Watts is the lone white man of the village who reopens the school. As he begins to read Great Expectations he expands the understanding and imagination of the few island kids who attend his school. Among the blossoming minds is young Matilda - who takes Mr. Watts and Pip into her heart and soul. She is so desperate for knowledge, love and inspiration and she connects so deeply with Pip, that she builds a shrine to Pip on the beach - spelling his name with shells and stones. When rebels enter the village they discover the shrine and demand to know who this “Pip” is. In a grand and noble misunderstanding terror and tragedy ensue.

Very few books surprise me, but there comes a moment in Mister Pip that literally made me cry out. In retrospect, I knew it was coming. It can happen no other way. Yet I was still surprised and heart-broken when it happened. That kind of writing and storytelling is very special. If you’ve never read Dickens or Great Expectations, or if you have and loved it or hated it; Mister Pip does not alienate any reader. Jones’s writing is splendid. This book is a beautiful tragedy.

In this very special episode of BCB, we discuss Everything Hurts, implement the “100 Page Rule” and of course, your favorite and ours….the BILF segment!

BCB: What authors/books inspired you?

Bill: Let’s do five authors and two books because if I like a writer I usually like everything he does. The authors are Richard Yates, Philip Roth, the Latin poet Catullus, my uncle Herbert Warren Wind and Erica Jong. The two books are The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron and The Doctor Who Made House Calls by Milton Bass.

Yates and Roth are, I hope, my biggest influences, but I don’t think that’s for me to say. I like writing about broken people, most of them Jewish. As craftsmen, they are otherworldly to me. If I am an author, they should be called something else. Catullus taught me the value of word (I majored in Latin at Harvard). My uncle, the legendary New Yorker writer and golf laureate, generously showed me the possibility of the writer’s life in New York. And Erica Jong is that rare combination of prolific, versatile and responsible in her celebrity and impact. (Why no Salinger? I love him, but he stopped giving us his art, so he doesn’t make this list.)

I read The Doctor Who Made House Calls when I was 20 and thought, “wouldn’t it be great to do that?” It was the last time I allowed myself to have that thought for 18 years, until my wife gave me The Artist’s Way. Without that book, a spiritual guide to creativity, I would not be a novelist. Fact.

BCB: What was the biggest challenge in writing Everything Hurts?

Bill: The biggest challenge was weaving the dual notion of physical and psychological pain without being sentimental or self-pitying. And doing all that while getting your laughs. And, as you’ll see by my answer a few questions later, because I was going through much of the same things as the lead character, I had zero idea how it would end.

BCB: Favorite funny book…

Bill: Can you do better than Confederacy of Dunces?

BCB: Are you reading anything now?

Bill: I’m reading two books simultaneously. Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon and (embarassed to admit) Humboldt’s Gift, Saul Bellow’s Pulitzer. They are both in the first person, as is the book I am working on, and I want to get it right.

BCB: Talk a little bit about how this book originated - where within you did it come from?

Bill: Here’s the deal. This book was borne out of personal experience. In December, 2004, out of nowhere, I developed this limp which left me in constant pain. It arose from nothing and never stayed in one place. Doctors were baffled, until I saw a doctor who specialized in psychosomatic pain. He said I fit the profile and if I worked his program (examining my past to find the unconscious rage that was responisble for the pain), it would go away. So, six months into the limp, in an attempt to “art” myself out of the pain, I decided to write a novel about a guy trying to get rid of a psychosomatic limp. Well, two years later, I finish the book. The guy in the novel is better. I’m worse! A year later, ten days after I sell the book, I go to a new doctor, takes one look at my most recent x-ray and says, “You need a hip replacement. You’ll be pain-free.” I got it, I am, and everyone says, “Aren’t you furious you were in such pain for three and a half years?” I tell them all the same thing: If I hadn’t been, I wouldn’t have gotten the book.

BCB: Why did you choose to set Everything Hurts in New York ?

Bill: The two best pieces of advice I got about writing fiction: 1) Make your characters lives complicated. 2) Write what you know. All of my novels are set in New York and Boston, where I have spent 90 percent of my life.

BCB: Let’s say Fahrenheit 451 comes to life, which book would you become in order to save it from annihilation?

Bill: The humble answer is the poems of Catullus, because I think others would take care of the other books I love. The non-humble answer is The Ringer, my first novel and the one with a character based on my uncle Herb, the most influencial man in my life.

BCB: What is one book you haven’t read but want to read before you die?

Bill: Well, I’m reading Humboldt’s Gift now, which is one of them. So, I need to hang in there another week or so. Why do you ask? Did you hear something? Did Dr. Cantor call you? He told me the bloodwork was fine! Okay, a little low in Vitamin D, but come on!

BCB: If you were a bartender, what is the best drink to describe Everything Hurts?

Bill: I was a bartender, and I like the drink Phil refers to when he talks to his brother, who also dealt with chronic pain, and says, “I have some pineapple juice. I could make you a Vicodin colada.” So, vicodin colada.

BCB: My favorite part of the book was Phil and Ellie’s “date”, what is your favorite part?

Bill: I’m glad you liked that part. I liked her in that bridesmaid’s dress and the fact that she was clearly the more comfortable person on the date, which says a lot about Phil. But my favorite part, going away, was a couple of chapters after that. The Marty Fleck Memorial Dinner. There’s an energy that I couldn’t have in the rest of the book because I could never get that many people in a scene at the same time.

Links:
Bill Scheft - www.billscheft.com