Ben Tanzer's Blog, page 183

My Father's House Goodreads giveaway.

It's true. We are giving away three copies of My Father's House on the Goodreads. The giveaway starts today and will run for four weeks ending on August 18th. Please sign-up, tell your friends and re-post. Also, please know that we love you, all of you, this much, and please note that we have spread our arms really, really far apart.

"More precise and funnier than anything in Knocked-Up." You Can Make Him Like You gets North of Onhava'd. And likes it. A lot.

Big thanks to new BFF James Greer for his most kind review of You Can Make Him Like You at the North of Onhava. We also appreciate the quite fine company we are included with in this post. And drinks are definitely on us whenever and wherever we meet-up next. Now how about some excerpt? Word.

"Tanzer writes with endearing frankness about the kind of postponed adolescence that most Judd Apatow characters go through in Judd Apatow movies, except Ben is more honest, and his dissection of his character Keith's emotional oscillations is both more precise and funnier than anything in Knocked Up, for instance. (I really hope Knocked Up is a Judd Apatow movie, or this review is screwed.)"

My Father's House is in the house. Part Two.

My Father's House is in the house. Part One.

CCLaP Weigel "Hypermodern Edition" release and interview action.

As CCLaP build towards its massive August 10th book release blow-out, we are happy to note that today represents the release of the hard cover, or if you prefer, "Hypermodern Edition," of the most excellent Too Young to Fall Asleep by the also most excellent Sally Weigel who CCLaP has taken a moment to interview, or "chat" with today as well, and yes, yes, we know its not the correct day for a new episode of Interview Sundays, but it might be Sunday somewhere, right? Sure it is. So, please do hit it, enjoy some excerpt and we look forward to seeing you on the 10th.


CCLaP: And how has your writing been going recently? I'm happy to announce, for example, that CCLaP will be putting out a new book by you next winter.

SW: Yes, which I am quite excited about. It works out perfectly because since the release of "Asleep" I have been writing on my own, mostly short stories. While some I have tried and managed to get published, a lot of the others have been sitting half-finished or 80% finished. So this summer is the perfect time to sit down, tie all of the loose ends up and really push through all of the revisions so I can hopefully come out with a collection that shows all of the ways my writing has changed since my last big publication. Which I do believe it has. It's exciting as a young writer, still learning the craft, to constantly feel this urge to show my skills and how I have changed. I don't necessarily feel like the same writer as when I wrote "Asleep".

CCLaP: I was just about to ask what it's like for you now to look back on the book, almost three years since you wrote the first draft. For those who don't know, you were still in high school when first working on this.

SW: Yeah, it's pretty strange. Because not only do I look back on a piece of writing but I look back the whole experience. And there was a definite draw from my own life that I took to develop the plot in the novella. So when I reread it, there are times when it's like revisiting that period in my life, during the summer going into college, which I believe to be one where I grew up quite a bit from. It's also strange because this was my first publication and so I look back on the novella with all of the feedback that I received and I look at it as a critic at times. I am happy with the novella in many, many ways but in other ways, I know specific things that I want to straw away from in future pieces.

Time of Death, Experiments in Manhood and My Father's House.

Big thanks to local scribe and TBWCYL, Inc. favorite Robert Duffer for inviting us to write a guest essay as part of his excellent blog series Experiments in Manhood. In keeping with our efforts to start building and spreading the hype around the soon to be released My Father's House, we not so subtly cross-pollinated our essay "Time of Death" with a handful of references to the new book, while only barely comprising, we hope, our professional mien and responsibilities. That said, we plan to do as much of this going forward as we can and we hope you enjoy it, all of it, including the excerpt below. Thanks again Duffer, and drinks on us, many, when next we meet.

"All this thinking about him not living has also got me wondering whether I will outlive him. Maybe? Probably? Okay, but what if I don't? That's only sixteen more years. Sixteen. That's plenty of time to write more, which is good, because there are so many things I want to write about. Like a novel inspired by, or possibly as an homage to, how a character might cope with his father's slow, though still way too fast death. (Yes, that is a quasi- and probably totally unprofessional plug for my soon to be released novella My Father's House.)"

My Father's House. Blurb goodness from the John Reed.

"Tanzer is a goliard for our times, singing, laughing, and wise with our sorrows." John Reed

My Father's House. Blurb goodness from the Mel Bosworth.

"The prose of Ben Tanzer's My Father's House is a waterfall, crashing cool onto our fevered heads and then carving pathways straight through to our hearts, never slowing, never shying, laced with the glitter of honesty, fear, and a son's love for his dying father. Despite the torrent, Tanzer shows exemplary control as he brings us into his narrator's swirling mind to explore the black, bottomless pools of all things yet to be experienced, and he does so with humor and wit, often employing buoyant insights that crack the water's surface like summertime toes pointing to the mist as it rises through the trees, skyward." Mel Bosworth

My Father's House. Blurb goodness from the Bosworth.

"The prose of Ben Tanzer's My Father's House is a waterfall, crashing cool onto our fevered heads and then carving pathways straight through to our hearts, never slowing, never shying, laced with the glitter of honesty, fear, and a son's love for his dying father. Despite the torrent, Tanzer shows exemplary control as he brings us into his narrator's swirling mind to explore the black, bottomless pools of all things yet to be experienced, and he does so with humor and wit, often employing buoyant insights that crack the water's surface like summertime toes pointing to the mist as it rises through the trees, skyward." Mel Bosworth

This Book Will Change Your Life - Fathermucker by Greg Olear.

Travel. Read. Canceled flights. More read. We almost feel guilty about the fact that Fathermucker by Greg Olear isn't even coming out until October, because you will want to read it, and we hope you will. We also are struggling with what to write that doesn't give anything away, or the wrong things away, but what is that, and what would those things be? Not entirely sure, so here's what we will say, there is a father, a writerly, somewhat faux writerly, yet still writerly father none-the-less, who works at home while doing most of the parenting duties. There is a long day, and yes the book covers just one day. A day full of play dates and arguments, discipline and crackers, butt wiping and playgrounds, and all the things we do when we are caring for little kids. There is also anger though and frustration, even the threat of violence, and real emotions, all of which rarely gets captured on the page when it comes to describing the quotidian and nightmarish, yet still somehow joyous, most of time, some of time, experience of parenting. And that's something to be applauded, just as Hush Up and Listen Stinky Pooh Butt by Ken Sparling, was to be applauded for all of the same reasons. There is also humor, however, lots of it, and pop culture, lots of that too, and the storytelling is propulsive and welcoming, and it's all very good, and fun, and yet, even with all that said, we want to pause to pay homage to a moment that comes when much of the day has passed, and following a run-in with the police, and the protagonist who has a work-related goal he wants, maybe needs, to pull-off, an interview with a local celebrity, and we won't ruin that by saying any more, but when he finally has a moment with said celebrity, we were struck more than at any other moment in the novel, how hard it all can be, the intersection of parenting and wanting to be an artist, but not quite getting there, or being there, wherever there is, and realizing maybe that maybe you won't ever be there, and that you might have to embrace that your parenting skills may be the best thing about you, despite the work you put in and the anxiety and the scrapping to be something more, and at that moment we thought about our own resistance to trying to be that guy, mostly artist guy who leaves his regular paying job to try and be much more of an artist guy and dad, and our own discomfort with all that, and what it means about masculinity and the struggles of our own dad with this very thing. The moment felt so real and piercing and knowing and timely that we started to cry at the recognition of it all, and that's something, because we don't ever remember quite seeing that in print, and when that happens, when you experience such a graphic display of your own needs, and pain, and wants, it's a gift, and why we read, something we haven't been driven to note here recently, maybe not since The Road, another story about a father, but there it is, and was, and sit tight until October, but then get on it, because it just might change your life.