Ben Tanzer's Blog, page 5

In which a long, lost Four Fathers interview the Dave Housley and we did magically appears for your reading consumption and we are forced to ask ourselves whether its sudden appearance qualifies as a holiday miracle or more accurately is merely something w

So confusing. All good. Excerpt? Word.


Linda (For Ben): Your stories, collected as “Puzzles,” show the process of figuring out each child. “Lies” epitomizes it, how you have to be a cultural translator for the whole beginning of their lives. And “Loud”—I so get that, where the parent’s version of cool is so very different than the child’s. Talk if you will, a bit about using these very specific vignettes to get at the larger idea, and managing to avoid sentimentality.Ben: The larger idea for me, though I didn’t consciously think about this when I was working on these pieces, is that as a parent, and especially when your children are younger, you’re always in a scramble, work, writing, wiping noses, picking-up socks and dishes, overseeing baths and brushing teeth, getting your children to sleep, and on and on. And while so much of it is automatic, or done on autopilot, you’re not an automaton either, you’re tired, and confused, and frustrated, and some times, even much of the time you feel real anger. You don’t quite understand how you got into this, and why there are moments that you feel so much rage. But then there are these amazing jolts of happiness and awe. They’re like slivers or little diamonds, and that’s what I was interested in, the jolts and the slivers, and all stories for me start with that. Not unwrapping a story, but wrapping the layers around an idea. The thing with flash fiction is that you need to nail the one idea, kill it, wrap it more tightly, and blow it up. So, not a conscious effort to tell any larger idea per se, but capture the endless small ones. Which are not small in the moment, they’re everything, and all you can see and feel, yet, ultimately, and inevitably, also reflect something larger, even if you don’t know what it is when you start.Linda (for Dave): I don’t even know where to start. Self-medicating father, Bieber Fever, neighbor in a downward spiral, rage, a baby on the way. In “Everything is Getting Worse,” everything is getting worse, but one presses on. You’ve thrown all of it on this character Burns, who doesn’t quite seem like he’s up to the load. I’m wondering whether we (or I guess I mean, I) feel for this guy, who in some respect made his own chaos, because he is a father? Or are we really rooting for the son?Dave: I hope you do feel for him! He’s my only recurring character, actually—he was the protagonist of a story called “Ryan Seacrest is Famous,” which was the title story in my first collection, and a story called “Toyota” from my next one, Commercial Fiction. I believe at one point I tweeted “my only recurring character is a terrible asshole.” So yeah, he’s kind of a terrible asshole who mostly obsesses over what other people have and how easy it all looks, about the choices he’s made and the fact that he can’t unmake them and they didn’t lead to him being a lead guitar player, or a news reader, or a shortstop. They didn’t lead anywhere his eighteen-year-old self would have thought was cool. They led to the normal places and he has all this resentment and self-loathing about that. He’s terrible but in my mind, at least, it’s mostly self-loathing.I really tried to put pressure on him in this story. A lot happens in terms of plot, especially for “literary fiction.” I pictured the progression of the story as this magnifying glass that was shining light on him, getting hotter and hotter, backing him into a corner, until he either has to figure out what’s important to him or just lose it altogether and in the process lose everything he still does have. I hope readers feel for him because you can tell that beneath his stupid, pill-popping, wine-drinking, selfish facade, he really does want to do the right thing. Or, he wants to want to do the right thing.There’s a thing that happens at a Justin Bieber concert, and I don’t tend to love moments of my own writing, but I’m still pretty happy about how the turn happens there, and after that I hope you can see him acting in a way that’s more worthy of our sympathy or feeling.I think the son is going to be okay. Or at least, I hope at the end of the story you feel like there’s been a movement toward a place where Burns is actually going to change and by the time the son is old enough to wonder what all of that was about, Burns will have it together for good. 

The New York Stories is all Steve Karas, book haul and fine company.

Mighty fine lookin' book haul from last night. @chicagoexpatjy @BenTanzer @wyllinois @DanNielsenFIVES @hobartpulp pic.twitter.com/KAtJl2dfEh— Steve Karas (@Steve_Karas) December 7, 2015

This Book Will Change Your Life - Zero Saints by the Gabino Iglesias.

It's true that riffing on a book so saturated with guns and violence during a week so saturated with guns and violence might cause one pause. Maybe should cause one pause. But what does it mean when such a book is so much fun, and are we even allowed to say that? Still, when a book moves between English and Spanish with no sense that author gives a fuck whether you know Spanish or not. Moves so fast, and is so graphic and so visual, that it reads like a graphic novel. Makes us remember that noir and pulp are meant for escape and there was most definitely escape. Maybe we just need to say that we readily admit how much we appreciated such a book during a week so saturated with guns and violence and sadness and bullshit. That even a book full of guns and violence did nothing to glorify any of it. And that the least of our problems this past week is literature that makes us fucking smile in middle of so much stress and sadness. All of which is to say that Zero Saints by the Gabino Iglesias most surely changed our lives this past week, and may certainly change yours as well.

That first time we read from SEX AND DEATH and decided that a white Oxford was so totally the correct sartorial flavor to go with.

This is what it looks like when the whole world (or at least the readers anyway) slowly lose their minds over the release party for Kinda Sorta America Dream by the Steve Karas.

@LeesaCrossSmith and @BenTanzer I can't wait to see you both read Saturday! Maybe you can sign your book a second time for me, Leesa.— Zach Yontz (@zontz) December 2, 2015

@LeesaCrossSmith @wyllinois @BenTanzer @chicagoexpatjy All Night Long. pic.twitter.com/Ba3bfpf3wY— Steve Karas (@Steve_Karas) December 4, 2015

@BenTanzer @chicagoexpatjy @Steve_Karas @LeesaCrossSmith so where's the kinda sorta American after party?— Wyl Villacres (@wyllinois) December 3, 2015

@BenTanzer @wyllinois @Steve_Karas @LeesaCrossSmith These threads are overwhelming (in delightful ways, always).— James Yates (@chicagoexpatjy) December 2, 2015

@Steve_Karas @chicagoexpatjy @LeesaCrossSmith @BenTanzer CAN WE ALL PUT ON THIIIICK CHICAWGO ACCENTS FOR THE READING?— Wyl Villacres (@wyllinois) December 1, 2015

@chicagoexpatjy @Steve_Karas @wyllinois @BenTanzer be safe! <3 see you sooooon.— Leesa Cross-Smith (@LeesaCrossSmith) December 1, 2015

@LeesaCrossSmith @wyllinois @BenTanzer @chicagoexpatjy pic.twitter.com/33VJSlulj9— Steve Karas (@Steve_Karas) December 1, 2015

This Podcast Will Change Your Life, Episode One Hundred and Twenty-Two - We Build Community, starring the John "Johnny Misfit" Wawrzaszek.

Wow are we so podcast. And quite Misfit. We are also terribly excited to talk Two Cookie Minimum, the Chicago Zine Fest and most especially the Chicago Publishers Resource Center (CHIPRC) - which so totally rocks - and their very current effort to raise funds via the INDIEGOGO, where you have a mere nine days to go to provide your support. Cool? 

Life In A Walk is on-demand (and iTunes) today and terribly geeked for the Yogi Roth we are.

So you should do this, because it will most certainly change your life. As will learning more here, and if it is your wont, and we think it is, listening to the Yogi Roth's episode of This Podcast Will Change Your Life, or even reading our interview with him at Men's Health, because they are the bomb.

This list Lost in Space is, yo.

For real. So, fuck genre distinctions indeed. And big thanks to the Wendy C. Ortiz for all of it.

This Book Will Change Your Life - Belief Is Its Own Kind Of Truth, Maybe by the Lori Jakiela.

"Writing is work and it's what we're made to do. It says, 'I was here.' It says, 'Maybe this life matters a little.'" page 280
Whenever someone talks about writing, why they do it, or asks why we do, when they say they can turn it off, that it's not a compulsion, or when someone says someone's writing is brave or raw or authentic, we think, yes, maybe it's all of that, but there is also a certain kind of fact to the act as well - we don't have a choice, a flip was switched and now we write. It's what we're made to do. It's also what we have to do. And Lori Jakiela well understands that. She also understands something that can be harder for us to admit - whether we have to write or not, the very act of doing so, and seeing that work published, God-willing, means there is a physical reminder that we were here. That even if life itself does, or does not, matter, maybe we did, or that we were special, at least a little anyway. Which brings us to Belief Is Its Own Kind Of Truth, Maybe by Jakiela, a memoir that is an exploration of not just whether we matter, but what it means to be here at all. The question is whether we should now go and attempt to unpack the details of Jakiela's endlessly moving dissection of a life well-lived, and well-loved. Instead though, we'd rather spend a moment considering that life, and the idea that even having written a memoir it doesn't mean that Jakiela's life still isn't missing something. Truth certainly. But also the kind of stability that comes from knowing who you are. And not because you are self-aware - Jakiela is that - but because you know where you come from. Which she does not. Not really. It seems trite then to say that a book that speaks to power and truth and things not found is a page-turner, or a triumph, but it is. So instead let's say this - during a moment where a handful of truly exceptional memoirs have been released which travel in memory and fragment, moments of flash and questions of truth - and yes we are thinking of Excavation by the Wendy C. Ortiz and This Must Be The Place by the Sean H Doyle in particular - Belief Is Its Own Kind Of Truth, Maybe is still something kind of magical. It is also sure to change your life, as it has ours.

United States of Japan by the Peter Tieryas is most sublime cover reveal.

It's quite sublime really, and for more details on said reveal do go here thank you.