Latest / Black Ibis Social Club / Episode 26: Pilum Press Crew

Transcript

Episode 26: Pilum Press Crew · Black Ibis Social Club

• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, welcome back to the Dicenius Review.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Alexander Konstantin.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: We've got a bunch of guests here today, including the esteemed Fisto Sobani.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: But before we start introducing our guests and say hello and everything,
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted to talk about some of the housekeeping stuff around here.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: Well,
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: If you guys notice, I did a solo episode about books this week.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: Six novels.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: I chose six novels that I really like.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: They're not the best novels.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: They're not the greatest novels.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: They're not even must-reads based on some people or something like that.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: But they're some of my favorite novels, so I figured I'd share them with you guys.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: So if you haven't listened to that episode, go ahead, give it a listen.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: I talk a little bit about each novel.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: I talk about
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: why I chose the novels.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I talk about the idea of where the novels fit into the spectrum of,
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: from Marvel to abstract avant-garde writing,
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: it was just a big,
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: what do you call it?
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: Spectrum.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: So go ahead and do that.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: Give that a listen to.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: And, uh, let me see what's been going on in, uh, in my world today.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I just, uh, chased down an ice cream truck with my daughter a second ago.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm all short of breath.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um,
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: but last night when I saw a movie,
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: so I've been going to the movies a lot and I haven't been going to like exciting
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: movie guys.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: I've been going to like kids movies because I have a six year old and, uh,
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not taking her to see The Joker or anything like that.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: And honestly,
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: no movie out in the last two to three years has been worth me paying for a
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: babysitter or not spending time with her.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: So we only go see kids' movies.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I saw the DreamWorks Wild Robot last night.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I didn't really go in there expecting anything.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know much of anything about it going in.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: And, man, it was great.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: It was a fantastic movie.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: And it had some,
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: like,
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: really touching scenes and some real,
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: like,
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: anti-nihilistic kind of stuff.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: And if you've been following the sub stack,
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: the conversation has been just filled with,
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: like,
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: constant attacks from,
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: just these –
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: Sad,
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: kind of pathetic nihilists that are stuck in that 1998 mode where they're
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: constantly nihilistic about everything,
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: and it's always doom and gloom,
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: and the world's falling apart,
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: and life doesn't even matter,
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: to the point where I started just blocking people left and right.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't want to deal with that.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: So it was nice to see a movie that had a very, I would say, existentialist kind of...
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: concept where you break through your basic programming.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: This robot was programmed to be a servant and it had no purpose besides that.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: And it found purpose.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: It was done in a combination that looked like old Disney movies mixed with Miyazaki.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: And if you've seen...
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: That latest Puss in Boots movie,
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: which I also really liked as a kid's movie,
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: they did a really good job visually with it.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: And this one, Wild Robot, takes the same kind of art style because it's the same team.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: And they make it look like a very much Miyazaki but westernized kind of thing.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought it was really good.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: But beyond that, I don't really have too much to talk about today about myself.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: So...
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: In the studio today, well, in our digital labyrinth studio today, we've got our two guests.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: Well, first of all, Fisto, what's up, man?
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_03: Hey man, nothing much.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_03: Same old, same old.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_03: Another beautiful Sunday here in the near swamp.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: I know, I know.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_03: It was homecoming weekend.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_03: It was homecoming weekend this weekend, so.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what that is.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_03: Friday.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, homecoming.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah, like the school thing.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_03: High school homecoming.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you know, all the people come back and it's a big event here.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: I was a derelict in high school, man.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't do any of that.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_03: But that was fun.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_03: Bunch of crazy stuff on Friday.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_03: I missed all the fun stuff last night because I had a debate competition I went to
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_03: instead with seven of the students I've started.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_03: That's one of the things I'm doing is starting a debate club at the school and it's virtually brand new.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_03: So it was actually kind of great.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_03: We had one of our students hit top five out of the 50 kids that were there.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_03: And then some of the other ones were recognized for their effort and performance during the event.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_03: So we brought home a little bit of hardware and all the kids are looking to...
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, you know what – Appetite and take trophies next time.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: You know what?
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: Being able to speak, being able to public speaking is probably one of the most critical skills, right?
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're not blessed with looking good or being a blonde woman or you're not
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: blessed with being handsome,
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: you better be able to communicate and that's the key.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: You've done some debate there which is basically lying.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: So being able to communicate and lie well is probably one of the most important skills.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: Like I've –
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: I've always been good at debating and talking.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: And that's just, I guess my personality type, it's a talent of mine.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: And you don't,
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: I can't even,
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: man,
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: in the hundreds,
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: thousands,
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: probably times I've gotten out of stuff just by lying,
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: being a master bullshitter,
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: like when somebody is like,
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: what are you doing?
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like,
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: Oh,
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: I'm working on,
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: I've done inspections of my work where like,
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: federal inspectors come and I,
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: I,
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: was hung over in the morning,
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: and I had no idea what the hell the inspection was even about because I forgot
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: about it.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, yeah, here's our training records.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: They're actually digital, so I can't access them because our supervisor is on vacation right now.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: But let me show you my little setup, and I'm completely making everything up.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: I've got all this stuff.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: So bullshitting is the key, man.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: Plus, I mean, that's –
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: That's how you succeed in life.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: But for our guests today, we've got the pylon crew, okay?
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: We've got Mr.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: Neil Durando and JB Jackson,
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: both who are previous guests,
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: not together but separate on the podcast in the early stages.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: Mr.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: Neil Durando is the editor and founder of Pylon Press,
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: which is one of the best small indie presses around.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: And then J.B.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: Jackson is the author of one of my favorite novels of all time.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: Well, my two favorite novels now.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: Shagdick and its follow-up, Ursula of Ulm.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, God.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: Brain dead.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's my ice cream.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: But Ursula of Ulm finally came out after about two, three years of being –
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: It works and it's fantastic.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: I've actually read it twice already.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: I like this so much.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: I read it once in the initial,
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: what do you call it,
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: in like the proof copy I got before JB was on the podcast.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: And then I read the final version, the final fully edited version.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's got a fantastic cover.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: It looks great.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: I read that just recently, two weeks ago.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_03: It's great to be here.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome, Neil.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome, JB.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_01: Likewise.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: I'm excited.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: I've been looking forward to having this one for a while.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I've been telling Fisto, I'm like, Hey man, I can't wait to get those guys on again.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I just love you guys' project.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: I love the whole thing.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: Now,
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: one interesting thing on top of JB,
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: and I'm going to come back to Ursula because that's what I really want to talk about.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: That's going to be our main thing.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: Well, maybe.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: Is that Neil over here, he's also a sub-stacker, right?
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: He is one of us, right?
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: And...
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: His substack,
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: Swing Thoughts and Roundabouts,
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: is,
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: in my opinion,
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: and I'm going to be a simp right now,
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: okay?
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to be simping for a bit.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: In my opinion, it is the best fiction substack on Substack, right?
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I share it all the time, but I'm going to link it again.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're listening to this and you haven't read Swing Thoughts and Roundabouts,
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: which is Neil's fiction substack,
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: You're absolutely behind the curve because the whole thing is a freaking lesson in
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: just writing,
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: in my opinion.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: Have you got a chance to read any of it, Fisto?
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: I have not, no.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, well, you need to go read it.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: But you know what?
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's just fantastic.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: So, Neil, man, you're hitting the spot with that stuff, okay?
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: You are on it.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks, I appreciate that.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: Every time I see a thing that's going like,
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: hey,
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: a new story,
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: they're interconnected and they feel like they're part of a larger novel,
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: if I'm correct,
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: right?
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm working out of a draft of a book I wrote
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_01: in I want to say it was a draft I wrote during COVID and so the idea is to do a
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_01: post put up a post every Tuesday as I go through that draft and I've gotten rid of
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: a lot and rewritten quite a bit but it's tightening up pretty nicely and I guess
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_01: I'm about halfway through now
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: How much editing goes into each substack post, would you say?
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_01: Well,
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_01: I decided to go back to the way I wrote when I wrote on paper,
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_01: and that was I would write my first drafts through to a final beat and then just
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: start typing again.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: So I'd have three pages of
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: of what amounted to notes.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: And then I would just start typing again.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_01: And it was, it was physically demanding to do it that way, but, uh, it lets you rehear things.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't know when I stopped doing that, but it was a mistake to ever stop.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_01: So, um, I just said to myself, well, why not redo that on the, on the computer?
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know why it took me 30 years to figure that out, but, uh,
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so for a week, I write through to a beat, and I have a sort of arc.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_01: That you're following?
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but you can't make a lot of progress over 1,500 words, so...
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: I just write through to a beat, and then I start to iterate it.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: So anything that gets posted has probably been through at least five iterations.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: So you're seeing a six draft.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: So you're initially writing by hand?
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, back in the day, no longer.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, man, I mean, I wish I could write by hand.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: I have a doctor's writing.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: So when I try,
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: when I try to write,
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: like I,
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a pretty avid journal or,
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: and I have tons of notebooks with stuff.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: And then about a year ago, I decided to go back and type all my journals.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: That way they're in a format.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: I can like control F and find stuff in there.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: And damn, I got some ugly writing.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: Like some of it.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, what did I say here?
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: You know?
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: It's very hard to go back.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um,
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_01: The nice thing about handwritten writing is that your writing will convey your
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: state of mind in ways that belie the words sometimes.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean, I write without an online paper.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: So my stuff is like up and down and diagonal and stuff.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: And it just does,
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: you're right,
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: it does show this state of my mind,
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: which is usually not good when I'm writing.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, oh, this is where I started Zoloft, and this is where I stopped taking Zoloft.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just joking.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: But it's exactly kind of the thing.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: Well...
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: I want to do the important stuff first.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: So Ursula of Ulm,
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: you,
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: Neil,
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: published Ursula of Ulm and obviously Shagdeg,
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: because Ursula of Ulm is the sequel to Shagdeg.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: And Mr. Jackson over here wrote it.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: And it officially came out.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: Remind me on the date where it officially came out.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: JB, do you remember?
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that sounds right to me.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: in July.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: It came in July, so you can find the book on the Pollen Press, on Amazon, all over the place.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, for independent reasons, you prefer people to pick it off of Pollen Press, correct?
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's five bucks cheaper, too, if you order from us.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_01: That's awesome.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: Now, for listeners that have not listened to the last two episodes with both Neil and J.B.,
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: Shagdick is a – it was one of my favorite novels that I read.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: I think it was 2019 or 2020 when it first came out.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I was actually living in a beautiful part of New Guinea at that time.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I read Shagdick in one day.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: It was a Sunday and I woke up.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: I had nothing to do.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, man, what am I going to do today?
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: So I opened Shagdick and I started reading.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: I couldn't put it down.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: I was hungover from the night before because we had a party with the locals.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: So I was all dancing around with a bunch of like –
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: Papua New Guinea cannibals or something.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I spent all day on this veranda overlooking the ocean, chain smoking cigarettes and reading a novel.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I think I went through an entire pack of cigarettes.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: And it was those British cigarettes they had in Papua New Guinea that have 25
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: cigarettes per pack instead of 20.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: So that's a – you know what?
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: One of the waitresses actually came and brought me an extra pack.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: I remember that specifically because I was about to panic.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, I haven't finished the book yet.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's Sunday and the cigarette place is closed.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: And the waitresses knew that my entire happiness depended on nicotine and coffee.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: So they had a stash of cigarette packs.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, so I smoked much, drank much coffee and read the entire –
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I loved it.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: And for you listeners, pick it up.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: It is a – okay, this is going to sound really lame.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: But I guess you could consider it an urban fantasy.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: But I hate that term because when you think of urban fantasy,
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: you think of like lame shit like,
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know –
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: Harry Dresden or whatever, you know, or vampires making out in Twilight.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's urban fantasy, right?
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_01: And Shagduck is... We love all other books.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: I don't.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: We love Shagduck and Ursula above you.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_01: But we love them all.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: For the record, guys, Neil and JB are very nice guys.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: They love all books, all of them.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: Me, I'm a hater.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a fucking goddamn hater, okay?
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: I will tell you if I hate your shit, right?
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: If you give me a book and I hate it, I'm going to hate this, right?
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: Realistically, it's just how I am.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Eastern European.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: I was born with a full-on hatred.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: Imagine if you look at my heart, there's one of those gnarly Transylvanian trees, like
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: growing in there, just fucking slowing me down.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_03: So when you read Shadduck, it grew five sizes that day.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, just a little, no, a little, like a little sprig of green popped out from one of those.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: A little sprig of green.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: My wife's like, you're like the only person that is miserable all the time and you like it.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: Like you enjoy misery.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_03: You put that on the back cover, a little sliver of green shot out of my heart.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_03: Alexander Constantine.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: out of my my black diseased heart you know and my wife's like god you're miserable
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: today is it because you're happy i'm like yes okay and i i dwell in misery which by
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: the way a brand new cure album is coming out in like five days i'm really excited
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: about anyways the shaktika is not your kind of like lame ass like urban fantasy but
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: it's urban and i don't know i've struggled with that it's probably got a little jb
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_03: would you say it's more forward than fantasy
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_03: Kind of like a Mahler symphony.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: And you know what?
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: Out of all the novels I've read, the best one to compare it to... Oh, my God.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: Where's my thing at?
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: The novel I compare it most to and...
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just crapping my pocket.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: Give me a second.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: The novel I most compare it to is Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: So what's going on in the novel, guys, is that we have our main character, and he is a librarian, right?
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: What a lame job.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just joking, JB.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: I know you're a librarian.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: So, and Sky, I love you, Sky.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: Librarians are awesome, okay?
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: Except everyone I've ever met.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: But you guys, academics and librarians, and I'm just a bum.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: Anyways, so Mr., our main character, right?
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: He's a librarian in Texas, right?
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: In Fort Worth, Texas.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: Place I've never been to, but if you really want to listen to me talk about Fort Worth or O'Neill,
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: and JB.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: We did all talk about Fort Worth a lot in the last episodes, but it sounds like a fantastic.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_03: January 1st, mid to late seventies.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_03: Shag book starts.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_03: And then Ursula picks up where it leaves off around what?
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_03: May 9th.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_03: All right.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: So JB over here,
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: he is a stickler for detail and he mentions television shows and events like
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: football games and stuff that happen.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: And when I was reading it on that one day of manic cigarette smoking,
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: very similar to how I feel today actually,
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: I was like,
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to get this dude.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to get this guy.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I went online and I looked up a football reference.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: I believe you mentioned a Super Bowl or a game.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, you had it right.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, oh, man, he got it.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: He nailed it, you know?
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I actually did that a few times where I looked at, like, is this band out yet?
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: Did this album come out?
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: And he's a stickler for detail, guys, right?
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: And you have pretty good taste in music.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's more Fisto's and Alexander Helene's taste in music than mine, but good nonetheless, right?
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: So back to the quick summary, our hero, he is a young librarian.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's a fictional university called college university or something like that.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, it's like a small school at Fort Worth, and it's got this big library.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: And his,
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_00: like,
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: one of the professors,
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: I believe he's retired,
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: but he still hangs around the library,
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: gives him a diary,
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: like a journal,
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: which is,
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: hey,
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: we were just talking about journals,
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: right?
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: And he's like, hey, start writing the journal.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: There's a bunch of cool quotes at the beginning.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: And what the novel is, what Shacktock is, is his journal of his first year.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: Anyways, a bunch of crazy stuff happens.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: You know, first simple, then it kind of ramps up slowly.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: And it's written in the journal format, the first person kind of journal format.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of the stuff – what I love about it because I love novels that do this, right?
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of the stuff is left unsaid and it's left for the reader to figure out because –
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: You're reading the supposed journals of the character as he's writing them down.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: So it's filled with mundane things like, oh, I went and bought some cigarettes or blah, blah, blah.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: Or I went and saw this band and I played the bass last night at this club.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I saw, you know, this girl and she looked kind of hot.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, your usual type of stuff you'd put down in a journal.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: But there's some supernatural or maybe not whatever elements hidden there that you,
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: the reader,
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: will notice them where they're not basically telegraphed to you.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: They're not in your face, right?
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes as a reader,
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: you'll notice things that the actual character doesn't until later because you
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: don't have the contextual,
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: well,
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: he doesn't have the contextual level that you from above reading this diary that
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: you know something's going to happen,
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: right?
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: Or else it'd be a boring book, right?
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: So one of my favorite novels, it's written so great.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: Like I couldn't put it down.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: Ursula comes in and takes off, I believe, a day after the same day of Shagduk.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: So tell me where Ursula takes us without giving spoilers because – Well,
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: first of all,
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_03: I want to say that I love that you smoked a whole pack of cigarettes while you read Shagduk.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_03: That's how it's meant to be read, and I encourage all the readers out there to –
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_03: Back up on cigarettes, cigars, pipes, whatever you got.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_03: Smoke them if you got them.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_03: Smoke?
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_03: Everyone in the book is smoking.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_01: Consumption is 25 cigarettes.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: I get in 50.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe,
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: Neil,
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: maybe Pylem can,
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: like,
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: get together with,
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: like,
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: a French or maybe,
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: like,
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: some Ukrainian cigarette company and give us coupons that we can order.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you buy a hardback edition.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: You get a pack of, like, Smoklyonias or something like that.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_01: That's a wonderful idea.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: some Russian cigarettes that are made out of the tobacco that's found on the floor
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: of the tobacco factory and all the leftover.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_01: Of a train carriage.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_03: Alex,
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_03: I got to ask,
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_03: the last book that you recommended to me that I read very,
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_03: very quickly was Neuromancer.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_03: With the amount of drug talk regarding this book, I kind of feel like I need to read it similarly.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_03: Is that accurate?
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you have to read Shagnik, man.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: Got it.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: You have to read it.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: You know what?
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_00: I'll tell you right now, Fisto.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: Shagnik is a book that's actually written for you, right?
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, for me?
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_03: We just met and you wrote a book for me.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: That's amazing.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: No, because it is –
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: and this is a testament to JB's like writing style, right?
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: I connected with,
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: for example,
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: I can connect with Neuromancer because I'm kind of a derelict and I spent time
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: shooting people in the military.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_01: You buy ice cream for your daughter.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: Now I do.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a recovered derelict, right?
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: But I mean, okay.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_03: That's how the guy ends up at the end of the book, at the end of –
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_03: He gets back to where he was.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's how my early 20s was.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: one day I'm drinking a lot and smoking weed and stuff,
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_00: and the next day I'm fast roping out of a helicopter in Helmand Province,
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: okay?
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_00: So I can,
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like,
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: hey,
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: so by the way,
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: they don't let you drink when you're deployed out there unless you find some.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: You're an American.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: Months and months, and yeah, unless you're American.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: and cool and like are like a spec ops guy or something like that you know you just
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_00: have to be french or you have to be french right and i i was actually on a patrol
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: base that the georgians ran for a while and uh georgians not as in georgia the
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: state but georgia the country and these you know what i'm insulting the
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_00: intelligence of my listeners everybody knows that okay i was
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_03: I immediately thought of the country just for the record.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I say that because that's the normie kind of thing.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: But everybody that listens to this knows I'm talking about Georgia, the country.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_00: But where Stolman was born, right?
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_00: anyways right these guys so I'm digging through their stuff because I took over
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: this kind of mud hut right and it's the medical hut so I had all these like
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: antibiotics and crap laying everywhere and I'm digging through this and I they had
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_00: these body bags like these empty body bags and like this little nook this little
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: mud nook that they had and I pulled them over and these guys had jars of like pure
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: alcohol
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: hidden in there you know i'm like oh my god these guys are drinking this shit i
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: didn't touch it because it's it looked unsanitary i guess it was alcohol yeah it
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: was probably embalming fluid or like fucking distilled jp8 fluid dripped out of the
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: back of an ac yeah i never worry about it
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_00: not being an alcoholic i never got to that level where i needed to drink like
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: whatever the some georgians left in helmand province but i mean yeah i guess some
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_00: people have more fun right i'm like i mean you did left it oh god georgians are
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: like like russians basically so they're by by nature alcoholics right and uh if
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: they left it untouched then i don't want to drink it you know what i mean but
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_00: But the reason I,
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_00: Jackson and Fista,
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: the reason I say that is because I,
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not an,
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: I don't have an academic streak to myself,
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_00: right?
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: Every,
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_00: my level of,
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: academia knowledge or anything like that,
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_00: or my eurydician,
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: I guess you could say,
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: right?
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: Comes from being a spiritual aristocrat and worshiper of the volcano demon, right?
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: And, yeah.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: I had to throw in that.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_01: All hail the volcano demon.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_01: You have a velvet smoking jacket.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I do.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I do have a purebred German Shepherd, which makes me extra cool.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: Even though it's afraid of dogs barking across the street.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's just a horrible dog.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: But what I'm trying to say is that I am not in the milieu for this novel.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not part of like – I've never worked in a library.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_00: I've never worked in a school or college.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: I've never taught anybody and I've been strictly on the other side of the world.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: The only thing I really I guess could connect to is I played in the band and we
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: talked about that in the past,
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: JB,
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: when you were on last time.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_00: But Fisto, you're a school teacher, man.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_00: That's cool.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: And,
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like the shenanigans that goes on in Shagduk in the,
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_00: between the characters,
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: for example,
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_00: like the different,
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: the staff of the library is something that's probably very close to what goes on in,
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_00: your average high school,
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: staff lounge and that type of thing.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: So I feel like it is a book that's much more written for you.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_00: But not being an intellectual midget,
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: I don't have to have a character that is for me to enjoy the novel, okay?
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: I did click with it, but that's what I meant.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_00: Read it, bro, and let us know.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_00: Sold.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, you know what?
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not actually just you, Fizzo.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody that's listening, go and buy it, okay?
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_00: Go and buy it.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: Not just because it's a fantastic book, but because we hate mainstream publishers.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: Well, not
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: Neil and JB, they love mainstream publishers.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_00: I despise them.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_00: That's from the blackest pit of my heart, right?
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I think we should support small indie publishers.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_00: And Pylem is one of the best.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_00: So go buy it.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_00: If you don't read it, you're stupid.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_00: But if you do read it, you're extra great.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_00: All right, but JB, tell me about what happens in the second novel, right?
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_00: Where do we take off and what are we doing there?
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_03: It's written as a diary.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_03: And so I just concentrate on –
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_03: you know, what would you write in the diary and what would you not write in a diary?
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_03: I just put myself in Steven's shoes and, uh, and write what happened that day.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_03: So in, uh, in Ursula, we see that, um, the stakes are, are rising.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_03: The danger is increasing.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, the mysteries are deepening and, um,
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_03: I should point out that this is not a series the way people understand.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_03: It's more like one big book,
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_03: like Lord of the Rings,
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_03: where it was the publisher who decided,
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_03: hey,
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_03: this is too long.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_03: We're going to break this up into smaller books,
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_03: smaller physical objects,
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_03: just so you're not reading a phone book.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_03: I think
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I was interested in the book and I gave him like a 250,000 word manuscript right off the bat.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_03: It's like, this is really long.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_03: So, um,
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it's a very easy argument to make.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_03: One unexpected thing that happened out of breaking it up into individual books is
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_03: that when we decided Shagbook should end somewhere around here,
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_03: it was a mutual decision.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_03: We kind of read through the story together and picked the spot that seemed like it
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_03: would be a good break point.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_03: But you couldn't just slice it off right there.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_03: I had to go back and cauterize the ends and make it feel like an ending or like the
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_03: end of an episode or something.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_03: I think the book benefited from that.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_03: And likewise, when I started working on Ursula, it just abruptly picked up where the last day was.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_03: left off.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_03: So I had to,
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_03: uh,
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_03: think about,
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_03: um,
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_03: what was the story that I was telling and,
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_03: um,
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_03: how to keep that alive and how to grow it.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_03: Um,
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_03: so likewise,
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_03: uh,
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_03: yeah,
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_03: I'm dealing with that right now,
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_03: uh,
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_03: really hard and in book three,
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_03: um,
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_03: in book three,
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_03: I don't mean to jump the gun here and talk about that,
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_03: but,
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_03: um,
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_03: to go back to how it was one huge manuscript.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_03: So after I was done with Ursula, I still had 75,000 words left over already contributed to book three.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm having a little difficult time because whereas Shagduk kind of
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_03: was in a way how I had written it to begin with.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_03: I just polished it up.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_03: But by the time I got to Ursula,
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_03: Shagdick had been established,
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_03: the things that had happened in there and I had to,
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_03: um,
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_03: kind of rein myself in and,
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_03: uh,
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_03: consider what I had already written.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I guess I'm kind of rambling.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_03: I don't even know what I'm trying to say, but,
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_00: No, I understand exactly right.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the difficulty of being a writer and writing and having material in a
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_00: way when you can spend a decade fantasizing or taking notes and writing on a work.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_03: What has come out, what was actually published.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_00: So you're going back and now you're basically taking off from where you left off
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_00: and improving on this stuff.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_00: And look, Ursula – going from Shagdug to Ursula is seamless, all right?
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_00: And for you guys that are going to read it that haven't read the first one, haven't read Shagdug –
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's not one of those novels where you get to the end and it's like to be continued or whatever.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_00: It could be a standalone novel.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_00: If you read Shagdick,
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_00: you don't like it or you like it just enough and you don't feel like going on to Ursula,
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_00: you don't have to because the pleasure of it is really –
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_00: to a point stylistically and also the enjoyment of the characters, right?
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_00: Well, there is an ongoing plot.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's, you know, snakes and weaves and it eventually comes towards a head towards the end of the book.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_00: The real pleasure,
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_00: in my opinion,
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_00: my favorite parts of the novel were just the weird stuff when,
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_00: they're playing music in the bar or that crazy outdoor festival.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah,
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_00: They're creeping around in the professor's house.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's just kind of the everyday stuff,
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_00: all the weird stuff with the missing cat and that weird business trip they took and
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_00: the strange side characters where I'm like,
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_00: are they bad?
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_00: Are they good?
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_00: What the hell is going on with this girl or this guy or whatever?
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_00: That's where the joy comes in from reading that novel.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's a novel that –
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_01: One of the pleasures of working with a writer like Jackson is that he sees all the
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_01: way around his object.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_01: There's lots of stuff that isn't made explicit.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_01: So when you're responding to it and you're sort of,
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_01: we have lots of conversations and we'll discuss impasses and that sort of thing,
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_01: but he's never at a loss.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_01: Usually, you know, our discussions are kind of elliptical.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I'll make a suggestion.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you know, see what you can do there.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, it will resonate with him or it won't.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, he'll go back to work.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't have to edit closely at all because he pays so much attention to his own work.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_01: Which is a curious thing to say because actually most writers don't pay attention
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_01: to what they're writing.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_01: They're set on broadcast.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_03: Neil sees things that I don't see.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_03: And
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_03: That's so valuable.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_03: It's like when you proofread your own work, you miss all the typos because you're too close to it.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_03: But Neil sees all sorts of potential that I don't necessarily see,
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_03: so I can develop really interesting threads that I might have left alone.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_03: The book that I gave him and the books that...
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_03: you guys are reading.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_03: The difference has been night and day.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_03: I'm so glad now that I didn't publish it myself.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_03: I was looking forward to it at first because I wanted to...
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_03: I'm interested in all aspects of books from their conception,
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_03: writing and they're producing them to publishing them and what happens to them in
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_03: bookstores and libraries and afterward.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_03: So I was looking forward to that, but, um, working with, with Neil has been, um, quite an education.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_03: I can feel myself becoming a better writer every day that I talk to him.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_03: Um,
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_03: But when he does make suggestions,
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_03: sometimes,
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_03: like what Alex was saying,
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_03: a lot of stuff doesn't go unsaid.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_03: Like, for example, if you're shot, you don't go home later and write in your diary, argh.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_03: so, um, but there'll be times where Neil says, uh, just, he gives me a big question marks.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_03: Like, what is this?
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm thinking,
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_03: well,
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_03: if you'd been reading closely,
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_03: you would know,
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_03: but I think about it and it's like,
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_03: well,
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_03: no,
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_03: I'm just assuming that the reader is as close to all this material as I am.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_03: And that's not the case at all.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_03: So I do have to remind myself that, that you, the reader don't know anything about Steven and his world.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_03: and I, um,
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_03: all that you know is all that I'm giving you.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_03: So, um, back to, you know, can you read Ursula first?
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I, I, I wouldn't recommend it only because, um,
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_03: I wouldn't recommend you read The Two Towers before Fellowship of the Ring either, but you can.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_03: But in case you are,
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_03: or in case it's been a long time since you read Shagdok,
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_03: I do remind you of what's going on when I refer back to the earlier book.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_00: You actually do a very good job of that.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_00: And it was definitely good because I think I reread Shag Dirk like a few months and
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_00: then I was going to read Ursula right away.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_00: But then life came at me and I just ended up picking it up.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_00: But,
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_00: on the topic of what we're talking about right now,
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_00: is it – you illustrate the point and I know Fisto is going to back me up on this
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_00: one too,
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_00: is that sometimes –
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_00: We have like talent or like raw talent specifically if we're younger and we need guidance.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_00: And fundamentally, somebody like an editor or a teacher, and that's what they're there for.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_00: They're there to – you guys are there.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_00: I speak as in Neil and Vista.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_00: You guys are there to look at the vomit we put out, whether it's our –
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_00: literary art or our just way of being in a classroom and our way of thinking and
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_00: then identifying the things and our blind spots and what we miss and you know
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_00: sharpening it and making it better and that's the one kind of key thing that we we
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_00: uh we tend to fail at in the independent writing world because there's a lack of
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_00: editors you know we've talked about this forever it's like uh
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_00: And unfortunately for editors, it's a talent and it's a skill set.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's a very difficult skill set.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I could never be an editor, right?
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_00: I don't have the chops,
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_00: the writing chops for one thing,
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_00: but I don't even have the temperament or the personality to be an editor,
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_00: mostly because of the black heart thing,
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_00: and I hate things.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_00: But the thing is, like, it's a difficult –
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's a difficult skill and one that goes really unsung.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_01: Well, if you do it right, it's completely on something.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_00: The editor is like the music producer or the sound engineer.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody's clapping.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody's clapping for Tay-Tay at the Grammys or whatever,
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_00: but nobody's giving the guy or girl or whatever behind that produced the album and
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_00: put it together and got the sound right and cut away all the stupid stuff.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_00: Like her last album needed a...
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_00: but much better producer and a lot of better editing.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_00: There's way too many songs on the album.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_00: You're like,
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_00: come on,
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_00: nobody needs to hear seven versions of the same song,
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_02: but you know,
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_00: you say that they're on the song.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_03: If you know,
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_03: like if you know who the producer is and something about,
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_03: then you can appreciate their contribution to the end result.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_03: Like I said earlier, I was doing a self publish and,
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_03: And it would have been a perfectly okay book,
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_03: I'm sure,
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_03: at least on par with a lot of the stuff that I used to read when I was a kid,
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_03: like the stuff that Len Carter helped bring to the world.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_03: Like that stuff is great, but it's not like Cormac McCarthy or anything.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_03: It's entertaining, but it's not fine literature either.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_03: like I said before, the difference between what I submitted to Neil and what ended up in the book.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_01: The dog barks when you say Cormac McCarthy.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_03: Working closely with an editor really boosted my appreciation for what editors do, for sure.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_03: And you can see in what's being put out there today that
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_03: Editors are a dying breed.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_03: They're not making... Their presence is not felt in the output.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_03: It finds its way to the shelf, let's say.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_02: Hmm.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, so what's interesting is, and I'll tell you a story.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_00: I'll have a little bit of a mission to make,
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_00: a little bit of a kind of like inside my brain kind of truth.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_00: So when I first read Shagdick,
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_00: I was obviously already familiar with Pylem Press and some of the stuff you guys
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_00: put out.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_00: I've been a longtime fan of Charlotte Ernstrom and I've read almost all his stories
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_00: and I've read everything you put out by him.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm pretty familiar with them.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_00: But if I'm correct, Shagdick is the first full-length novel put out by Pylem Press, right?
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's correct.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_01: Sky is working his way through a novel now.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_01: Very, very excited about.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_00: I can't wait for that either.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, my gosh.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_00: Give me a second, guys.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_00: I got to go kill.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_03: I kind of have a question guys.
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_03: Um, Alex made a link between being an editor and being a teacher.
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_03: And this week I've been thinking maybe because I'm deep into second,
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_03: the second quarter and the kids are,
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_03: showing signs of,
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_03: of wear and tear already.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but it's like, it's, it's like the difference in my mind is like, is it patients?
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_03: Is that what the editor brings?
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_03: What do you think?
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you can't be.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, as a teacher, you're an authority.
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_01: You can never step away from that.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_01: I think being an authority as an editor is probably not something that you should set out to do.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_01: I try to be the writer's best reader.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_01: and uh you know so there's there's that uh you can be it's good if you have some uh
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_01: linguistic chops to go with that and i do um but there the other side of it is uh
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_01: really you know you're the secret sharer um you have to um
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_01: help things along in any way you can.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I I've seen, you know, a couple of famous editors up close and colleagues of mine.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, there are basically two modes.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_01: There is one mode where an editor is very interventionist,
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_01: uh,
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_01: who will take a finished manuscript and rewrite it.
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and then there's another sort of editor who is, um,
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_01: you know, a friend and doesn't do anything to the manuscript.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I try to,
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_01: come up with the median between those two poles and probably err closer to being a friend.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_01: So, I mean, in a teaching context, and I've heard you talk about teaching before.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_01: So,
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_01: if you give a really,
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_01: really difficult task that the student doesn't think that they can accomplish,
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_01: What you want to do is position yourself as a resource to help them accomplish this
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_01: difficult task that you yourself have set.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_01: You're not really an evaluator or you're not someone who punishes and rewards.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_01: That's beside the point.
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_03: When you said the editor is the best reader,
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_03: I thought to myself,
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_03: the teacher is the best student in so much as I'm providing an example to the
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_03: student where,
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_03: Hey,
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_03: if you guys want to learn how to learn this,
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_03: here's how I would do it.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_03: Here's an example, you know, to nudge the balance between, go ahead.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_01: Approaches,
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_01: you have to recognize when,
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_01: when a certain approach might be sterile and be able to,
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_01: to express clearly,
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_01: uh,
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_01: an alternative.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_01: We never,
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know about you,
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_01: JP,
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_01: but I don't feel like we ever got into an editorial impasse with either of these
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_01: two books.
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_01: I think it was just a joy to edit.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_01: I would, you know, make my notes.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, Jackson would come back with
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_01: with solutions that,
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_01: that exceeded,
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_01: uh,
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_01: whatever,
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_01: whatever reservation I might've had,
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_01: uh,
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_01: he,
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_01: he,
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_01: he's very,
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_01: very good at paying forward on,
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_01: on expectations and in the narrative,
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_01: he's,
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_01: he's far harder on himself than,
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_01: than I ever could be on him.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so, you know, with a writer like that, you, you just,
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you instigate and then you get out of the way.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_01: Hmm.
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_00: You know, what's always interesting is that, you know,
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_00: Many editors are novelists themselves, right?
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes – No, I don't know that that's true.
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_00: Not all of them.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_00: No, you're right.
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_00: But I've read stuff.
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_00: Like I've often been like, you know, who edited this?
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_00: And then I come across like a novel that's written by that editor and I'm always
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_00: usually mostly disappointed because it seems like they're two different mindsets,
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_00: two different skill sets in a way.
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_00: Would you say that they're two different –
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_01: They're very different.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_01: I've known.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_01: I won't name names because I don't feel like pissing people off today,
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_01: but I've had colleagues in the past who are far,
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_01: far smarter than I was.
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_01: And yet they could not write.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I'm just enough of a villain that I can write.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_01: it takes villainy to be a writer.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_01: I like that.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_01: I like that.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_01: To actually create something.
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you have to not know your place.
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I think part of being a successful editor is having an understanding of where to...
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_01: where you can situate texts within a larger cultural context.
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_01: And so you spend a lot of time thinking about your place or the last paragraph that you wrote.
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_01: Does this have a place in the spot that I imagine it to be?
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's a crazy way of working, but I know of one very, very brilliant editor who has added
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_01: illustrious career who always wanted to write uh but just can't do it um you know
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_01: it's always his expectations are so high that he's never taken the pause to to
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_01: actually learn how to create this is true of literature students as well um when i
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_01: was in graduate school i was
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_01: very, very frequently disappointed in my colleagues.
• 49:02
  SPEAKER_01: But the part that was sad about them and excusable was that literature students,
• 49:09
  SPEAKER_01: readers who read to interpret don't have that villainy usually.
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_01: Now and again, if they do,
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_01: they can be very brilliant critics and they can be very brilliant professors of literature,
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_01: but it's rare.
• 49:31
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's very rare.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that's very interesting, you know, because I, so I, there's a,
• 49:42
  SPEAKER_00: Without naming names of authors that we probably all know out there,
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_00: both independent and mainstream,
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_00: there's a mindset of just work,
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_00: just work,
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_00: just write,
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_00: write,
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_00: write,
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_00: write,
• 49:55
  SPEAKER_00: write,
• 49:55
  SPEAKER_00: put that crap out.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_00: Amazon.com is going to sell it for you, and you're going to sell a book a day, and it doesn't matter.
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_00: Don't be an artsy-fartsy fag about stuff.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_00: You know exactly who I'm talking about, and I'm sure we all do, right?
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not in that camp.
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_00: I tend to look at writing or really any artistic endeavor as a near-mystical endeavor.
• 50:24
  SPEAKER_00: kind of spiritual way of doing things.
• 50:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I feel like you're right.
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_00: I like that.
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_00: You said,
• 50:29
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 50:29
  SPEAKER_00: there needs to be a level of villainy,
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_00: and I,
• 50:33
  SPEAKER_00: I guess you can look at that level at when it comes to,
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_00: the creative forces,
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_00: it's gotta be like kind of raw and gross and dirty at the same time.
• 50:41
  SPEAKER_00: Well,
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know,
• 50:43
  SPEAKER_01: but I mean,
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_01: it's,
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_01: there's an essential sort of arrogance to,
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 50:49
  SPEAKER_01: to create something that,
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_01: I mean,
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_01: you know when you've written a successful story or a successful novel,
• 50:57
  SPEAKER_01: there's a feeling that comes over you,
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_01: which is an objective feeling.
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's not a subjective one.
• 51:03
  SPEAKER_01: You look at whatever you've done and you say,
• 51:06
  SPEAKER_01: well,
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_01: whatever else I might say,
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_01: this didn't exist before and now it does.
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_01: And then you go back and you try to make it stronger.
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 51:20
  SPEAKER_01: So I think writing hard that way is a product of its times.
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_01: I mean,
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_01: there was the idea that we could,
• 51:33
  SPEAKER_01: with a little bit of finagling with Amazon's algorithm,
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_01: you could get particularly a very short book if you had a large social media following,
• 51:43
  SPEAKER_01: and that you could raise a bow wave of interest
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_01: and sell off of that momentum.
• 51:54
  SPEAKER_01: I think that may have been true for a while.
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think it's true now.
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I think particularly with the advent of AI and with real villainy,
• 52:06
  SPEAKER_01: with real organized villainy,
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_01: not only is that no longer possible,
• 52:12
  SPEAKER_01: but it's making reading harder and rarer than it already was.
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_00: I mean,
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_00: listen,
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_00: in my opinion,
• 52:20
  SPEAKER_00: if you step into the arena of fiction writing,
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_00: literature,
• 52:27
  SPEAKER_00: any genre,
• 52:28
  SPEAKER_00: whatever,
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_00: and you're thinking that I'm going to write a bunch and I'm going to make some
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_00: money or I'm going to become famous.
• 52:35
  SPEAKER_00: I absolutely think you're a moron.
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_00: If you're going to make money doing anything – Oh, you're deluded.
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_00: You're insane.
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_00: You're better off making some cockamamie like mentally ill political sub stack and
• 52:51
  SPEAKER_00: you will have 8,000 followers by saying Orange Man Bad over and over and they'll
• 52:55
  SPEAKER_00: toss you $5 a month and you'll be making 50 grand a month in like no time.
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_00: you know?
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because one, you're right.
• 53:03
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody reads that.
• 53:04
  SPEAKER_00: That's the truth.
• 53:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I hate to admit it.
• 53:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I used to argue with you, but I, I tend to agree.
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_00: Well, nobody reads anything good.
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_00: I know plenty of readers.
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_00: They're just reading giant 2000 page romantics.
• 53:14
  SPEAKER_01: This is,
• 53:15
  SPEAKER_01: this is,
• 53:15
  SPEAKER_01: this is a good,
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_01: a good question to open up,
• 53:19
  SPEAKER_01: open up to Jackson as he's on the front line.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, what,
• 53:26
  SPEAKER_01: JB, what's your notion?
• 53:27
  SPEAKER_03: Well, people read what's in front of them.
• 53:31
  SPEAKER_03: And because everyone's doing that,
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_03: that's what they're talking about,
• 53:35
  SPEAKER_03: and it's a vicious circle,
• 53:37
  SPEAKER_03: and things gather a lot of momentum in our culture when everybody's looking and
• 53:45
  SPEAKER_03: reading and listening to the same things.
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_03: I've numerous times I've gone through the library and saw an empty display stand
• 53:55
  SPEAKER_03: and put something that I thought was cool there,
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_03: or even just something that was obscure and sure as shit,
• 54:03
  SPEAKER_03: an hour later,
• 54:03
  SPEAKER_03: it's gone.
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_03: Someone checked it out.
• 54:06
  SPEAKER_03: You just got to put, put things in front of people.
• 54:10
  SPEAKER_03: So one thing I've noticed, and, and, and this is true of libraries as well as bookstores is you,
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_03: especially of libraries, um, the stuff you see on the shelf was all published in the last 20 years.
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_03: The,
• 54:27
  SPEAKER_03: um,
• 54:27
  SPEAKER_03: stuff that,
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_03: um,
• 54:31
  SPEAKER_03: the library acquired a long time ago,
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 54:33
  SPEAKER_03: classics,
• 54:35
  SPEAKER_03: uh,
• 54:35
  SPEAKER_03: I don't,
• 54:35
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_03: literature of the eighties,
• 54:37
  SPEAKER_03: whatever that stuff,
• 54:39
  SPEAKER_03: um,
• 54:41
  SPEAKER_03: falls out of circulation and it gets withdrawn.
• 54:46
  SPEAKER_03: It falls apart and typically it's not reordered.
• 54:50
  SPEAKER_03: And so it just sort of disappears.
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_03: And so one thing I noticed that
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_03: and this is true of any library except academic ones,
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_03: is a lot of the fiction that I read in the 80s is now unobtainable in a library as
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_03: well as bookstores.
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_03: So I do try and restock that stuff and put it in front of people's faces again because,
• 55:14
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_03: just because...
• 55:18
  SPEAKER_03: 40 years has gone by,
• 55:19
  SPEAKER_03: 50,
• 55:19
  SPEAKER_03: 60,
• 55:21
  SPEAKER_03: hundreds of years,
• 55:23
  SPEAKER_03: doesn't mean that that stuff is not important or not any good anymore or irrelevant.
• 55:29
  SPEAKER_03: So... Republishing is a huge...
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, yeah, I looked at New York Review Books.
• 55:43
  SPEAKER_03: They're putting out stuff that's been forgotten.
• 55:46
  SPEAKER_03: That's just solid gold, like, what was it, Jeffrey Household's Rogue Mail.
• 55:52
  SPEAKER_03: Like, I wouldn't have even known about that book had they not put it in front of me.
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 56:04
  SPEAKER_00: But I mean, you know, this is not a problem that's just in the novel, you know, the written word world.
• 56:15
  SPEAKER_00: You have the same thing with film, right?
• 56:16
  SPEAKER_00: I mean,
• 56:17
  SPEAKER_00: you have so many great movies from,
• 56:19
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 56:20
  SPEAKER_00: 50s,
• 56:20
  SPEAKER_00: 60s,
• 56:21
  SPEAKER_00: 70s,
• 56:21
  SPEAKER_00: and even the 80s that are not being streamed anywhere anymore.
• 56:26
  SPEAKER_00: So they're not in front of you, right?
• 56:27
  SPEAKER_00: They're not being put front and center by Amazon or Netflix or whoever the fuck.
• 56:32
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 56:32
  SPEAKER_00: And they're, you know, they're not in the DVD section of target or wherever people buy.
• 56:40
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 56:40
  SPEAKER_00: Where did they buy DVDs?
• 56:41
  SPEAKER_01: It would be a mistake.
• 56:42
  SPEAKER_01: It would be a mistake not to think for a moment that the archives of everything aren't on fire.
• 56:51
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 56:52
  SPEAKER_00: I think you're right.
• 56:52
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's a terrifying thing because we're looking at a,
• 56:55
  SPEAKER_00: You know, a century of film, for example, that risk being lost.
• 57:02
  SPEAKER_00: And you listen – I listen to different podcasts and one of them occasionally listen
• 57:07
  SPEAKER_00: to Quentin Tarantino and I believe –
• 57:11
  SPEAKER_00: John Avery or Jack Avery or whatever his friend's name.
• 57:13
  SPEAKER_00: He was a co-writer on Pulp Fiction or Reservoir Dogs.
• 57:16
  SPEAKER_00: And what they do is they talk about movies that are obscure and weird and kind of
• 57:21
  SPEAKER_00: forgotten and that were popular.
• 57:23
  SPEAKER_00: And the way they talk about these movies,
• 57:26
  SPEAKER_00: they're like,
• 57:26
  SPEAKER_00: oh,
• 57:26
  SPEAKER_00: yeah,
• 57:26
  SPEAKER_00: I remember when I was 16 and we went to the Galleria and we saw this movie and it
• 57:30
  SPEAKER_00: was huge and everybody went.
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_00: All my friends went.
• 57:32
  SPEAKER_00: And you can't even get this fucking movie on Amazon anymore.
• 57:35
  SPEAKER_00: You can't even order the DVD.
• 57:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's like completely gone.
• 57:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's disappeared.
• 57:39
  SPEAKER_00: And they screen these movies and talk about them.
• 57:42
  SPEAKER_00: And in the book world,
• 57:44
  SPEAKER_00: it's even worse than that because movies tend to have a little bit more – in a way
• 57:48
  SPEAKER_00: – in a strange way,
• 57:49
  SPEAKER_00: they're a little bit more solid because of the media kind of format of them and the
• 57:53
  SPEAKER_00: fact that film is the American 20th century art medium.
• 57:59
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, what happens?
• 58:00
  SPEAKER_00: What's going to happen to all this stuff?
• 58:02
  SPEAKER_00: What happens to all these books?
• 58:04
  SPEAKER_00: Some of these books are so valuable.
• 58:06
  SPEAKER_00: Even the more pop kind of simple adventure novels.
• 58:10
  SPEAKER_00: I remember when I first read Scaramouche.
• 58:14
  SPEAKER_00: I remember talking to you about this, Neil, a lot.
• 58:16
  SPEAKER_00: Scaramouche is by Sabatini.
• 58:18
  SPEAKER_00: He also wrote Captain Blood.
• 58:20
  SPEAKER_00: I believe it's a novel from the mid – early 20th century and it's a novel about the
• 58:27
  SPEAKER_00: French Revolution and it's ultimately an adventure novel,
• 58:31
  SPEAKER_00: right?
• 58:32
  SPEAKER_00: But it is a – that lawnmower guy.
• 58:35
  SPEAKER_00: Anyways, it's a great novel and nobody has ever heard of it except for like maybe you, you know?
• 58:42
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like –
• 58:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's a novel that I shot and it got made into a movie.
• 58:48
  SPEAKER_00: And it got made into, I think, multiple movies.
• 58:50
  SPEAKER_00: And it was a very huge hit and very popular at that time.
• 58:56
  SPEAKER_00: And now it's just disappeared.
• 58:58
  SPEAKER_00: I found a weird $1.99 copy on Amazon one day on Kindle that I picked up.
• 59:04
  SPEAKER_00: And we...
• 59:07
  SPEAKER_00: it's sad you know that like there's all these fantastic novels that are forgotten
• 59:11
  SPEAKER_01: they're not put forward in this scaramouche scaramouche i read in in my high school
• 59:17
  SPEAKER_01: library right um and it was it was published in english i think in 1921 that's what
• 59:23
  SPEAKER_01: the internet um yeah i can do that right now jackson can you can you go and check
• 59:27
  SPEAKER_00: to see if you have it in your library i'm curious
• 59:35
  SPEAKER_00: I'd be very curious to see because I love that novel.
• 59:38
  SPEAKER_00: Have you ever heard of it, Fisto?
• 59:39
  SPEAKER_03: I have not.
• 59:40
  SPEAKER_03: Another one for the list.
• 59:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's an old novel.
• 59:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's a really good one.
• 59:44
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, it's – I mean it's an adventure.
• 59:46
  SPEAKER_00: Honestly,
• 59:47
  SPEAKER_00: Scaramouche is a novel that if I would have read it in high school,
• 59:50
  SPEAKER_00: if somebody gave it to me in high school,
• 59:52
  SPEAKER_00: I would have really –
• 59:54
  SPEAKER_00: been much more into reading than I was at that time in high school.
• 59:58
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 59:58
  SPEAKER_00: I was a nerd.
• 59:58
  SPEAKER_00: I read a lot,
• 59:59
  SPEAKER_00: but I can see as a novel that I would hand to a teenage boy to read a novel about a
• 1:00:05
  SPEAKER_00: dude that disguises himself as a clown and fights people with swords,
• 1:00:09
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:00:09
  SPEAKER_00: like,
• 1:00:10
  SPEAKER_00: come on,
• 1:00:10
  SPEAKER_00: like the most popular novel ever.
• 1:00:14
  SPEAKER_03: And it's one of the academic libraries has it.
• 1:00:17
  SPEAKER_03: It's actually checked out.
• 1:00:19
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:00:25
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, there we go.
• 1:00:26
  SPEAKER_00: Somebody's reading.
• 1:00:27
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's good news.
• 1:00:28
  SPEAKER_01: You see?
• 1:00:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there we go.
• 1:00:30
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:00:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um,
• 1:00:31
  SPEAKER_00: but yeah,
• 1:00:31
  SPEAKER_00: for you guys,
• 1:00:32
  SPEAKER_00: listen,
• 1:00:32
  SPEAKER_00: we'd scare Mitch anyways,
• 1:00:34
  SPEAKER_00: but I,
• 1:00:35
  SPEAKER_00: yeah,
• 1:00:36
  SPEAKER_00: it's,
• 1:00:36
  SPEAKER_00: we are entering a,
• 1:00:37
  SPEAKER_00: an era of,
• 1:00:38
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:00:39
  SPEAKER_00: things are just disappearing and,
• 1:00:41
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:00:41
  SPEAKER_00: we're not going to have them anymore.
• 1:00:43
  SPEAKER_00: And for a long time,
• 1:00:45
  SPEAKER_00: I think in the two thousands,
• 1:00:46
  SPEAKER_00: when I was coming of age and when you guys were,
• 1:00:48
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:00:48
  SPEAKER_00: in your guys prime,
• 1:00:50
  SPEAKER_00: you old fuckers,
• 1:00:51
  SPEAKER_00: right.
• 1:00:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um,
• 1:00:53
  SPEAKER_00: When I was in my 20s,
• 1:00:55
  SPEAKER_00: there was this view of the internet was going to be the greatest repository of
• 1:01:00
  SPEAKER_00: knowledge and information,
• 1:01:01
  SPEAKER_00: period.
• 1:01:02
  SPEAKER_00: And none of that happened.
• 1:01:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's actually the opposite.
• 1:01:05
  SPEAKER_00: So much so that we just don't even have…
• 1:01:12
  SPEAKER_00: The stuff on the internet from when I first started using the internet, you can't find it anymore.
• 1:01:17
  SPEAKER_00: You can't find these great blog posts anymore.
• 1:01:19
  SPEAKER_00: You can't find these great collections of information and stuff.
• 1:01:24
  SPEAKER_00: I was watching this silly thing on – I think it was like on YouTube with my
• 1:01:28
  SPEAKER_00: daughter and wife the other day and they were showing like little –
• 1:01:31
  SPEAKER_00: Like, they're matching characters to, like, apps or something stupid like that.
• 1:01:34
  SPEAKER_00: And there was, like, a green character.
• 1:01:36
  SPEAKER_00: And my first thought was LimeWire, you know?
• 1:01:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm always like, man, nobody knows what that is.
• 1:01:40
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
• 1:01:42
  SPEAKER_00: And LimeWire was where you found stuff back in the day, or at least back in the 2000s.
• 1:01:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, no, you're right.
• 1:01:49
  SPEAKER_00: I'm an internet fogey now.
• 1:01:51
  SPEAKER_00: Like, the internet, my internet doesn't exist anymore.
• 1:01:54
  SPEAKER_00: The one I grew up on where I could find stuff.
• 1:01:57
  SPEAKER_00: But you can't find anything on the internet anymore.
• 1:01:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's all gone unless you go to Amazon.
• 1:02:01
  SPEAKER_00: And then Amazon is barely usable.
• 1:02:03
  SPEAKER_00: All those things are barely usable.
• 1:02:05
  SPEAKER_00: So the internet, for all its great promises, has failed to be a repository of good stuff.
• 1:02:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's failing on almost every level.
• 1:02:15
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that...
• 1:02:16
  SPEAKER_00: We're entering – we're back in the era of must amass, you know, solid media again.
• 1:02:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I used to be – and I think you remember, Neil.
• 1:02:26
  SPEAKER_00: We used to always talk and I was the Kindle proponent.
• 1:02:28
  SPEAKER_00: Now I'm like, you know, I'm back to hardcover books, man.
• 1:02:31
  SPEAKER_00: Because –
• 1:02:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's just because we're dealing with data that is not held up at all.
• 1:02:38
  SPEAKER_00: And we're going to forget everything.
• 1:02:40
  SPEAKER_00: And we're going to be living in a perpetual 1998 where we're just recycling the
• 1:02:45
  SPEAKER_00: same plots and the same styles.
• 1:02:47
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of these new writers you come across that are writing genre stuff,
• 1:02:51
  SPEAKER_00: especially sci-fi and fantasy.
• 1:02:54
  SPEAKER_00: I'll pick up a novel that's like some Hugo Award winner or something like that.
• 1:02:58
  SPEAKER_00: And it's, it's lauded as like the next best thing since sliced bread.
• 1:03:02
  SPEAKER_00: And this is so creative and so awesome and such a great idea.
• 1:03:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I opened it and I'm like, well, this is a fucking episode of Star Trek from like, you know, 1969.
• 1:03:10
  SPEAKER_01: That effect, that effect gets worse as you get older.
• 1:03:15
  SPEAKER_00: I can imagine.
• 1:03:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's horrible.
• 1:03:19
  SPEAKER_00: The last time I read a mainstream science fiction book, it was like a Nebula winner, Hugo winner.
• 1:03:25
  SPEAKER_00: And literally the plot, right?
• 1:03:28
  SPEAKER_00: The main conceit of the character, the main sci-fi element was this kind of like memory thing.
• 1:03:36
  SPEAKER_00: And it was not even from Star Trek, original Star Trek.
• 1:03:40
  SPEAKER_00: It was from Deep Space Nine.
• 1:03:42
  SPEAKER_00: It was basically the author lifted the whole Trill thing,
• 1:03:45
  SPEAKER_00: Jadzia Dax,
• 1:03:46
  SPEAKER_00: where she's got the slug in her and the slug holds all the memories of past lives.
• 1:03:51
  SPEAKER_00: And the slug moves on to a new host and the host is a combination of the host plus
• 1:03:56
  SPEAKER_00: all the previous past hosts.
• 1:03:58
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 1:03:59
  SPEAKER_00: And that's kind of what was the conceited, the novel.
• 1:04:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, first of all, the way they did it was fucking stupid.
• 1:04:04
  SPEAKER_00: It was nowhere near as cool as having a slug implanted into your belly.
• 1:04:07
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:04:09
  SPEAKER_00: And second, it was like done before in, in star Trek.
• 1:04:13
  SPEAKER_00: And it was like the plot of like 50 episodes on deep space nine and deep space nine
• 1:04:18
  SPEAKER_00: is not like,
• 1:04:18
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:04:19
  SPEAKER_00: it's not an old show.
• 1:04:21
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I guess it is now as a 20 years old.
• 1:04:24
  SPEAKER_01: That would be a great conceit for a writer who had the courage to
• 1:04:29
  SPEAKER_01: to unmoor themselves from, from genre.
• 1:04:33
  SPEAKER_01: What if,
• 1:04:34
  SPEAKER_01: what if you deployed the,
• 1:04:35
  SPEAKER_01: the slug with memories just,
• 1:04:37
  SPEAKER_01: um,
• 1:04:38
  SPEAKER_01: in an ordinary,
• 1:04:39
  SPEAKER_01: in an ordinary milieu?
• 1:04:43
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:04:43
  SPEAKER_00: It, yeah, like the, the past lives type of thing.
• 1:04:46
  SPEAKER_00: That, that, that would be interesting.
• 1:04:47
  SPEAKER_00: I think one of the,
• 1:04:48
  SPEAKER_00: the best episodes they did was when one of the past lives was like a suppressed
• 1:04:52
  SPEAKER_00: serial killer.
• 1:04:53
  SPEAKER_00: And it was like a failed past life basically for the slug.
• 1:04:57
  SPEAKER_00: And, uh,
• 1:04:58
  SPEAKER_00: it started creeping into the personality of the current host.
• 1:05:04
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, my God.
• 1:05:04
  SPEAKER_00: Somebody's knocking on my door.
• 1:05:08
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry, guys.
• 1:05:09
  SPEAKER_00: You guys talk for a second, okay?
• 1:05:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's all right.
• 1:05:13
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah,
• 1:05:14
  SPEAKER_03: with what Alex was saying there,
• 1:05:15
  SPEAKER_03: I just keep thinking to myself,
• 1:05:16
  SPEAKER_03: I have this picture of the internet as this giant sewage bonfire.
• 1:05:21
  SPEAKER_03: And just everything's just being tossed into it.
• 1:05:23
  SPEAKER_03: And there's nothing good coming out of it.
• 1:05:24
  SPEAKER_03: And it's like, what on earth were we thinking with this thing?
• 1:05:26
  SPEAKER_03: I don't even remember.
• 1:05:27
  SPEAKER_03: I used to be like Alex back in the day.
• 1:05:29
  SPEAKER_03: Like, ah, the internet's going to fix everything.
• 1:05:30
  SPEAKER_03: It's going to be amazing.
• 1:05:31
  SPEAKER_03: And now I see my kids scrolling on TikTok and everything.
• 1:05:35
  SPEAKER_03: I'm just like, internet, the one to ask.
• 1:05:37
  SPEAKER_03: Just nuke it.
• 1:05:39
  SPEAKER_03: Get rid of this thing.
• 1:05:40
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know.
• 1:05:40
  SPEAKER_03: What do you guys think?
• 1:05:41
  SPEAKER_03: Well, it happened with vinyl.
• 1:05:43
  SPEAKER_03: And I think it's going to happen with the compact disc.
• 1:05:45
  SPEAKER_03: Or it has to.
• 1:05:48
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it's happened with cassettes, for Christ's sakes.
• 1:05:51
  SPEAKER_03: but there's just way too many CDs out there.
• 1:05:55
  SPEAKER_03: If they're manufactured before 1994, the quality is really great.
• 1:06:02
  SPEAKER_03: They're durable.
• 1:06:03
  SPEAKER_03: They still sound as great as they did when...
• 1:06:06
  SPEAKER_03: I mean,
• 1:06:08
  SPEAKER_03: provided they're not covered with fingerprints or used as a coaster.
• 1:06:14
  SPEAKER_03: But yeah, I go to these really nice record stores around where I live.
• 1:06:22
  SPEAKER_03: And it's all about vinyl right now.
• 1:06:24
  SPEAKER_03: And so the CDs they put on the floor underneath the cabinet and they're all like $3.
• 1:06:29
  SPEAKER_03: And I find so much great stuff down there.
• 1:06:32
  SPEAKER_03: And I just think one day they're going to rediscover this stuff and the prices are going to shoot up.
• 1:06:39
  SPEAKER_03: They're going to get picked over.
• 1:06:40
  SPEAKER_03: All the good stuff's going to disappear.
• 1:06:42
  SPEAKER_03: But it's kind of a golden age for people who like compact discs right now.
• 1:06:50
  SPEAKER_03: That's kind of ridiculous.
• 1:06:51
  SPEAKER_03: I almost don't want to say anything about it because I don't want the competition.
• 1:06:55
  SPEAKER_01: So 94 is pre-94 CDs are manufactured to a better standard.
• 1:07:10
  SPEAKER_01: That makes me wonder why...
• 1:07:12
  SPEAKER_01: Well,
• 1:07:12
  SPEAKER_01: we haven't really,
• 1:07:13
  SPEAKER_03: for practical reasons,
• 1:07:15
  SPEAKER_03: we haven't found that out yet.
• 1:07:18
  SPEAKER_03: They still, you know, with few exceptions, there are such things as like CD rot.
• 1:07:25
  SPEAKER_03: But
• 1:07:32
  SPEAKER_03: they still sound great and they probably will for a very long time, as long as you can find a CD player.
• 1:07:37
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know about 94 per se,
• 1:07:40
  SPEAKER_03: but around the mid nineties,
• 1:07:42
  SPEAKER_03: you started to see things like brick walling and excessive compression and
• 1:07:48
  SPEAKER_03: tinkering with the masters.
• 1:07:52
  SPEAKER_03: So what you end up hearing is not, doesn't sound as good as it's supposed to anymore.
• 1:07:57
  SPEAKER_03: And quite a lot of it's unlistenable, you know, in the,
• 1:08:02
  SPEAKER_03: 21st century people are starting to realize that a little bit like classical music
• 1:08:10
  SPEAKER_03: was never hit very hard country music was okay but if you get like I don't know
• 1:08:19
  SPEAKER_03: like the first time that Russia's catalog was remastered for CD it was a disaster
• 1:08:27
  SPEAKER_03: it sounded so bad and I felt so bad for the band because they had nothing to do
• 1:08:31
  SPEAKER_03: with it
• 1:08:35
  SPEAKER_03: To this day, Rush has been pretty poorly served by record companies where CDs are concerned.
• 1:08:41
  SPEAKER_03: You have to go back to the original 80s issues of that stuff to hear it the way it was meant to be heard.
• 1:08:49
  SPEAKER_03: The funny thing about it is a lot of remasters were billed as,
• 1:08:57
  SPEAKER_03: oh,
• 1:08:57
  SPEAKER_03: hear it the way it was meant to be heard.
• 1:09:00
  SPEAKER_03: It's like, that's not what we're listening to at all.
• 1:09:03
  SPEAKER_03: And nobody even understand,
• 1:09:05
  SPEAKER_03: well understood it at the time,
• 1:09:06
  SPEAKER_03: um,
• 1:09:10
  SPEAKER_03: to go off on a tangent that the history behind that is,
• 1:09:13
  SPEAKER_03: um,
• 1:09:14
  SPEAKER_03: the iPod was ubiquitous at the time and people who manufactured,
• 1:09:21
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 1:09:21
  SPEAKER_03: produced CDs understood that if you crank up this,
• 1:09:25
  SPEAKER_03: if you made the CD louder,
• 1:09:27
  SPEAKER_03: it would,
• 1:09:28
  SPEAKER_03: um,
• 1:09:29
  SPEAKER_03: You could hear it better on an iPod.
• 1:09:32
  SPEAKER_03: So everything that came out was optimized for that.
• 1:09:35
  SPEAKER_03: And at the same time,
• 1:09:36
  SPEAKER_03: those remastered versions were being played on the radio,
• 1:09:40
  SPEAKER_03: and they quickly discovered,
• 1:09:42
  SPEAKER_03: oh,
• 1:09:42
  SPEAKER_03: the remastered stuff's way louder than the stuff that's not.
• 1:09:47
  SPEAKER_03: So we have to keep making it louder to compete with all the other loud stuff.
• 1:09:54
  SPEAKER_03: I've popped in newer CDs that have almost blown my speakers.
• 1:10:01
  SPEAKER_03: I wasn't prepared for how loud it was.
• 1:10:10
  SPEAKER_00: Right, and that's like the loudness wars of the 2000s or late 90s, 2000s.
• 1:10:16
  SPEAKER_00: I mean,
• 1:10:16
  SPEAKER_00: I think if I'm correct,
• 1:10:18
  SPEAKER_00: right,
• 1:10:18
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not a big audio guy,
• 1:10:20
  SPEAKER_00: but a lot of this stuff now sounds like ass because it's basically mastered for
• 1:10:25
  SPEAKER_00: Spotify and streaming.
• 1:10:27
  SPEAKER_00: And Spotify has kind of taken over as the place to release a single.
• 1:10:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:10:35
  SPEAKER_00: you kind of have to make it sound good for Spotify.
• 1:10:37
  SPEAKER_03: I do this all the time looking for parallels and everything.
• 1:10:40
  SPEAKER_03: So, you know, what's happening to music is it's happening to everything.
• 1:10:46
  SPEAKER_03: You just have to think about it.
• 1:10:48
  SPEAKER_03: Um, like what I just described, um, how is that happening in literature?
• 1:10:54
  SPEAKER_03: For example, if you think about it hard enough, you can recognize that, uh, let's say for example, um,
• 1:11:03
  SPEAKER_03: With Spotify and various streaming sites, anybody can put stuff out there.
• 1:11:10
  SPEAKER_03: And musicians who are not necessarily engineers or producers or have any technical know-how,
• 1:11:23
  SPEAKER_03: if you self-publish,
• 1:11:25
  SPEAKER_03: you run the risk of putting something out there that is lacking in quality.
• 1:11:30
  SPEAKER_03: The writing can be great.
• 1:11:33
  SPEAKER_03: It may benefit from an editor,
• 1:11:36
  SPEAKER_03: but the font that you chose and the size of the font and the quality of the paper
• 1:11:41
  SPEAKER_03: and all these different things,
• 1:11:43
  SPEAKER_03: it's just completely transformed the landscape of consuming art.
• 1:11:50
  SPEAKER_03: By art, I mean all of art.
• 1:12:01
  SPEAKER_00: Now,
• 1:12:01
  SPEAKER_00: okay,
• 1:12:02
  SPEAKER_00: so there'd be the argument,
• 1:12:03
  SPEAKER_00: right,
• 1:12:04
  SPEAKER_00: that you look back at the 19th century,
• 1:12:07
  SPEAKER_00: for example,
• 1:12:08
  SPEAKER_00: and you had guys like Dostoevsky and Dickens and stuff in that era,
• 1:12:13
  SPEAKER_00: and they're outputting all their stuff initially,
• 1:12:16
  SPEAKER_00: not at major publishing houses,
• 1:12:19
  SPEAKER_00: but they're publishing,
• 1:12:19
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:12:20
  SPEAKER_00: basically every 19th century great novel that we've read was initially published in multiple,
• 1:12:27
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:12:27
  SPEAKER_00: episodic periodicals that would sell for like,
• 1:12:30
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:12:31
  SPEAKER_00: one COPEC or whatever the hell.
• 1:12:35
  SPEAKER_00: Or indeed newspapers.
• 1:12:36
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
• 1:12:36
  SPEAKER_00: Basically in newspapers.
• 1:12:40
  SPEAKER_01: I found an unpublished Richard Yates story.
• 1:12:45
  SPEAKER_01: Jackson, you'll appreciate this.
• 1:12:47
  SPEAKER_01: I remember you once tracking down all of Salinger's unpublished work.
• 1:12:55
  SPEAKER_01: And that was before.
• 1:12:56
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:12:58
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:12:59
  SPEAKER_01: Well, anyway, I found this Richard Yates story in an issue of Cosmopolitan from, I want to say, 1957.
• 1:13:06
  SPEAKER_01: I was looking at the table of contents.
• 1:13:10
  SPEAKER_01: This is not a short story that Yates wrote.
• 1:13:14
  SPEAKER_01: It's 5,000 words, easy.
• 1:13:16
  SPEAKER_01: There were four stories.
• 1:13:19
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, which meant that people like my mom were reading Richard Yates.
• 1:13:23
  SPEAKER_01: That was a monthly magazine.
• 1:13:26
  SPEAKER_02: Boggles the mind.
• 1:13:31
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:13:31
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's a different world, you know.
• 1:13:34
  SPEAKER_00: But I mean,
• 1:13:35
  SPEAKER_00: what do you think of,
• 1:13:36
  SPEAKER_00: okay,
• 1:13:36
  SPEAKER_00: what do you think of like,
• 1:13:37
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:13:38
  SPEAKER_00: more like,
• 1:13:39
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:13:39
  SPEAKER_00: writerly kind of platforms like Substack,
• 1:13:44
  SPEAKER_00: right?
• 1:13:44
  SPEAKER_00: I mean,
• 1:13:45
  SPEAKER_00: do you think that we can build something on a format like Substack where you're,
• 1:13:51
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:13:52
  SPEAKER_01: you're building,
• 1:13:53
  SPEAKER_01: you're King Canute,
• 1:13:55
  SPEAKER_01: you're building against the tide.
• 1:13:57
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:13:59
  SPEAKER_00: I mean,
• 1:13:59
  SPEAKER_01: if you're on Substack,
• 1:14:01
  SPEAKER_01: you understand that about 80% of the discourse on Substack is about being on Substack.
• 1:14:08
  SPEAKER_01: That's true.
• 1:14:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, 100%.
• 1:14:12
  SPEAKER_01: It was like...
• 1:14:13
  SPEAKER_01: Was it three months ago that they started notes?
• 1:14:17
  SPEAKER_01: So notes for the uninitiated are,
• 1:14:19
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 1:14:20
  SPEAKER_01: Substack was originally organized around posts,
• 1:14:23
  SPEAKER_01: which I do on my site,
• 1:14:26
  SPEAKER_01: Swing Thoughts and Roundabouts.
• 1:14:28
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, my posts are usually a thousand words.
• 1:14:33
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't take an hour to read, but it doesn't take a minute either.
• 1:14:38
  SPEAKER_01: So I think to push the platform, they invented notes, which are like tweets, basically.
• 1:14:44
  SPEAKER_01: And you see the same sort of discourse that happens in tweets and notes.
• 1:14:49
  SPEAKER_01: And it's made the site I got on just before Twitter.
• 1:14:54
  SPEAKER_01: notes was installed.
• 1:14:55
  SPEAKER_01: So I'll never complain about Substack on Substack.
• 1:14:59
  SPEAKER_01: I'll complain about it here.
• 1:15:01
  SPEAKER_03: I discovered if you put something in front of someone's face,
• 1:15:04
  SPEAKER_03: they'll pay attention to it,
• 1:15:06
  SPEAKER_03: like what I did at the library.
• 1:15:08
  SPEAKER_03: Well, with the population explosion, and it's easier than ever to put something out there,
• 1:15:15
  SPEAKER_03: it's too difficult to put something in front of someone.
• 1:15:18
  SPEAKER_03: Now, how do you do that?
• 1:15:21
  SPEAKER_03: It's,
• 1:15:21
  SPEAKER_03: there's a lot of good stuff out there still like,
• 1:15:24
  SPEAKER_03: well,
• 1:15:25
  SPEAKER_03: what Neil's writing on Substack,
• 1:15:26
  SPEAKER_03: for example,
• 1:15:28
  SPEAKER_03: but you've got to know about it.
• 1:15:29
  SPEAKER_03: You've got to hear about it somehow,
• 1:15:31
  SPEAKER_03: but if you don't,
• 1:15:32
  SPEAKER_03: it's just completely drowned out by all the time slots.
• 1:15:41
  SPEAKER_01: In a way, in a way,
• 1:15:43
  SPEAKER_01: In a way, I don't mind because I like that word of mouth bit.
• 1:15:48
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I'm so old that I can remember when Gary Newman's album Cars came out.
• 1:15:58
  SPEAKER_01: And you couldn't find that in the stores.
• 1:16:02
  SPEAKER_01: You had to make a trip to buy that.
• 1:16:06
  SPEAKER_01: And you didn't hear about it.
• 1:16:08
  SPEAKER_01: You didn't hear it on the radio.
• 1:16:11
  SPEAKER_01: You heard about it from your buddy who had it, whose cousin in California got it.
• 1:16:17
  SPEAKER_00: Right, but that wasn't just your era, man.
• 1:16:19
  SPEAKER_00: That was like, you know, I grew up in the late 90s.
• 1:16:22
  SPEAKER_00: I came of age in 2000.
• 1:16:23
  SPEAKER_00: I turned 18 in 2002.
• 1:16:27
  SPEAKER_00: And it was the same in my era, right?
• 1:16:30
  SPEAKER_00: Like,
• 1:16:30
  SPEAKER_00: yeah,
• 1:16:31
  SPEAKER_00: if you wanted like,
• 1:16:32
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:16:33
  SPEAKER_00: the Britney Spears album or whatever,
• 1:16:35
  SPEAKER_00: you could go to Target or Walmart and it's there.
• 1:16:38
  SPEAKER_00: Or you can go to Tower Records if you guys remember Tower Records or do you even still have that?
• 1:16:44
  SPEAKER_00: Probably not.
• 1:16:45
  SPEAKER_00: But if you wanted like some punk rock stuff,
• 1:16:47
  SPEAKER_00: some like Suzy and the Banshees or something like that,
• 1:16:50
  SPEAKER_00: you had to make a trek.
• 1:16:51
  SPEAKER_00: For us in Southern California,
• 1:16:53
  SPEAKER_00: we had to go to Hollywood and go to Amoeba Music and Amoeba Records and pick
• 1:16:58
  SPEAKER_00: something up at Amoeba.
• 1:17:00
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes like you will find like you would have like the little like weird odd
• 1:17:04
  SPEAKER_00: like punk rock slash goth music store.
• 1:17:07
  SPEAKER_00: There was one in Anaheim called Ipso Facto that we used to –
• 1:17:11
  SPEAKER_00: As soon as we got cars,
• 1:17:12
  SPEAKER_00: we used to go over there,
• 1:17:13
  SPEAKER_00: and that's where you'd find the punk rock stuff,
• 1:17:17
  SPEAKER_00: the Joy Division albums and the Joy Division stuff.
• 1:17:22
  SPEAKER_03: Well, we knew where to go.
• 1:17:24
  SPEAKER_03: I knew that,
• 1:17:26
  SPEAKER_03: okay,
• 1:17:27
  SPEAKER_03: this is pre-internet,
• 1:17:28
  SPEAKER_03: but I got my hands on a book called The Trouser Press Record Guide.
• 1:17:34
  SPEAKER_03: and it had an alphabetical list of bands and it had their discographies.
• 1:17:39
  SPEAKER_03: It had ratings, reviews, descriptions.
• 1:17:42
  SPEAKER_03: It was, um,
• 1:17:44
  SPEAKER_03: the most important book of my life at the time.
• 1:17:48
  SPEAKER_03: So if I discovered a band in there that I thought was interesting,
• 1:17:52
  SPEAKER_03: I would get in my car and drive to a few different places.
• 1:17:57
  SPEAKER_03: You know, Bill's Records in Dallas, he had a lot of imports.
• 1:18:01
  SPEAKER_03: And I know if I wanted to hear like an obscure EP, well, he was, but that's...
• 1:18:09
  SPEAKER_03: He was a pervert.
• 1:18:12
  SPEAKER_03: But he'd have it, and it would be horribly expensive.
• 1:18:15
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, he's a record store owner, right?
• 1:18:18
  SPEAKER_03: But it was great.
• 1:18:21
  SPEAKER_03: And you tell your friends, yeah, you tell your friends, hey, I got this at VVV.
• 1:18:26
  SPEAKER_03: VVV Records.
• 1:18:28
  SPEAKER_03: We found each other back then,
• 1:18:30
  SPEAKER_03: and we find each other now,
• 1:18:32
  SPEAKER_03: despite how it's really hard,
• 1:18:34
  SPEAKER_03: but we do find each other.
• 1:18:42
  SPEAKER_00: So,
• 1:18:43
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:18:43
  SPEAKER_00: ultimately when it comes to like,
• 1:18:45
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:18:45
  SPEAKER_00: the business of writing,
• 1:18:47
  SPEAKER_00: I think that one thing that we have to accept is that,
• 1:18:52
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:18:52
  SPEAKER_00: we are on uncharted territory,
• 1:18:55
  SPEAKER_00: you know?
• 1:18:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's the era of the empire of giant publishing houses and that one author that's
• 1:19:07
  SPEAKER_00: going to make it and he's going to get flown around the world for press conferences
• 1:19:11
  SPEAKER_00: and people are actually going to give a shit about.
• 1:19:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's just a fantasy that no longer exists and it's just never going to happen probably.
• 1:19:19
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe like –
• 1:19:20
  SPEAKER_01: I wouldn't, I wouldn't want to leave rural France to do that.
• 1:19:24
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:19:24
  SPEAKER_00: I mean,
• 1:19:25
  SPEAKER_01: the other,
• 1:19:26
  SPEAKER_01: the other side of it is that,
• 1:19:27
  SPEAKER_01: that,
• 1:19:28
  SPEAKER_01: that fantasy is,
• 1:19:29
  SPEAKER_01: is selects for fewer and fewer people.
• 1:19:33
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:19:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um,
• 1:19:34
  SPEAKER_00: but ultimately like that idea of,
• 1:19:36
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:19:37
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to become the next Stephen King or,
• 1:19:40
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:19:40
  SPEAKER_00: even Brett Easton Ellis or one of the,
• 1:19:43
  SPEAKER_00: the nineties guys,
• 1:19:44
  SPEAKER_00: like,
• 1:19:44
  SPEAKER_00: I mean,
• 1:19:45
  SPEAKER_00: shit,
• 1:19:45
  SPEAKER_00: Donna Tartt,
• 1:19:46
  SPEAKER_00: for example.
• 1:19:47
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:19:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, well,
• 1:19:49
  SPEAKER_00: I think she's due for a novel now.
• 1:19:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's been like 10 years since the last one.
• 1:19:53
  SPEAKER_00: But, I mean, you can mention – people cared about who won the Pulitzer Prize like 20, 30 years ago.
• 1:19:59
  SPEAKER_00: And people would talk about that kind of stuff.
• 1:20:01
  SPEAKER_00: And if I mention like the Pulitzer Prize to anybody I work with,
• 1:20:05
  SPEAKER_00: they're like,
• 1:20:05
  SPEAKER_00: what the fuck are you talking about,
• 1:20:06
  SPEAKER_00: man?
• 1:20:07
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the Pulitzer is not a good thing to discuss when it comes to novels.
• 1:20:11
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
• 1:20:11
  SPEAKER_01: The most overtly political prize since there was a Pulitzer Prize.
• 1:20:16
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:20:16
  SPEAKER_01: But substitute whatever prize you want to say.
• 1:20:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, substitute whatever.
• 1:20:21
  SPEAKER_00: I just thought about that because I think Donna Tartt won that one for her
• 1:20:25
  SPEAKER_00: crappiest novel out of her three novels in my opinion.
• 1:20:28
  SPEAKER_00: But you have that kind of world that just doesn't exist anymore.
• 1:20:32
  SPEAKER_00: But you do have a world where –
• 1:20:34
  SPEAKER_00: In a way,
• 1:20:35
  SPEAKER_00: while you can't – the record store with the creepy pervert that sells you strange
• 1:20:41
  SPEAKER_00: bands and recommends strange bands doesn't exist anymore.
• 1:20:45
  SPEAKER_00: You do have the internet and podcasts and word of mouth.
• 1:20:49
  SPEAKER_00: So I think you can become very insular in your choices and you can find all these –
• 1:20:57
  SPEAKER_00: the stuff you want if we have the right guidepost.
• 1:21:01
  SPEAKER_00: I think maybe that's our job.
• 1:21:03
  SPEAKER_01: I think that –
• 1:21:04
  SPEAKER_01: I think that insularity is a little bit sad.
• 1:21:07
  SPEAKER_01: No, I agree.
• 1:21:08
  SPEAKER_01: I mean,
• 1:21:08
  SPEAKER_01: but part of the joy of,
• 1:21:13
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 1:21:13
  SPEAKER_01: the way things were when he was 15 or something,
• 1:21:17
  SPEAKER_01: you could say,
• 1:21:18
  SPEAKER_01: oh,
• 1:21:18
  SPEAKER_01: went to Bill's.
• 1:21:19
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, did he try to feel you up?
• 1:21:21
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone knew what that meant.
• 1:21:23
  SPEAKER_01: At the same time, you know,
• 1:21:30
  SPEAKER_01: Jackson's talking about musicians and I guess it's over the last decade.
• 1:21:34
  SPEAKER_01: I've noticed that there, you know, it's ride or die time, ride or die time happened first for musicians.
• 1:21:45
  SPEAKER_01: And by that,
• 1:21:46
  SPEAKER_01: I mean,
• 1:21:47
  SPEAKER_01: am I going to continue to be a musician given that you mentioned LimeWire the other day,
• 1:21:53
  SPEAKER_01: a moment ago,
• 1:21:54
  SPEAKER_01: um,
• 1:21:57
  SPEAKER_01: Am I going to continue to play in my stupid rock band?
• 1:22:02
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's like a really, you have to think about it.
• 1:22:09
  SPEAKER_01: If your intentions aren't pure,
• 1:22:12
  SPEAKER_01: and musicians,
• 1:22:13
  SPEAKER_01: they're generally so autistic that they're so deeply into their art,
• 1:22:18
  SPEAKER_01: they don't think about this kind of stuff.
• 1:22:23
  SPEAKER_01: The musicianship that I've been seeing, particularly in live acts, is off the charts good.
• 1:22:30
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:22:31
  SPEAKER_01: I would say the same thing.
• 1:22:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:22:33
  SPEAKER_01: And this is, you know, these are the people, these are the guys who are going to do it anyway.
• 1:22:38
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't matter how hot the fire burns.
• 1:22:42
  SPEAKER_01: They're going to get together.
• 1:22:43
  SPEAKER_01: They're going to do sessions.
• 1:22:46
  SPEAKER_01: You know, maybe the band isn't going to be, the band isn't there to play stadiums.
• 1:22:53
  SPEAKER_01: You know, they get together, they form a band, they do a couple of discs and it's cool.
• 1:22:58
  SPEAKER_01: And they go on, they do another thing.
• 1:23:00
  SPEAKER_01: I just I just found I love discovering stuff on YouTube because it's so hard.
• 1:23:08
  SPEAKER_01: But I found this this band called Brain and Bone, and I think they're out of it might be Asheville.
• 1:23:16
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, I came across a song there.
• 1:23:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's called Valley of the Kings, which I just thought was great.
• 1:23:23
  SPEAKER_01: What Jackson was saying earlier is that,
• 1:23:25
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 1:23:26
  SPEAKER_01: there's not an engineer among them because it's really poorly produced.
• 1:23:31
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it doesn't come off the way I think it should.
• 1:23:35
  SPEAKER_01: But, you know, the song is kind of a power pop.
• 1:23:41
  SPEAKER_01: riff that sounds a little bit like Peter Case from the Plimsolls.
• 1:23:46
  SPEAKER_01: It has that very major key upbeat vibe to it.
• 1:23:52
  SPEAKER_01: But it's not engineered.
• 1:23:53
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, oh, well, we'll just put it up on YouTube and see who discovers it.
• 1:23:58
  SPEAKER_01: I'm looking at it right now.
• 1:23:59
  SPEAKER_01: I think I was probably one of the first people to discover it.
• 1:24:05
  SPEAKER_01: So they've had 700 views in seven days.
• 1:24:07
  SPEAKER_01: So that's pretty good.
• 1:24:10
  SPEAKER_01: but they're these guys you know brain and bone aren't in it to they're not going to
• 1:24:16
  SPEAKER_01: play the Texas Jam they're not going to build a stadium that's not their project I
• 1:24:26
  SPEAKER_03: don't know I'm watching it right now and it's it's reminded me of the stuff that
• 1:24:30
  SPEAKER_03: like my friends and I would record in our in our garage just because we could and
• 1:24:34
  SPEAKER_03: we felt like it and it's just having some fun
• 1:24:38
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:24:39
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, ultimately, like, this is pretty hip.
• 1:24:41
  SPEAKER_00: This is cool.
• 1:24:41
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to have to listen to this as we're done here.
• 1:24:44
  SPEAKER_00: Well,
• 1:24:44
  SPEAKER_00: what's,
• 1:24:45
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:24:45
  SPEAKER_00: we say stuff like,
• 1:24:46
  SPEAKER_00: oh,
• 1:24:46
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:24:46
  SPEAKER_00: the people don't,
• 1:24:48
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:24:48
  SPEAKER_00: when it comes to music,
• 1:24:49
  SPEAKER_00: I,
• 1:24:49
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:24:50
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a proponent of current day music.
• 1:24:53
  SPEAKER_00: I think there's a lot of great stuff out there and I find,
• 1:24:55
  SPEAKER_00: I find new stuff all the time that I like to share with people.
• 1:24:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I,
• 1:24:58
  SPEAKER_00: get, get all amped up into it, you know?
• 1:25:02
  SPEAKER_00: But I mean, you look at music, right?
• 1:25:03
  SPEAKER_00: There's an audience for it, right?
• 1:25:05
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you got somebody like Taylor Swift, that's a billionaire, right?
• 1:25:08
  SPEAKER_00: Off her music, right?
• 1:25:10
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, she makes more, more money than any other musician in the history of music.
• 1:25:15
  SPEAKER_00: She surpassed like Prince and Elvis and David Bowie and every great,
• 1:25:19
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:25:20
  SPEAKER_00: and her concert tours last like two years straight.
• 1:25:23
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know,
• 1:25:24
  SPEAKER_00: And then you've got people behind her,
• 1:25:27
  SPEAKER_00: stuff like Lana Del Rey and Beyonce and all those that aren't slouches themselves
• 1:25:32
  SPEAKER_00: either and have had long careers and they've had – they pack huge stadiums.
• 1:25:37
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, come on.
• 1:25:38
  SPEAKER_01: Lana Del Rey, she's kind of a slouch.
• 1:25:40
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, you better take... That's kind of, that's part of her.
• 1:25:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, okay, this is Alana Del Rey.
• 1:25:45
  SPEAKER_00: She's not going to try too hard.
• 1:25:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, this is Alana Del Rey, respect her.
• 1:25:48
  SPEAKER_00: You know, she's working.
• 1:25:49
  SPEAKER_00: 2025 is going to be her country album.
• 1:25:50
  SPEAKER_00: She's going country now.
• 1:25:51
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm actually...
• 1:25:58
  SPEAKER_00: I know, but I'm excited because she's got that gator husband behind her now and it's going to be good.
• 1:26:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's going to get weird.
• 1:26:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's going to get weird.
• 1:26:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's going to be Louisiana.
• 1:26:06
  SPEAKER_00: There we go.
• 1:26:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, she's going to be out there in a swamp banjo.
• 1:26:10
  SPEAKER_00: She's got to have at least one banjo riff on there.
• 1:26:13
  SPEAKER_00: But, you know, so there is music.
• 1:26:14
  SPEAKER_00: People do listen to music.
• 1:26:15
  SPEAKER_00: And even at work, the young guys I work with will come in and mostly the girls don't.
• 1:26:21
  SPEAKER_00: Like, oh, she's listening to this new song or whatever.
• 1:26:23
  SPEAKER_00: So there is a level of excitement for it.
• 1:26:26
  SPEAKER_00: And obviously,
• 1:26:27
  SPEAKER_00: there's people paying like $5,000 a ticket to go see Taylor Swift sing the same
• 1:26:32
  SPEAKER_00: song 30 times.
• 1:26:34
  SPEAKER_00: But she does put on a good show.
• 1:26:35
  SPEAKER_00: I've seen parts of the movie and the live movie she's done.
• 1:26:38
  SPEAKER_00: And she does put on a very good show.
• 1:26:41
  SPEAKER_00: And when you think about it,
• 1:26:42
  SPEAKER_00: historically speaking,
• 1:26:43
  SPEAKER_00: right,
• 1:26:44
  SPEAKER_00: the idea of the rock star,
• 1:26:45
  SPEAKER_00: the rock band,
• 1:26:46
  SPEAKER_00: or the singer-songwriter kind of like independent person,
• 1:26:51
  SPEAKER_00: that's relatively a blip in the history of music,
• 1:26:54
  SPEAKER_00: right?
• 1:26:55
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that didn't really start, you know, until the mid-60s.
• 1:26:59
  SPEAKER_00: And,
• 1:26:59
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:27:00
  SPEAKER_00: probably with the Beatles was the first like superstar band and the Beach Boys and
• 1:27:03
  SPEAKER_00: that kind of stuff.
• 1:27:05
  SPEAKER_00: And then, you know, Elvis and a few of the big ones.
• 1:27:07
  SPEAKER_00: And then we get into the hippie era and –
• 1:27:10
  SPEAKER_00: you know the 70s big bands and the 80s and stuff and that's relatively a blip that
• 1:27:18
  SPEAKER_01: has come and gone you know this is a great question for jackson i mean with with
• 1:27:24
  SPEAKER_01: the beach boys absent no not at all have been as good
• 1:27:30
  SPEAKER_03: the success of their recordings is half of it is the musicians involved in the production behind it.
• 1:27:38
  SPEAKER_03: So much so that the Phil Spector, for example, his wall of sound was people were, were crazy for it.
• 1:27:49
  SPEAKER_03: And there are, there were hundreds of imitators, people trying to capture that sound.
• 1:27:55
  SPEAKER_03: The righteous brothers worked with him briefly and,
• 1:28:00
  SPEAKER_03: And the main righteous brother, Bill, whatever his name is, he's like, I can do this myself.
• 1:28:07
  SPEAKER_03: And he knocked off some more recordings based on what he observed Spector do in the studio.
• 1:28:15
  SPEAKER_03: That's a great example of how important producers and engineers are.
• 1:28:31
  SPEAKER_00: So where does Charles Manson come in in this Beach Boys conversation?
• 1:28:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:28:37
  SPEAKER_00: I just bring it up because I read that book, Chaos, which I highly recommend.
• 1:28:42
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you guys heard about that one.
• 1:28:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's basically like an investigative reporter putting together a bunch of files and
• 1:28:50
  SPEAKER_00: stuff from the Manson era and all the weird stuff that was around the investigation.
• 1:28:55
  SPEAKER_00: I thought it was hilarious because the Beach Boys obviously play a large part in the Manson story.
• 1:29:01
  SPEAKER_03: Sooner or later, you meet people.
• 1:29:04
  SPEAKER_03: Manson used to hang out with Terry
• 1:29:08
  SPEAKER_03: and that crowd.
• 1:29:10
  SPEAKER_03: At one point,
• 1:29:10
  SPEAKER_03: I guess they liked a demo that Manson played and they turned it into one of their
• 1:29:16
  SPEAKER_03: own songs.
• 1:29:25
  SPEAKER_01: How can you not be attracted to people who can make music like that?
• 1:29:32
  SPEAKER_01: You're just going to draw...
• 1:29:34
  SPEAKER_01: you're going to draw all kinds of weirdos and lunatics to you.
• 1:29:38
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:29:39
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, just on my sub stack alone, I get a bunch of weirdos and lunatics, you know?
• 1:29:42
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, Fisto, you know how many people I've blocked?
• 1:29:46
  SPEAKER_00: You know how many people I've blocked in the last two weeks, man?
• 1:29:48
  SPEAKER_03: Dude, you...
• 1:29:49
  SPEAKER_03: You're the Brian Wilson of podcasting.
• 1:29:53
  SPEAKER_03: You've been on a tear that I am jealous of, my friend.
• 1:29:56
  SPEAKER_03: I'm like, man, I used to be the guy that got all the weirdos.
• 1:30:00
  SPEAKER_03: Now Alexander shows up and is like, just gets out the Romanian and then all of a sudden...
• 1:30:05
  SPEAKER_00: And the crazy part is that like I'm not even like – I'm not even out looking for it
• 1:30:12
  SPEAKER_00: or posting inflammatory drama stuff.
• 1:30:15
  SPEAKER_00: They'll come on some like random post about like I don't know,
• 1:30:17
  SPEAKER_00: Wish or something like that or the fucking magic robot or whatever.
• 1:30:22
  SPEAKER_00: And they're like, well, you're –
• 1:30:24
  SPEAKER_00: blah blah blah you know jay and i'm like okay man come on what does what does that
• 1:30:29
  SPEAKER_00: have to do like you know it's it's like how i i posted that quote about uh the
• 1:30:33
  SPEAKER_00: quote from umberto echo describing sub stackers you know he's describing conspiracy
• 1:30:38
  SPEAKER_00: theories and you know the always it always goes fools yeah that one right there
• 1:30:43
  SPEAKER_00: morons and lunatics and it always goes down it always goes back to the templars you
• 1:30:48
  SPEAKER_00: know and we could we could be then when i read that i
• 1:30:52
  SPEAKER_00: lunatic gang here yeah i you know i actually like that quote right that quote was
• 1:30:58
  SPEAKER_00: uh i had it saved uh on my kindle file when i first read the book and i was looking
• 1:31:04
  SPEAKER_00: at it and i was like oh this that that's perfect that it's it's the synergy of you
• 1:31:08
  SPEAKER_00: know this week that the quote spoke to me again because i'm like you replace
• 1:31:12
  SPEAKER_00: templars with you know what right and um
• 1:31:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's like every post goes to that.
• 1:31:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, okay, somebody comes on your thing, starts talking about stuff.
• 1:31:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of normal.
• 1:31:24
  SPEAKER_00: The second comment, you're like, okay, we're getting a little bit crazy now.
• 1:31:29
  SPEAKER_00: And then boom, Templar is on the third post.
• 1:31:31
  SPEAKER_00: And you're like, okay, all right.
• 1:31:34
  SPEAKER_00: All right, man.
• 1:31:34
  SPEAKER_00: I hope you're getting paid enough by the FBI to try to bait me into antisemitism or whatever.
• 1:31:41
  SPEAKER_00: You're right.
• 1:31:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's just – there's some insane people.
• 1:31:47
  SPEAKER_00: But what really helped out Mr.
• 1:31:49
  SPEAKER_00: Manson himself is that he had a bunch of hot girls that were basically his prostitutes.
• 1:31:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:31:54
  SPEAKER_00: My personal theory, and it's a non-educated theory because I don't know the files and stuff.
• 1:31:59
  SPEAKER_00: I think he was a pimp, right?
• 1:32:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I think he was their pimp.
• 1:32:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I think these guys,
• 1:32:03
  SPEAKER_00: most of these musicians from like the 60s were actually kind of dorks when you
• 1:32:07
  SPEAKER_00: really look at their lives before they became pretty famous.
• 1:32:11
  SPEAKER_00: And here comes this freaking guy with a magnetic personality and like,
• 1:32:14
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know,
• 1:32:15
  SPEAKER_00: 20 easy chicks with drugs.
• 1:32:17
  SPEAKER_00: Of course you're going to let him hang out with you, man.
• 1:32:20
  SPEAKER_00: He's bringing 15 girls to your party.
• 1:32:21
  SPEAKER_00: Occam's hoo-ha.
• 1:32:22
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 1:32:31
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
• 1:32:31
  SPEAKER_00: These guys were cool.
• 1:32:33
  SPEAKER_03: The skeleton key to rock and roll is just naked chicks and drugs.
• 1:32:36
  SPEAKER_00: Right, but I think in a way, Quentin Tarantino in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, he kind of showed that.
• 1:32:43
  SPEAKER_00: He almost got Brad Pitt's character picking up that little skis bag on the side of the road, right?
• 1:32:50
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why he went to the freaking ranch over there in that movie, right?
• 1:32:55
  SPEAKER_00: And the fact that he rejected her in that movie was a really good point because he
• 1:33:01
  SPEAKER_00: saw that she was just a thought.
• 1:33:02
  SPEAKER_00: He's like, I'm not fucking with you, plus you're underage.
• 1:33:06
  SPEAKER_00: Those two things that was kind of really funny in the movie.
• 1:33:09
  SPEAKER_00: But then you get a guy like Terry Melcher and stuff and some of the Beach Boys,
• 1:33:12
  SPEAKER_00: and they can't say no to dropping acid and joining a fucking orgy with a bunch of girls.
• 1:33:20
  SPEAKER_01: Just to go back to Once Upon a Time in Hollywood for a moment.
• 1:33:25
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for helping me get over my innate distaste for Tarantino.
• 1:33:32
  SPEAKER_01: You're right about that movie.
• 1:33:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's by far his best one, and it's even a good movie.
• 1:33:39
  SPEAKER_01: Editorially speaking, what I really appreciate about it
• 1:33:45
  SPEAKER_01: is the strength that you identified, he rewrites an established trope by picking up this girl.
• 1:33:54
  SPEAKER_01: And from every point from, say, 1950 up until that movie, that trope was going to go one way.
• 1:34:05
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:34:06
  SPEAKER_01: And he recognized that.
• 1:34:09
  SPEAKER_01: I love tropes in fiction because they're a wonderful attempt
• 1:34:14
  SPEAKER_01: They're a wonderful opportunity to overthrow them.
• 1:34:18
  SPEAKER_01: And when you do, Skye Hernstrom is particularly strong in this regard.
• 1:34:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, yes he is.
• 1:34:24
  SPEAKER_01: When you do overthrow them, you gain a lot of power.
• 1:34:29
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:34:30
  SPEAKER_00: And for you guys that haven't seen the movie,
• 1:34:31
  SPEAKER_00: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,
• 1:34:33
  SPEAKER_00: the scene Neil is talking about is Brad Pitt's character.
• 1:34:38
  SPEAKER_00: I forgot his character's name.
• 1:34:39
  SPEAKER_00: But anyways, Brad Pitt's character, he's a total chad.
• 1:34:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's probably the best Brad Pitt has looked in any movie in my opinion, right?
• 1:34:46
  SPEAKER_00: That scene when he's on the roof like fixing the antenna or whatever and smoking a
• 1:34:50
  SPEAKER_00: cigarette almost turned me gay.
• 1:34:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, okay, I see.
• 1:34:54
  SPEAKER_00: I see why women love Brad Pitt.
• 1:34:56
  SPEAKER_00: The guy is like 60 years old and he's rocking the six pack and he's out here.
• 1:35:00
  SPEAKER_00: chiefing a cigarette, working on an antenna on the roof.
• 1:35:03
  SPEAKER_00: Either way,
• 1:35:03
  SPEAKER_00: Brad Pitt's driving down either Sunset Boulevard or Santa Monica or one of the
• 1:35:08
  SPEAKER_00: Hollywood Boulevard and he sees one of the Manson girls,
• 1:35:11
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:35:11
  SPEAKER_00: and she's like this like ditzy kind of,
• 1:35:14
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:35:14
  SPEAKER_00: trampy looking girl
• 1:35:16
  SPEAKER_00: You know, trash digger girl.
• 1:35:17
  SPEAKER_00: But she's pretty hot.
• 1:35:19
  SPEAKER_00: And she kind of like smiles at him and waves and blah, blah, blah.
• 1:35:22
  SPEAKER_00: And he goes on with his day.
• 1:35:24
  SPEAKER_00: He goes to the studio.
• 1:35:25
  SPEAKER_00: He comes back on the way back.
• 1:35:26
  SPEAKER_00: And he sees her again.
• 1:35:27
  SPEAKER_00: But now she's like hitchhiking in the opposite direction.
• 1:35:30
  SPEAKER_00: The first time... The first time...
• 1:35:33
  SPEAKER_00: and this is where the trope gets kind of initiated he pulls up at the stoplight and
• 1:35:36
  SPEAKER_00: she's hitchhiking and she looks at him but she's hitchhiking away from where he's
• 1:35:40
  SPEAKER_00: going so he like points in the direction he's going and says peace and leaves
• 1:35:44
  SPEAKER_00: leaves her ass right and you know something like beta cuck would have turned around
• 1:35:47
  SPEAKER_00: and given her a ride you know because but it's also strong because it remains
• 1:35:52
  SPEAKER_01: cinematic
• 1:35:52
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:35:53
  SPEAKER_00: There's no dialogue.
• 1:35:54
  SPEAKER_00: There's no dialogue whatsoever.
• 1:35:56
  SPEAKER_00: On the way back, he's going the way she is going and she's still there like thumbing it.
• 1:36:00
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:36:01
  SPEAKER_00: So he like lets her in and they're driving and she's talking about drugs or something.
• 1:36:06
  SPEAKER_00: I forgot.
• 1:36:07
  SPEAKER_00: He's like he keeps on asking her like where she lives and where that kind of stuff.
• 1:36:11
  SPEAKER_00: The point of that scene is really to let Brad Pitt's character know that they're
• 1:36:15
  SPEAKER_00: staying at the spawn ranch,
• 1:36:17
  SPEAKER_00: right?
• 1:36:17
  SPEAKER_00: And that triggers the next scene,
• 1:36:19
  SPEAKER_00: which is he goes to check out the spawn ranch because his friend runs the spawn
• 1:36:23
  SPEAKER_00: ranch and he's worried about his friend because he can tell that these bitches be creepy,
• 1:36:27
  SPEAKER_00: right?
• 1:36:29
  SPEAKER_00: But there's a scene where she gives him like an LSD-laced cigarette and he puts it in his pocket.
• 1:36:36
  SPEAKER_00: And that comes into play later in the movie.
• 1:36:39
  SPEAKER_00: But she gives him – she offers him like a blowjob or something like that.
• 1:36:44
  SPEAKER_00: And he's like, you're not even like 18.
• 1:36:46
  SPEAKER_00: He like calls her out right away like no interest whatsoever.
• 1:36:49
  SPEAKER_00: And that's where the trope was because any other movie you would have seen is he
• 1:36:53
  SPEAKER_00: would have fallen for her probably the first time.
• 1:36:55
  SPEAKER_00: But Quentin Tarantino does a double rejection which really illustrates the character very well.
• 1:37:01
  SPEAKER_00: And listen, I'm not a Quentin Tarantino ride or die kind of guy, right?
• 1:37:06
  SPEAKER_00: There's a few of his movies I cannot fucking stand.
• 1:37:08
  SPEAKER_00: I hate Inglourious Bastards and I hate The Hateful Eight.
• 1:37:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I think Kill Bill has some bright moments there, but it overall is too long.
• 1:37:18
  SPEAKER_00: Quentin Tarantino is a – he's a filmmaker who makes visual movies and he fails when
• 1:37:24
  SPEAKER_00: he lacks – when he forgets that he also has to edit them properly.
• 1:37:28
  SPEAKER_00: They're sometimes too long and too drawn out.
• 1:37:31
  SPEAKER_00: But Quentin Tarantino really fails when he steps out of his milieu,
• 1:37:35
  SPEAKER_00: which is his milieu is Hollywood and crime.
• 1:37:38
  SPEAKER_00: So he really works well when you really feel – you've got Reservoir Dogs,
• 1:37:43
  SPEAKER_00: which is a Hollywood crime movie,
• 1:37:45
  SPEAKER_00: Pulp Fiction,
• 1:37:46
  SPEAKER_00: which is a Los Angeles crime movie,
• 1:37:48
  SPEAKER_00: and you've got Jackie Brown,
• 1:37:50
  SPEAKER_00: which is his best movie,
• 1:37:52
  SPEAKER_00: but it's not even written by him.
• 1:37:54
  SPEAKER_00: That movie is based on, I believe, a novel called Rum Punch by – what's his name?
• 1:37:59
  SPEAKER_00: You probably know who he is.
• 1:38:01
  SPEAKER_00: James Elroy.
• 1:38:03
  SPEAKER_00: James Elroy, right.
• 1:38:04
  SPEAKER_00: And then –
• 1:38:06
  SPEAKER_00: And then he kind of goes off the deep end and when he leaves Hollywood,
• 1:38:10
  SPEAKER_00: when he leaves Los Angeles,
• 1:38:11
  SPEAKER_00: he leaves what he knows.
• 1:38:13
  SPEAKER_00: So it becomes the Los Angeles film version of the subject, right?
• 1:38:20
  SPEAKER_00: So he never made – like Inglourious Basterds sucks because it's not really – okay,
• 1:38:24
  SPEAKER_00: so it sucks and it doesn't suck.
• 1:38:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's not really a war movie.
• 1:38:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a movie about World War II.
• 1:38:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a movie about Nazis and that whole thing.
• 1:38:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's basically a movie about movies about World War II, right?
• 1:38:39
  SPEAKER_00: Because that's his only frame of reference.
• 1:38:41
  SPEAKER_00: And it goes the same for –
• 1:38:44
  SPEAKER_00: The Hateful Eight.
• 1:38:45
  SPEAKER_00: He's not making a movie about the West.
• 1:38:47
  SPEAKER_00: He's making a movie about Westerners.
• 1:38:50
  SPEAKER_00: In a way,
• 1:38:50
  SPEAKER_00: he fails in the same way a lot of genre writers today will make – will write books,
• 1:38:57
  SPEAKER_00: but their only frame of reference is like Dungeons & Dragons video games as opposed
• 1:39:01
  SPEAKER_00: to the actual tradition of –
• 1:39:03
  SPEAKER_00: fantasy or a speculative fiction, right?
• 1:39:07
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that's where he fails.
• 1:39:09
  SPEAKER_00: But then he goes back to Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and he's back at home.
• 1:39:13
  SPEAKER_00: He's where he belongs in that movie.
• 1:39:15
  SPEAKER_00: And he's really where he should have belonged the whole time.
• 1:39:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm hoping that his next movie is going to stick to that.
• 1:39:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I believe his next movie is about a movie critic is kind of the plot or at least the
• 1:39:27
  SPEAKER_00: the idea behind it so he might that might actually be good because he's not going
• 1:39:31
  SPEAKER_00: off the deep end like doing a sci-fi you know or something like that he's sticking
• 1:39:35
  SPEAKER_01: to that was that was some glorious Tarantino spurting right that was that was that
• 1:39:42
  SPEAKER_01: was that was almost that was almost to the level of uh
• 1:39:47
  SPEAKER_01: is his speech about Goose and whatever.
• 1:39:50
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
• 1:39:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:39:51
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, look, look, look, okay?
• 1:39:54
  SPEAKER_00: I have a fondness for Tarantino.
• 1:39:56
  SPEAKER_00: And look, the reason I do is because his fucking movies are exactly where I grew up, right?
• 1:40:03
  SPEAKER_00: Like...
• 1:40:03
  SPEAKER_00: When he – in Jackie Brown, right?
• 1:40:10
  SPEAKER_00: The mall scene.
• 1:40:11
  SPEAKER_00: They go to the mall or whatever.
• 1:40:12
  SPEAKER_00: That's the Del Amo Mall.
• 1:40:14
  SPEAKER_00: I used to go to the Del Amo Mall as like a – my mom would go there with me and my dad.
• 1:40:19
  SPEAKER_00: And then I'd drive there to the Del Amo Mall when I had a car.
• 1:40:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I know where the Del Amo Mall was.
• 1:40:25
  SPEAKER_00: And that's like – that's where I grew up, right?
• 1:40:28
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a level of like I feel those streets.
• 1:40:31
  SPEAKER_00: And he shows like a Los Angeles –
• 1:40:33
  SPEAKER_00: Kind of a grimier,
• 1:40:34
  SPEAKER_00: grosser Los Angeles that's more real than even like your rap video Los Angeles,
• 1:40:39
  SPEAKER_00: which is also a fantasy that never really existed,
• 1:40:42
  SPEAKER_00: right?
• 1:40:43
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why I do like Tarantino to a certain degree.
• 1:40:46
  SPEAKER_00: But I think it was Sky actually,
• 1:40:48
  SPEAKER_00: Schuyler Hernstrom,
• 1:40:49
  SPEAKER_00: the author Schuyler Hernstrom in one of our kind of private chats that said that
• 1:40:53
  SPEAKER_00: Quentin Tarantino writes violence like a dude that's never been punched,
• 1:40:58
  SPEAKER_00: right?
• 1:40:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that that's true.
• 1:41:01
  SPEAKER_00: You look at the guy and he does – his violence is not – his violence is cinematic violence.
• 1:41:07
  SPEAKER_00: None of the violence ever,
• 1:41:09
  SPEAKER_00: with the exception of maybe the initial Reservoir Dogs,
• 1:41:13
  SPEAKER_00: his violence always feels fake.
• 1:41:14
  SPEAKER_00: And that's okay though because he is not – he's a movie fan now.
• 1:41:22
  SPEAKER_00: movie maker, a movie fan filmmaker.
• 1:41:24
  SPEAKER_00: Every one of his scenes in every one of his movies is a reference to something else
• 1:41:29
  SPEAKER_00: or a subtext from even the outfits they wear.
• 1:41:35
  SPEAKER_00: One movie of his that is completely underrated in my opinion is Death Proof.
• 1:41:39
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 1:41:40
  SPEAKER_00: I really liked that movie because yeah,
• 1:41:42
  SPEAKER_00: I thought it was,
• 1:41:45
  SPEAKER_00: it's such a great movie because that was more Quentin Tarantino than something like
• 1:41:50
  SPEAKER_00: hateful eight or,
• 1:41:51
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:41:52
  SPEAKER_00: because it's got these like hot girls talking dirty and driving fast cars and
• 1:41:56
  SPEAKER_00: punching people in the face.
• 1:41:57
  SPEAKER_00: And that was cool.
• 1:41:58
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I don't know why I like that movie a lot.
• 1:42:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I saw it when it was Grindhouse.
• 1:42:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it was the Grindhouse, the double feature thing.
• 1:42:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I saw that I hated Grindhouse.
• 1:42:10
  SPEAKER_01: We should do some business here.
• 1:42:13
  SPEAKER_01: The film rights to Shagduk and Ursula are still available, but they won't be forever.
• 1:42:22
  SPEAKER_01: So I don't know, Jackson, but who's the director you see?
• 1:42:27
  SPEAKER_01: I think Richard Linklater, you know, probably we could get him interested.
• 1:42:32
  SPEAKER_00: Who would direct Shagdick?
• 1:42:36
  SPEAKER_03: Who would be the Shagdick director?
• 1:42:38
  SPEAKER_03: Because of his Texas connections, I think he would get that aspect of it.
• 1:42:44
  SPEAKER_03: I'd have to go with him.
• 1:42:46
  SPEAKER_03: You're right.
• 1:42:54
  SPEAKER_01: I'll draft the correspondence.
• 1:42:57
  SPEAKER_00: What did he do?
• 1:42:58
  SPEAKER_00: He did Boyhood, Eternal Ascension of the Spotless Mind, right?
• 1:43:03
  SPEAKER_00: Call of Ten and a Half.
• 1:43:05
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:43:06
  SPEAKER_01: That wonderfully taxes that film.
• 1:43:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, I see.
• 1:43:12
  SPEAKER_00: Dazed and Confused.
• 1:43:13
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, yeah, I can see that.
• 1:43:15
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody wants some.
• 1:43:16
  SPEAKER_01: Slacker.
• 1:43:19
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody should see Everybody Wants Some.
• 1:43:21
  SPEAKER_01: It's got the same... It's the same time frame as Jack and Ursula have owned.
• 1:43:28
  SPEAKER_01: Have you seen it, Jackson?
• 1:43:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you'll go out of your mind.
• 1:43:35
  SPEAKER_00: I think I'd want David Lynch to direct my stuff.
• 1:43:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of... If we can't...
• 1:43:47
  SPEAKER_00: Well, yeah, that is a problem.
• 1:43:49
  SPEAKER_03: I think that's entirely what Alexander intends, is that it would become a David Lynch film.
• 1:43:56
  SPEAKER_00: I say this all the time on every episode,
• 1:43:58
  SPEAKER_00: but I work with a bunch of young guys and girls,
• 1:44:01
  SPEAKER_00: and one of my goals in life is that I'm a wizard of some sort,
• 1:44:07
  SPEAKER_00: and I like to kind of force my recommendations upon them,
• 1:44:11
  SPEAKER_00: and I get them to...
• 1:44:13
  SPEAKER_00: to read all,
• 1:44:14
  SPEAKER_00: all this,
• 1:44:15
  SPEAKER_00: all this reader,
• 1:44:15
  SPEAKER_00: read all this weird stuff and like watch all these weird movies and stuff.
• 1:44:19
  SPEAKER_00: And,
• 1:44:19
  SPEAKER_00: uh,
• 1:44:20
  SPEAKER_00: I have gotten basically all of them to watch twin peaks and they're all the way
• 1:44:24
  SPEAKER_00: through twin peaks.
• 1:44:25
  SPEAKER_00: Now I think most of them are on the third season.
• 1:44:28
  SPEAKER_00: Now they just finished them, you know, the prequel movie in between the fire walk with me.
• 1:44:32
  SPEAKER_00: So now my, my work chat is basically twin peaks memes.
• 1:44:36
  SPEAKER_00: And,
• 1:44:37
  SPEAKER_00: um,
• 1:44:38
  SPEAKER_00: I love that,
• 1:44:39
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:44:39
  SPEAKER_00: and it's like,
• 1:44:39
  SPEAKER_00: I'm,
• 1:44:40
  SPEAKER_00: I'm always like,
• 1:44:40
  SPEAKER_00: okay,
• 1:44:41
  SPEAKER_00: now you've watched twin peaks,
• 1:44:42
  SPEAKER_00: uh,
• 1:44:43
  SPEAKER_00: Now it's time to move on to the next level of darkness.
• 1:44:47
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, let me see what I got for you.
• 1:44:49
  SPEAKER_00: I did many years ago when I was navying around all over the Pacific,
• 1:44:56
  SPEAKER_00: I was stuck in this little camp for a few weeks.
• 1:45:00
  SPEAKER_00: a few months and we had a projector and I made everybody watch like true detective,
• 1:45:07
  SPEAKER_00: all the David Lynch movies,
• 1:45:08
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:45:08
  SPEAKER_00: and I was just watching it by myself.
• 1:45:10
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 1:45:10
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just sitting here drinking wine,
• 1:45:12
  SPEAKER_00: red wine on the couch outdoors in by malaria infested mosquitoes and listening to
• 1:45:18
  SPEAKER_00: Lana Del Rey really loud.
• 1:45:19
  SPEAKER_00: And people be like, Oh no,
• 1:45:21
  SPEAKER_00: Alex is on his suicidal ideation kick right there by himself but then I would put
• 1:45:26
  SPEAKER_00: on a movie at this projector we had and I would link it up to my laptop and you
• 1:45:30
  SPEAKER_00: know true detective started and you know one guy sat down another guy sat down and
• 1:45:35
  SPEAKER_00: then it became like you know we watched it through in like two days and then we
• 1:45:39
  SPEAKER_00: moved on to Mulholland Drive and in a just every weird movie I could think of that
• 1:45:43
  SPEAKER_00: I had on my hard drive at that time and one of my co-workers he's a senior guy like
• 1:45:49
  SPEAKER_00: me he
• 1:45:50
  SPEAKER_00: Towards the end, we were sitting around at a restaurant having dinner together.
• 1:45:54
  SPEAKER_00: And he's like, he's like, man, you fucking ruined these kids.
• 1:45:58
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, what do you mean, man?
• 1:46:00
  SPEAKER_00: He's like, you just like, you just fucking ruined them, man.
• 1:46:02
  SPEAKER_00: They're all normal, you know, motivated young guys in the military.
• 1:46:06
  SPEAKER_00: And now they're all fucking weird, watching weird shit and talking about like all kinds of crazy stuff.
• 1:46:12
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, dimensions and like magic and existentialism and like,
• 1:46:19
  SPEAKER_00: You're just like a cult leader.
• 1:46:22
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, oh, okay.
• 1:46:24
  SPEAKER_00: I think he meant it as an insult or told me to knock it off,
• 1:46:28
  SPEAKER_00: but I took it as the greatest compliment of my life.
• 1:46:29
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
• 1:46:32
  SPEAKER_01: Chief DeMoto.
• 1:46:34
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, listen, guys, okay?
• 1:46:36
  SPEAKER_00: Just because your third eye hasn't opened yet, I can help you.
• 1:46:40
  SPEAKER_00: I can help you.
• 1:46:42
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah,
• 1:46:43
  SPEAKER_00: I mean,
• 1:46:44
  SPEAKER_00: this is what I love about this podcast is that we start off talking about books
• 1:46:48
  SPEAKER_00: we're publishing and we're talking about wide-ranging conversation.
• 1:46:52
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what makes it wonderful.
• 1:46:54
  SPEAKER_00: I do kind of want to take it back to books.
• 1:46:56
  SPEAKER_00: Well, not back to books, but back to writing.
• 1:46:58
  SPEAKER_00: Because honestly,
• 1:46:59
  SPEAKER_00: we don't talk enough about writing on here,
• 1:47:01
  SPEAKER_00: even though almost everybody we get through here has written a book or is writing a book.
• 1:47:07
  SPEAKER_00: I think that when the indie kind of thing started off,
• 1:47:10
  SPEAKER_00: and this is like back in like,
• 1:47:12
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:47:12
  SPEAKER_00: when sci-fi was going through the whole sad puppy nonsense and all that stuff.
• 1:47:17
  SPEAKER_00: The problem of that era was that there was really nothing good.
• 1:47:20
  SPEAKER_00: I was just sorry, guys.
• 1:47:21
  SPEAKER_00: There's nothing really good on the indie side, right?
• 1:47:25
  SPEAKER_00: Except for Sky and a few other people.
• 1:47:27
  SPEAKER_00: But for the last part, it kind of, eh, cool.
• 1:47:30
  SPEAKER_00: But now you've got a lot of great stuff.
• 1:47:33
  SPEAKER_00: You've got stuff like fucking Caleb Caudill, whose stuff I love.
• 1:47:38
  SPEAKER_00: I think he's great.
• 1:47:38
  SPEAKER_00: And he's dropping his small independent publishing house also.
• 1:47:42
  SPEAKER_00: I believe his is out of Australia.
• 1:47:44
  SPEAKER_00: And you have a lot of, like,
• 1:47:47
  SPEAKER_00: really good people coming in on this market you know and i i do that does make me
• 1:47:52
  SPEAKER_00: feel good like for the first time like in many years of kind of doing this like i'm
• 1:47:56
  SPEAKER_00: i pick up a book and i'm like okay this is on par or better than a lot of stuff you
• 1:48:01
  SPEAKER_00: can pick up at barnes and noble and that makes me happy and that that's what's
• 1:48:04
  SPEAKER_00: great about is that at this point when i see an independent small publisher like
• 1:48:08
  SPEAKER_00: yours neil and you give me something like shag dick i know it's going to be better
• 1:48:12
  SPEAKER_00: than the romanticist book that is front and center at barnes
• 1:48:16
  SPEAKER_00: I just know, you know.
• 1:48:17
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 1:48:18
  SPEAKER_01: That's a really low bar.
• 1:48:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
• 1:48:26
  SPEAKER_01: it's,
• 1:48:28
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know,
• 1:48:29
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 1:48:30
  SPEAKER_01: for a few years,
• 1:48:31
  SPEAKER_01: I was kind of hoping that partly you're doing it here,
• 1:48:37
  SPEAKER_01: but there needs to be a new
• 1:48:41
  SPEAKER_01: curatorial or critical class to emerge.
• 1:48:45
  SPEAKER_01: Not everybody can be a writer.
• 1:48:47
  SPEAKER_01: Not everybody can be an editor.
• 1:48:49
  SPEAKER_01: And certainly not everybody can be a critic.
• 1:48:52
  SPEAKER_01: But I don't know.
• 1:48:54
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I vacillate between total despair and private triumph.
• 1:49:05
  SPEAKER_01: I mean,
• 1:49:06
  SPEAKER_00: that's ultimately...
• 1:49:07
  SPEAKER_00: Okay,
• 1:49:07
  SPEAKER_00: but to be fair,
• 1:49:08
  SPEAKER_00: that's ultimately because you are a writer and an editor.
• 1:49:11
  SPEAKER_00: And most of us that are neither writers nor editors also oscillate between despair and,
• 1:49:19
  SPEAKER_00: mostly in my case,
• 1:49:20
  SPEAKER_00: despair and despair.
• 1:49:22
  SPEAKER_00: And so, I mean, I guess maybe that's the 21st century mode of existence, right?
• 1:49:28
  SPEAKER_00: Those guys back in the 19th century had it easy.
• 1:49:31
  SPEAKER_01: It would be nice if we could get back to, you know, I don't know.
• 1:49:34
  SPEAKER_01: I don't fight against nostalgia too much.
• 1:49:38
  SPEAKER_01: I think that
• 1:49:39
  SPEAKER_01: between the ages of 14 and 18 so many of your tastes are set uh forever i i think
• 1:49:47
  SPEAKER_01: you know for me the apex year in music is 1979 and that's that's not even up for
• 1:49:52
  SPEAKER_01: debate but uh well what's that weird noise going on there who's uh moving out of my
• 1:50:00
  SPEAKER_00: way slamming stuff around
• 1:50:09
  SPEAKER_00: What do we got in 1979 there?
• 1:50:11
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to take that, you know.
• 1:50:13
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it's not to discuss music, but really what I miss about that time would be in a social situation.
• 1:50:25
  SPEAKER_01: No, we're talking about school now.
• 1:50:28
  SPEAKER_01: You would see your buddy on Monday morning.
• 1:50:33
  SPEAKER_01: And,
• 1:50:33
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 1:50:33
  SPEAKER_01: you would go through,
• 1:50:35
  SPEAKER_01: you would perform whatever skit was best on Saturday Night Live the weekend before.
• 1:50:41
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:50:42
  SPEAKER_01: Without even saying, oh, hey, did you see SNL?
• 1:50:45
  SPEAKER_01: No, you would just start doing it.
• 1:50:47
  SPEAKER_01: Correct.
• 1:50:49
  SPEAKER_01: There was a common, there's common cultural shorthand in a way that doesn't exist anymore.
• 1:50:57
  SPEAKER_01: You keep mentioning this mysterious person, Taylor Swift, of whom I've only heard you speak.
• 1:51:03
  SPEAKER_01: But it seems to be a very isolated phenomenon.
• 1:51:10
  SPEAKER_01: If you know, you know.
• 1:51:13
  SPEAKER_01: But it's not something that what I'm saying is that audiences are so narrowly selected.
• 1:51:24
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:51:25
  SPEAKER_00: No, you're right.
• 1:51:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I think Brett Easton Ellis in his book,
• 1:51:30
  SPEAKER_00: his non-fiction book White,
• 1:51:31
  SPEAKER_00: he talks about this and he calls it the empire.
• 1:51:34
  SPEAKER_00: And it is definitely the era where something happened or you saw a TV show or
• 1:51:40
  SPEAKER_00: everybody went to the movies on a Friday night because that's what you did.
• 1:51:43
  SPEAKER_00: And everybody went and saw Jaws that just came out.
• 1:51:47
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what everybody is talking about, you know.
• 1:51:49
  SPEAKER_00: hey but you know what i don't think it's all gone right i just think it's different
• 1:51:53
  SPEAKER_00: now so i mean fisto like do your kids talk about stuff they are all over the place
• 1:51:58
  SPEAKER_03: dude they're shattered it's i never know what anybody's going to be talking about
• 1:52:03
  SPEAKER_03: until they talk about i mean there's when i say that i mean you'll have like five
• 1:52:06
  SPEAKER_03: or six talking about this thing you'll have five or six talking about this thing
• 1:52:08
  SPEAKER_03: you'll have five or six talking about this thing maybe i'm too old and i just can't
• 1:52:12
  SPEAKER_03: follow but
• 1:52:16
  SPEAKER_03: let me put it this way on Fridays.
• 1:52:18
  SPEAKER_03: So I always have music playing in my class when they do work, right.
• 1:52:21
  SPEAKER_03: When they're working on their own.
• 1:52:23
  SPEAKER_03: And at Fridays, I let them pick the music.
• 1:52:25
  SPEAKER_03: I never know what they're going to throw out.
• 1:52:26
  SPEAKER_03: And like,
• 1:52:27
  SPEAKER_03: I discovered,
• 1:52:28
  SPEAKER_03: Ooh,
• 1:52:29
  SPEAKER_03: this might be a fun way for me to discover new music,
• 1:52:31
  SPEAKER_03: just stuff,
• 1:52:32
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 1:52:33
  SPEAKER_03: like finding things on YouTube,
• 1:52:34
  SPEAKER_03: like where did you find this?
• 1:52:36
  SPEAKER_03: What even is this?
• 1:52:37
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, geez, I had the one kid that one day who was like, Hey, how about the Smiths?
• 1:52:41
  SPEAKER_03: Sorry.
• 1:52:42
  SPEAKER_03: What?
• 1:52:43
  SPEAKER_03: You're a Zoomer?
• 1:52:44
  SPEAKER_03: Listen to the Smiths?
• 1:52:45
  SPEAKER_03: All right, let's do it.
• 1:52:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's funny because I've got a Zoomer that I work with that's not even 21 yet,
• 1:52:50
  SPEAKER_00: and the best thing about him is that he's a black dude from Louisiana,
• 1:52:55
  SPEAKER_00: from New Orleans,
• 1:52:57
  SPEAKER_00: and he is a Smiths guy,
• 1:52:58
  SPEAKER_00: and he knows everything.
• 1:52:59
  SPEAKER_00: When I put Smiths on, he's like, oh, hey, it's fucking the Smiths.
• 1:53:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, what?
• 1:53:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I was shocked for a second.
• 1:53:07
  SPEAKER_00: I can't think of a common thread between any of them, honestly.
• 1:53:11
  SPEAKER_00: Call of Duty came out, so they're probably going to be talking about Call of Duty tomorrow.
• 1:53:15
  SPEAKER_03: Even computer games.
• 1:53:18
  SPEAKER_03: Friday, we were doing the homecoming stuff, and I was in line joking about video games with some kids.
• 1:53:23
  SPEAKER_03: One of them brought up Fortnite.
• 1:53:24
  SPEAKER_03: One of them brought up Call of Duty.
• 1:53:25
  SPEAKER_03: Somebody brought up some other thing.
• 1:53:28
  SPEAKER_03: It's not like the water cooler where, hey, did you play the new Halo or whatever?
• 1:53:33
  SPEAKER_03: I was there.
• 1:53:34
  SPEAKER_03: Everybody's got that common language.
• 1:53:38
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe that's me.
• 1:53:39
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe it's me, but
• 1:53:42
  SPEAKER_00: No, you're right.
• 1:53:44
  SPEAKER_00: We're living in a cultural shattering where it's very shattered and it's almost a paradox, right?
• 1:53:54
  SPEAKER_00: Because in the history of humanity, we've never been more –
• 1:53:58
  SPEAKER_00: interconnected by technology and able to communicate.
• 1:54:03
  SPEAKER_00: Look at this right now.
• 1:54:04
  SPEAKER_00: We're talking from South Carolina, California, Florida, and France.
• 1:54:09
  SPEAKER_00: We're having a conversation.
• 1:54:11
  SPEAKER_00: We are more connected than ever, ever.
• 1:54:14
  SPEAKER_00: We can have these conversations,
• 1:54:15
  SPEAKER_00: yet our psychic space,
• 1:54:18
  SPEAKER_00: our psychic sphere,
• 1:54:20
  SPEAKER_00: basically,
• 1:54:21
  SPEAKER_00: of media and entertainment and society is completely shattered to where
• 1:54:26
  SPEAKER_03: We're all connected and we have nothing to talk about.
• 1:54:29
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
• 1:54:29
  SPEAKER_00: And it's interesting and it's terrifying.
• 1:54:32
  SPEAKER_00: I want to ask you guys actually – I want to ask you and Neil, right?
• 1:54:35
  SPEAKER_00: Because I find that interesting.
• 1:54:37
  SPEAKER_00: And Jackson, you can always hop in.
• 1:54:39
  SPEAKER_00: You'll see why I'm asking these guys, right?
• 1:54:41
  SPEAKER_00: And so I want to talk about writing specifically, right?
• 1:54:46
  SPEAKER_00: And writing as a creative art form and –
• 1:54:51
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, this taps in editorial work and education.
• 1:54:57
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, can you teach writing?
• 1:54:59
  SPEAKER_00: Can you teach somebody to write a novel?
• 1:55:01
  SPEAKER_00: Can you educate a novelist?
• 1:55:04
  SPEAKER_00: Or is writing fiction, for example, a novel that has any real value, any staying power value?
• 1:55:11
  SPEAKER_00: You need both.
• 1:55:12
  SPEAKER_00: Is that something that is an innate talent?
• 1:55:15
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you need to have both.
• 1:55:17
  SPEAKER_03: There's got to be some talent.
• 1:55:19
  SPEAKER_03: There's got to be a knack for it.
• 1:55:20
  SPEAKER_03: You think both?
• 1:55:21
  SPEAKER_03: Some people are just born storytellers.
• 1:55:24
  SPEAKER_03: They usually need an editor.
• 1:55:29
  SPEAKER_03: But I've learned so much from Neil, for example.
• 1:55:36
  SPEAKER_03: He arguably taught me how to write a novel.
• 1:55:41
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 1:55:50
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 1:55:50
  SPEAKER_00: because you see in Substack,
• 1:55:52
  SPEAKER_00: on Substack,
• 1:55:53
  SPEAKER_00: or really any single social media type platform,
• 1:55:58
  SPEAKER_00: as soon as it kicks off the ground,
• 1:56:00
  SPEAKER_00: you are inundated by...
• 1:56:03
  SPEAKER_00: People telling you what to do to write.
• 1:56:05
  SPEAKER_00: Write this way or this is how you do it or here's my writing advice.
• 1:56:10
  SPEAKER_00: Here's my book on writing.
• 1:56:11
  SPEAKER_00: Here's this and this is what I learned in my MFA program.
• 1:56:14
  SPEAKER_00: And there's one dude on there that writes about his MFA program that he teaches and
• 1:56:18
  SPEAKER_00: I saw one of his posts and it just pissed me off because he talked about –
• 1:56:21
  SPEAKER_00: how, how great Stephen King was.
• 1:56:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, you high dude.
• 1:56:26
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:56:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um,
• 1:56:27
  SPEAKER_00: but,
• 1:56:28
  SPEAKER_00: um,
• 1:56:29
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like,
• 1:56:29
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:56:30
  SPEAKER_00: if I,
• 1:56:30
  SPEAKER_00: if I,
• 1:56:30
  SPEAKER_00: if I paid my,
• 1:56:31
  SPEAKER_00: I guess you don't pay for MFAs,
• 1:56:33
  SPEAKER_00: you could accept it too.
• 1:56:33
  SPEAKER_00: But if I was hustling, you know, sure you do.
• 1:56:36
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I mean, yeah.
• 1:56:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:56:38
  SPEAKER_01: You pay, you pay somehow.
• 1:56:40
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you're, you're, you're, you're, you have to be minimally acceptable to, um,
• 1:56:48
  SPEAKER_01: whatever school you're applying to, I mean socially.
• 1:56:53
  SPEAKER_01: And if you meet that requirement,
• 1:56:56
  SPEAKER_01: then you pay in the form either of tuition or in terms of opportunity cost.
• 1:57:04
  SPEAKER_01: Because usually you're in your mid-20s,
• 1:57:07
  SPEAKER_01: and you're at least smart enough to get into an academic environment,
• 1:57:12
  SPEAKER_01: which means that you are missing out on all the money you would be earning
• 1:57:17
  SPEAKER_01: in a normal job at that time.
• 1:57:18
  SPEAKER_01: So even though I didn't cut a single check for tuition for my MFA,
• 1:57:26
  SPEAKER_01: you figure I would have at least cleared what?
• 1:57:31
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know, $30,000 a year.
• 1:57:32
  SPEAKER_01: So when you look at it that way, you do pay.
• 1:57:38
  SPEAKER_01: You pay very high price for anything in the humanities.
• 1:57:42
  SPEAKER_01: But to answer your earlier question, can writing be taught
• 1:57:47
  SPEAKER_01: not to people who already think they know how to do it.
• 1:57:53
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 1:57:56
  SPEAKER_00: That's actually a really good answer.
• 1:57:58
  SPEAKER_00: I see what you mean.
• 1:58:02
  SPEAKER_01: Because I think... Yeah, you can't argue with people about that.
• 1:58:07
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:58:08
  SPEAKER_01: But a lot of people...
• 1:58:12
  SPEAKER_01: You mentioned Substack before.
• 1:58:14
  SPEAKER_01: So a lot of people come with that, with the notion that they already have everything they need.
• 1:58:23
  SPEAKER_01: And my answer to that is always fine, great.
• 1:58:27
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, see, I have the opposite problem.
• 1:58:29
  SPEAKER_03: Sorry, go ahead.
• 1:58:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, please.
• 1:58:31
  SPEAKER_03: I have the opposite problem.
• 1:58:33
  SPEAKER_03: I have a bunch of kids who don't think they can write.
• 1:58:36
  SPEAKER_03: even if they can, even if they know, it's a lack of confidence.
• 1:58:40
  SPEAKER_03: It's a lack of, what if I look stupid?
• 1:58:44
  SPEAKER_03: That's the big thing I keep dealing with.
• 1:58:45
  SPEAKER_03: But that's probably normal for that age.
• 1:58:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you can't cure that.
• 1:58:49
  SPEAKER_01: But I mean, there are tricks to it.
• 1:58:54
  SPEAKER_01: I think children, especially young adults, they respond well to formal exercises.
• 1:59:06
  SPEAKER_01: So you show them a few tricks, you know.
• 1:59:09
  SPEAKER_03: I can't fix it.
• 1:59:13
  SPEAKER_03: I can't fix it, but I can show them how they can fix it.
• 1:59:15
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:59:16
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's the key.
• 1:59:17
  SPEAKER_00: That's really like where at least at that age, that's what you got to focus on.
• 1:59:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, you know, here are some tricks and stuff.
• 1:59:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:59:27
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:59:27
  SPEAKER_00: ultimately,
• 1:59:28
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:59:28
  SPEAKER_00: you,
• 1:59:29
  SPEAKER_00: there's a talent there that there's a spark and there's a desire to go on further
• 1:59:34
  SPEAKER_00: that they will,
• 1:59:35
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:59:35
  SPEAKER_00: I just think,
• 1:59:37
  SPEAKER_03: I think the spark that I keep finding is three months into the year.
• 1:59:42
  SPEAKER_03: I keep asking kids, I ask them a question or ask them to summarize something or ask them to do something.
• 1:59:46
  SPEAKER_03: And it's, what's your gut tell you?
• 1:59:48
  SPEAKER_03: What's your gut tell you?
• 1:59:49
  SPEAKER_03: Just spit it out.
• 1:59:50
  SPEAKER_03: What are you thinking?
• 1:59:51
  SPEAKER_03: I see something up there.
• 1:59:52
  SPEAKER_03: Just spit it out, overthink it.
• 1:59:55
  SPEAKER_03: And then they're like,
• 1:59:57
  SPEAKER_03: whatever the answer or whatever they think.
• 1:59:58
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm like, good, let's build on that.
• 2:00:00
  SPEAKER_01: Do you teach classics?
• 2:00:02
  SPEAKER_01: Is that...
• 2:00:05
  SPEAKER_03: I teach social studies.
• 2:00:06
  SPEAKER_03: So the class is called World Cultural Geography,
• 2:00:10
  SPEAKER_03: but basically I think of it as like introduction to social studies.
• 2:00:13
  SPEAKER_03: So like an intro social studies course for ninth graders.
• 2:00:17
  SPEAKER_03: That's going to be the best way to think of it.
• 2:00:19
  SPEAKER_03: So like something that preps them because in Florida you take world history and then you take U.S.
• 2:00:24
  SPEAKER_03: history.
• 2:00:25
  SPEAKER_03: And then U.S.
• 2:00:25
  SPEAKER_03: history is like the one you have to pass to graduate.
• 2:00:28
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm kind of early in that process to prep them for that.
• 2:00:33
  SPEAKER_01: I see.
• 2:00:34
  SPEAKER_01: This wouldn't work with ninth graders,
• 2:00:35
  SPEAKER_01: but I mean,
• 2:00:36
  SPEAKER_01: one way to go would be to teach them who Cicero and Seneca were,
• 2:00:40
  SPEAKER_01: and then understand that those are the two basic forms of rhetoric in English.
• 2:00:50
  SPEAKER_01: And that breaks out into a very describable
• 2:00:59
  SPEAKER_01: uh lesson plan which can be you know you can take an idea and and and treat it in a
• 2:01:06
  SPEAKER_01: senecan style or in a ciceronian style i want to try that regardless that actually
• 2:01:12
  SPEAKER_03: sounds really interesting
• 2:01:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you can simplify it in a way, right?
• 2:01:16
  SPEAKER_00: And you can, I mean, crap, when I was in ninth grade, I would have loved that concept.
• 2:01:21
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 2:01:22
  SPEAKER_00: if somebody put that for me in ninth grade during like an essay writing,
• 2:01:26
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 2:01:26
  SPEAKER_00: kind of class,
• 2:01:28
  SPEAKER_00: I would find that fascinating.
• 2:01:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I would probably go down.
• 2:01:32
  SPEAKER_01: You have to make it very simple.
• 2:01:33
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it sounds, I'm speaking in shorthand here in it.
• 2:01:38
  SPEAKER_01: it must sound terribly pretentious, but Seneca is a running style without subordinate clauses.
• 2:01:45
  SPEAKER_01: And if there's a compound sentence, it's always conjoined with and or but or or.
• 2:01:56
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas Cicero uses subordination in periodic sentences.
• 2:02:01
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it takes some time to set those ideas out, but it seems like that would be an objective.
• 2:02:07
  SPEAKER_01: If
• 2:02:08
  SPEAKER_01: If any of your students are taking Latin, then they'll be delighted.
• 2:02:14
  SPEAKER_03: You know, it's funny you bring that up.
• 2:02:15
  SPEAKER_03: None of them are, but I've started.
• 2:02:17
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know Latin, but I'm using Latin in class, like basic phrases and basic stuff like that.
• 2:02:22
  SPEAKER_03: And I have a couple of classes that are like, can we learn more Latin?
• 2:02:25
  SPEAKER_03: This is kind of cool.
• 2:02:29
  SPEAKER_03: So maybe this is a door to walk through.
• 2:02:31
  SPEAKER_00: I took one Latin class and it wasn't a very fascinating class.
• 2:02:35
  SPEAKER_00: It was actually kind of dull.
• 2:02:36
  SPEAKER_00: It was like a Latin for like healthcare providers.
• 2:02:39
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, the words.
• 2:02:42
  SPEAKER_00: Latin for medical terminology, which it was fucking painful.
• 2:02:47
  SPEAKER_00: It was dull.
• 2:02:48
  SPEAKER_00: I mean it came useful to me, but –
• 2:02:52
  SPEAKER_00: it,
• 2:02:53
  SPEAKER_00: it's pretty dull,
• 2:02:53
  SPEAKER_00: but I mean,
• 2:02:54
  SPEAKER_00: yeah,
• 2:02:54
  SPEAKER_00: I mean,
• 2:02:55
  SPEAKER_00: that's a fantastic way of looking things,
• 2:02:56
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 2:02:57
  SPEAKER_00: and like,
• 2:02:57
  SPEAKER_00: I see what I mean.
• 2:02:58
  SPEAKER_00: This is where, where I like this podcast.
• 2:03:00
  SPEAKER_00: Cause we start talking about cool stuff like this,
• 2:03:03
  SPEAKER_00: but yeah,
• 2:03:03
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 2:03:04
  SPEAKER_00: one of the things that like bothers me and about,
• 2:03:06
  SPEAKER_00: um,
• 2:03:07
  SPEAKER_00: So I look at – I try to read new stuff, okay?
• 2:03:11
  SPEAKER_00: If I see something on – I don't know.
• 2:03:15
  SPEAKER_00: I've been reading the London Review of books and I try to keep up with like stuff
• 2:03:21
  SPEAKER_00: out of New York that's like fresh or gets mentioned and stuff.
• 2:03:25
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of the stuff is obviously MFA, like post-MFA young writers.
• 2:03:30
  SPEAKER_00: And one thing I notice in a lot of it is that they have nothing to say.
• 2:03:36
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and I see this in a lot of like, a lot of people send me their stories, their short stories.
• 2:03:43
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of people send me their novels because I talk about books a lot online.
• 2:03:47
  SPEAKER_00: So the people, I guess, send me their stuff.
• 2:03:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I start reading them and I realize that like, okay, this is cool plot, man.
• 2:03:55
  SPEAKER_00: This is, you know, decent characters.
• 2:03:58
  SPEAKER_00: What are you saying?
• 2:03:59
  SPEAKER_00: You know, like what's going on here?
• 2:04:02
  SPEAKER_00: What's the point of all this, right?
• 2:04:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not just going to read this for like,
• 2:04:06
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 2:04:07
  SPEAKER_00: entertainment because what I'm competing – what you're competing with –
• 2:04:10
  SPEAKER_00: If you have nothing to say, you're competing with Call of Duty, all right?
• 2:04:15
  SPEAKER_00: Because if I just want entertainment from left to right,
• 2:04:18
  SPEAKER_00: from beginning to end,
• 2:04:19
  SPEAKER_00: then I might as well just –
• 2:04:22
  SPEAKER_00: Play Call of Duty with my friends, right?
• 2:04:24
  SPEAKER_00: Which is not a bad way to spend a Friday night with a six-pack of beer and like a
• 2:04:28
  SPEAKER_00: headset on and you're just talking shit to people,
• 2:04:30
  SPEAKER_00: right?
• 2:04:31
  SPEAKER_00: Actually,
• 2:04:31
  SPEAKER_00: that's an even better way than just reading a book because you're being social
• 2:04:37
  SPEAKER_00: while you're doing it and you're getting the same level of storyline.
• 2:04:41
  SPEAKER_00: So that's why I kind of like – I'm at the point where people will criticize me.
• 2:04:47
  SPEAKER_00: They go,
• 2:04:47
  SPEAKER_00: you tend to be kind of a snob when it comes to what you like to read or what you
• 2:04:51
  SPEAKER_00: want to write about.
• 2:04:53
  SPEAKER_00: And the question is, yes, yes, I am kind of a snob.
• 2:04:55
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason is because when it comes to like fun adventure,
• 2:04:59
  SPEAKER_00: straightforward,
• 2:05:00
  SPEAKER_00: unthinking media,
• 2:05:01
  SPEAKER_00: guess what?
• 2:05:02
  SPEAKER_00: Marvel does it better than you because it's visual.
• 2:05:05
  SPEAKER_00: Call of Duty does it better than you because it's visual and tactile and interactive, right?
• 2:05:10
  SPEAKER_00: So you need to – as a writer in this era,
• 2:05:14
  SPEAKER_00: you're not just competing with other writers or comic books or any of that kind of stuff.
• 2:05:20
  SPEAKER_00: You're competing with at your fingertips constant visual interactive stimulation.
• 2:05:28
  SPEAKER_00: And we've talked about – for example, we've talked about Cyberpunk, the video game 2077.
• 2:05:33
  SPEAKER_00: And Cyberpunk, the video game, its storyline and the way you interact with it is –
• 2:05:39
  SPEAKER_00: as good as a lot of great science fiction novels i've read and not only does it
• 2:05:46
  SPEAKER_00: have the visual and the game aspect and interactive aspect it also has a storyline
• 2:05:53
  SPEAKER_00: a plot line that deals with some really in-depth themes that are above and beyond
• 2:05:58
  SPEAKER_00: what you find in most science fiction novels that are being published today right
• 2:06:03
  SPEAKER_00: so the question is when i you know and this is something that i want to tell
• 2:06:07
  SPEAKER_00: writers they you're listening to this if you're writing right now
• 2:06:09
  SPEAKER_00: When I am offering a book your book right your science fiction novel to one of my co-workers,
• 2:06:15
  SPEAKER_00: that's 21 What does your novel why is it better than cyberpunk 2077 all right?
• 2:06:22
  SPEAKER_00: Why is it better than some of the other video games that they play that have really
• 2:06:26
  SPEAKER_00: complex in-depth storylines?
• 2:06:28
  SPEAKER_00: So that's what you're competing with for the brains of these 20 year olds right or
• 2:06:32
  SPEAKER_00: these 18 year olds you know because
• 2:06:35
  SPEAKER_00: you got to say something, man.
• 2:06:36
  SPEAKER_00: And the problem,
• 2:06:37
  SPEAKER_00: what I've noticed with a lot of the MFA type people is that they haven't done
• 2:06:41
  SPEAKER_00: anything in their life except go to college.
• 2:06:45
  SPEAKER_00: And there's only so much of the MFA lifestyle that you can really enjoy if you're
• 2:06:52
  SPEAKER_00: not somebody that goes to college.
• 2:06:54
  SPEAKER_00: And we look at the statistics of college education right now and
• 2:06:58
  SPEAKER_00: For the first time in history, we are reaching a super majority of females dominating college.
• 2:07:04
  SPEAKER_00: So, I mean, my lifetime, like when you went to college, Fisto, right?
• 2:07:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 2:07:09
  SPEAKER_00: We were probably at a majority of female graduates, right?
• 2:07:13
  SPEAKER_00: Probably a little bit less when Neil and Jackson went to college.
• 2:07:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 2:07:19
  SPEAKER_00: In my age range, we had a majority of female graduates.
• 2:07:22
  SPEAKER_00: Well,
• 2:07:22
  SPEAKER_00: the generation graduating in June or getting their bachelors in June,
• 2:07:27
  SPEAKER_00: we're looking at a super majority of females,
• 2:07:30
  SPEAKER_00: right?
• 2:07:31
  SPEAKER_00: So if those are the people that are graduating,
• 2:07:34
  SPEAKER_00: going to these MFA programs,
• 2:07:36
  SPEAKER_00: we're going to have a literary landscape that is completely dominated by females
• 2:07:42
  SPEAKER_00: writing about females going to college.
• 2:07:45
  SPEAKER_00: All right?
• 2:07:46
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 2:07:47
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know that that's –
• 2:07:53
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I don't know that that's true.
• 2:07:58
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there are other subjects, and subjects become exhausted.
• 2:08:03
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we're still living through... Do you know who Candace Bushnell is?
• 2:08:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, okay.
• 2:08:12
  SPEAKER_01: Candace Bushnell first showed up on my radar in the pages of the New York Observer, which was the
• 2:08:19
  SPEAKER_01: weekly cultural page that Hilton Kramer used to publish.
• 2:08:24
  SPEAKER_01: And she wrote this little column that was pretty funny.
• 2:08:27
  SPEAKER_01: And every now and then you figured you would recognize someone you knew socially.
• 2:08:33
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it was very popular.
• 2:08:37
  SPEAKER_01: Now everybody,
• 2:08:39
  SPEAKER_01: every,
• 2:08:40
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know,
• 2:08:41
  SPEAKER_01: there's a certain number of female writers who want to walk in the Manolo Blahniks
• 2:08:48
  SPEAKER_01: of Candace Bush.
• 2:08:50
  SPEAKER_00: real real intersection for people that are not familiar with who she is is she is
• 2:08:54
  SPEAKER_00: the uh the author uh that sex in the city is based off off of am i right so yeah
• 2:09:02
  SPEAKER_01: we're still we're still living in the you know the the cultural backwash of of that
• 2:09:08
  SPEAKER_01: uh and and that was that her column and you know this the subsequent television
• 2:09:18
  SPEAKER_01: shows
• 2:09:19
  SPEAKER_01: went deeper than even Friends or Seinfeld.
• 2:09:25
  SPEAKER_01: And we're still living with it.
• 2:09:30
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I guess I saw it coming in the mid-90s.
• 2:09:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, this is really, you know, we didn't spend our entire day on the internet in 1995.
• 2:09:43
  SPEAKER_01: But the kind of reading that you do now on a screen, you would do
• 2:09:49
  SPEAKER_01: in a rag like the New York Observer.
• 2:09:52
  SPEAKER_01: And you just eat it up with a spoon.
• 2:09:56
  SPEAKER_01: It was great as a weekly column.
• 2:10:00
  SPEAKER_01: It was very witty.
• 2:10:06
  SPEAKER_01: There were lots of things to suss out between the lines.
• 2:10:12
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, once you make the transition to television, all of that goes away.
• 2:10:18
  SPEAKER_01: And then it became aspirational.
• 2:10:20
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it was always a kind of lifestyle that you would look at.
• 2:10:25
  SPEAKER_01: It was titillating, but also horrible.
• 2:10:29
  SPEAKER_01: But, you know, once it goes into television, television makes things aspirational.
• 2:10:37
  SPEAKER_01: And,
• 2:10:37
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 2:10:38
  SPEAKER_01: that kind of cultural phenomenon can't really get going anymore because there's
• 2:10:44
  SPEAKER_01: just so much other product crowding it out.
• 2:10:48
  SPEAKER_01: Right, right.
• 2:10:51
  SPEAKER_01: so i i don't think all the you know the preponderance of female graduates i i don't
• 2:10:59
  SPEAKER_01: know what they'll do who knows what they'll do i i think that creative writing
• 2:11:03
  SPEAKER_01: programs are become gargantuan i mean in my cohort on the exception i don't teach
• 2:11:11
  SPEAKER_01: in in an academic environment um
• 2:11:17
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't seem possible to employ all of these people, but, you know, it's a reverse auction.
• 2:11:25
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's more supply of, you know, sex in the city type books.
• 2:11:32
  SPEAKER_01: I heard someone calling them discourse novels,
• 2:11:36
  SPEAKER_01: but,
• 2:11:36
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 2:11:36
  SPEAKER_01: I'm somewhat convinced of the category,
• 2:11:38
  SPEAKER_01: but,
• 2:11:39
  SPEAKER_01: you know.
• 2:11:40
  SPEAKER_00: That's a good descriptor, you know.
• 2:11:43
  SPEAKER_00: And it seems like right now the literary scene is dominated by the auto-fiction kind of stuff.
• 2:11:52
  SPEAKER_00: That seems to be the big thing,
• 2:11:54
  SPEAKER_00: and now it's also the big punching bag where everybody kind of criticizes the auto-fiction.
• 2:12:01
  SPEAKER_01: Your objections are seated in style, I think, ultimately.
• 2:12:05
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's a kind of...
• 2:12:10
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I could never get, I would expose my age immediately.
• 2:12:13
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you read a line of mine and you know that it's not from the discourse novel era.
• 2:12:21
  SPEAKER_01: It's from a time already past.
• 2:12:27
  SPEAKER_01: It's very strange to...
• 2:12:31
  SPEAKER_01: to feel this way.
• 2:12:33
  SPEAKER_01: I think every writer imagines that they're young and new when they sit down,
• 2:12:40
  SPEAKER_01: but I'm getting to the point where certain styles exhaust themselves and you've
• 2:12:50
  SPEAKER_01: seen it again and again.
• 2:12:51
  SPEAKER_01: What you are all experiencing, those of you who have come up with social media,
• 2:12:57
  SPEAKER_01: is what it is like to read a slush pile.
• 2:13:03
  SPEAKER_00: It must have sucked, right?
• 2:13:06
  SPEAKER_01: I guess I should explain what a slush pile is and not assume.
• 2:13:08
  SPEAKER_01: A slush pile is the pile of manuscripts that come to you in the mail back in the
• 2:13:17
  SPEAKER_01: day when we used the mail if you were a publisher that accepted unsolicited manuscripts.
• 2:13:24
  SPEAKER_01: So unsolicited manuscripts is what I'm talking about.
• 2:13:28
  SPEAKER_01: And they were kind of a pain in the ass to deal with because they had to be
• 2:13:30
  SPEAKER_01: physically opened and put back in their envelopes and sent away at minimum,
• 2:13:36
  SPEAKER_01: right?
• 2:13:37
  SPEAKER_01: You slap a rejection slip on or whatever.
• 2:13:40
  SPEAKER_01: But you would look at them briefly just to make sure that you weren't tossing away
• 2:13:46
  SPEAKER_01: something that was golden.
• 2:13:49
  SPEAKER_01: But it's like reading Twitter.
• 2:13:52
  SPEAKER_03: right so i mean okay the metaphor sorry the the metaphor made me laugh because i'm
• 2:13:57
  SPEAKER_03: from ohio and i immediately imagined the giant hills of snow that get pushed up
• 2:14:02
  SPEAKER_03: into the corner of a parking lot so well i think slush it as well that's pretty
• 2:14:06
  SPEAKER_03: well said i immediately imagine that as reading oh god it's a lost language you
• 2:14:12
  SPEAKER_03: know that makes complete sense makes complete sense
• 2:14:15
  SPEAKER_00: How many manuscripts about Templars do you get?
• 2:14:19
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like, oh, it always goes back to the Templars.
• 2:14:22
  SPEAKER_00: But, you know, hey, look, we're dooming and glooming, right?
• 2:14:25
  SPEAKER_00: We're dooming and glooming here, which to a certain degree –
• 2:14:29
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not that big of a doomer and gloomer when it comes to things.
• 2:14:36
  SPEAKER_00: You look at the environment, right?
• 2:14:39
  SPEAKER_00: The writing environment, the reading environment, the media environment, right?
• 2:14:43
  SPEAKER_00: I hate the word media.
• 2:14:44
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know why.
• 2:14:45
  SPEAKER_00: It just sounds so fucking stupid.
• 2:14:47
  SPEAKER_00: It sounds like you're an asshole when you use that word.
• 2:14:49
  SPEAKER_00: The people that use the word content, like, oh, I'm providing content, that just fucking pisses me off.
• 2:14:53
  SPEAKER_00: It just grosses me out.
• 2:14:54
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know why.
• 2:14:55
  SPEAKER_00: But our greater media environment,
• 2:14:58
  SPEAKER_00: right,
• 2:14:59
  SPEAKER_00: that we're in today,
• 2:15:00
  SPEAKER_00: right,
• 2:15:00
  SPEAKER_00: it's completely schizophrenic and disjointed and itemized and,
• 2:15:06
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 2:15:06
  SPEAKER_00: to use the Baudrillardian terms,
• 2:15:09
  SPEAKER_00: it's atomized,
• 2:15:10
  SPEAKER_00: right?
• 2:15:11
  SPEAKER_00: And we have so much stuff but so little connections between the stuff and it's all over the place.
• 2:15:16
  SPEAKER_00: But, you know, the thing is, though, there are readers out there, you know, you have –
• 2:15:21
  SPEAKER_00: You have like my wife, she reads those romantic novels, right?
• 2:15:26
  SPEAKER_00: And she'll read some Sarah J. Maas or whatever.
• 2:15:29
  SPEAKER_00: Or there's tons of new ones out every day.
• 2:15:32
  SPEAKER_00: And you look at these books, right?
• 2:15:33
  SPEAKER_00: And you go to Barnes & Noble and these books are like the size of like 17 Bibles taped together.
• 2:15:39
  SPEAKER_00: And there's like seven of them in the series.
• 2:15:41
  SPEAKER_00: And they all came out and they're all selling out.
• 2:15:43
  SPEAKER_00: And there's –
• 2:15:44
  SPEAKER_00: thousands and thousands and thousands of people talking about these on like ass
• 2:15:49
  SPEAKER_00: talk or whatever the fuck book talk or whatever and Instagram and everywhere so
• 2:15:53
  SPEAKER_00: there's people reading it there's people going out and buying books and reading
• 2:15:56
  SPEAKER_00: them right the question for us is Ray
• 2:16:01
  SPEAKER_00: What are we doing?
• 2:16:02
  SPEAKER_00: What are we doing?
• 2:16:03
  SPEAKER_00: We're writing, we're writing, we're putting out stuff, we're shouting into this void.
• 2:16:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a void, to be honest.
• 2:16:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's worse than a void, right?
• 2:16:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's like static.
• 2:16:15
  SPEAKER_00: There's a complete digital transmission scrambling out there, right?
• 2:16:21
  SPEAKER_00: And our hope is what?
• 2:16:22
  SPEAKER_00: That we will find an audience, one of those like if we build it, it will come type of mindsets.
• 2:16:29
  SPEAKER_00: What is our goal and how can we approach it?
• 2:16:33
  SPEAKER_01: I think I'm pretty philosophical about this.
• 2:16:37
  SPEAKER_01: I'd be interested to hear what Jackson has to say because I think he's different.
• 2:16:40
  SPEAKER_01: But briefly, I think that until –
• 2:16:45
  SPEAKER_01: the 1970s or thereabouts, you could write for money.
• 2:16:51
  SPEAKER_01: And if you went at it seriously,
• 2:16:56
  SPEAKER_01: you would have some reasonable expectation of not being rich,
• 2:17:03
  SPEAKER_01: but making your life.
• 2:17:05
  SPEAKER_01: After that, up until the 90s, you could write for prestige.
• 2:17:14
  SPEAKER_01: and that publishing with the good press brought you prestige,
• 2:17:19
  SPEAKER_01: which usually translated in terms of fiction into a creative writing job.
• 2:17:24
  SPEAKER_01: It's something I would never really want to do.
• 2:17:26
  SPEAKER_01: I'm very glad to have avoided that fate.
• 2:17:29
  SPEAKER_01: I think now that that's exhausted, that has been exhausted.
• 2:17:40
  SPEAKER_01: There are lots of reasons for that, but there's the kind of sameness that has set in
• 2:17:44
  SPEAKER_01: such that it doesn't seem prestigious anymore to publish with Random House or Knopf.
• 2:17:53
  SPEAKER_01: It is prestigious, but it's prestigious in places that you probably don't want to be a member anyway.
• 2:18:02
  SPEAKER_01: I think the last redoubt for writing is respect among writers.
• 2:18:09
  SPEAKER_01: And that's a very insular...
• 2:18:12
  SPEAKER_01: thing.
• 2:18:13
  SPEAKER_01: It's where poetry was in the mid-90s.
• 2:18:18
  SPEAKER_01: Only poets read poetry.
• 2:18:21
  SPEAKER_01: And me.
• 2:18:22
  SPEAKER_01: I read a lot of poetry.
• 2:18:24
  SPEAKER_01: But they are... It's depressing to be around them in one way.
• 2:18:31
  SPEAKER_01: If you go to a party where there are poets and there's... But it's also very pure.
• 2:18:38
  SPEAKER_01: It goes back to the idea of musicians...
• 2:18:42
  SPEAKER_01: The only ones who are still around are those who have decided to ride.
• 2:18:48
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that that's where writing,
• 2:18:50
  SPEAKER_01: serious writing,
• 2:18:51
  SPEAKER_01: even writing that is not just commodity,
• 2:18:58
  SPEAKER_01: is going to be centered on the respect of other writers.
• 2:19:04
  SPEAKER_01: I don't envision any other goal.
• 2:19:07
  SPEAKER_01: Jackson, what do you think about this?
• 2:19:09
  SPEAKER_00: Put you on the spot, man.
• 2:19:11
  SPEAKER_00: What do you write?
• 2:19:11
  SPEAKER_00: What are you scribbling into the digital void?
• 2:19:22
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I had a lot of stories that needed to be told.
• 2:19:28
  SPEAKER_03: And I tried to write them down back in the day in the 90s.
• 2:19:35
  SPEAKER_03: I did a series of zines that were presented as the diary of some random asshole.
• 2:19:46
  SPEAKER_03: But...
• 2:19:49
  SPEAKER_03: Later, when it was time to write Shagdook, I drew from that source material pretty heavily.
• 2:19:54
  SPEAKER_03: And it's kind of surprising to me when I go back and read Shagdook that I just
• 2:20:00
  SPEAKER_03: lifted it straight out of the zines that I wrote a lot of it.
• 2:20:06
  SPEAKER_03: But the question then was, where do I go with it?
• 2:20:09
  SPEAKER_03: So I write because the stories wanted to be told.
• 2:20:12
  SPEAKER_03: I have a creative urge that needs an outlet.
• 2:20:17
  SPEAKER_03: I've always been creative.
• 2:20:19
  SPEAKER_03: Back in the day, I was in bands.
• 2:20:23
  SPEAKER_03: But that requires the collaboration with other people.
• 2:20:27
  SPEAKER_03: And I discovered after I discovered I was a terrible artist that writing was
• 2:20:33
  SPEAKER_03: something I could do anytime,
• 2:20:35
  SPEAKER_03: anywhere by myself.
• 2:20:37
  SPEAKER_03: And that's where that started.
• 2:20:40
  SPEAKER_03: But I've got a few more books in me.
• 2:20:44
  SPEAKER_03: After that, I don't know.
• 2:20:45
  SPEAKER_03: There may be a time when I come to a stopping point if I have nothing left to say.
• 2:20:49
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 2:21:00
  SPEAKER_00: That's a very human way of putting it.
• 2:21:02
  SPEAKER_00: Now,
• 2:21:03
  SPEAKER_00: you'll get a lot of writers,
• 2:21:05
  SPEAKER_00: artists or whatever that will say some stuff along the lines of,
• 2:21:08
  SPEAKER_00: well,
• 2:21:09
  SPEAKER_00: you know what?
• 2:21:10
  SPEAKER_00: I write because I want to write and I don't care if anybody ever reads my stuff, right?
• 2:21:15
  SPEAKER_00: Which I would say that's an honorable way of looking at things.
• 2:21:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's a very – I guess maybe very Japanese way of doing things like –
• 2:21:24
  SPEAKER_00: There will be the equivalent of you spending all day working on your rock garden
• 2:21:30
  SPEAKER_00: and raking your garden and then the next day starting all over.
• 2:21:34
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody is going to see it.
• 2:21:34
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody is going to appreciate the beauty because it's transient.
• 2:21:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's just transient and personal, right?
• 2:21:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's one good way of looking at it.
• 2:21:43
  SPEAKER_00: I don't –
• 2:21:44
  SPEAKER_00: I don't look at that this way because you can ask the same questions.
• 2:21:47
  SPEAKER_00: What do you podcast?
• 2:21:48
  SPEAKER_00: What do you sub-stack?
• 2:21:49
  SPEAKER_00: Why are you writing stuff non-stop, Alex?
• 2:21:51
  SPEAKER_00: I think that in a way that I think we as humans yearn to connect creatively with
• 2:21:57
  SPEAKER_00: other humans and no matter what,
• 2:22:00
  SPEAKER_00: we want to just infect the greater consciousness with even one viral load of our
• 2:22:06
  SPEAKER_00: brain or of our thoughts.
• 2:22:09
  SPEAKER_00: It might go big.
• 2:22:11
  SPEAKER_00: It might not.
• 2:22:12
  SPEAKER_00: But at least
• 2:22:13
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 2:22:13
  SPEAKER_00: spinning it out there into the void and letting it live independently of ourselves
• 2:22:19
  SPEAKER_00: and seeing if there's something that germinates in the greater cultural consciousness,
• 2:22:25
  SPEAKER_00: even if it's for a second,
• 2:22:26
  SPEAKER_00: even if it's for a blip.
• 2:22:27
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's like an innate kind of like thing that all people,
• 2:22:33
  SPEAKER_00: whether it's musicians,
• 2:22:34
  SPEAKER_00: writers,
• 2:22:34
  SPEAKER_00: filmmakers and stuff,
• 2:22:36
  SPEAKER_00: have in common.
• 2:22:37
  SPEAKER_00: And yes, we do live in a world that's very difficult to do any of that.
• 2:22:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll say,
• 2:22:43
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 2:22:44
  SPEAKER_00: I don't care if I make a dollar off of anything I ever do,
• 2:22:47
  SPEAKER_00: but I do want somebody to read it.
• 2:22:49
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not going to lie.
• 2:22:50
  SPEAKER_00: I want people to read.
• 2:22:51
  SPEAKER_00: I want people to listen to this podcast.
• 2:22:53
  SPEAKER_00: and pick up Shagduck and go, hey, man, that's a great book.
• 2:22:56
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 2:22:56
  SPEAKER_00: And now we share something in common, right?
• 2:23:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's what humans are here for, right?
• 2:23:03
  SPEAKER_00: Like if – me and Fisto, we don't know each other in real life, right?
• 2:23:08
  SPEAKER_00: But we share Neuromancer together now, right?
• 2:23:11
  SPEAKER_00: Because –
• 2:23:12
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 2:23:13
  SPEAKER_00: And we share tons of other books we've read together.
• 2:23:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I said this on my last podcast and I think I've said it before in numerous ones.
• 2:23:21
  SPEAKER_00: My favorite line out of that, the recent Cormac McCarthy novel, right?
• 2:23:25
  SPEAKER_00: The Passenger was when he –
• 2:23:28
  SPEAKER_00: One of the characters says that,
• 2:23:30
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 2:23:30
  SPEAKER_00: the greatest thing about,
• 2:23:32
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 2:23:32
  SPEAKER_00: somebody that shares,
• 2:23:34
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 2:23:34
  SPEAKER_00: a few dozen books read in common has to share something almost as thick as blood or
• 2:23:39
  SPEAKER_00: even thicker than blood,
• 2:23:40
  SPEAKER_00: right?
• 2:23:41
  SPEAKER_00: And that's true because we share a temporary,
• 2:23:45
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 2:23:46
  SPEAKER_00: psychosphere kind of space,
• 2:23:48
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 2:23:48
  SPEAKER_00: to use some Wu language there.
• 2:23:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I guess that's why I –
• 2:23:53
  SPEAKER_00: That's why we're doing this, right?
• 2:23:54
  SPEAKER_00: That's why I support – I want to have you guys on and I will throw every dollar I
• 2:23:59
  SPEAKER_00: have at Pylon Press and everybody you put out and I will do so for Caleb Caudell
• 2:24:05
  SPEAKER_00: and Lisa Kuznack and everybody that I meet who I think has something to say at
• 2:24:09
  SPEAKER_00: least –
• 2:24:10
  SPEAKER_00: in for a minute for a second right so maybe it's like a weird idealistic person but
• 2:24:16
  SPEAKER_00: it's very easy for some of us to slip into a doomer nihilism where we're like well
• 2:24:22
  SPEAKER_00: it's over there's never going to be a great writer and it's all going to be
• 2:24:26
  SPEAKER_00: freaking ai stupidity and amazon slop and i'm going to
• 2:24:31
  SPEAKER_03: not ever do it right you know alex alex it's it's the creepy record store owner you
• 2:24:38
  SPEAKER_03: wish to be exactly exactly that's what it is hey i got all the good stuff in the
• 2:24:42
  SPEAKER_00: basement kids come on down right and if i if i creep up on some kids at least i've
• 2:24:48
  SPEAKER_00: succeeded somewhat and that's how i look at it you know and from from i mean
• 2:24:53
  SPEAKER_00: obviously neil you you
• 2:24:55
  SPEAKER_00: whether you,
• 2:24:56
  SPEAKER_00: you agree with me or not,
• 2:24:57
  SPEAKER_00: there's some part of you that believes some of what I say,
• 2:25:00
  SPEAKER_00: because you're still publishing stuff,
• 2:25:02
  SPEAKER_00: right?
• 2:25:02
  SPEAKER_00: You're finding these great writers and publishing them, you know?
• 2:25:05
  SPEAKER_00: And you know what?
• 2:25:06
  SPEAKER_00: I think that the world would be worse off if you didn't put out Shagduck.
• 2:25:11
  SPEAKER_00: And the world would be worse off if you never put out Sky's stuff.
• 2:25:16
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way,
• 2:25:17
  SPEAKER_00: if you guys never read Sky's stuff,
• 2:25:19
  SPEAKER_00: he's a total recluse and does not use the internet except secretly.
• 2:25:24
  SPEAKER_00: And he's some of the best sword and sorcery fantasy writer out there.
• 2:25:28
  SPEAKER_00: I mean I like the dude so much I went and met him in Pittsburgh when I got a chance to go up there.
• 2:25:33
  SPEAKER_00: But –
• 2:25:34
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that's the thing, guys, right?
• 2:25:36
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Alex.
• 2:25:38
  SPEAKER_01: I really appreciate that.
• 2:25:39
  SPEAKER_00: You obviously have to believe it or else you wouldn't be doing it.
• 2:25:42
  SPEAKER_00: Because honestly,
• 2:25:43
  SPEAKER_00: if you are a mercenary,
• 2:25:44
  SPEAKER_00: look,
• 2:25:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to do some simping for you real fast,
• 2:25:49
  SPEAKER_00: but I've read your stuff.
• 2:25:51
  SPEAKER_00: on your own sub stack, right?
• 2:25:53
  SPEAKER_00: I've read the swing thoughts and roundabouts and you are a fantastic writer.
• 2:25:57
  SPEAKER_00: On top of that,
• 2:25:58
  SPEAKER_00: I know you're a great editor because,
• 2:25:59
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 2:26:00
  SPEAKER_00: spoiler alert,
• 2:26:01
  SPEAKER_00: you have edited some of my short stories.
• 2:26:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember I sent you a story once and it was like,
• 2:26:05
  SPEAKER_00: you,
• 2:26:05
  SPEAKER_00: you get,
• 2:26:05
  SPEAKER_00: you got it back to me in like five minutes.
• 2:26:07
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 2:26:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I looked at it and I was like, Holy crap.
• 2:26:09
  SPEAKER_00: Everything I wrote was crap.
• 2:26:10
  SPEAKER_00: And everything you recommended was on point, you know?
• 2:26:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I turned it around and I got it published like that morning, you know?
• 2:26:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, Oh,
• 2:26:18
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 2:26:19
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 2:26:19
  SPEAKER_00: This dude knows what the fuck he's talking about, you know?
• 2:26:22
  SPEAKER_00: And, uh, like, you know, you're, you're obviously believing that kind of stuff.
• 2:26:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I do,
• 2:26:28
  SPEAKER_00: I do think that the world is a better place because there is weirdos like us having podcasts,
• 2:26:33
  SPEAKER_00: collecting,
• 2:26:34
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 2:26:34
  SPEAKER_00: old CDs and records and talking about music.
• 2:26:39
  SPEAKER_00: You know?
• 2:26:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 2:26:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 2:26:41
  SPEAKER_00: The world is better for people like Quentin Tarantino who keep old film – like film
• 2:26:47
  SPEAKER_00: celluloid movies and show them in his movie theater and stuff,
• 2:26:50
  SPEAKER_00: right?
• 2:26:51
  SPEAKER_00: He's fortunate because he's rich and he's made it well on his own talents and merits.
• 2:26:56
  SPEAKER_00: But I mean I think it's important that he does stuff like what he does with his –
• 2:27:00
  SPEAKER_00: movie theater that he owns in Los Angeles.
• 2:27:02
  SPEAKER_00: If you guys don't know,
• 2:27:03
  SPEAKER_00: he like runs a,
• 2:27:04
  SPEAKER_00: he shows old movies and that kind of stuff and exposes tons of people to it.
• 2:27:08
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 2:27:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that if you were a mercenary kind of guy,
• 2:27:11
  SPEAKER_00: Neil,
• 2:27:12
  SPEAKER_00: you have the skill and the talent to take a bunch of schlop writers,
• 2:27:15
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 2:27:15
  SPEAKER_00: that are writing shit,
• 2:27:17
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 2:27:17
  SPEAKER_00: sci-fi or fantasy right now and turn them into the next Sarah J.
• 2:27:21
  SPEAKER_00: Mass,
• 2:27:21
  SPEAKER_00: Twilight or whatever.
• 2:27:23
  SPEAKER_00: And you can become a millionaire just by selling like some romantic stuff.
• 2:27:28
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 2:27:28
  SPEAKER_01: No, I wouldn't.
• 2:27:30
  SPEAKER_01: It wouldn't go that way.
• 2:27:38
  SPEAKER_01: The answer to that is very long,
• 2:27:42
  SPEAKER_01: but I think that the most coherent thing I could say is that you get into your attention...
• 2:27:54
  SPEAKER_01: your attentions refine themselves to the point where you get interested in how
• 2:27:59
  SPEAKER_01: sentences are put together.
• 2:28:01
  SPEAKER_01: And then you get interested in how paragraphs get put together and so on.
• 2:28:08
  SPEAKER_01: And you don't really ever look up from that.
• 2:28:13
  SPEAKER_01: And that's been true of every editor I've ever met.
• 2:28:19
  SPEAKER_01: Jackson and I were chatting about Leonard Cohen
• 2:28:24
  SPEAKER_01: earlier today.
• 2:28:26
  SPEAKER_01: And, uh, I was reminded that, I guess we, I don't remember whether we discovered Leonard Cohen.
• 2:28:34
  SPEAKER_03: I think at the same time, um, I dated a girl who was Enda Cohen and, uh, she told me about his book.
• 2:28:50
  SPEAKER_01: Well, so we, we, we, I remember this really, uh,
• 2:28:54
  SPEAKER_01: really well we we ran down um we ran down his his first two novels the first one's
• 2:29:02
  SPEAKER_03: called the other one i never read because the story didn't appeal to me but
• 2:29:06
  SPEAKER_03: favorite game i reread recently um i wish he had written more novels would you
• 2:29:16
  SPEAKER_01: think
• 2:29:24
  SPEAKER_01: It's a very, very good book.
• 2:29:26
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway,
• 2:29:27
  SPEAKER_01: years later,
• 2:29:28
  SPEAKER_01: when I first started at Harcourt Brace,
• 2:29:32
  SPEAKER_01: I met the editor-in-chief there whose name was Corliss Smith.
• 2:29:38
  SPEAKER_01: His nickname was Cork.
• 2:29:41
  SPEAKER_01: And so I went into Cork's office and he was just this lovely, diplomatic, abusive kind of fellow.
• 2:29:50
  SPEAKER_01: And he had
• 2:29:52
  SPEAKER_01: He had the cover of The Favorite Game up on his wall.
• 2:29:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I looked at it and said, oh, I love that book.
• 2:30:02
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, it was one of the first books I published.
• 2:30:08
  SPEAKER_01: So you were talking earlier about holding books in common.
• 2:30:13
  SPEAKER_01: I remember that moment so well because I,
• 2:30:16
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 2:30:16
  SPEAKER_01: if I had been a little more cynical,
• 2:30:18
  SPEAKER_01: I would have,
• 2:30:19
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 2:30:19
  SPEAKER_01: I would have been,
• 2:30:20
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 2:30:20
  SPEAKER_01: Eddie Haskell gone in there and seen that.
• 2:30:23
  SPEAKER_01: But I had actually really read the book and really liked it.
• 2:30:28
  SPEAKER_01: And he picked up on that as well.
• 2:30:29
  SPEAKER_01: So we got on really, really well.
• 2:30:33
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 2:30:35
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway.
• 2:30:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that that is exactly what I'm talking about, right?
• 2:30:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's like these connections and sharing this media together and,
• 2:30:43
  SPEAKER_00: Now we're approaching almost three hours of conversation, I think.
• 2:30:48
  SPEAKER_00: So before we go, Jackson.
• 2:30:52
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so for all the listeners, you can find Jackson's work at Highland Press.
• 2:30:57
  SPEAKER_00: That's the number one place.
• 2:30:58
  SPEAKER_00: You'll find all the other cool stuff put out by Neil.
• 2:31:01
  SPEAKER_00: And then you'll find Neil's sub stack at Swing Thoughts and Roundabouts.
• 2:31:06
  SPEAKER_00: If you're on sub stack or you read sub stacks, it's fiction specifically, that is a must read.
• 2:31:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's probably one of my favorite sub stacks out there.
• 2:31:17
  SPEAKER_00: Just, I mean, the fact that you're
• 2:31:20
  SPEAKER_00: you're, you know, you're, you're sharing your, your writing as you're writing it.
• 2:31:23
  SPEAKER_00: It makes me not want to share mine stuff because my shit's so crappy compared to yours,
• 2:31:27
  SPEAKER_00: but that's the best part.
• 2:31:28
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the best way to do it is like, you're, you're amazing.
• 2:31:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then,
• 2:31:33
  SPEAKER_00: You can also find Shagdick and everything on Amazon.
• 2:31:35
  SPEAKER_00: I know Goodreads and all the different stuff.
• 2:31:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's everywhere.
• 2:31:38
  SPEAKER_00: Ursula of Ulm is the follow-up, and it's also fantastic.
• 2:31:44
  SPEAKER_00: I finished it already.
• 2:31:45
  SPEAKER_00: I read it twice because I read the proof copy you sent me, Neil, and then I read the final.
• 2:31:51
  SPEAKER_00: And what's next for you guys?
• 2:31:54
  SPEAKER_00: What's next for you, Neil?
• 2:31:55
  SPEAKER_00: What's next, Pylem-wise?
• 2:31:57
  SPEAKER_01: For Pylem, I think...
• 2:32:01
  SPEAKER_01: I expect I'll, it's a race between Sky and Jackson for the next novel.
• 2:32:11
  SPEAKER_01: I'll edit whichever comes in first.
• 2:32:14
  SPEAKER_01: And since we're such a small publisher, it doesn't really make sense to organize things into seasons.
• 2:32:22
  SPEAKER_01: So we just publish as things are finished.
• 2:32:26
  SPEAKER_01: Then I expect a book called Winning Secrets from Geoffrey Johnson.
• 2:32:32
  SPEAKER_01: I can't wait to read it myself.
• 2:32:39
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to read that one too, just because some of his ideas are interesting.
• 2:32:47
  SPEAKER_01: Even if you don't find his ideas interesting, his expression of
• 2:32:53
  SPEAKER_01: of them is always engaging.
• 2:32:57
  SPEAKER_00: I enjoyed his first book you put out.
• 2:32:59
  SPEAKER_01: How to Win at D&D.
• 2:33:03
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, no, not from you guys.
• 2:33:04
  SPEAKER_00: What was his old book?
• 2:33:06
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, Appendix N. Appendix N, right?
• 2:33:09
  SPEAKER_01: He did a wonderful survey of Appendix N from Dungeons & Dragons,
• 2:33:15
  SPEAKER_01: which is a list of source material behind the first edition of Dungeons & Dragons that...
• 2:33:23
  SPEAKER_01: Gary Gygax compiled, you know, he read everything on there and wrote a really wonderful book.
• 2:33:31
  SPEAKER_00: He really got me into
• 2:33:33
  SPEAKER_00: that book and his, his, uh, his rants about it.
• 2:33:36
  SPEAKER_00: And he really got me into Vance, to be honest.
• 2:33:39
  SPEAKER_00: I was never a huge Vance guy until, uh, I read that appendix done by Jeffro.
• 2:33:45
  SPEAKER_00: And then I became kind of a Vance devotee.
• 2:33:49
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, maybe not as much as like Lisa Kuznick is.
• 2:33:51
  SPEAKER_00: I think Lisa Kuznick is her and like Sky, Skylar, her, her, the biggest Vance people around.
• 2:33:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um,
• 2:33:59
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, so I got to credit Jeffra for that.
• 2:34:02
  SPEAKER_00: And he also – he got me into Fritz Lieber,
• 2:34:06
  SPEAKER_00: which is another like – it was a 1950s,
• 2:34:10
  SPEAKER_00: 60s kind of sci-fi fantasy writer that did really inspire like Dungeons and Dragons.
• 2:34:18
  SPEAKER_00: And he kind of really brought in that kind of like lo-fi kind of fantasy that –
• 2:34:26
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if you look at modern Dungeons and Dragons, oh God, we're going to go there.
• 2:34:31
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, look at modern Dungeons and Dragons.
• 2:34:33
  SPEAKER_00: We're not going there, but real quick.
• 2:34:36
  SPEAKER_00: You would think that it's inspired,
• 2:34:38
  SPEAKER_00: like kind of the thesis of Jeff Rose appendix and a lot of his work is that modern
• 2:34:44
  SPEAKER_00: editions of Dungeons and Dragons are inspired.
• 2:34:48
  SPEAKER_00: fraudulently or wrongly attributed to being inspired by stuff like Tolkien.
• 2:34:56
  SPEAKER_01: Jeffro's work is about cultural recovery, but done with an unbelievable...
• 2:35:08
  SPEAKER_00: irrepressible enthusiasm right right he's like the Quentin Tarantino of Dungeons
• 2:35:13
  SPEAKER_00: and Dragons in a way you know what I mean right his enthusiasm right but you know
• 2:35:19
  SPEAKER_00: his base thesis for people that are not familiar with his work is that you know
• 2:35:24
  SPEAKER_00: when people think of Dungeons and Dragons or stuff inspired by Dungeons and Dragons
• 2:35:27
  SPEAKER_00: which is the worst thing ever because you shouldn't have things whatever um
• 2:35:32
  SPEAKER_00: You tend to think of Tolkien and that kind of stuff when really that wasn't the real inspiration.
• 2:35:36
  SPEAKER_00: The real inspiration was more like Vance and Lieber and Howard and a lot of that
• 2:35:41
  SPEAKER_00: other stuff from that era.
• 2:35:42
  SPEAKER_00: And if you look at the appendix N for people that don't know what appendix N is,
• 2:35:46
  SPEAKER_00: it was at the back of the first edition Dungeons & Dragons manual.
• 2:35:50
  SPEAKER_00: It was basically a, hey, this is what inspired us.
• 2:35:53
  SPEAKER_00: Bam, and there's a list of books, right?
• 2:35:54
  SPEAKER_00: And Jeffra goes through all those books,
• 2:35:56
  SPEAKER_00: and he kind of identifies some of the elements that made it into the game.
• 2:36:01
  SPEAKER_00: Most famously, obviously, is the whole Vankian magic thing, right?
• 2:36:05
  SPEAKER_00: Which means jibber-jabber,
• 2:36:07
  SPEAKER_00: all nothing to anybody that doesn't play Dungeons & Dragons or has never played it.
• 2:36:11
  SPEAKER_00: But the inspirations...
• 2:36:12
  SPEAKER_00: are clearly there in the early game,
• 2:36:16
  SPEAKER_00: and they're really,
• 2:36:17
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 2:36:18
  SPEAKER_00: the tendrils of the early inspirations still exist in the contemporary game,
• 2:36:24
  SPEAKER_00: but it gets ignored to our detriment,
• 2:36:28
  SPEAKER_00: basically,
• 2:36:29
  SPEAKER_00: is kind of what Jeffro's saying.
• 2:36:32
  SPEAKER_01: Jeffro's going to explain why all of this matters.
• 2:36:36
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
• 2:36:38
  SPEAKER_01: The final thing we've got going is the...
• 2:36:42
  SPEAKER_01: fourth anthology in our New Voices series so I try to bring out a yearly anthology
• 2:36:51
  SPEAKER_01: of new shorter fiction showcasing writers that I'm interested in and that I don't
• 2:37:03
  SPEAKER_01: know when in that sequence it may be the next thing that we publish I sort of send
• 2:37:10
  SPEAKER_01: it to press once it's done
• 2:37:12
  SPEAKER_01: But it's an anthology,
• 2:37:14
  SPEAKER_01: so it's a lot of correspondence and a lot of lifting that I don't want to do necessarily.
• 2:37:22
  SPEAKER_01: But I love the anthologies.
• 2:37:25
  SPEAKER_01: I tend to reach out to writers who interest me in my wandering over the internet.
• 2:37:40
  SPEAKER_01: But if you think I should publish you,
• 2:37:45
  SPEAKER_01: well,
• 2:37:45
  SPEAKER_01: then buy one of the anthologies,
• 2:37:48
  SPEAKER_01: read it,
• 2:37:48
  SPEAKER_01: see what we're up to.
• 2:37:50
  SPEAKER_01: And then if it really, if what you're up to would vibe with that, then send it.
• 2:37:57
  SPEAKER_01: You can find the address at the Violent Press site.
• 2:38:02
  SPEAKER_01: So that's what we have going, I guess, three, four books upcoming.
• 2:38:09
  SPEAKER_00: How about you, Jackson?
• 2:38:10
  SPEAKER_00: You're working on the final part of the Shagdook, right?
• 2:38:16
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, okay.
• 2:38:21
  SPEAKER_02: So you've got plenty on the table for Shagdook for old Steve and the librarian crew.
• 2:38:27
  SPEAKER_03: I want to live up to readers' expectations and the potentials there.
• 2:38:33
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm just working hard to achieve it.
• 2:38:43
  SPEAKER_00: You know, how cool is that, though, by the way, right?
• 2:38:45
  SPEAKER_00: That,
• 2:38:46
  SPEAKER_00: like,
• 2:38:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sitting here randomly,
• 2:38:48
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 2:38:48
  SPEAKER_00: scrolling through X,
• 2:38:49
  SPEAKER_00: and I'm looking at,
• 2:38:51
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 2:38:52
  SPEAKER_00: posts about Templars and,
• 2:38:53
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 2:38:54
  SPEAKER_00: orcs and all the other stuff that's on X nowadays,
• 2:38:57
  SPEAKER_00: right?
• 2:38:58
  SPEAKER_00: And all of a sudden, some random person I've never heard of that's not connected to anybody...
• 2:39:03
  SPEAKER_00: it's like oh yeah you guys should read this you know that has got to be the coolest
• 2:39:07
  SPEAKER_00: thing because I think it's cool from my perspective because like oh I read that one
• 2:39:10
  SPEAKER_00: before it came out I feel like you know I feel it feels like I discovered a cool
• 2:39:14
  SPEAKER_00: band you know like a local band I saw in the at the Roxy or something like that on
• 2:39:19
  SPEAKER_00: a Tuesday night and now like it's like you know big and other people are so it just
• 2:39:24
  SPEAKER_00: makes me want to like hop into their slide into their responses and be like oh yeah
• 2:39:29
  SPEAKER_00: JB Jackson that's a cool dude I know that guy he's on my podcast
• 2:39:32
  SPEAKER_00: you know?
• 2:39:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I, I like that.
• 2:39:34
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's, I think that's pretty crazy.
• 2:39:36
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure it feels cool.
• 2:39:38
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted to write a book.
• 2:39:41
  SPEAKER_03: I love like the kind of book that I want to read.
• 2:39:45
  SPEAKER_03: And I figure, well, I like to read all these other books and other people like them too.
• 2:39:49
  SPEAKER_03: So it stands to reason that somebody is going to like to read what I'm writing, I guess.
• 2:39:54
  SPEAKER_03: But I, I didn't, you know, I didn't expect the reception shag that got, but it's pretty cool.
• 2:40:07
  SPEAKER_00: That's awesome.
• 2:40:07
  SPEAKER_00: I mean it's a great book.
• 2:40:09
  SPEAKER_00: It deserves so much more than what it has.
• 2:40:12
  SPEAKER_00: I think this is the lament of the times, right?
• 2:40:17
  SPEAKER_00: But I think in a different era,
• 2:40:20
  SPEAKER_00: if you're writing around the time like Vance and stuff were writing,
• 2:40:22
  SPEAKER_00: it would have been a freaking bestseller everywhere,
• 2:40:26
  SPEAKER_00: everywhere.
• 2:40:26
  SPEAKER_00: It would have been mainstream as all hell.
• 2:40:30
  SPEAKER_00: But we're not living in that era.
• 2:40:31
  SPEAKER_00: But you know,
• 2:40:34
  SPEAKER_00: And ultimately, I'm glad you have a lot more to write, man.
• 2:40:37
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm looking forward to everything.
• 2:40:39
  SPEAKER_00: So keep sending me those galley drafts, man, because I like reading them.
• 2:40:43
  SPEAKER_00: I want to know what happens next.
• 2:40:46
  SPEAKER_00: All right, Fisto, you got anything for us before we go?
• 2:40:49
  SPEAKER_03: No, sirs.
• 2:40:52
  SPEAKER_03: Really enjoyed the conversation.
• 2:40:53
  SPEAKER_03: I learned a lot.
• 2:40:54
  SPEAKER_03: You guys have given me some cool stuff to read, so I appreciate that.
• 2:40:57
  SPEAKER_03: And thank you for spending the time.
• 2:40:59
  SPEAKER_03: It was a real pleasure.
• 2:41:00
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, nice.
• 2:41:00
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 2:41:00
  SPEAKER_03: I look forward to reading your book, Jackson.
• 2:41:03
  SPEAKER_03: Literally purchased it during the podcast, so it's on the way.
• 2:41:07
  SPEAKER_00: I will link it.
• 2:41:09
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, I went to go order that Leonard Cohen book just now on my phone.
• 2:41:14
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that one.
• 2:41:15
  SPEAKER_00: But it's not on Kindle, man.
• 2:41:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's not on Kindle.
• 2:41:20
  SPEAKER_00: I had to order the paperback for $22 on Amazon.
• 2:41:22
  SPEAKER_03: I'm going to have to check that guy out.
• 2:41:25
  SPEAKER_03: I didn't.
• 2:41:26
  Yeah.
• 2:41:29
  SPEAKER_00: Cohen's fantastic.
• 2:41:31
  SPEAKER_00: That's true.
• 2:41:32
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know who that is, but that's cool.
• 2:41:35
  SPEAKER_00: You paid $22 to Taylor Swift, so you might as well, right?
• 2:41:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 2:41:38
  SPEAKER_00: I think I paid $50 for – Yeah, so you got no room to talk about it.
• 2:41:44
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, no, dude.
• 2:41:44
  SPEAKER_00: Listen, I paid $50.
• 2:41:46
  SPEAKER_00: I already bought it, dude.
• 2:41:48
  SPEAKER_00: I bought it.
• 2:41:48
  SPEAKER_00: What are you talking about?
• 2:41:49
  SPEAKER_00: Of course I bought it.
• 2:41:50
  SPEAKER_00: I'm rich, motherfucker.
• 2:41:51
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a goddamn podcaster.
• 2:41:53
  SPEAKER_00: I have so much money.
• 2:41:56
  SPEAKER_00: You got that pod money.
• 2:41:57
  SPEAKER_00: I got that pod – wait a second.
• 2:41:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's a free podcast.
• 2:42:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, right?
• 2:42:01
  SPEAKER_00: But no.
• 2:42:01
  SPEAKER_03: That explains my paycheck.
• 2:42:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, zero, bro.
• 2:42:04
  SPEAKER_03: I wasn't sure about that.
• 2:42:06
  SPEAKER_00: So I actually did drop $50 and I bought the limited edition pre-sale printing of
• 2:42:14
  SPEAKER_00: the new upcoming Cure album on vinyl.
• 2:42:16
  SPEAKER_00: All right?
• 2:42:17
  SPEAKER_00: So that's going to be exciting.
• 2:42:20
  SPEAKER_00: $50 for some vinyl.
• 2:42:20
  $7.99.
• 2:42:20
  SPEAKER_00: $6.99.
• 2:42:20
  SPEAKER_00: $4.99 on sale.
• 2:42:21
  SPEAKER_00: How much was vinyl back in the day, Jackson?
• 2:42:22
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 2:42:30
  SPEAKER_00: What would you say?
• 2:42:31
  SPEAKER_00: What's that inflation-wise?
• 2:42:32
  SPEAKER_00: Because right now my groceries,
• 2:42:33
  SPEAKER_00: I buy like a suspect of LaCroix and like a frozen pizza for $100 at Publix.
• 2:42:43
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 2:42:44
  SPEAKER_01: Well, no.
• 2:42:44
  SPEAKER_01: Tom Petty's dead, so it would be like...
• 2:42:47
  SPEAKER_01: $150.
• 2:42:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:42:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 2:42:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's wild.
• 2:42:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's insane.
• 2:42:53
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, so that's coming in the mail.
• 2:42:55
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't have a problem buying something that's the cure though, man.
• 2:42:58
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, come on.
• 2:42:59
  SPEAKER_00: You know what, writer?
• 2:43:00
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't know if you listened to those six novels that I chose, Neil.
• 2:43:05
  SPEAKER_00: One of the writers that I really wanted to put in on that list and I just couldn't
• 2:43:09
  SPEAKER_00: fit it in because it couldn't invite was – what's his name?
• 2:43:14
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, my God.
• 2:43:15
  SPEAKER_00: I'm mind-blowing right now.
• 2:43:16
  SPEAKER_00: A British guy who wrote Crash.
• 2:43:18
  SPEAKER_00: What is it?
• 2:43:20
  SPEAKER_00: Ballard, you got me into Ballard, okay?
• 2:43:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I've read so much Ballard.
• 2:43:25
  SPEAKER_00: And the only reason I didn't put him on there was because I don't particularly love
• 2:43:31
  SPEAKER_00: his style,
• 2:43:31
  SPEAKER_00: but I love all his themes and everything.
• 2:43:34
  SPEAKER_00: But, God, man, like I wish there was a Ballard writing right now.
• 2:43:38
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I would buy all his stuff online.
• 2:43:41
  SPEAKER_00: There is a brand new Welbeck book that came out.
• 2:43:45
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it came out – you probably already had it because it was in French originally.
• 2:43:49
  SPEAKER_00: But it just got the translation of his latest novel got translated into English.
• 2:43:55
  SPEAKER_01: I'm frightened of Welbeck.
• 2:43:56
  SPEAKER_01: I've been avoiding him for ages.
• 2:43:58
  SPEAKER_00: So I ordered it on my Kindle.
• 2:44:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's sitting on my Kindle and I'm just – I can't open it because it's like I have
• 2:44:03
  SPEAKER_00: to be in the right kind of depressed like –
• 2:44:07
  SPEAKER_00: sexually deprived deranged kind of mood to like read it and it's it's like there's
• 2:44:12
  SPEAKER_00: some novels that i i love and like i do enjoy well back or like for example like uh
• 2:44:17
  SPEAKER_00: celine's like journey to the end of the night it's a novel that you have to be in
• 2:44:21
  SPEAKER_00: the proper mindset to read and it's like
• 2:44:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just not into it.
• 2:44:26
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 2:44:26
  SPEAKER_00: I need to go see a psychiatrist first and get some medication and then be like,
• 2:44:30
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 2:44:30
  SPEAKER_00: be like leveled a bit.
• 2:44:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'm too much of a manic phase for Selene right now.
• 2:44:34
  SPEAKER_00: So there's no rereading of that.
• 2:44:36
  SPEAKER_00: And then Welbeck,
• 2:44:37
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to,
• 2:44:37
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 2:44:38
  SPEAKER_00: Welbeck,
• 2:44:39
  SPEAKER_00: Welbeck reads like you're chewing Zoloft and it's a good thing actually,
• 2:44:43
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 2:44:44
  SPEAKER_00: but also a bad thing.
• 2:44:46
  SPEAKER_00: But anyways, I'm just not, I'm not, I'm not healthy enough to read Welbeck right now.
• 2:44:51
  SPEAKER_00: So it's going to have to wait until,
• 2:44:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I had this conversation with another substacker that I want to have a guest, the guy Astral.
• 2:44:58
  SPEAKER_00: He actually said the same exact thing.
• 2:44:59
  SPEAKER_00: And he's like, I got it.
• 2:45:00
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't read it yet.
• 2:45:01
  SPEAKER_00: I just got too much brain stuff right now.
• 2:45:04
  SPEAKER_00: But for you guys listeners,
• 2:45:06
  SPEAKER_00: once again,
• 2:45:06
  SPEAKER_00: well,
• 2:45:07
  SPEAKER_00: first of all,
• 2:45:07
  SPEAKER_00: once again,
• 2:45:07
  SPEAKER_00: thank you very much for all the guests that came on today.
• 2:45:10
  SPEAKER_00: You guys are wonderful.
• 2:45:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, guys, thank you.
• 2:45:12
  SPEAKER_00: Pylem Press is awesome.
• 2:45:13
  SPEAKER_00: Go read it.
• 2:45:13
  SPEAKER_00: For you dorks that don't know what Pylem is,
• 2:45:16
  SPEAKER_00: it's basically the short spear that the Roman legions used to stab people in the
• 2:45:20
  SPEAKER_00: face during their formations.
• 2:45:21
  SPEAKER_00: Am I right, Neil?
• 2:45:23
  SPEAKER_01: Well, they're jamming it in their shields.
• 2:45:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, jamming it in their shields.
• 2:45:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 2:45:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's a little spear, a tiny spear.
• 2:45:32
  SPEAKER_00: And once again,
• 2:45:34
  SPEAKER_00: if you're listening to this podcast,
• 2:45:35
  SPEAKER_00: please like,
• 2:45:36
  SPEAKER_00: share,
• 2:45:36
  SPEAKER_00: and discuss on Substack,
• 2:45:39
  SPEAKER_00: on Spotify,
• 2:45:40
  SPEAKER_00: YouTube.
• 2:45:41
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have to listen to this podcast on Spotify.
• 2:45:45
  SPEAKER_00: If you look in the corner of the webpage,
• 2:45:47
  SPEAKER_00: there's a little button that has like all the different ways to stream it.
• 2:45:51
  SPEAKER_00: And then if you like it on Spotify, every episode will appear on Spotify.
• 2:45:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 2:45:57
  SPEAKER_00: But please do that because it does spread out our visibility and allows us to get
• 2:46:04
  SPEAKER_00: these great conversations out to everybody.
• 2:46:06
  SPEAKER_00: And ultimately,
• 2:46:07
  SPEAKER_00: the goal of this place is to kind of spread and fight against the atomization of
• 2:46:13
  SPEAKER_00: our cultural milieu.
• 2:46:15
  SPEAKER_00: Now, for the podcast itself, there's some cool stuff coming up.
• 2:46:20
  SPEAKER_00: I believe on Tuesday, we're going to record a Halloween episode.
• 2:46:23
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to talk about horror and
• 2:46:25
  SPEAKER_00: horror and uh horror and uh i got a lot to say about horror fiction i know
• 2:46:30
  SPEAKER_00: alexander helene wrote a post about slasher films and what he thinks about them and
• 2:46:35
  SPEAKER_00: i tend to agree with him uh i got so i got a bunch of notes for that one the
• 2:46:40
  SPEAKER_00: following day i am going to record another podcast with the guest and you'll have
• 2:46:43
  SPEAKER_00: to wait and see who that is and i got another podcast guest next sunday so i'm just
• 2:46:48
  SPEAKER_00: knocking them out everybody wants to talk to me i'm you know
• 2:46:51
  SPEAKER_00: And very soon in the very near future, we're going to complete season one of the podcast.
• 2:46:57
  SPEAKER_00: And it is a little bit of retooling on format and maybe pull out some brand new
• 2:47:01
  SPEAKER_00: microphone and stuff and start season two.
• 2:47:03
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's a good way to kind of organize it.
• 2:47:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I do plan on having some changes and some new ideas for everybody.
• 2:47:10
  SPEAKER_00: So stay tuned for that.
• 2:47:12
  SPEAKER_00: But until then, thank you very much and have a good night.