Boise, Bolaño, Brian Allen Carr, Niclas in English, Hurray for the Riff Raff, and Dehd
New Influences: March
It’s the first morning in Nashville with warm air. Our insurance company texted about a severe storm threat. The local celebrity e-weather guys say chance of straight-line winds, which is a new wind they invented the last few years. Chance of hail and chance of tornados, but they ended a six-tweet thread with a calming summary:
That was several few hours ago, and their recent tweets are much more ominous, as is the sky outside. I’ll keep y’all updated.
Notes below on stuff I loved in March, plus pics from Storyfort in Boise. -AV
What have you been into? Not a rhetorical question. Type here ⬇⬇⬇
😢 Brian Allen Carr crying on a podcast
I hadn’t read Brian Allen Carr before listening to this interview. No doubt it’s an even deeper dive if you’re familiar with his work.
Mike Nagel’s asking the questions, and Brian is turned up to eleven. After listening, I read two of his novels, and I’m definitely reading more. I saw Brian do panels, Q&As, and read from Bad Foundations at Storyfort in Boise last month, and we got to hang out a lot. Honestly, I could use more of all of it.
I’m going to go listen to more podcasts and crap with Brian to get more, but if you’re B.A.C.-curious, start with this one and stick around for the softening at the end.
I’m knocked out by the guy’s knowledge, and by the way he’s using it. Brian is exceptionally well-read, duh, and he’s got enviable recall. Like all my favorite big brains to be around, he dumbs down for others gracefully, for the hang!
I will say, across every official Storyfort event and unofficial chat, Brian Allen Carr was the only writer I saw get comfortably pissed off. This Gen-X cop was into it. At each event during the festival, my brief surveys always said I was the oldest person in the room. Brian was usually second-place at 44.
📖 Xosé Lendoiro, the lawyer/lit Mag editor in The Savage Detectives
Very fun to have this book in my life now. I’m new to Roberto Bolaño. A friend said, “Man, I think he’s probably your shit.”
Of course, now I see it name-checked and referenced constantly. I see the spine on bookshelves in the background of people’s pics.
This is the second entry in My Year of Reading Thiccly™️. Like the first one, Fosse’s Septology, I spent the first 50% of the book loving the writing, but nervous about the payoff VS the time these weighty tomes take, what with all the slim and medium-build books piling up around the house. But like the Fosse, half-way through The Savage Detectives, I got extremely comfy, only more and more stoked to be in there, invested.
I listened to a couple dip dogs on a buddy podcast give the book two thumbs down. They didn’t give a shit about the middle part, the mass of the book, and admitted to skimming. They were disinterested and annoyed by all those extraneous characters.
The word count is necessary! The overwhelming cast of characters is not only fun as hell to meet, but it’s additive to the book’s whole thing.
Consider Xosé Lendoiro, one of my favorite bit-part guys (who could say why?) who shows up 450 pages in and hangs around for one chapter, 20 pages, then disappears.
“In those days I was traveling and conducting experiments. My practice as a lawyer or jurist afforded me sufficient income so that I could devote ample time to the noble art of poetry ... Naturally, I had a magazine. I was, if I may say so, the funder and editor, the publisher and star poet.”
And then:
“There was a time when my money was the object of jokes and ridicule ... I know there was a time, at the beginning of my magazine’s run, when my young collaborators mocked the source of my money. You pay poets, it was said, with the money you make from crooked businessmen, embezzlers, drug traffickers, murderers of women and children, money launderers, corrupt politicians. I never dignified this slander with a reply ... and instead of buying a yacht with the money I made, I started a literary magazine.”
I mean. What’s up Xosé.
Bolaño’s gift to readers is gracious: You get a complex accounting of a batshit poetic movement, and never have to read a single poem. Masterful! For me, it’s aspirational. If I write my novel correctly, readers will enjoy the story of Christian Rock without having to listen to a note of the music.
✍🏻 Niclas in English
I share a Google Doc with Niclas in Sweden. Neither of us allow notifications, so we check in on the file randomly. We’ll tell a story, rant about something, confess to something, or respond to whatever the other guy said last. The pace is a little faster than old-school pen pal, but much slower than texting or emailing. Here’s something Niclas said on Feb 23, though I didn’t see it until Mar 5:
“heavy winds today. fence blew off the balcony. felix got his puma/cheetos basketball shoes in the mail. he had the kind of joy that i remember having maybe once or twice so far. i got an rc-car for christmas at seven. i got dismissed from the army at seventeen.”
Niclas loves to apologize for not being a good writer; he does it every few entries. But so often he drops something like Cheeto shoes and the military, and I’m like: You are a serious man of letters, motherfucker.
🎸 Dehd & My Least-Favorite Festival Item
I hate the blow-up beach ball at an outdoor gig. I was up front for Dehd’s set at Treefort, but the ball was too distracting. Ohhhhs and Ahhhhs went up in each pocket of the audience where the ball tried to land, and the thing was magnetically attracted back to this clump of half-fans next to me. These people would abandon any melody, any riff, any lyric to bat the ball back up into the air and cheer. I peeled and watched the second half of the show standing near the soundboard. “Clear” was a the standout. The new songs sounded rad. Here’s a clip of “Loner,” also great, which came early in the set. I managed to get a 30-second clip free from the beach ball.
🎶 “Hawkmoon” by Hurray for the Riff Raff
This is the song from the new HFTRR record that I’m currently freaking out about. Several of the tunes have been my favorite already, for a day or two, for five hours or five minutes, and then another nugget comes on and I’m like, “Oh god it’s actually this one isn’t it.”
📷 Pics from Boise
Took a field trip to Storyfort, and left inspired. Evidence below, in portraiture!
