Interview with Author Joe Meno

Q: Why did you decide to write?

Joe Meno: Well, I grew up playing in bands, so when I was in high school I was really into music and playing in these really awful metal and hairmetal-type cover bands. Then I started listening to other types of music, punk music, and new wave. I guess the way I started writing was actually writing lyrics for these awful, Poison and Motley Crue kind of songs. From there I started writing poetry, because that seemed a little easier than a whole story, then into writing short stories. When I went off to college, I actually studied screenwriting because I really loved the idea of writing and storytelling, but nobody I knew or grew up with, nobody in my neighborhood on the south side of Chicago really read, or I didn't know anybody who was a writer, but everybody I knew was interested or at least went and saw movies. So, that's what I studied for the first couple years. And then I started writing fiction, and I realized I could tell a whole movie without having to get actors or producers or a studio involved. I decided that prose fiction was the most interesting to me. There's all these elements like film and music, two things that have a really huge influence on the way I right and the kinds of stories that I write.

Q: Yeah, I can definitely see the music influence of course in Hairstyles

Joe: Everything I've written in some way -- like, my second novel, this book called How the Hula Girl Sings, a real kind of noir crime novel, and it was really influenced by the music of Johnny Cash. And the Boy Detective book, yeah, there's a couple bands like Belle and Sebastian and the Beatles and this band from Chicago in the mid-nineties called the Cocktails, and they were all bands who had kind of an orchestral, poppy sound, but were kind of moody and sad at the same time, like Eleanor Rigby by the Beatles, one of the saddest songs, really beautiful and lush sounding. That's kind of what I wanted the mood of the Boy Detective book to be like, so its not like a lyric or an idea from a song so much as like the tone--

Q: The way you feel.

Joe: The way the song makes you feel. Then it's like, how do I make that happen on the page?

Q: Where did the Boy Detective Fails come from? Obviously there's some inspiration from the kid detective novels where you're leaping off from.

Joe: I started writing a few months after Sept. 11, and I was like 27 or 28 at the time, and just really kind of shocked and saddened by those events. And as the country started moving towards war in Afgahanstian and ultimately Iraq, and I was moving toward my 30s, a lot of these strange things were starting to happen in my life. Hairstyles of the Damned came out and it was a big bestseller, and I was 30 years old, and I suddenly had this fear that I would probably never write a book again that just had that kind of quick impact, like immediate success. At 30 and having that feeling... not being a has-been, but that your biggest success might already be behind you. Not that your books aren't as good, or they're not as artistically interesting, but just... there's so much chance involved when you have a bestseller, so I was kind of thinking about all those things. And as I was turning thirty having this feeling, this real question about, how do you negotiate your adult life when there's all these unknown variables and this real sense of chaos and disorder. At least that's the way I felt at that time, and by then America had moved into Iraq, and it was obvious that was not going well. In my 20s I felt like the world, at least America, was moving in this really interesting, progressive direction, and then suddenly it felt like overnight things just turned and kind of went back in this very chaotic direction, and so all these things kind of shaped that book.

So this character who's maybe a has-been, in some way, or his best days are certainly behind him, and then the world of the book that's really disorderly ad chaotic, and there's this pervasiveness of meanness and evil as well, and these disappearing buildings, which are definitely kind of part of the aftereffect, those images of Sept. 11. And trying to say, well, this is the world, how do you make sense of it? How do you come to actually appreciate the choas or the mystery? The book is a mystery novel that's really about the necessity of mystery. Why we need to be surprised, or why you need to not always have all the answers. Usually the things that give you joy in your life are kind of a mystery. As I was writing it, I was thinking about order, and this is a character, the boy detective, he has to tie other people's shoes on the bus. That's the thing he most desires, is order. So as I was writing the book I decided this was going to be the most orderly book. Hairstlyes of the Damned was very chaotic, and I wanted to feel like the arrangement of the book was like the arrangement of a mix tape.

The Boy Detective I wanted to have a very, very orderly feeling. So I made all these rules, like the prologue and epilogue are each 5 chapters, and the middle three sections are each 30 chpaters, so its 100, which I felt was the most orderly number. And then I decided, well, actually, the book's not about order, it's about disorder and living with that, so that's when I went back and introduced the little buildings of text that appear throughout the novel, the little rectangular pieces of text, they just kind of appear randomly, and as you're reading, well, I wanted the reader to have the feeling of genuine surpirse, even in terms of the text, like, what's the next page going to look like? When you listen to a great record, or you see a Stanley Kubrick film,you're like, I really don't know what's going to happen next. So even in terms of the layout of the book I wanted it to have that feeling. And then I went back and started adding all these codes, and all these extra little things that, if you're inclined, you can solve with the decoder ring.

Q: Yeah, that was cool, that was a really unique way to go about it.

Joe: The whole idea was, this is a story about mystery, and how often do you have that experience in your life? Maybe not since you were five or six or eight, where you actually decoded something. And that forces you as the reader to take five minutes out of your life to cut the decoder ring out and do this thing. And I'm really surprised. There's the code in the book, then there's another secret code that's in Billy sister's diary entries, then there's a third code, these little letteers at the bottom of the page, and if you decode that you can send in for a free prize. It's funny, we've had a couple hundred people decode that, and I thought it would only be like 10 or 15. Really committed, former psychiatric patients that had the time to do this.

Q: What is it you want a reader to walk away with? What is it you want us to walk away feeling, thinking, after reading this book?

Joe: I guess that idea of the necessity of mystery. The older you get, the more responsibilities you have. The idea of disorder is something that's usually unpleasant. You see it as a problem you have to solve. To realize that the things that really give you happiness are usually associated with things you can't plan, you know, like falling in love with somebody, or some other surprise that might happen. For me, as an adult, that's one of the toughest things that you have to deal with is the unplanned. And a real sense of, hopefully, wonder in the book, even in these really odd moments. The way you perceive the world as more of an opportunity, and not as something that you're... Earlier in the book, Billy's on the bus, and he's being overwhelmed by all the noise and the odd people on the bus, and definitely, sometimes you feel like that when you get on the subway train. Seeing it more as like an opportunity to be amazed by something.

Q: When you say that, it makes sense to me, because I know when my wife read it she said that she felt at the end like there were some things that just didn't have this absolute closure to them. And that's life, right?

Joe: It's funny, because the book is a mystery, and none of the mysteries ever get solved. They move towards it. There's these three big mysteries in the book. the way the book is set up, there's a prologue, and epilogue, and then the middle three parts of the book there's a different mystery for each one. The first one is the mystery of Evil, and Billy tries to solve this thing about these disappearing buildings. And he kind of finds out who's behind it, but he doesn't actually solve the mystery. He doesn't send them to jail, he just kind of finds out, and he's overwhelmed by it. The second one is the mystery of Love. And there's this plot of these people that are being made to disappear. And the last one is the mystery of death, and he's trying to find out what happened to his sister. Even then, when he goes down in that cave and finds those bodies, he still doesn't really know what exactly happened or who did it. There is no closure for him. None of these mysteries actually get solved. I was really proud of that idea. Writing a mystery where none of the mysteries actually get solved. There's so few things in your life that you ever find closure for, especially the things that are really important to you. I've been married to my wife for seven years. I love her. But I would feel like I have less of an understanding in some ways -- in a good way, too -- it's not like Oh! I totally understand you.

Q: It goes along with that constant discovery.

Joe: It's like oh, I'm done trying to understand. And then you have the issues of trying to understand evil as it exists, or mysteries of death and what happens after. So there are things you're suddenly like "Oh, I've got that figured out now." Whereas the professor in the book, who has these answers to everything, but they're kind of like these answers that I don't actually believe. Very academic or intellectualized answers. Hopefully that acceptance of the lack of closure is a huge part of the book.

Q: How is publishing under a more independent label is different than -- you were with HarperCollins, was it your second one?

Joe: I love it. It's been a totally liberating, amazing experience working with Johnny Temple of Akashic Books and Dan Sinker who was editor of Punk Planet and edits the Punk Planet book imprint. There's just so many huge differences. The thing that's the most important to me is that I actually work with an editor on the book. In a corporate press you have an editor, but they're more like an A&R rep, where they sign you up, but they don't actually edit the book. It might be copy edited, but they don't go through it, like "Why is this chapter here? What are you doing here?" With my first book, I was really young. I was twenty-two when I wrote it and it came out when I was twenty-four, and I really needed someone to say, "Why did you use this word three times in a row?" Just real simple stuff. It was great to have someone asking you questions about the choices you make, because a lot of it's subconscious. So that was really helpful. Having control over things like the book cover is really important to me. It was one of the things I most resented about working with St. Martin's and HarperCollins. Almost always the book is designed by someone in the art department which is connected to the marketing department. These people haven't even read your book, they've got these descriptions that an editor might write. And then they come up with a book that is going to appeal to the widest possible audience. My second book cover, my second book was like a noir book that didn't have anything to do with the book, and they argued that the book buying public is like 70% women, and so they have to have book covers that appeal to women, even if it doesn't represent what the book is about. So I take the book covers really seriously. With Akashic I've been able to have total control over the book covers. I always try to get a friend or my wife or somebody on the cover in some way. On the cover of Hairstyles, that's my friend Megan. My wife actually did the drawing for the cover of the Boy Detective. Just to have a personal touch -- all these people in my life who've been so supportive of me. When you're on tour and you see your wife's drawing, it kind of cheers you up, gives you a little extra energy that night. So, all those issues, not to mention touring.

Akashic was founded by Johnny Temple, the bassist of Girls Against Boys, this great pop post-punk band, and he really understands the importance of touring. With a big corporate press, their idea of a tour is like maybe two or three cities. When Hairstyles came out I did something like 36 cities, and it really really helped because, unless you're a huge award-winning writer who's work is published in the New Yorker, it's really hard to get a review in a city outside of your own. So the only way someone in San Francisco is going to write about my book is if I actually go to San Francisco. [Johnny] just has a really key understanding of the importance of that. By the time my third book came out I had a pretty good idea of how publishing worked and why it wasn't kind of working for me. Johnny said here's these ideas I have, I want to do a short little 'zine of the book that I can hand out for free a couple month before the book comes out, and I want to do a tour before the book comes out, and then a tour when it comes out. It actually really paid off. The success of Hairstyles was kind of like a grassroots -- it wasn't an overnight thing. It seems really simple. If you're a first-time novelist, they might have some huge names on their list, so they're going to devote their time and money and energy to supporting those people. They sign up new writers on the off-chance that, just by luck, their book is going to do really well. It has nothing to do with the quality of the book. And that's what's unfortunate. There's just so many great books that are being put out, but because the larger corporations are putting out 400, 500 books a year, they just get buried. No one's going to take your book as seriously as you are. Akashic books, they maybe put out 20 books a year, so it's a little easier to get attention, to talk about here's my plans for this. They're very excited about an author that is self-directed.

My next novel will be out in 2009, and actually Norton Publishing it going to put it out. I really love their list. They're kind of like the best of both worlds. They're a large house, but they're the oldest independent publisher. Most of these other big houses are now either owned by German companies, or some of them are owned by British companies that have nothing to do with publishing. HarperCollins is owned by Rupert Murdoch. What happened when all these houses started to become consolidated is that books stopped being books and they became products that editors have to justify in terms of sales. There's still a couple of great publishers out there, large ones like Knopf and Ferrar Strauss and Girouz, but it's a little disheartening to see how many of them have turned to putting out books about celebrities, B-list celebrities, porn stars or professional wrestlers, because they know they're going to sell.

Q: It's the art versus product.

Joe: It is, it's really fascinating. At the same time, one of the reasons Hairstyles of the Damned sold so well was because of a corporation like Barnes and Noble. There's really no room to be dogmatic and say just because something's independently produced it's automatically good, or just because something comes from a large house it's automatically bad. It's a matter of what best works for the author. I've been very lucky to have a very wide experience with a lot of different places, so I feel what kind of works for me now.

Q: What are some of your favorite books and/or authors who have inspired you to write or influenced you in some way?

Joe: One of my favorite books of all time is Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson. It's an older book, it came out in 1917, but that book has influenced everything that I've written. It's about this guy, this kid, he's 19 or 20 in this small town, he's lonely, he walks around at night and meets all these odd characters. The tone, it's set in the Midwest, it's affected a lot of what I've written. I'm a huge fan of William Faulkner. He's just so incredibly ambitious and thoughtful. I feel like he's the best prose writer that America's ever produced. So any time I'm feeling really great about myself, I'll go read some Faulkner. Sometimes he's a little intimidating for readers, but he has this great book called The Unvanquished, which is 6 short stories that are interconnected that are really accessible and really powerful.

Q: I've always really liked the concept of his mythologies, the interconnectedness of a lot of his novels and stories.

Joe: He set up a whole world. These characters reoccur, events reoccur, and you really feel like you know the history of this place. He has such a huge range of the kinds of -- there is a certain kind of story or theme or concept that he deals with over and over again, but he does it in such a different way. His last book, The Reivers is this comedy compared to some of his other stuff. He wrote this book Sanctuary which is pretty much like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It's set in Mississippi, but it's the exact same plot. These college kids, their car breaks down, they go into the woods and there's this crazy house and people. That was his best seller. I think he was a little resentful that his other stuff which was a little more intelligent or intellectual wasn't taken seriously. Toni Morrison is someone else I really love. She's a Midwestern writer. The language is so incredible and poetic. The characters are just incredibly crafted. There are very few writers who can make you feel sympathy for a pedophile --

Q: Right, The Bluest Eye.

Joe: That's just a lesson for every writer. How did she do that? I think about what she does with the character a lot. She has some really unsympathetic characters that you end up feeling this real sense of humanity for. In Beloved this mother kills her daughter. But it makes sense in this world. There's a couple contemporary authors, like Dave Eggers, I love his stuff. Other folks in Chicago like Elizabeth Crane. She did really short stories, usually kind of odd and experimental. I really love her work.

Q: What can you tell me about your upcoming book? I know that it's coming out through Norton.

Joe: Well, that's my next novel. My next book comes out next August. It's a collection of 20 short stories. That will be out through Akashic. It's 20 short stories and we got 20 different artists to do illustrations for the book, so each story is illustrated by a different artist. We got folks like Charles Burns who did the Black Hole series comics... a huge gamut of very different kinds of artists, from comic book people to painters to design people. Proceeds from the book, all the author and contributer proceeds, go to benefit the 826 Chicago branch of the tutor and learning centers. It was actually started by Dave Eggers in San Francisco, and now they have branches in four or five different cities. I've been on the board for the last couple years. It's an amazing program. They provide after-school tutoring for kids all the way up to age eighteen, and it's totally free. So yeah, it's kind of part art book, part short stories. Demons in the Spring. You can look online, I think they have it up on Amazon.com. It's a limited edition thing, we're only doing 4000 copies. We try to make it like a special, limited vinyl. I always loved that, as a record buyer, the idea of a band doing a limited run.

Q: I'll have to preorder.

Joe: We'll see if people are as excited about that idea.

Again, I want to thank Joe for taking the time to talk with me. Keep an eye out for Demons in the Spring next August, and get your preorder in early, because even 4000 copies could sell fast.