hippy birdee, miss lowanda louski

Kerrville, Texas, 1996

New Jersey, 2008

Happy 40th, buddy. Don't sweat it...the ugly boys are right behind you.

mister earbrass muddles about in his manuscript

That's Mr. Earbrass, to the left; avoiding work on his new novel.

Reading while writing seems to have evolved into cycles for me: there's a time when I voraciously read everything and anything having to do with the subject of the new novel...full immersion for smarts and inspiration. Then follows a time period when I voraciously read everything and anything NOT having to do with the subject of the novel...allowing the muse to bounce and dart freely while I float blissfully on an ocean of "other things."


And then comes the third cycle: that would be the cycle where I don't write at all and don't seem to read much at all and in fact don't seem to be doing much of anything at all except, apparantly, anything I can do to avoid working on the new novel. Sometimes I'll go to such great lengths to avoid working on the new novel that I'll start another novel. Which is how one ends up with not one, not two, but three book-length works in progress. Which then leads to a point where I'm actively not working on three books at once. Ridiculous, really. I mean, really.

Be that as it may -- ridiculous, I mean -- it's where the end of summer found me. Actively avoiding working on three books at once:


1. "The new novel"...I'm furthest along on this, it's the one I've been talking about for two years, and I need to just finish it before people get sick of me talking about this book.

2. "The Night Door"...this is the one for my daughters. Although, talk about procrastination: I'm writing a YA novel for my daughters, one of whom is already 21. I have some time because daughter number 2 is only 10, but still, at this pace, she'll be 21 too before I finish.

3. A nonfiction thing that I don't want to talk about.



Well, summer is done. Autumn is upon us. And I always write best in autumn. So here we go. Time to finish.


To date, my novels have been released exactly three years apart. This was in no way intentional, just how it worked out. The Ice Beneath You in 2002, Voodoo Lounge in 2005, and In Hoboken in 2008. It seems like a long time between books, but it's okay, I guess. I don't want to do worse, though. Which means that for me to hit 2011 at the latest for novel #4, I need to get my ass in gear (there's about 1 year give or take of production time, between when the publisher gets a manuscript and a book hits the shelves).


Hopefully work will be a little more agreeable this fall, as well. I write on planes a lot, and on trains. And it looks like there will be a fair amount of travel this fall.


Some have asked what it is, exactly, that I do for work. Since I don't seem to be rolling in dough generated from my novels, and I don't teach like most normal novelists...what the hell is it that I go into Manhattan to do to bring home the bacon? My friend Gregg recently sent me an image that sums up my job nicely:

paris!

Right up the Champs Elysees, pal.

For the flight home, and then the flight out to the Left Coast -- where I am this week -- reading material was Neil Gaiman's Fragile Things. He's the bomb, plain and simple.

could it be, options are few?

In the Times today, someone named Robert Frank -- an economist affiliated with both Cornell and NYU -- has written a review of two new books about Wal-Mart. Let me start by saying I'm not a huge Wal-Mart fan. I'm not an enemy, just not a huge fan. The big box, the killed downtowns, etc etc. It wrinkles my nose, although not much more than that: distasteful, but also, imho, inevitable. Sad, but inevitable. On a personal note, I'm just more of a Target guy. If need for the big box arises, I go to the red one, not the blue one. Let me also say I AM a big fan of Barbara Ehrenreich and her Nickel and Dimed from a few years back.

Okay, great. Having said all that, can I say, Mr. Frank's review/article in today's Times is one of the most ridiculous things I've read in a while. Two quotes:

"It is no mystery that consumers show up in record numbers when a retailer offers significantly lower prices. More puzzling, however, is how the notoriously stingy Wal-Mart has managed to attract so many dedicated workers. Anyone who has read Barbara Ehrenreich’s description of her experiences as a Wal-Mart clerk in “Nickel and Dimed” or Steven Greenhouse’s chronicle of Wal-Mart’s widespread flouting of safety and hours regulations in “The Big Squeeze” might well wonder why anyone would even consider a job with the company. "

and then later:

"While Moreton’s book answers important questions about why workers have been willing to accept Wal-Mart’s austere compensation package, Lichtenstein’s sheds valuable light on the technological reasons for the company’s success. "

It's people like Mr. Frank who read Ehrenreich and annotate her and chat about her in chatty circles and write smart article in the Times...but somehow manage to avoid actually understanding or internalizing anything that Ms. Eherenreich has actually written. A completele and maddening lack of understanding.

Take that first quote. Basically, he's saying that since Nickel and Dimed was published, you "might well wonder why anyone would even consider a job with the company." And that second quote: "why workers have been willing to accept Wal-Mart's austere compensation package."

Can I just say: what an ass.

I can picture it now, the internal conversation of a 40-year-old mother of three in Flemington, NJ or Falmouth, MA or Sacramento, CA: "Well, Billy's raise this year took him from $50,000 a year up to $52,000 a year. That's a little help, but boy we're still strapped. I guess I'll have to pick something up in the evenings when he comes home from the plant. Oh, but wait, I was just reading Nickel and Dimed, and it reported dirty pool down at the Wal-Mart. Never mind, we'll just get by I guess."

It's really that second quote of his that gets me, though...both the point of it and the language he uses: "why workers have been willing to accept Wal-Mart's austere compensation package." I get angirer every time I read that line. Really, Mr. Frank? You think that's how it goes down at the HR desk at Wal-Mart? Here comes Steve, who's sweating his ass off all day in an auto-body shop but still can't provide for his family, so he goes down to Wal-Mart for weekend hours. He has an enlightened conversation with the HR person, then sits back, shakes his head, and says: "You know, I'm afraid I just can't accept this austere compensation package. Verily, I say to thee, the grim coin you offer is unreasonable. Instead, I shall to Cornell go, and inquire there as to a more favorable package, as I'm sure my credentials will astonish them."

It's someone like Mr. Frank who might well wonder why I joined the army in 1991, with a war under way. Why would some do that, what with the Army's austere compensation package and -- you know -- chance of death and dismemberment?

Because there were no other choices. Because people don't have options.

Is his article wrong? No. Do the books he's reviewing get it wrong? No.
It's that tone.

It's that same tone everyone academic seemed to have when Nickel and Dimed came out: "What?!?! What a shock!"

The same tone when Chris Hedges released American Fascists (not Chris himself, mind you, anymore than Ehrenreich herself)...I remember the room the night of the book release party at Gerald Stern's house: Chris read from the book to a general reaction of: "What?!??! Shocking!"

And I just wanted to stand up and say to those gathered: Really? Really...are you kidding me? If you're shocked, then you're an ass. (I hate to use a cliche phrase, but the bumpersticker "You're not paying attention" fits well here.)

Just like everyone "discovering" soldiers post-2001. Really? Same guys, been doing the same thing, for you, for 100 years+ now. Nice of you to notice, now that you're scared.

Professor Frank's surprised deconstruction of Christian fundamentals and traditional male/females roles in management at Wal-Mart isn't wrong, or off. It's dead on. But that tone: "Gee whiz, don't they see? Why would anyone settle for this austere compensation package?"

Because there are no other compensation packages, my friend. Just this one. Just this option. This, or pick up the kids and leave. Easier said than done. Easier said than done.

mayor of hoboken arrested

It is oddly comforting that even with the gentrification of Hoboken, some things never change. I hate to say that this news put a smile on my face, but...it did.

Elsewhere, more conversations and thoughts on the writing process in the Comments at WardSix today. This time about self-editing.

a concert, and childhood friends

I joined Cags onstage last weekend at BPF for a little "Lost in Durango"...first time singing onstage since In Hoboken release last year, I think. Big fun. Was a gorgeous day on the heels of a stormy night; crystal clear skies, and a good crowd. Mr. Gg killed, as he does. He's got a drummer now, and why not. I missed the later-in-the-day sets from Ellis Paul and Willy Porter unfortunately, but what a pleasure to hear Peter Mulvey again. Haven't seen him in many years, and it was nice to both catch up and hear his set. Peter is just stupidly good. I wrote about him in The NY Times a few months ago.

BPF takes place in the town where I went to high school, and I saw a bunch of old friends (hey Nicole and Rick! Matt and Beth! Rob! Kenny! Karl! Chris Ogden Graham Nash!) some of whom I haven't seen since 1988.

One of those names up there wasn't just from high school, but all the way back to grade school. I put some thoughts here not too long ago about my grade school and those of us who went there (actually, I had 2 grade schools, because I moved from Pennsylvania to New Jersey; I'm refering to the second one, Franklin Township, from fourth grade onward). She was from that small tribe of us who passed together through FTS, one of the smallest little schools in the state at the time. Like me, she was a latecomer to the clan (I think I beat her by a year, her family moving in around the corner maybe 5th grade). There were a small handful of us who came in late and didn't do the full cradle-to-high-school journey: me, Nicole, Kathleen, Virginia, Jon B. We were the first small signs of what would be a large boom in the township (and a massive boom in the county), but that wasn't so clear back in 1980. Actually, before us, it wasn't so much a cradle-to-high-school journey but often a cradle-to-grave journey. Hunterdon County (old Hunterdon County, I mean) was a farm community, and if you were born there, you died there, and your children did the same. You can still see old Hunterdon County (and old Franklin Townhsip) but you have to tilt your head and squint and know where to look. (You can start at Ma D's in Frenchtown.)

I say all this to refer back to what I wrote a few months ago about our small circle of kids who went through FTS; forty of us, I think. Having the small group like we did intensifies what is already the case about childhood: childhood is like being in the wilderness, and pushes an intense bond among those who go through it together...like prison, like the army. You grab ahold of each other and survive. You do terrible things to one another, while simultaneously loving and understanding each other better than anyone else in the world. And then, one day...it's over. Just like that. It's over, and you walk away.

Which is why it's so strange when, many years later, you see someone from school...strange enough from high school, even stranger from the purple, mysterious depths of grade school. It's one thing, I guess, to go to a reunion (I haven't gone to one, but I guess) when you know it's coming, and you know there will be time beforehand to get your thoughts and memories straight, and time enough at the event to sit down and talk and laugh (hopefully laugh, right?). My wife went to a reunion and she said it was weird, but it's why she was there, and it was good and fun in the end. Something else entirely to be taken unexpectedly, and here is this person (or people) you went through such an intense period of your life with, and you have all of thirty seconds to say hello, wow, how are the kids?

There are reasons I don't live where I grew up, one of them being the need to put some distance between my childhood and my life (as if they were two seperate things, and I guess they are). And I go through my days assuming I'll never see any of them ever again, and that's okay, because I hold them in my head as memories, I have them up there as I remember them: eleven and twelve years old, summertime fearless, pushing down the old path through the woods by the abandoned train station in Pittstown. It's almost unfair to see someone from the old tribe for only thirty seconds, for a fleeting moment at a concert. Almost better to not see them at all. Because after all that, because after all we went through (and I mean everyone, because we all survived childhood, right?) if you're going to see someone again you want to be able to sit down and say, "Hello, how are you? Did you come out okay on the other side? I'm sorry if I ever did anything to hurt you. I know you feel the same. Anyway, I wish you the best, because I'm one of the people who knows how much you deserve it."

what our characters do all day

Inside a book review at Ward Six, novelist J. Robert Lennon begins a discussion that quickly moves into the Comments section on plot or the lack-thereof, with a sidebar on fiction vs. reality in character and place. I threw in my two cents based on In Hoboken as well as the novels I'm working on now, The Dog House and The Night Door.

In other news...Kristina is coming home this week! A valiant return after her 2-month African adventure. To quote David Wilcox, "How you get up there?"

And...if you're anywhere near it this weekend, here's where you should spend your time and money. Gregg Cagno, Peter Mulvey, Ellis Paul...all good, baby. All good.

sharks, sneakers, and winding the watch

Kristina and her friend Logan flew out of JFK last week for 12 hours in London then 2 months in South Africa. Playing their part in the big dig of a new discovery. Very cool. A quick phone call to report safety and happiness. They’re staying on the coast, near the Great White Shark capital of the world. And snakes. There are snakes there. Funny about the kind of things that for 38 years I thought would be pretty cool to tromp right down in the middle of, yet suddenly give serious pause when it’s your little girl out there exploring. She’s a pretty smart cookie, though, Kristina is. With a great eye for what’s going on in the world around her. Back here in the States, Fiona is also having a great couple of weeks: the Solebury Red Hots are 7 and 1, and seriously kicking softball booty. It’s good to be 10 and knee-deep in a winning season.

Busy month here. Much doings. But all that aside, two things I found myself thinking about this morning. In 1995, when I got out of the army, I took off my watch and told myself I would never wear one of those again, and I threw out my running shoes and told myself I would never run again. The watch was just a cheap black plastic digital thingy, picked up at a PX somewhere, permanently strapped to my left wrist through both Somalia and Haiti. You kind of need a watch in the army, no getting around that. But afterward…well, does anyone really know what time it is? Does anyone really care? Right. September 1995, goodbye watch.

As for the running, I never liked running. In fact, I hate it. Does nothing for me. Some people thrive on it, burn on it, live for it. I was never that person. I ran in the army because I had to. And I was a small, skinny guy back then, with long legs, so running was never a problem. I was fast, and could go forever. If I needed to. And that’s the key right there: if I needed to. As of September 1995, I no longer needed to, and I stopped that shit right quick.

So, thirteen years later, December 2008, I get my first physical in a long, long time. My doctor is Terry Shlimbaum in Lambertville, NJ, a great physician in the classic family doc mold, and an old family friend (when I was a kid he was a resident with my mother, and he and his wife babysat young C.W.B. a few times, way back in the day). So this past December, sitting in his exam room, Terry adjusts his brown glasses and smiles and allows how perhaps C.W.B. could lose a few pounds. And, well, maybe we ought to talk about that cholesterol level. Long story short: I’m old.

So, front of January I tried to cut down on the spinach dip and I joined the gym down the street, showing up a few days a week at the opening bell of 5:30 am. Four months later, fifteen pounds. Sweet. Very happy about that. I’ll never have that 1995 body again, but it’s nice to at least fit in my clothes. And yeah, it involves running. And I still hate it. Only way I can do it is on the treadmill with both i-pod working and the TV on. Full distraction. And as for the watch? That’s back, too. Something nice happened recently, and me and Bren went and picked up a Movado for my left wrist. Nothing flashy, but nice. I like it. I’m still not really sure what time it is, and I’m still not sure I care, but I like it.

if you go to Baltimore, then I'll see you in heaven

That's the public library in Baltimore, as snapped from the stone steps of the Catholic cathedral across the street this past Saturday (and a gorgeous spring Saturday it was). I was down there for the annual City Lit festival. Hardly my first time to Baltimore, but my first time ever to their library. A very cool old place. I read from In Hoboken in the Poe Room. The quote above at the top of this blog (as of this writing, anyway) is Poe in nature, but I don't often think of it because, of course, the context is Beatles. But indeed, you know, it's about Poe. And man you should have seen them kicking. Fortunately, the good folks of Baltimore didn't kick me, and I am appreciative to the generosity of my hosts and audience.

Always an experience spending hours on I-95 south of Philadelphia. Many, many years ago, I used to make the 6-hour drive from Newport News, Virginia to New Jersey about once a month or so, to visit Kristina. I can do that drive in my sleep (and, probably, often did). This particular journey up and back was aided by David Sedaris on the ipod.

Back home, I'm quite ready to stop talking about In Hoboken and itching to start talking about the new novel...but I can't yet. Progress is steady, though. Slow, quite; but steady. Or steady-ish. More later.

Finally, we spent the non-Baltimore parts of the weekend with large chunks of my wife's family, who had flown in from England and Ireland for a family wedding. These are the Dennigans, and they're fantastic people. Daughter Fiona spent Sunday afternoon trying to wrap her head around the fact that she has 40-some cousins she's never met spread around the globe. An exciting and overwhelming thought. I'd always wished for a big family. Lacking that, I married into one.

38-year-old novelists and the circumstances of pennsylvania

You may (or may not) recall that a few months ago I wrote a little something for the New York Times book review series of writers talking music. This week, the novelist J. Robert Lennon -- who has a new novel, Castle -- is up with his own piece in this series. JRL and I don't know each other (although in the last 48 hours we've tossed a few emails back and forth), and our lives had not intersected in any conscious way up to this point. We came to the Living With Music series at the NYT through seperate invitations from editor Gregory Cowles.

So here's the funny thing: In the space of a few months, Living With Music published essays/playlists from 2 white male novelists who are also musicians...who were both born in 1970...in Easton, Pennsylvania.

Of course it's that last fact that makes it interesting. If all the same had been in common but a birthplace of, say, Manhattan...perhaps not such a big deal. But Easton, Pennsylvania?

As Greg Cowles asked us in an email yesterday: so, what's in the water in Easton?

I find this especially fascinating because just last week I finished reading Outliers, the newest book from New Yorker staff writer Malcom Gladwell, which is all about how circumstances of time and place have as much if not more to do with where your life goes as does what's hard-wired in your head. The argument being: yes, you have to be born with a baseline something to be successful in a given path (circumstance of time and place alone won't make Mozart or Bill Gates who they are), but it is just as critical where and when you were born and what circumstances happened in your life (there are plenty of brains born wired to possibly be Mozart or Gates, but circumstance doesn't allow it to happen). The architects of the internet and modern computers were all born at about the same time, in about the same place, and had similar critical things happen to them along the way. Born a couple years too soon or a couple years too late...nada. Born same time and same place but didn't have quite the same stream of circumstances...nada.

So, friend reader, if you've been thinking that your dream in life is to be a pleasantly well-reviewed but not exactly bestselling novelist who also has/had dabbled in music...unless you were born in Easton, Pennsylvania in 1970, I'm afraid you're shit out of luck. Too bad for you.

A side note: turns out JRL and I had one other minor crossing of fate. Back when I did that kind of thing for bread (ten years ago?), I was the copy editor for his wife Rhian Ellis's first (and great) novel After Life. JRL and Ms. Ellis are a married writer couple, and skimming their blog this morning ("we've both been writing..." as excuse for lack of correspondence) reminded me of my all-time favorite writer couple, the Halls. I wrote a short piece about the Halls for All Things Considered a few years ago...the text is here.

pennding

I'm on the Penn campus this week, in west Philly. Not far from home, less than an hour with no traffic, but the days are long so I'm staying. It's a good experience, but strange in it's own way, having nothing to do with the reason I'm here. Penn is a comfortable place, and familiar. I've done readings here for two of my books. One of our favorite Indian restaurants is near here, so we come down for that from time to time.

Way, way back, though, U of Penn is where my mother was a medical student. She began medical school when I was 5, so unlike most physicians' children, I was not only alive but have memory of her being in med school. Memories from that far back in childhood are funny things. There are large swaths of nothingness, blackness, and then the odd random incredibly vivid image. Buildings, streets, that kind of thing. The cadaver room, with all those dead bodies awaiting their student dissection. Soundtrack by Chuck Mangione and Bill Withers. University City, mid to late 1970s.

Years later, when I was 19, 20 years old, I lived in Philly and direct environs for a year or more, and not in a particularly good way. I remember wandering the Penn campus with guitar on my back, going against the flow of all those students streaming out of brick buildings, students who were my age but on a planet tilted differently than my own. An entirely foreign orbit.

our father

Over at IdentityTheory (home of many friends, as well as quite a few rants of mine going back over the years) I have a new essay up today. "Essay" for lack of better word. Mini-focused-memoir? Whatever. It's called "Our Father" and can be found here. Watch your head on the roots.

Update: ...and the New York Times posts about the essay here.

classic hoboken

This Google Earth image just in from GG. Sure, Rome in 3D is cool, but a downhome street altercation in front of Maxwell's can be just as educational.

playlist 2: in today's New York Times

The New York Times has lately taken to asking the occasional novelist to write up a playlist, usually on a theme, which they then post on the Times' Book Review site. Today was my lucky day. They asked me to write a list and comment on some of the people I opened for back in the 1990s when I was still walking around with an acoustic guitar in my hand.
Oh boy, the stories to tell. You'll find it all here.
http://papercuts.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/14/living-with-music-christian-bauman/

playlist 1: "in hoboken"

When we did the book release party for "In Hoboken" at Maxwells, my ol' pal Gregg put together a CD of good drinking music to be played before the live music started in the back room. Clever guy that he is, it was all songs that are in one way or another mentioned in the novel. Either actually quoted from, or refered to, or hinted at in passing, or...you get the idea.

So here it is...the official "In Hoboken" soundtrack singles (presented in no particular order).

Across the Universe - The Beatles
Change Partners - Stephen Stills
Damn Everything but the Circus - The Story
Blue Chalk - John Gorka
Do-Re-Me - Woody Guthrie
Eleven Small Roaches - Michael Hedges
Gone - Don Brody/Gregg Cagno/Rich Grula
Nathan (The City) - Linda Sharar
The Grind - Gregg Cagno
The Motorcycle Song - Arlo Guthrie
Renegade - Styx
Suite: Judy Blue Eyes - Crosby, Stills & Nash
99 Years: Don Brody
Way Over Yonder in the Minor Key - Woody Guthrie
Paradise - John Prine (it's The Dorkestra version that gets mentioned, though)
Mingus Died in Mexico - Gregg Cagno/Christian Bauman
Welcome to the Jungle - Guns n Roses
Deportees - Woody Guthrie
Jeanie With the Light Brown Hair - Stephen Foster
Let It Be - The Beatles
Burning For You - Blue Oyster Cult
All Things Being the Same - Ellis Paul
Slip Sliding Away - Paul Simon
Bob Luciano's House - Linda Sharar
Talkin' Alien Abduction Blues - Dan Bern
Participate - Linda Sharar
Ringing In My Ears - The Marys
From Here - Gregg Cagno

It's not every day you get Blue Oyster Cult and Stephen Foster on the same playlist. We do what we do.

And Gregg clearly had time on his hands that week, because he even made up some nifty album art for your iTunes playlist.

With apologies to Melville House. At the very least.

vermont

The smallest Bauman demonstrates the sure sign of a good day of skiing.

the space you need

Daughter Kristina sent me this link, to a photo gallery of writer's rooms. (Be sure to click the little tag for SHOW CAPTIONS under the view window, so you can see which author belongs to which office.)

Kristina has a vested interest in this because, being a transient between-houses child, for a while there her room was also my office. (Sorry, Krissy.)

The photo gallery is great, much fun. I guess I come from a completely different generation, though. The laptop has really changed everything. And maybe I've changed, as well.

I used to think I needed a grand space. Books all around, solitude, great desk, notes tacked everywhere. Over the years, though, that concept has just drifted away from my life. When we gutted and rebuilt our house a few years ago, it finally died for good, I guess; we didn't really build a "writing place." I do have an office with a desk, sort of. But it's also the dog room, and more for paying bills and storing things. I do write in there from time to time, when I need to close a door and have silence. But I'm more likely to be at the kitchen table, or maybe up in the play room, which has a great view of the woods. Or, this time of the year, sitting in front of the wood stove in the living room. And those are just the home options. Fact is, most of my writing is done on the train these days.

Below: the laptop in action on my kitchen counter.

stop dragging my heart around

Hands down, the most fun I had in high school was being the drummer in a garage band. In a high school career that was mostly miserable with a few bright spots, this was the absolute brightest. It's a no-brainer, really. Is it possible to have more fun than playing in a rock band, at any age? I don't think so. We were called Hypothermia, because we practiced in the unheated loft of my barn. That's how I got the gig, actually. I wasn't a very good drummer. But I had a drum set and a place where the band could practice. That's really half the battle. Matt Williams (who played bass and owned all the equipment) and I say now we were the most dysfunctional rhythm section in rock history. And that's saying something.

This pic below was shot moments after our first gig (a 60s-theme dance in the old Girls' Gym at the high school). I'm quite sure I will be hunted down and hurt for posting this picture on the internet.

Check out the suede-fringed boots and coral necklace. Yeah, baby. I really made some stunning fashion decisions at the age of 15.

Say what you will, though. We had a great time. And I don't know too many high school bands with the balls to attempt "Scenes From An Italian Restauant." A few of these guys are still out there playing (Matt, Gregg, Karl).

Matt got married this summer, to another old friend of ours, Beth. We posed for the occasion in the pic below...not a pair of parachute pants to be found...



The great news is that Beth and Matt are now proud parents of baby Maeve. Congratulations guys.

my president, Barack Obama

I was driving home late on the night of the third, listening to the radio, and heard someone (Tavis Smiley?) say: "I want to live again in a country that is as good as its promise."

And now, on the afternoon of the fifth, that's exactly how I feel, but in the present tense. That is, for the first time in 8 years, I feel like there truly is the potential to again have my country be as good as its promise.

I'm writing today from Pittsburgh, the left coast of my fair state. There is no significance to that except that I am reminded of how damn long my state is, a fact I sometimes forget.

voting with vin...early and often

Returned to WFUV New York and Vin Scelsa's lair on Saturday, for another visit on Idiot's Delight. Always a good time. Joining us in conversation this time were Cintra Wilson (who did a Caligula monologue from her new novel that was just hysterical) and Marc Aronson (editor of the War Is... anthology mentioned below). This link has the whole 4 hour broadcast in a zip file. Our conversation spanned the first two hours. I read "Letter to a Young Enlistee" in its entirety for the first time (minus a few choice F-bombs), which was a more disturbing experience than I expected it to be. All around, good radio, if you have 2 hours to kill.

And RIP, Studs Terkel.

The Election Reading Project

Daughter Kristina and friend Nick DiGiovanni hooked me into GoodReads a while back, and I've lately been catching up with my postings. I'm in general a very stumble-along kind of reader...no agenda or schedule. I have a huge stack of unread books, and usual case is that when I finish one I grab whatever from the stack moves me at that moment.

For the upcoming election, though, I set out a three-book process. I'm halfway through.

1. I wanted to be inspired, presidentially, and at the same time fill in some large blanks about a president I know woefully little about. So I went with the big book of Lincoln.

2. I wanted a reminder (as if I need one; Christ) of how important my vote is, and how much damage one man can do. So I went with "Angler," the new book about Cheney. I'm halfway through that now.

3. To cap it, I'll turn to my man's own words, which I have not yet read. Not sure which I'll read, "Dreams of my Father" or "Audacity of Hope." Probably the first one.

(And just in case you're wondering...yes, I have decided what I'm reading on the heels of this presidential swim. The new one by Marilynne Robinson, "Home.")

50 reasons to vote obama

Gregg sings it. "50 Reasons to Vote Obama." Yeah.

new albums from Linda and Jack, and a return to Vin

Tune-in alert: I'll be returning to Vin Scelsa's Idiot's Delight on the evening of Saturday Nov 1 (schedule and streaming info here) for a little pre-election hell-raising, as well as some chatter from and about my essay "Letter to a Young Enlistee" from the new anthology War Is...


In other news, two old musician friends have new releases (recent readers of In Hoboken can decide if they want to play "Who's that character based on?").


First is the amazing, the lovely, the talented Linda Sharar. Linda, Gregg, and I have spent more time together cramped between guitar cases in small vehicles than any three humans ought. We explored the burnt-out remains of Woody's childhood home together, we picked ticks off each other (same trip, oddly), we...well, you get the point. Her new album is called Everyday. It's wonderful. This is Linda's first outing post-motherhood, and that experience has added in richness to her lyricist's pen. And of course, as always, Linda packs a killer band.





Also new in the world is a project from Jack Hardy. Jack and his old pal David Massengill have taken to calling themselves the Folk Brothers, and did a CD to prove it. That's Jack on the right (if you didn't already know that...)



This one I just got in the mail and am only halfway through, but fantastic so far. Mark Dann on lead guitar, two great songwriters (and singers, let us not forget), and a song called "The Worst President Ever." What's not to like?

Ayelet's quest

Late to the party, but I'm in.
I sent books. You send money.

Oh dear. I guess my politial affiliation is public.
What a shock.

David Foster Wallace has left the building

The news today, oh boy, is David Foster Wallace has died, at a very young age, and from terrible circumstances.

In private conversations with writers and other artists I trust, I’ve been known to discuss dividing the world of novelists (and maybe the whole world) into two camps: those who get the joke and those who don’t get the joke. You know, “the joke.”

D.F. Wallace, though, was a different stripe of cat altogether. Even saying “gets the joke” has a certain finality to it; i.e., to get the joke, the joke’s been told and done. But Wallace seemed to play on the plane of the never-ending joke. Hey, I’m not talking about the title of his novel here.

Anyway. You had to walk away from your life to read Wallace, slip through the door. And you had to bring a fork.

And now it seems David himself has slipped through the door; his method was different, but he’s laid the terrible master to waste. Poor David. His poor wife.

do re mi

I had a tasty breakfast and friendly sit-down a few weeks ago with Richard Cuccaro, him what used to run ye olde Fast Folk Cafe in New York's Tribeca neighborhood. Richard now edits Acoustic Live, one of the last of the folkie pubs still thankfully hanging on, and the breadth and depth of our conversation is in the article he wrote for this month's issue. Included in the free admission are some choice (you can define that word any way you like) old photos of some skinny young folksinger from many moons ago...like this 1996 photo below, of the skinny young folksinger and friends tearing one up with the skinny old folksinger.

That was "Do Re Mi" we were singing there, my favorite Woody Guthrie song. As I recall, we'd run through it once before the show, and had it about where we wanted it, and then when time came to do it onstage, Seeger came on already playing, and playing it about three times faster than I'm used to. His way was better, as it turns out. That picture up there ranks in the top 5 most fun 5 minutes I've ever had. Along for the ride up there are Carol Sharar (The Amazing Incredibles) on fiddle, Karl Dietel (The Samples) on bass, Gregg Cagno, and Amy & Jennie.

high school, grade school, and presidential politics

Just back from Mexico; on edge down there for awhile eyeballing Gustav's approach across the Atlantic, but it worked out for us. Not so much for New Orleans, so it seems this morning. But hopefully not as bad as Katrina.

It was my 20th high school reuinion (North Hunterdon Regional, Class of 88...barely, in my case) right before I left. I couldn't make it, but Gregg and Karl did.

I haven't made a reunion yet, and doubt that I will. High school and I had a less than comfortable relationship. If they had reunions for grade school, I'd go to that, I think (not that my relationship with education was any stronger in the younger grades). 4th through 8th grade I went to Franklin Township School in tiny Quakertown, NJ. We were still partially a farm community back then. There were only two classes for each grade, so maybe 40 kids total per grade. It was awful, frequently, because we all knew each other and each other's business in inescapable ways...there were no secrets and no hiding. But like prison or the army, those close-quartered bonds come to mean something. You get a group protection mentality, even when you're eviscerating your own members inside. It is possible to hate and love someone at the same time, and I learned that at FTS.

But then we all left and went to the huge regional high school (of the aforementioned reuinon).

Anyway, I didn't go to the reunion, but I (surprise) wrote something for the local paper's (Hunterdon County Democrat) monthly magazine about it. You should be able to right click it below then blow it up to read. It's about me and Gregg. Yeah, those are our Senior portraits to the left. Yuck it up.

In other news, Obama picked ol' Joe Biden for his running mate last week. I'm okay with that. Joe is a good guy, and a native Pennsylvanian. I met him, twice, although he certainly wouldn't remember. Two years ago, when my daughter Kristina was a freshman at college in New Hampshire (this before transfering to UVM). I flew up twice on the Saturday morning dawn patrol from Philadelphia, and both times ol Joe was onboard. A Senator, visiting New Hampshire regularly, a year before a Presidential election? Not hard to figure that one out.

Speaking of Kristina, she's a diehard Nader girl. And this will be her first votable presidential election. It's kind of fun, having differing politics in the household (fun unless there's a slide to the right, and then someone loses an eye). Krissy is collecting her own political meets already. This is her and ol' Ralph, from a bunch of years ago:

The setting was the National Press Club in Washington. The occasion can be found in the essay link to the right labeled "Mr. Bauman Goes to Washington" or something like that. Anyway, I like ol' Ralph a great deal, I think he's a kind of a genius, an often-unheralded gift to this country, and he had or has my support in most everything he does...I just wish he'd stop running for president. It's just that one tiny thing I don't agree with him on.

Anyway, Autumn approaches, thankfully. Happy time. And writing time, too. Happy September... time to lie down in that September grass.

new essay in new collection

There's a new cover on the list of anthologies down below and to the right. An essay I wrote called "Letter to a Young Enlistee" opens a new collection titled War Is... coming from Candlewick Press in a few weeks. Friends Joel Turnipseed and Chris Hedges also contributed. In addition to contemporary authors, they did something cool by adding in Mark Twain and Bob Dylan among others. Good book. Here's the back cover copy:

***
War is...
Soldiers, Survivors, and Storytellers Talk About War
edited by Marc Aronson and Patty Campbell

"The most important Young Adult book of the year, tough, smart and clear-eyed about a topic more taboo than sex - going to war - a topic teenagers need to know about before they make real life and death decisions." -- Robert Lipsyte, author of THE CONTENDER

Marc Aronson thinks war is inevitable. Patty Campbell thinks war is cruel, deceptive, and wrong. But both agree on one thing: that teens need to hear the truthful voices of those who have experienced war firsthand. The result is this dynamic selection of essays, memoirs, letters, and fiction from nearly than twenty contributors, both contemporary and historical -- ranging from Christian Bauman's wrenching "Letter to a Young Enlistee" to Chris Hedges's unflinching look at combat to Fumiko Miura's Nagasaki memoir, "A Survivor's Tale." Whether the speaker is Mark Twain, World War II correspondent Ernie Pyle, or a soldier writing a miliblog, these divergent pieces look war straight in the face -- and provide an invaluable resource for teenagers today.
In a provocative anthology, two editors with opposing viewpoints present an unflinching collection of works reflecting on the nature of war.

Chatting from Paris

Hands down, Jessa Crispin's Bookslut.com is my favorite book news/commentary site. Detractors claim Jessa's blog is snarky. I think she's pragmatic and usually right. Anyway, loving the site like I do, it's big fun for me to be one of their interviews this month.

The interviewer was Jessa's sister Jen Crispin, who I'm a big fan of because she's written flattering reviews of all my books (I'm easy like that). It's rare, too, to have a reviewer who actually gets what's you're trying to do. So, you know, the whole Crispin family is basically aces in my book.

Anyway, we did this by email, and I was in Paris at the time. Here's how my side of the conversation started:

***
"Hello from Paris, where I’m answering these questions. The weather is milder over here this week than at home in Pennsylvania, and for that I’m thankful. The weather and the foie gras, thankful for both. And I saw Jeanette Winterson today. Not in a “we shared witty conversation and a bottle of wine at a small table overlooking the Seine” kind of way, but in a “I walked into Shakespeare & Co. wondering what the line was about and there she was, signing books.” Unable to browse the stacks because of her line, I wandered over to Notre Dame just in time to have the guard lock the gate on me. A wrinkled little pear of a street woman saw my defeat and showed me how to get in through the Exit, so she got my 5 Euros directly, rather than me having to pass it through God’s hands first. Okay, let’s answer questions."
***

We go on from there to talk about In Hoboken, my other books, Silas House, singing with Woody Guthrie's sister, Stephen King, and the Dragonriders of Pern. It's all here.

Here come ol flat top

I'm down with Al Gore, baby. Traded in the gas-sucking red Beemer (was a sweet ride, though, sigh) for a new Mini Coop. Soundtrack for the first week's riding:

The Fratellis, Costello Music
Steely Dan, Vol 2 and 3 of the boxed set
Paolo Conte, Best of
Chet Baker, a concert bootleg Gregg got me from someone in the Netherlands
Amy Winehouse, Back to Black
Blue Oyster Cult, Agents of Fortune
mix CD daughter Kristina made for my birthday

Art Nouveau

There's a nicely condensed conversation I had recently with Damon Sgrignoli to be found over at Art Nouveau magazine.

"In Hoboken" in Hoboken

I'll be at the Hoboken Historical Museum this Sunday 6/22 at 4pm for a reading, signing, etc., with Gregg Cagno and Connie Sharar (and whoever else shows up) doing some fabulous music.

with Vin Scelsa on Idiot's Delight

Had a fabulous time with Vin Scelsa on Saturday. And got to check another box on my Legends of Radio fantasy list. In usual Vin fashion, the conversation was freeflowing and all over the map...we both read from all three of my novels, played some good music, pontificated on matters profound, and Vin tried to pry out of me the real identity of every character I've ever written.

The broadcast is available streaming here at the WFUV site, although only for two weeks or so because they don't permanently archive. But if you've got a speedy connection and/or some time to download, you can pull the entire broadcast as an mp3 (wrapped in a zip file) from the Idiot's Delight fan site. The whole show is 4 hours long...my segment is first in the broadcast, and lasts 2 hours.

***

Here is how WFUV introduced the show:

Christian Bauman, writer and public radio commentator ("All Things Considered"), will talk with Vin about his latest novel, "In Hoboken", which chronicles the acoustic folk scene in that unique city across the Hudson River during the mid-90s. Bauman, whose experience as a soldier in Somalia and Haiti earlier in that decade informed his novels "The Ice Beneath You" and "Voodoo Lounge," is not only a novelust but a songwriter and guitarist who was part of the "Camp Hoboken" collective of musicians and artists that thrived at Maxwell's and other clubs in NJ and NYC in the mid-to-late 90s. His new novel throbs with a hands-on accurate portrait of the city and its inhabitants, a city going through enormous changes and a group of people trying hard to cling to a musical chain that links back to Woody Guthrie. Readers and listeners will recognize very real people in Christian Bauman's fictional characters, notably the late Don Brody of The Marys, and even a radio station called WFUV that figures occasionally in the tale.

***

Inbetween all of our jawing we spun discs. Here's the playlist, scattered around the 2-hour conversation:

1. "The Past Didn't Go Anywhere" / Utah Phillips & Ani DiFranco

2. "God Damn Everything But the Circus" / The Story

3. "The Day Roy Orbison Died" / The Marys

4. "The Grind" / Gregg Cagno

5. "The Places You Will Go" / Christian Bauman

6. "Give Me Some Truth" / John Lennon

7. "The Queen of Ohio" / Christian Bauman

8. "Gone" / Big Happy Crowd

That whole folk novel thing

So, next time you have 36 minutes to kill, why not listen to me and Ed Champion talk books and writing and such (well, I could think of reasons why not, but...)

It's at the Bat Segundo Show...direct link here...or straight to the mp3 here.

***
An excerpt:

Ed Champion: You have this particular rock ‘n’ roll novel dwelling upon Hoboken, as well as Mona Smith, who is this Erica Jong-like figure, who is the mother of Thatcher. But I wanted to ask you about this. Because it’s very fascinating to me. I have the belief that if you write a rock ‘n’ roll novel, there needs to be some additional element. Some additional hook. Because if you dwell too much on rock ‘n’ roll music, well, it’s going to possibly be something of a circlejerk. So I wanted to ask you. Was this a consideration in setting this book in Hoboken? The Hoboken aspect came first? What happened here?

Bauman: Yeah, I think the Hoboken aspect came first. Well, first of all, I should point out that everyone keeps calling it a rock ‘n’ roll novel. It is actually a folk novel. So we should just be clear here. There’s a lot more Woody Guthrie here than anything else. But it’s a good point. You know, the whole thing I wanted to do, in as far as I wanted to anything and it didn’t just happen the way it happened — I was trying very hard this time to do two things. One was to write about a place. A very specific place to the point where the place became one of the characters in the book. And of those places where I’ve either lived or been alive in my life, Hoboken was one of them that stood out as a good place to go. And the other one was that I really wanted to try and write an ensemble novel to the best of my ability. And I kind of failed in that aspect.
***

How's that for a good time? Hot, hot, hot.

Crazier than a shithouse rat

There is no deeper meaning to that subject line above...it just aptly describes a few people in my life right now. And probably describes me, too. And mostly, I just wanted to write that as a subject line.

What I really want to talk about is chatting. So much jawing, with a new book. We begin with Ed Champion, one of the two best long-form lit interviewers online (and the only one doing it audio; the other is Birnbaum, of course...we had coffee in Boston a few months back, he and Rosie are resting). Me and Ed attacked blue cheese burgers at the Moonstruck Diner on 37th and Madison in NYC the other day, then blathered into the microphone awhile. I'll post it when the link goes up.

And then there's Vin Scelsa. Respect the elders. Embrace the new. Encourage the impractical and improbable, without bias. I'll do some blathering about In Hoboken on Idiot's Delight, probably Saturday May 31, I'll let you know airdate for sure when I know. There is no one living cooler than Vin Scelsa. No one.

right coast book club, left coast lunch date

The other night I stopped by a book club that had read In Hoboken over the previous month. I've visited a lot of book clubs over the past few years, and it's always a fun but surreal experience. It actually used to make me very uncomfortable. Not so much anymore...it's fun. But the surrealness hasn't changed.

This club provided one of those experiences I always love: someone pointing out something VERY OBVIOUS about the book...that I hadn't realized. Which always elicits this response from me: "Oh yeah, glad you noticed...I meant to do that. Completely intentional."

I'm just not that smart. Fortunately, my readers are.

Speaking of nice, smart readers, here's one from Seattle who had lunch with me and I didn't even know...

fun at maxwells

So, we did two book releases for In Hoboken. A normal one, at Farleys on the Delaware...very nice evening. Thanks to Julian there, and all who came out, and stayed for the party after.

And there was Maxwells. For those who live elsewhere, Maxwells is...well, hard to describe. The New Yorker calls it the best club in New York, and it isn't in New York. It's in Hoboken. Some of us used to drink there. Some of us used to work there. Some of us used to live there.

It had been an awfully long time since I'd visited.

We started, of course, with a reading. Because that's what you do at these things.

And then it was time to strap on.

I should have stuck with the reading, but...what the hell, man.

A quorum of the Camp...for the first time, I think, since The Bottom Line, 1998.

Kids and drunks. Gotta love it.

Carbone is impressed.

Moments after the picture below was taken, we strolled off-stage and decompensated into a vicious fight over blue M&Ms.

Many, many thanks to Annalee Van Kleeck for the photos. And huge thanks to all of you who came out and packed the joint. It was the most fun I've had this decade.

word on the street

So, I try hard not to get too promotional gloppy and horn-tooting here on the blog. But there is one little thing I've made a tradition of, so indulge me for the day. That's the first review. Y'know, us'n authors are supposed to be all cool and uncaring but I can't lie on this score: the first review is a groovy thing. You work 3 years on something, it's nice to wake up one morning and read someone saying, "Hey, this novel doesn't suck." The first review of The Ice Beneath You came from Publishers Weekly (which, back in the day, was the location of all first reviews; not so much anymore). If I recall correctly, Voodoo Lounge got a three-way tie for first review, because I heard about Details, Booklist, and Bookslut.com all on the same day.

And for In Hoboken? Turns out of all things the first review is fromThe Star-Ledger (for those of you who don't live in the greater New York-New Jersey area, that's the paper that used to slam down on Tony Soprano's driveway every morning). Can't argue with the cosmic appropriateness of the venue.

***
The Star-Ledger
"Ambling to their own beat"
Sunday, March 23, 2008
REVIEWED BY BETSY WILLEFORD
In Hoboken
a novel, by Christian Bauman

In 1995 gentrification is merely nibbling at the edges of the "mile-square city." Bauman's characters live in sixth-floor walkups; use pay phones, not cells; eat in unretrofied diners. Some commute to day jobs across the Hudson. But music is the passion that draws them together -- wood music, folk songs they write and play on acoustic guitars, earning "tens of dollars." There's also an artist, and a pair of buddies right out of Simon and Garfunkel's "Old Friends" who spend the day at the local behavioral institute, formerly the mental health center.

Remarkably, for an ensemble story, Bauman has created nearly a dozen fully rounded characters, each of whom could be the core of a novel.

Thatcher Smith, 24 and newly released from the Army, and his high school friend James, recently released from Rutgers, both amble in slow diagonals when they walk, a block up, a block over, taking it all in, the crowd flowing around them.

That's how Bauman tells his story, too. Marsh is a middle-age dad with a lifelong polio limp, eking out a living promoting marginal groups to marginal album labels. Quatrone is the painter who lives with his 80-year-old mom in an apartment downstairs from James. Bruno, who works in Manhattan, had a minute of almost-fame on a Bananarama tour in the '80s. Lou is a singer whose departing lover schleps her to a shrink for "closure."

A lot of comic stuff about language here, but so deftly interwoven you have to read the novel at James' walking pace to notice. Orris, one of the day patients -- clients, they're called -- at the behavioral institute where Thatcher works as a file clerk, remembers that when one of his friends died, the hospital staff didn't want him going to the funeral. "They think the funeral might be disturbing."

A lot about Hoboken, too. Elysian Field, where Alexander Cartwright's home team lost the first recorded baseball game, 27-1, to the New York Knickerbockers. Guglielmo Marconi -- who, it could be argued, made Frank Sinatra possible -- lived in Hoboken. Willem de Kooning supported himself as a sign painter for a year before crossing the Hudson.

Quatrone explains to Thatcher how de Kooning's early work has changed over time because of the materials he used. "Materials decay." Like a song, Thatcher thinks: You play it, and it's yours. And then immediately it's not.

Bauman's throwaway lines resonate. He's wise enough to let the echo do the work. Having helped his son move furniture into the sixth-floor apartment, James' father says, "I worked my whole life to keep you out of this." This being the Hoboken that energizes Bauman's people and his story. No easy revelations or resolutions. The material is frayed at the start, loosely woven at the conclusion, a year in the life.

Tempting to call the book a tour de force, but that suggests a neon light flashing a*c*h*i*e*v*e*m*e*n*t. What's amazing about "In Hoboken" is you're unaware of the writer's hand.
***

Having been on the receiving end of reviews that -- even when positive -- were clearly written by someone who didn't "get" the book, I can't tell you how nice it is to have the first review of In Hoboken be by someone who so clearly got it. A nice feeling. And now I can go back to pretending I don't care what the critics say...

all of the ladies attending the ball

Me and GG are feverishly working on compiling a list of every song mentioned in any way inside In Hoboken. Can you smell the smoke? Gears are turning and burning. Not every day you can get Woody Guthrie, Blue Oyster Cult, The Dorkestra, and Sinatra on the same playlist.

List to come soon. As well as pics and stories from last week's release events at Maxwells and Farleys. (Odd, that: the release parties have come and gone, the book is available on Amazon, yet it's still not "officially" released. Whatever. If you need a bookstore to make your purchase, it's coming, man, it's coming.)

get your red hots...

And oh look, Amazon has it in stock as of today. Beat the hordes in the book stores two or three weeks from now.

And you know you want free shipping, so you might as well order two or three copies.

http://www.amazon.com/Hoboken-Christian-Bauman/dp/1933633476/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1204910481&sr=1-1

5 days to Maxwells

Okay, I'm officially psyched for Tuesday now. And to celebrate, more pictures! Gregg sent this next one over, a view of Maxwells from back in the day...


Followed by my all-time favorite photo of The Marys...



And then, for some reason, Don cut his hair. Nobody knows why. Here he is at the first Camp Hoboken photoshoot in NYC, circa 1996 I think. From left: moi, Gregg, Con, and Don.



And to round it all off, a man I haven't seen in a long time...he'll be flying into Newark on Tuesday afternoon just in time to join us Tuesday night. Seen here on the woodline up in High Camping at Falcon Ridge Folk Festival somewhere back in the mists of time, using a Bud bottle as a slide on his guitar, the legendary Rich Grula.

Margaret B. Jones

So, this whole thing. I wrote about this for IdentityTheory the last time it happened, January 2006. A short essay called "Jumping for that Elusive Truth." Slightly different context...same general idea. And my opinion hasn't changed much.

NPR stories

Sorry about the drippy slog of photographic nostalgia I thrust on you the last few days...what can you do. For a completely different slice of self-indulgant memory, here's this:

Two of my favorite pieces I've done for NPR's All Things Considered over the years were the two about music. The first was called "Rules of the Road," a memory of Godfrey Daniels, Passim, and Caffe Lena, among other places and things. The second is one of my all-time favorite things I've ever written. It's called "Traveling Companion," and is about my then-seven-year-old daughter Kristina (now 19!) keeping me company on a road trip up to the Iron Horse in Northampton, Mass. (Those links above will take you to the audio at NPR's site. For the text of the pieces, see the links to the right.)

In Hoboken comes out officially in eleven days. I got a couple of copies of the printed book in the mail yesterday. As I've said, I dig Melville House's design for it. And the proportions are slightly odd, too, which is cool. It's kind of square-ish. Big fun.

...this time, really

Okay, one more, and then that is it, I swear, for the month, if not the year.

Not to be outdone by Grula, Gregg sent this one below in the middle of the night. Pic from a long-forgotten newspaper feature, that's Carol Sharar with the violin, Gregg and me, a few minutes before we walked onstage for my set and to sing one with Pete Seeger at an outdoor benefit concert circa 1996 (Pete joined us for Woody's Do Re Mi; thanks Pete).

It was that same summer that I was working on a short story called "Two Soldiers" that, a few years later, became the basis of The Ice Beneath You.

okay, one more...

Alright, one more today...Grula just sent this. I had completely forgotten about this great picture. It was taken by famed folk/blues photographer Robert Corwin, somewhere in a back hallway in the middle of the night at the 1997 North American Folk Alliance, about one month before Don Brody died. That weekend's concerts were, matter o fact, the second to last time Camp Hoboken played together before Don's death (last time was at the Shannon Lounge in Hoboken). That's Don front and center, leading the way, with Grula in the baseball cap. Linda and Connie are in there, too. Only one missing is Gregg.

ah, the sweet, stupid memories

It's inevitable, of course, that publishing a novel where the setting and characters are so close to my heart (which is what you do with a third novel, right?) is going to force me to pull out the proverbial shoebox, looking dreamily at things I haven't looked at in years (and probably should never look at again). So expect a smattering of crumbs from the chicken-nugget-bucket that is my media memory over the next few weeks. Let's start with this below, shall we? Fort Eustis, Virginia, circa 1993, shortly after returning from Somalia. I was playing some gigs on the weekends and needed a b&w, so my buddy Trent Kolden put me up against the wall and took this shot. The hair you see sticking out from the front of the newsboy is about all the hair I had at the time: I wasn't Christian Bauman then, I was Private Bauman.

[UPDATE] Funny...after I posted the above, I saw how the picture in the right column looks like an old-age re-creation of the one from 1993. My daughter Kristina took the one to the right up in Burlington in the fall. So, somewhere between my early 20s and mid 30s I lost the cigarette and the hat, and gained hair and pounds. Fun for me.

For more of what we look like now, check out this down below, Carbone and Cagno at the Kitchen Table reunion at the Hoboken Museum a few months ago. Nice.

And, for more of what we looked like then, scroll way down to the old Camp Hoboken touring poster I found a while ago. (What I'd really love is a jpg of the circus-type original Camp Hoboken poster that Grula designed...I have the poster, but not electronically. Hint hint.)

sad news from across the river in Princeton

I heard today that Raymond Smith died last week, of complications from pneumonia. He was the publisher/editor of the Ontario Review and the independent press associated with it (they published my friend Barry Raine's memoir Where the River Bends a few years ago). I didn't really know Smith, but met him twice, both times at wonderful dinners at the home of a mutual friend. The first time with my wife, the second time with my daughter Kristina...around the time my first book came out, I think. I remember Raymond and his wife Joyce were both so kind and gracious to Kristina, who was I think in middle school at the time. They were also clearly devoted to each other, and doted around each other like little frail old birds at the end of the evening. How horrible that she has lost her companion.

...and here's how it's wrapped

So, down below there I showed an early comp of the cover of In Hoboken. And now we have the real thing...look to your right (assuming this is still the top post). Many, many thanks to Neal Pollack for the nice blurb (one of these days I have to write an essay or something about the fine arts of giving and receiving blurb...but that's another story). Neal and I have actually only met in person once (a beer-drenched evening in Philadelphia many years ago, an evening of readings at the old 215 Festival...The Ice Beneath You had just come out, so I was reading stuff from that, and Neal was touring with a full band, and they absolutely rocked; that was a lot of fun). We knew each other from a small and far-flung tribe back in I guess 2003 trying through email and blogging to keep each other sane as Cheney marched us head-on into this war. Atrios was publishing some of what we were writing. And this was I think the same way I met Joel.

But boy do I digress. So to your right is the cover, and down below is the back-cover copy, as it will appear on the printed book (for those of you concerned about the "seedy" controversy of my previous post):

***
As in Roddy Doyle’s The Commitments and Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity, IN HOBOKEN is about the music that makes it all worthwhile when you’re young and struggling—but in this New Jersey waterfront town, there is as much soul in the place and the people.

In the mile-square city of Hoboken, a twenty-four-year-old Woody Guthrie-obsessed guitar player named Thatcher Smith has come home from the army to a clerk’s job and a circle of unlikely friends trying to form a band. Critically acclaimed novelist Christian Bauman—himself a former soldier and itinerant guitar player—has returned with his finest writing yet, drenched in time and place and the vivid colors of its characters: Marsh, the polio-crippled rock & roll king of Hoboken; the bachelor painter Quatrone and his ancient Italian mother; Thatcher’s “brother” the virtuoso James and their “sister” the folk chanteuse Lou; the half-blind, half-mad Orris. Drunk in a sea of failed relationships, distant celebrity parents, and the certainty he was born fifty years too late, Thatcher navigates a year of life and death in Hoboken, New Jersey, the Bohemian city alive and kicking in the shadows of New York.

Christian Bauman’s first two novels The Ice Beneath You and Voodoo Lounge were based on his experiences as a young soldier in the combat zones of Somalia and Haiti, and on his wanderings around North America. Bauman is now a regular contributor to NPR’s All Things Considered and an editor-at-large for IdentityTheory.com. He lives in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, with his wife and daughters.
***

Publishing is a funny thing, for many reasons, one of which is that these books are usually finished long before they hit the shelves of your local bookstore. In this case, In Hoboken was done last year, and I'm knee-deep in not just one but two new books (a novel called The Dog House, and a young adult novel called The Night Door). So it's kind of like by the time a book comes out, you've already moved on, you know? But it's fun, especially I think in this case, to come back to it, and see it come to life for everyone else. I'm very, very happy to see this one in the flesh, and really looking forward to it's publication next month.

"Seedy" Hoboken

It seems that the Star Ledger posted something about the book release on their website, and picked up some old back-cover copy about the book that says something about Hoboken being "seedy"...and that in turn has become the object of much discussion in the SL's comments section.

Let me just say: Hoboken isn't seedy. I'm not even sure what seedy means, but whatever it is, Hoboken isn't it. It isn't it now, nor was it in 1995 when the novel is set. The publisher put that word on their original draft of the back cover, and I requested it removed. It HAS been removed, in as far as it won't be on the actual printed book, but I guess the old descriptions of the book (along with the old draft of the cover art) are still up on amazon.com etc. I'm in the process of begging to get the new cover art and especially the new book description up, but these things are slow-moving unfortunately. Meantime, rest assured, there's nothing seedy about nothing.

"In Hoboken" events

So, starting to get some info for the release of In Hoboken next month. Me and the wife and kids are going to have a little bit of a party on Tuesday March 11 in the back room at Maxwells on Washington Street in Hoboken. Besides the usual book release night hoo-ha, looks like we'll have us a bit of a concert. Mr. Cagno will MC the affair, with a pretty-dern-near-to-it Camp Hoboken reunion...Linda? Grula? Con? All that. We hear tell that young Perry Brody might swing by for a song. Right on. And as for Linda, she's got a new album and fingers are crossed to see if she has it in hand in time for this...

And then two nights later, on Thursday March 13, we'll do the hometown version for friends and neighbors out here in Pennsylvania. Some wine, some cheese, some books. All good. We'll be at the fabulous Farleys Bookshop in New Hope.

For you New Yorkers: we'll do a little something in Manhattan, and also in Brooklyn at Melville House. Details to follow.

But now...time for Quebec. J'ski.

Where my eyeballs have been

Much like the government, IdentityTheory continues to track what we're reading...

And Ed Champion, one of the few really interesting long-time book bloggers, closed down shop but is doing something else very cool and completely different.

Detz or Debts, he's still Karl Dietel to me

First day of high school (September, 1984), first period, the guy sitting behind me was Gregg Cagno, and the guy sitting next to me was Karl Dietel. Note the alphabetization. By junior year, we were, respectively, the drummer, rhythm guitar player, and keyboard player for Hypothermia, a rockin' little unit of a high school band that had the audacity to attempt things like "Scenes From An Italian Restaurant." When Matt and Mike graduated a year before us (they weren't smarter, just older) the band changed (wipe a tear)...but ultimately the friendships stayed. Karl did a lot of dubious things like playing bass with me whenever I asked him to, usually for no money (dear Jesus, who can count the brain cells lost at Miller's Tavern?)...and he did a lot of very cool things, too. Like the fact that he's gone on to become the keyboard player for The Samples and travels around in a tour bus and plays Red Rocks and shit like that.

Anyway, my friend releases his first solo album this week. Congratulations, KD.