Ben Greenman is a pretty okay guy (I know, I know, I’m gushing). He’s an accomplished editor at this rag called The New Yorker and he’s published, like, a half dozen novels. Sometimes he takes time out of his busy days to laugh, via Gchat, at my stories about working in a sex toy store and to encourage my literary pursuits. It’s very nice of him.

Last month, he released a new book called Please Step Back, on Melville House. It deals with the career of a 70s rock star and it’s great.

To celebrate its release, I came up with a harebrained scheme: I planned to ask him 3 questions everyday in May. And not just about the book, about everything: life, love, death, art—all the biggies.

But then the whole thing got way too hard to keep up and it wound up not being fun (or funny) anymore, so I quit. I often quit. I like to quit.

So here is that interview, revised. Although it’s not as elaborate or lengthy as originally envisioned, I think it’s a lot better.

So, friend, let’s talk about me. Of your books, Please Step Back is my favorite. Why do you think that is?
Because you are a novelty-based person. No, I don’t know. It’s the most straightforwardly emotional. It has less trickery and may be less annoying. There are also interesting dimensions having to do with race and gender that are present in but less treated in other books.

Wrong! I like it because of the hardcore sex scenes. Next question: who do you think is more attractive, Beyonce or me?
Given that you like the book, I’d say you.

Right! So, now that’s out of the way, I guess we should describe the new book for the people.
“Please Step Back,” the new novel, is the story of a funk-rock star named Robert Franklin, aka Rock Foxx. He moves from Boston to San Francisco in the 1960s and becomes a star. What happens when you become a star?

Everything happens.
Yeah, everything. So it’s a fast-moving, brightly-colored book about pop music, American culture, race, history, and fame. It’s also a very tightly focused study of this one character and how he deals with (or doesn’t deal with) his own creativity, motivation, and flaws.

Do you think your passion for music helps you understand anything about fiction better?
My passion for music helps in two major ways. First, it helps give me something to do while my brain is organizing the fiction but I can’t quite write. Second, it teaches an important lesson, which is that fiction shares space with other art forms. A three-minute pop song has as much emotional content, as much existence, as a book sometimes, which keeps you, as a writer, humble.

That’s an excellent answer. Is there any other advice you’d like to impart to writers? More specifically, to the young ones?
Get ready for a world that’s ninety percent rejection, at some level. Oh, also, remember that there’s a great disparity between the dignified rewarding part of the process, which concerns making something from nothing, and the undignified frustrating part of the process, which concerns convince others that the thing you made has value. Oh, also, don’t get hung up on what people think of your work. Really. Any work that has any character at all will only connect with a certain number of readers — or, if you’d like, a certain percentage of available readers. Books that have lots of meaning for authors are not generally books that have meaning for a broad coalition of readers. There are exceptions, but don’t worry about them.

Speaking of not getting hung up on what other people think of your work, how do you feel about critics?
They are people, nothing more and nothing less.

That’s a cagey answer, isn’t it?
KG, like Kevin Garnett?

No. Cagey, like you’re not saying what you mean. How do you feel about good and bad reviews?
I try never to read them. A review is a strange thing, because while a critic may, if he or she is good, be able to accurately represent his or her own reaction to an artwork, there’s no way that he or she can accurately predict your reaction to that same artwork. I was talking to someone at a reading the other day, some guy I had never met, and he said that he only reads books that are well-reviewed. I begged him to think for himself, or to at least try.

Sounds like what’s at the bottom of this is bad reviews hurt your feelings. Am I right?
No, you are wrong. I have gotten both good and bad in the past. Every writer does. For this new one, I don’t really know. I don’t read reviews during the project. Why would you? I was watching the Chris Isaak show and he said that the reason he never reads reviews is that he wants to believe he is better than he is. That’s exactly right. Why would you bother reading something that will either confirm your sense of your talent or bring you down? There’s nothing to gain. You suppose too much. I think the idea of reviews is stupid, don’t you? You always assume my thinking is defensive. Isn’t it possible I’m just wiser than you are?

Fuck no. And anyway, I’m the one asking the questions here. Have you ever been mugged?
Yes.

Really? By gunpoint?
Maybe. I didn’t ask to see the weapon. Probably knife. I fought and got a black eye.

Whoa! That makes you sound tough. I mean, as tough as a story about being victimized can make you sound.
Well, you know.

Besides your lightning-fast fists, what’s your best quality?
Having the sense not to say what my best quality is.

During your book release party, you said you were bad at working with others.  Is that true or were you just saying it for the crowd?
I am bad at it. Awful. Once there was a casualty during a collaboration. It was me and Abe Lincoln. We were inventing a game together. It ended badly.

Ha! Next question. Is having kids what you thought it would be like?
Yes, but there’s marginally less vomiting than I had been led to believe.

Why don’t you believe in God?
Never saw the point. I have pretty strict standards for myself in certain ways, and I believe in other things that do for me what I imagine divinity does for other people. They’re mostly artistic things: books, albums, movies.

Is that, then, the function of art?
The function of art is to give artists something to do.

Hmmm. Well, how can you tell if a piece of art is any good?
You can’t. No one agrees on anything. Well, people agree on beauty. If you show ten people a book, six will be indifferent. Two will have a positive reaction. Two will have a negative reaction. If you show ten people a picture of a beautiful people, you’ll get some consensus, I think. That’s why beauty has more value than truth, or rather why it is a reliable form of truth. So maybe that’s the function of art, to create beauty.

I disagree. I think beauty is equally as relative as truth. I won’t go into it, but now I’m all worked up. And it’s only six thirty in the morning. Thanks.
Is that what time it is there? I’m in an airport sitting near a trash pail. Someone just threw away an orange, so it’s not so unpleasant. There’s a guy next to me who has three different cell phones. He has one in a briefcase, one strapped to his belt, and one in his hand. What does one person need with three different cell
phones?

It’s probably to he can keep business and pleasure separated, if you know what I mean.
What?

Never mind. Let’s talk a little bit more about music. Stravinsky once said that music expresses itself and nothing else, and that if it seems to express something, it’s an illusion. What do you think of that?
He may be right about classical music. Pop music is, for me, a written form. Songs are songs. They express trends. They interact with the real world. They are mixtures of poems and slogans and advertisements. Pop songs, which are the kind of music that feature in my book, are compressive and expansive at the same time.

Can you talk a little bit about your collaboration with Swamp Dogg?
Sure. I love Swamp Dogg. He is great. I reviewed a record he made, a strong comeback record — well, critics say comeback, but it’s not like he went away, so let’s say a less idiosyncratic record more able to break into the mainstream of the dwindling soul market — and after my review, he contacted me. I was sure it was a joke. I was sure someone had acquired an email address and was pretending to be Swamp Dogg. Turned out I was wrong. It was really him. We became friendly over email. I asked him if he wanted to turn one of my lyrics into a song. He leapt at the chance.

Are there any painters that move you like musicians do?
Lots of them. Goya, certainly. “Flight of the Witches,” which has a figure running away from three hovering witches, is one of my favorite works of art of any type.

Oh, I just looked at it. It’s creepy.
And Duchamp, not necessarily as a painter, but as a thinker. And Ensor, Bocklin, Correggio, Whistler.

For you, what is the most difficult part of the novel writing process?
Answering questions about it. No, no. Just kidding.

What the–?
Don’t get all defensive. I’d say structure. Once I have that worked out — is it one voice talking or two? Is it forward in time or flashing back? — then there’s the part I genuinely enjoy, which is the writing.

Great. Oh wait, one last thing. Let’s play the Greatest, like in your book. Who is better Al Green or Marvin Gaye?
Marvin Gaye, I’d say. Not because there’s anything wrong with Al Green, but Al Green’s buoyancy, which has preserved him, has also kept him from going down into the songs to the same depth that Marvin Gaye went. Or at least that’s how it seems to me. Marvin Gaye was at once more generic (if you listen to those early Motown hits) and more unhinged and personal/political (if you listen to the material from the mid-seventies). Marvin Gaye also has a more tragic mythology, but it’s close.

I agree, Gaye all the way. Britney Spears or Madonna?
Madonna, I guess. I listen to those songs more. But we have to wait and see what happens with Britney. Plus, Madonna never beat the crap out of a car with an umbrella.

True.

My boyfriend thinks that the impulse to have children is purely narcissistic–that people just want to create little versions of themselves in some ass-backward bid at immortality.

I disagree with this, and I’m pretty much always right, but it’s kind of hard to disprove his theory when pictures of Gwen Stefani, her three-year old and their matching dye jobs/ska-punk (by way of Rodeo Drive) outfits  hit the internet.

Oh and also, celebrities, can we please have a moratorium on carrying around living things (dogs and babies) as accessories? ‘Cause I can think of, like, 30 accessories that won’t barf on you.

Seriously, 30. Just off the top of my head.

Curated by Luna Park and Billi Kid, the show features work by Billi Kid, Blanco, Cake, Destroy & Rebuild, Immininent Disaster, Peru Ana Ana Peru, Stikman and Veng (RWK), among others.

Primarily, the door functions in this show as a substitute for the traditional canvas, but for me, any and every door always represents the infinite potential possibilities behind it.  Kind of like in cartoons.

Artbreak is at 195 Grand St and the show is on the second floor. theGREAT outDOORS is open from Thursday through Sunday, 1-7pm and runs from 5/2/09 to 5/29/09.

It’s a fun show that’s definitely worth checking out.

Jon Burgerman is one of my favorite artists.  A couple of months ago I happened to see him in the crowd at an art show my boyfriend was in, but refrained from speaking to him because of the astronomically high likelihood of coming off as the Ultimate Creep.

So, as a surrogate for actual social interaction, I went home and googled him.  Living in a world where it is weird to talk to someone in person but it is somehow not weird to go home and (in the darkness of your room) pore over every bit of minutiae about their lives available on these here fine interwebs really works for me.  The Information Age rules so hard.

Obviously I find his art to be aesthetically pleasing, but because I know so little about art and art criticism,  the big reason that I like Jon Burgerman’s work is pure, unabashed visceral response.

There’s a mixed up sense of mirth and absurdity and sadness and humor (dark or otherwise) present in his work and it resonates deeply with me.  He makes me feel feelings, dudes.

Also, it seems like he is really enjoying himself, which makes me feel good.  And his answers to the interview questions made me laugh, so therefore he is awesome.  The End.

1) What’s the last song you listened to?
Pork Eater by Ticklah, it’s my new favourite song!

2) What did you want to be when you were ten?
An artist, footballer or Ghostbuster.

3) What’s the best professional advice you’ve ever been given?
Don’t act like an idiot. Really, it’s good advice for all occasions.

4) What’s the last thing you were obsessed with?
I’m not really an obsessive person to be honest. I got a bit obsessive about the end of the Sopranos when it was on TV. Oh, I’m a bit obsessive about the mail and checking emails too. I’m a communication obsessive I guess.

5) What are you afraid of?
Getting old and getting ill all at the same time.

All of these pictures were taken from his website.  He’s got a lot of work for sale on there and it’s all very reasonably priced.

…I’m just sayin’ is all.

Granted this is a clever ad, and funny in its on way, but it kind of makes you feel bad if you’re a faceless blowjob machine woman.

I see these Svedka ads everywhere, which is unfortunate because I think they are dull and uninspired.

Then again, I suppose it shouldn’t matter that Svedka_Grl is not even remotely funny, ’cause if I had an anatomically correct sexbot, odds are I wouldn’t be keeping her around for her witty bons mots, if you know what I mean, wink, wink nudge.

I’m sorry, what? Putting aside for a second the fact that a poster using fake Russian* is accusing others of being “pretenders,” are the good folks at Stoli really trying to tell me that the only thing in the world I can trust is a bottle of vodka?

LIKE I DIDN’T ALREADY KNOW THAT, DUDES!

But me and my liver thank you for the reminder anyway.

It took me a long time to figure out what it was about this ad that gave me the bum-outs. I happen to like Terry Richardson and I happen to like Belvedere.

But then I realized I don’t like these ads because they remind me of how BORING I AM. It turns out, I don’t even KNOW Vincent Gallo. SUX FOR ME.

Stoli, what was it again that were you guys trying to tell me? ‘Cause I think I’m ready to listen now.

*Excuse me if I’m wrong, but isn’t there a little more to Russian than just the occasional backwards R?

Tommy, my love, I know you are mourning the loss of Rock of Love Bus, so here is a website to fill the void:

It’s called Tales From A Groupie, and it is exactly what it sounds like it is. Sure we could speculate about whether or not these tales are true, but let’s not because that spoils the fun.

Groupie culture simply fascinates me, probably because if it weren’t for a debilitating fear of contracting an STD, I’d be on some baller’s dick right now.

Some choice quotes:

On Allen Iverson (This is a fucking tragedy, because he’s a babe):