Category / Bat Segundo

by Edward Champion

The Bat Segundo Show: Thomas M. Disch

Thomas M. Disch appeared on The Bat Segundo Show #219.

The late, great author committed suicide on July 4, 2008. This was his last face-to-face interview before his death, conducted on June 25, 2008 at his apartment. For more on Disch, start here. His most recent book was The Word of God.

Condition of the Show: In memoriam.

Author: Thomas M. Disch

Subjects Discussed: The difficulties of declaring yourself a deity, truth and memoirs, authenticity, James Frey, Disch’s takedown of Whitley Streiber, Democrats and evangelism, Reverend James Dobson, the unexpected reaction to Disch declaring himself an atheist at a North Dakota convention, Clifford Irving, the fun of footnotes and annotation, fundamentalists, writing books in which the ground is always shifting, Emerson and the trinity, Algis Budrys, Thomas Mann, the taboos of simulacra and alternative realities, war and commandments, the fantasy of having different parents, griping about editors and agents, the American literary tradition of celebrating con artistry, L. Ron Hubbard, Disch’s religious acolytes, Michael Moorcock, asking for blurbs without any of the blurbers reading the book, Philip K. Dick’s 1972 letter to the FBI, Camp Concentration, pulp fiction and literary posterity, “A Visit from Saint Nicholas” and Clement Brown, whether or not literature (and civilization) will survive into the next century, maintaining a LiveJournal, on not submitting poems to magazines, Samuel Johnson’s maxim, poetry and the New Yorker, editors or critics who hate Disch’s guts, being ignored, being snubbed by Stephen Donaldson, ridiculing enemies, nonoverlapping magesteria, having Catholic friends, cowboys, literature as a religion, Disch’s efforts to read The Tale of Genji before death, the reading of “approved classics,” Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa and Jane Austen, Disch’s strong love of Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin novels, writing Amnesia and building a model of Manhattan within the text adventure game, literature as a constantly changing medium, inhabiting the now and obsolescence, silent film, and poetry as Disch’s “one good horse.”

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

Correspondent: I wanted to also ask you about A.J. Budrys, who I know you — I saw your LiveJournal where there were many caustic remarks directed his way. But I should point out that when I received this galley well before June 9th, when he died, you referred to him as “the late Algis Budrys.”

Disch: (laughs) Yes!

Correspondent: I’m wondering if you had some inside dope or if this is another example of your divine powers.

Disch: I guess so. I mean, I never know what my divine powers are going to do often, until they’ve done it. And this is certainly a case where I had picked the right horse without even knowing.

Correspondent: Well, I mean, why did you type “the late” so early on? I mean…

Disch: (laughs) Well, for one thing, I didn’t know.

Correspondent: You didn’t know he was alive?

Disch: Yeah. I sort of figured it was likely that he was dead. And wishing it to be the case, I just wrote it that way.

Correspondent: Or he was dead to you in other words?

Disch: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if I had my druthers, there he is.

Photo credit: Flickr

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BSS #219: Thomas M. Disch

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by Edward Champion

The Bat Segundo Show, 2004-2008?

The Bat Segundo Show is going on indefinite hiatus. Which pretty much means that it’s over, unless some magical sponsor or benefactor can appear at the eleventh hour to save the show. But I doubt it.

I tried to keep the show running as long as I could, supporting it with my own money. A typical show took me about twenty to thirty hours to produce from start to finish. Segundo was a full-time job for which I received nothing but generous donations, including many of you who kindly chipped in during last year’s pledge drive. The hell of it is that the money required to keep the show going was peanuts.

But now that most of my freelancing income sources have dried up — in some cases permanently — I’m looking for a full-time job to make ends meet. And I only have so much time and energy to go around.

I feel tremendously sad about all this. I know that for some authors, Segundo was the only place they had to discuss their books. But I see no other option but to fold the show under the current economic circumstances.

Thanks to all the authors who took the time out of their busy schedules to talk with me. Thanks to all the publicists who went along with the crazy concept. And thanks, most of all, to the listeners. For four years, we offered a bona-fide alternative to the mainstream. And I’m extremely disheartened to abandon this. I never felt entitled to a living from this. But I do feel as if I’ve drowned a baby.

There are about nine shows left to be released, with a few more interviews I’ve set up that have yet to be conducted. I’ll be putting these shows up in the forthcoming weeks.

In the meantime, if you need a guy to write for you full-time or wait tables, please feel free to email me.

[UPDATE: I’ve added a question mark to the post’s title, since it seems possible to carry on the show in a severely reduced capacity. Perhaps through a seasonal special or two. Last night, I left a comment in the accompanying thread outlining some of the options. I conducted an interview this morning. Lots of laughs. Knowing that it would be one of the last ones (at least for a while), I appreciated it more than I usually do.]

by Edward Champion

The Bat Segundo Show: Andre Dubus III

Andre Dubus III appeared on The Bat Segundo Show #218. Dubus is most recently the author of The Garden of Last Days.

Condition of the Show: Plagued by decaying verdure and intrusive catering managers.

Author: Andre Dubus III

Subjects Discussed: The propinquity of Roman numerals after surnames, Richard Flanagan’s The Unknown Terrorist, Heinrich Böll, books being categorized as post-9/11 novels, on letting a book go after publication, political novels, writing longhand in cars, Tobias Wolff, the car as shared confessional experience, Flannery O’Connor, writing as a dreamworld, verisimilitude, getting an approximation of an outsider’s character or experience, “White Trees, Hammer Moon,” prison, capitalism, serial description in a declarative sentence, considering the reader, realism vs. postmodernism, self-indulgence in writing, Blaise Pascal, the dangers of the author pleasing himself, taking twenty-five years to write a novel, Dubus’s beverage motif, whether or not specific details in a novel are symbolic, the advantages that come from confined and sustained narratives, sensuality, writing in short sustained bursts, vicarious moral outrage, poems and Books on Tape, T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, an interruption by a catering manager, Dubus’s early life bumping around, the responsibilities of a novelist, honesty, novelists who impose endings on books, fiction as a pack of lies vs. fiction as truth, Picasso, sincerity, characters who become truer than real people, and the absence of fathers and husbands in The Garden of Last Days.

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

Correspondent: I had to remark on the beverage motif throughout this book. We open this book with, of course, April having a plastic coffee cup with her legs. And then two hundred, three hundred pages in, we see the cop with the #1 GRANDDAD mug. And then we also have Virginia heating a cold cup of coffee in the microwave. So…

Dubus: Ho ho! This is brilliant, man. (laughs)

Correspondent: But the concern for coffee in this is rather extraordinary! Because coffee is almost this life force of good versus the drinking one sees from the antagonists in this book. All the antagonists tend to drink. Or they resist drink in order to be good. And so…

Dubus: Oh, this is fascinating.

Correspondent: So there’s a certain coffee-alcohol axis I had to ask you about.

Dubus: Well, God, it just sounds like a weekend in my life.

Correspondent: (laughs)

Dubus: Drink Friday night, drink coffee on Saturday morning. Fascinating. Wow. I hadn’t even known that. Listen, I do believe that we live in our bodies. Even those of us who live very ethereally from the chin up. And I truly believe that these central details shape us and guide us. You know, I had this experience a few years ago where my wife and I had a little spat over money the first thing in the morning. My coffee was cold, gone cold during the fight. I get in the car. It hardly starts up. And I’m worried about money and can I fix this clutch. I drive off. A guy cuts me off in his truck. And I’m telling you. If that car could go fast, I’d go down the road, rip him off the truck, and beat on him.

The next day, my wife and I were fine. We weren’t having a spat. My coffee was delicious. It was the perfect cup of dark French roast. Black. That I like. And it was just the right temperature. I had a little cup, driving cup. And it wasn’t spilling. The car started up. I pull out into the word and another guy cuts me off. And this time, Ed, I said, “Go in peace, my brother. You should be careful. You might hurt someone or yourself.” I had all this good will. And it had to do with my coffee being good. (laughs)

Correspondent: But I’m wondering how this…

Dubus: This stuff isn’t unimportant?

Correspondent: It’s important. But I’m curious. You have to be aware — since there is so much coffee in this book — that you’re repeating this symbol over and over again. So readers like me say, “Well, coffee. Might be a symbol.” Or as we’re suggesting here, it may not be a symbol at all. It may just be some aspect of the world you’re drawing from that just happens to repeat itself.

Dubus: But, Ed, man, I really believe that the reader tends to know more than the writer. At least, certainly in my case.

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by Edward Champion

The Bat Segundo Show: Rachel Shukert

Rachel Shukert appeared on The Bat Segundo Show #217. Shukert is the author of Have You No Shame? Incidentally, she’ll be appearing at the July 17th installment of the In the Flesh reading series.

Condition of the Show: Contending with tenuous widows and the mysterious circumstances of Mr. Segundo’s death.

Author: Rachel Shukert

Subjects Discussed: Whether Ms. Shukert is still on the Viacom blacklist, the soul-crushing aspects of temping, working odd jobs in Amsterdam, Anne Frank as a constant in life, the holy similarities between Northw__t and G_d, plane crashes vs. car crashes, airlines and gods, the legal system and divine repercussions, lawyers in Nebraska, talk show hosts who come from Nebraska, Montgomery Clift, the relationship between Jewish identity and location, Omaha vs. New York, the notion of stretching out time, writing truthfully about scatological topics, placing a parental advisory warning, expanding the limitations of personal experience, on being perceived by others, limits on confessional writing, room for the persona to grow within annotation, elevated prose, abandoned sets of footnotes left out of the book, David Foster Wallace’s “Tri-Stan: I Sold Sissee Nar to Ecko,” David Macaulay’s Motel of the Mysteries, Will Self’s The Book of Dave, Newt Gingrich, writing letters vs. email, using all caps in print vs. online, grouping people into taxonomies, Fred Savage and Jason Priestley, first crushes, being published as a paperback original, The Anorexic’s Cookbook vs. The Anarchist’s Cookbook, and performing pieces in front of a crowd.

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

Shukert: Jason Priestly and Fred Savage were the two guys on TV who I had big crushes on as a child. I had a picture of Fred Savage in my locker that I cut out from the newspaper. I remember that he was holding a candy box. Like a Valentine’s heart box. And I would pretend that he was holding it for me. And then when I got a little older, I thought Jason Priestly was the handsomest man I had ever seen. I mean, when I say “a little older,” I mean ten. But I had a big poster of him in my room too.

Correspondent: Who was the first crush you had?

Shukert: Gene Kelly.

Correspondent: Really? And he’s not referenced in the book.

Shukert: No. That’s private. (laughs)

Correspondent: Not anymore. It’s public now. But this is an interesting distinction. Are you slightly ashamed of these crushes?

Shukert: No, I’m not ashamed. But there’s a difference between being ashamed of something and just having something close to your heart. (laughs)

Correspondent: Wow. Well, I’m curious. How much does a crush linger over the course of one’s life like this? I mean, you can be safe with Jason Priestly and Fred Savage, but…

Shukert: I don’t have crushes on them anymore.

Correspondent: But you still have a crush on Gene Kelly.

Shukert: Yes, but he’s dead.

Correspondent: He’s dead. The dead people are the ones to really lust after the best.

Shukert: Yeah, I think that that’s true.

Correspondent: Because there’s no way that you can possibly consummate it.

Shukert: I also loved Paul Newman as a child.

Correspondent: What are you going to do when he dies?

Shukert: I’ll be sad. I’ll mourn like a widow.

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by Edward Champion

The Bat Segundo Show: Mort Walker

Mort Walker appeared on The Bat Segundo Show #216. Mort Walker is the creator of Beetle Bailey. A volume of the first two years of Beetle Bailey is now out.

Condition of the Show: Observing fifty years of development.

Author: Mort Walker

Subjects Discussed: Walker’s drawing pace, the Beetle Bailey production cycle, filtering through the gags, rejected strips sent to Sweden, Beetle’s early days as a slacker in college, the military as the common experience, Walker’s relationship with the syndicate, the curly hair look of Buzz and Lois, portrait-like illustrations of women, early attention to background, the shrinking space of newspaper comics, Berkeley Breathed and Bill Watterson’s fights for space, appealing to the greatest number of readers, the development of Sarge’s girth and teeth, Plato as the only other character carryover, covering the eyes of characters, Dik Browne, Beetle’s early square form and perpendicular limbs, Walker as Lt. Fuzz, Lt. Jack Flap, African-American characters in comic strips, being confronted by editors by Ebony, Colin Powell’s approval of Flap, code numbers associated with the comic strip, writing a military-based comic strip without reference to Iraq, General Halftrack’s skirt-chasing and later sensitivity training, the circumstances that will cause Walker to change his strip, why Walker hasn’t included women soldiers, aborted cliffhangers, and characters staying the same in the Beetle Bailey universe.

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

Correspondent: Here we have a military strip. But there’s no reference to Iraq. And I wanted to ask you about this kind of balance.

Walker: I try to avoid anything controversial. Because if you do something pro-Bush, fifty percent of your readers are going to get mad, fifty percent of your readers might like it. But I’m after the whole broad spectrum. So I’m really avoid those things.

Correspondent: But to talk about the broader audience, I mean, Bush’s approval rating isn’t exactly the best in the world. It’s under 30%. So you have 70% of the audience if you were to play around with this kind of thing.

Walker: Yeah. Well, anyway, I try not to get too topical or controversial. That’s why I’ve avoided the war pretty much. I don’t mention Iraq very much. Very seldom.

Correspondent: Even though this war has lasted longer than World War II? I mean, doesn’t it seem…?

Walker: But there’s so many people that are angry about it that I’ve got to be really careful about how I treat it. Mostly, I just ignore it. People say, “Well, when is Beetle going to go to Iraq?” I said, “Jesus Christ. I hope never!” You know, I don’t want to send him there because it’s very difficult to deal with. I’m just keeping him in basic training. It’s the common experience that all soldiers have. If I take him out somewhere and specify into some particular kind of work, I’ll lose a lot of my readers there. They won’t be interested or they won’t understand it. But everybody understands basic training. That’s where I keep him.

Correspondent: I mean, you had this similar situation with Jack Flap. That’s why I present this as well. I mean, that didn’t hurt you. In fact, that got Beetle Bailey more attention, you know?

Walker: Yeah, but it was a common experience. Anyway, that hasn’t hurt me.

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