Fresh Loaf

GENRE: A debut novel about trying to write a debut novel. That’s a genre, right?

MEET SLATER BROWN, FICTIONAL NOVELIST: “He’d come to San Francisco expressly for the purpose of writing something that would last forever. Only he didn’t feel he could share this personal ambition with just anyone. They would think what? That he was a fruitcake! That he had lost contact with reality? It was a tricky situation, having a plan you couldn’t share. Nevertheless, for the first three days he exerted the plan flawlessly and with maximum concentration from the his perch in the back of TK’s. In the evenings he would reread what he’d written by the bar’s dim light. Nobody paid him a scintilla of attention.”

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Futureproof, N. Frank Daniels’ novel set mostly in and around Atlanta, is a thinly veiled retelling of the author’s own descent into teenage drug abuse and general delinquency. It’s about a white boy with dreads trying to figure himself out in the televised glow of Kurt Cobain. It’s also about half as good as it could be — full of writing that should have been reworked, trimmed, or simply cut before ever appearing in print. Daniels goes about his work with an attitude much like Luke, the story’s headstrong, willfully ignorant narrator. As a result, Futureproof comes across as a defiant but ultimately flawed debut.

Daniels, like most writers, didn’t like the idea of his manuscript gathering dust in the neglected slush piles of literary agents or book publishers. “In this age of so much media and information and distraction … Shakespeare himself would have had his work turned down” without the right connections, Daniels claims in a postscript to Futureproof. Instead of waiting around for someone to hand him a contract, Daniels published the book himself.

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GENRE: A brick-sized collection of music journalism from a decidedly Southern magazine

THE PITCH: Trendy bands and celebrity fluff pieces aren’t welcome here. OA editor and founder Mark Smirnoff wants this writing to pay “tribute to how music seeps into us.”

BLUES SISTERS: The writing is most successful when it veers far from the confines of music history, like Carol Ann Fitzgerald’s memoir-ish tale of lesbian attraction and Bessie Smith. “I slept while she rubbed my back in motel beds. Her hands clenched and declenched, just shy of hurting. We burned candles that smelled like pumpkin pie. Bessie was on repeat,” she says.

SEX PISTOLS IN ATLANTA: Mark Binelli tells the story of the Sex Pistols’ first U.S. show at a strip mall in Atlanta. Afterwards the band heads to a bar, but Sid Vicious disappears into the night. “Vicious finally turned up at Piedmont Hospital,” Binelli explains. “After scoring some heroin, he’d gotten bored and carved the words GIMME A FIX into his chest.”

STEVE MARTIN ON FAILED MUSIC ASPIRATIONS: “Obsession is a great substitute for talent.”

ALLMAN BROTHERS IN MACON: John T. Edge quotes roadie Red Dog Campbell about Mama Louise Hudson’s soul-food restaurant, “At the H&H, they didn’t care if we were black, white, or purple. Mama didn’t say anything if we were trippin’ our asses off. Now, she might tell me to come in the back door instead of the of the front when I was messed up, but really she just fed us fried chicken and loved us.” (more…)

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GENRE: A plate-thin, hardcover collection from a local contemporary poet

BACKSTORY: Guest, currently a visiting professor at the University of West Georgia, has been paralyzed from the neck down since a bicycle accident at age twelve.

SUGGESTIVE TITLE OF THE OPENING POEM: “User’s Guide to Physical Debilitation”

PUBLISHER’S ANGLE: Guest is the first poet Ecco has contracted in over a decade. If it’s been that long (or longer) since you’ve bought a book of poems, this would be a good place to start.

INDEX OF KNOWLEDGE: Like his contemporary Dean Young, Guest conjures information with a self-aware, surreal style. Mozart’s skull, ascetic Canadian monks, Werner Herzog, Kim Jong Il, and Wayne Gretzky all make appearances in the book, summoned like passing thoughts in an intimidating mind. (more…)

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GENRE: Like a Zagat or Places To See guidebook for unabashed liberals

REASONS TO HAVE THIS BOOK: Ever fretted over finding the best summer camp for your leftist children? Looking for a worker-owned, unionized strip bar? Want to eat at Studs Turkel’s favorite restaurant? The Nation Guide has you covered.

GEORGIA: Not exactly the most prominent location in the book, but we’re not off the map, either.

MANUEL’S TAVERN: Atlanta’s most revered liberal hangout is given a short but loving bio. The Nation’s version omits that Manuel’s son (and the bar’s current owner) Brian Maloof, is rumored to have some Republican leanings.

DID YOU KNOW? Eugene Debs, famed union organizer, Nobel Peace Prize nominee, and founder of the IWW, lived in Atlanta from April 1919 until the end 1921. While in Atlanta, Debs ran for president and received over six percent of the popular vote, the highest ever for a Socialist Party candidate. Want to visit his old house? It’s the United States Penitentiary on McDonough Boulevard. (more…)

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GENRE: Collected nonfiction of a gonzo journalist

PROFILED PERSONAS: Wounded Iraq War vets, junkie musicians, L.A. gang members, high I.Q. misanthropes, Hawaiian meth-heads, Vietnam vets living in Thailand, a few maligned celebrities, and an elusive Marlon Brando

BOLD PRINT: Sager’s essays have been published in the Washington Post, Rolling Stone, GQ, Esquire, and many other discerning publications. His writing inspired the films Boogie Nights and Wonderland. He even interned for Creative Loafing back in the ’70s.

CENTRAL METAPHOR: Though the essay “Wounded Warriors” is about a group of Iraq War vets, the title is an apt description for any of the conflicted addicts and wayward personalities among the pages.

A 680-POUND MAN SAYS: “I’ve always been fat. I don’t even know what it’s like to be thin. It’s like being born blind — you have no idea what sight is.”

AN IRAQ WAR VET FROM GEORGIA REMEMBERS: “I woke up on the ground. I was like, Shit. I felt like I’d got hit by a damn fucking truck. There was blood everywhere. My neck was ripped open. See here on my neck? My little happy face made out of scars? It wasn’t that happy at the time.”

A JUNKIE IN MANHATTAN ADMITS: “I hate to admit it, but dope is the best thing in the world. I swear to God, it’s like cheating death. I’m a thrill seeker, I guess.”

WOMEN SAY: Almost nothing in the entire book. Despite Sager’s over-the-top efforts to travel to remote locales and immerse with subjects, it seems that women have proven too hard to reach for his journalistic efforts.

MARLON BRANDO SAYS: Nothing either. Sager chases Brando around Tahiti without managing to get a single quote. Sager’s hunt for Brando becomes, instead, an adventure in profiling himself.

HYPE QUOTE FROM THE COVER: “This collection of pieces from Mike Sager is just brilliant — brave, written with soul and beauty, and unflinching in the depiction of a real America that needs to be revealed,” Buzz Bissinger, author of Friday Night Lights.

Wounded Warriors by Mike Sager. Da Capo Press. $16.95. 288 pp.

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GENRE: Gritty, inner-city coming-of-age novel

FIRST LINE: “I’d been at the shelter for two weeks and there was nothing to do but go to counseling or lie on my cot and count the rows of empty cots nailed to the floor or watch TV in the rec room, where the girls cornrowed each other’s hair and went on about pulling a date with Reggie the counselor because he looked like Billy Dee Williams and had a rump-roast ass.”

NARRATOR VS. AUTHOR: Miles from Nowhere is narrated by Joon, 13, a Korean immigrant living in the Bronx who runs away from home. Nami Mun, 40, is a Korean immigrant who grew up in the Bronx and ran away from home as a teenager.

THE PUBLISHER CLAIMS: “Miles from Nowhere will haunt and inspire a generation of readers.”

NEGATIVE PRESS: An Amazon.com reader says, “This book is wacky…I just wanted it to be over…the book was written so scatter-brained that I thought I was reading journal entries.”

AUTHOR’S BIOGRAPHICAL COMING-OF-AGE MOMENT: “During my runaway years, I kept a journal. I’d write down the events of the day, mostly while riding the subways. Once I sat next to a woman, and I could tell she was reading over my shoulder. I’d write a sentence and she’d make tiny sounds — of either disapproval or dismay. The more I wrote, the louder and more demonstrative she became, saying things outright sometimes and shaking her head. What I remember most is how she never addressed me directly. I don’t think she even saw me, really. Her eyes stayed on my journal and I got the sense that even if I didn’t exist in her world, my words could.”

RESUME BOLD PRINT: Mun graduated from the University of California at Berkeley, received her masters from the University of Michigan, and teaches creative writing at Columbia College Chicago. She is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize and scholarships from the Corporation of Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony.

BIG NAME HYPE FROM THE BACK COVER: “Suspenseful, funny, painful, and poetic, Nami Mun’s debut shows a talent for close observation and a prose which fills the grit of street life with flashes of gold.” — Janet Fitch, author of White Oleander

Nami Mun comes to A Capella Books/The Opal Gallery on Jan. 19, 7 p.m.

(Photo courtesy Amazon.com)

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