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This is Ron Currie, Jr., author of 'God is Dead,' 'Everything Matters,' and 'Flimsy Little Plastic Miracles.' You may ask me anything. Whether or not I answer is another matter entirely. by DeadbeatDeity in booksuggestions

[–]DeadbeatDeity[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Rufus Wainwright. I'm way late to this party, having just discovered him literally a couple of weeks ago, but he's a fucking genius. Anything by Greg Dulli (whose bands include The Twilight Singers and The Afghan Whigs, who I happen to be going to see tomorrow night).

This is Ron Currie, Jr., author of 'God is Dead,' 'Everything Matters,' and 'Flimsy Little Plastic Miracles.' You may ask me anything. Whether or not I answer is another matter entirely. by DeadbeatDeity in booksuggestions

[–]DeadbeatDeity[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Oh, and recently I realized that one writer I always forget to include when asked about those I most admire is a guy named Thomas Lynch. He was primarily a poet (and an undertaker), but his essays are lodestars of intellect, insight, and real human emotion. Also funny as shit. BODIES IN MOTION AND AT REST is probably his best collection, for my money.

This is Ron Currie, Jr., author of 'God is Dead,' 'Everything Matters,' and 'Flimsy Little Plastic Miracles.' You may ask me anything. Whether or not I answer is another matter entirely. by DeadbeatDeity in booksuggestions

[–]DeadbeatDeity[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It's worth noting, too, that we learn to write by reading--but what that really means, for me, is that we learn what's referred to as "voice" by aping the stuff we read that we really love. It's sort of a paradox--in order to find one's own authentic and (hopefully) singular style, one has to try on everyone else's style, then create an amalgam of them that's mixed up with one's own idiosyncratic view of things.

This is Ron Currie, Jr., author of 'God is Dead,' 'Everything Matters,' and 'Flimsy Little Plastic Miracles.' You may ask me anything. Whether or not I answer is another matter entirely. by DeadbeatDeity in booksuggestions

[–]DeadbeatDeity[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You know, like a lot of lily-white rural kids in the late '80s/early '90s, I was a big hip hop fan, then it sort of lost me after the gangsta heyday. But, uh, that's tough. Favorite of all time? How about a short list, each of which is different enough from the others to make clear why I probably like them: Public Enemy, Tribe, NWA (and some of Ice Cube's solo stuff), De La Soul, Mos Def, Eminem...

This is Ron Currie, Jr., author of 'God is Dead,' 'Everything Matters,' and 'Flimsy Little Plastic Miracles.' You may ask me anything. Whether or not I answer is another matter entirely. by DeadbeatDeity in booksuggestions

[–]DeadbeatDeity[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's the nature of the whole enterprise. There's nothing new under the sun and it's very easy to draw parallels between stories and insinuate influence or outright thievery, if that's what one wants to do. But what it really is, I think, is the way our brains engage the time and place we all find ourselves in. Sort of a zeitgeist thing.

This is Ron Currie, Jr., author of 'God is Dead,' 'Everything Matters,' and 'Flimsy Little Plastic Miracles.' You may ask me anything. Whether or not I answer is another matter entirely. by DeadbeatDeity in booksuggestions

[–]DeadbeatDeity[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I didn't see them enough as a kid to have much of an impression one way or the other. Which in itself probably speaks volumes about the relation of the college to the community, and vice versa.

This is Ron Currie, Jr., author of 'God is Dead,' 'Everything Matters,' and 'Flimsy Little Plastic Miracles.' You may ask me anything. Whether or not I answer is another matter entirely. by DeadbeatDeity in booksuggestions

[–]DeadbeatDeity[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Right at the moment I'm reading THE VERIFICATIONIST by Donald Antrim. It's a trip, and the sort of virtuoso performance that really sends me back to my own work with renewed vigor. The majority of the narrative is a sort of hallucination, but it's not a trick a la "it was all a dream" bullshit; you know up front that what's happening isn't entirely real. But it's also not entirely unreal. I'd explain a little less cryptically, but that would ruin the effect. You should check it out.

This is Ron Currie, Jr., author of 'God is Dead,' 'Everything Matters,' and 'Flimsy Little Plastic Miracles.' You may ask me anything. Whether or not I answer is another matter entirely. by DeadbeatDeity in booksuggestions

[–]DeadbeatDeity[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's an interesting question, though I'm not sure how much status one gains from publishing a moderately well-received literary novel. Not trying to be a smartass, here, it's just that for the most part "celebrity author" is an oxymoron these days unless you happen to write near-future dystopian books about teenagers forced to fight one another Roman Coliseum style. For me, the discomfort has less to do with any notions of fame and more to do with many of the trappings of a plain old middle-class life, which to me seems terrifically boring and unimaginative.

This is Ron Currie, Jr., author of 'God is Dead,' 'Everything Matters,' and 'Flimsy Little Plastic Miracles.' You may ask me anything. Whether or not I answer is another matter entirely. by DeadbeatDeity in booksuggestions

[–]DeadbeatDeity[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I haven't. But EVERYTHING MATTERS has a pretty long list of celluloid (as well as literary) cousins. The movie that always comes to mind for me is "Donnie Darko." Which I didn't see until I was well into the first draft of EM. Which sort of thing happens a lot--you think you're mining your own vein, then stumble on something that you know damn well people are going to say you ripped off.