With Jason Michel
Tim Hall is not cool, okay?
If you want cool, go and read a book about a drug addict lying in his own vomit, or someone being blown by a giant crab.
Mr Hall has just written a non-fiction book. Yes, that’s right, big ears, you heard correctly. A non-fiction book. The book is entitled, “How America Died”. It may just be important. But it is definitely not cool.
We had a very uncool chat together …
JM – Hey Tim,
So, America’s dead. Tell me, how does it smell?
Where did the need to write an essay come from, and are you prepared for the criticism of writing something that might be seen as a political standpoint?
TM – “So, America’s dead. Tell me, how does it smell?”
Like freedom, of course.
“Where did the need to write an essay come from, and are you prepared for the criticism of writing something that might be seen as a political standpoint?”
As for the criticism, of course. It comes with the territory. This is a protest/freakout piece of the 60s/70s style and that just isn’t done. It isn’t COOL. Caring about sad little relationships or shitty jobs–two subjects I’ve written extensively about, in fact–just seems unbearable to me now, for whatever reason.
Where it came from was that last March I performed a self-exorcism, burned a few cases of my books and when the smoke had cleared so had my mind–perhaps some smoke got caught in the folds of my brain, I don’t know. I hate to sound all dramatic about it but I was honestly in a trance; I sat down and wrote How America Died in 5 straight days, then spent a couple of months hacking it down and adding some citations and such. I have no memory of writing it and don’t take anything stronger than oolong.
Why do you think hipster/artist types have such an aversion to talking about what’s going on around them? Is it really any worse than talking about sitting at a bar in a story? Have the media cowed us with their hatefests, or is it just a coolness issue like I believe?
JM – Jesus, you’ll be burned at the stake for that. Summoning up spirits with oolong. Brrrr … (Thinks: must buy some oolong. You never know)
There’s a definite “hip” streak to the apathy, too many middle class boring Bukowski-copyists, not enough people willing to go deeper into their motivations of why they write, or why they think the way they do. They just want to write about their bad habits without there being an actual story and/or insight in there somewhere.
Burroughs and Bukowski were addicts who could actually write.
I mean, just write a blog.
Or even better keep a diary and show no-one.
Fuck the hipsters.
I actually have a big problem with “art” & politics, when it’s blatantly spewed into our faces. It becomes nothing more than another product, and is just filled with soundbites, shiny foreheads and perfect teeth. It is very Ballardian now. When what pop stars actually think matters. I mean, who the hell wants to be Coldplay? It is all so obvious. So dull.
But, hey, even Blake was fiercely political, so what do I know.
And dare I say it, too many champagne socialists who hide their hypocrisies behind their liberal education and don’t even question what it means to be left or right or whatever. I find there to be more fascism from the haters of hate than from honest racist/homophobes out there. They tend to mistake education for intelligence.
There’s also the disillusionment of it all. I don’t know about over there, but Europe is wallowing in the mire at the moment. Some people just want to escape from it all, I guess. After a hard weeks work, you can’t blame them.
Which non-fiction writers do you admire?
Do you think it’s time to bring about a resurrection of Gonzo?
I say this as I notice the “living book” idea is a form of experimental non-fiction waiting to blast off.
TM – “Which non-fiction writers do you admire?”
All the New Journalists, definitely. Seymour Krim’s writing about literature had a big impact on me. I also like what I’ve read of Willie Morris, Barbara Kingsolver, Cyril Connolly, Colin Wilson. Andy Warhol is an underrated writer. Just started reading Thomas Merton–oh, and Ginsberg! Deliberate Prose is monumental. He was the ultimate rarity in literature–someone who was a not only a great artist but an even greater human being. I aspire to artistic greatness but can’t imagine it now without the courageous moral component like Ginsberg had in abundance.
”Do you think it’s time to bring about a resurrection of Gonzo?
I say this as I notice the “living book” idea is a form of experimental non-fiction waiting to blast off.”
The living book is great, and I don’t praise myself often. I’m determined to make it work–pioneers are usually the suckers who wind up with the arrows in their backs while the imitators make the cash, and I don’t want that to happen with this. Glenn Greenwald and Digby have both already agreed to be part of version 2.0 of How America Died, so I’m hoping to build enough press coverage/awareness to keep the vampires at bay.
As for Gonzo, I think the closest we’ve got is Matt Taibbi. The folks at Sadly, No! are wonderful–especially Gavin M., who might be the most brilliantly funny sociological/political humor writer alive today.
So, how does one move to France? Can we come live with you? How can so many millions of immigrants criss-cross the globe every year to practically any civilized country they want when it’s nearly impossible for three dowdy American francophiles to do it unless we’re millionaires?
JM – You could always marry a French lass. Then you’re sorted.
Of course, you’d have to suffer the endless disparaging remarks about not having any real culture and the lack of any true way of eating outside of France (even if the French would still be eating boiled turnips if Catherine Medici, a member of an aristocratic Italian family, hadn’t married one of theirs and taught them how to cook).
But if you could put up with that, then venez, monsieur, venez.
I came here by a different route. I’ll leave by a different route too.
But, yeah, come and visit. The invitation’s open.
“How can so many millions of immigrants criss-cross the globe every year to practically any civilized country they want when it’s nearly impossible for three dowdy American francophiles to do it unless we’re millionaires?”
It’s probably because those shit poor immigrants have nothing to lose. They’re willing to die in cattle trucks and ferries to live the “good life”, even though we know it to be a lie. They believe their TVs (the poor always have a TV), and those TVs sell them dreams. For some the streets are still paved with gold.
What was it that inspired and continues to inspire your countrymen, The Lost Generation and Miller et al, to come over to Paris and write?
Why Paris?
TM – “Why Paris?”
Probably because it’s easier to type ‘Paris’ than ‘Dubrovnik’.
When I talk of moving somewhere else I’m really thinking about having enough money to live where I want. The older writers mostly did it for economic reasons, when Yurp was cheap. Money, and not Paris, is the only movable feast.
I guess I’m thinking of escape because this financial stuff is much, much worse than most people realize. I’ve been following Wall Street since I was a kid, it’s been my side passion the way other writers love horse racing or bullfighting, and this is absolutely fucked to the degree of infinity. I’ve never been a prognosticator and don’t panic easily, but I’m trying to prepare for the worst. We moved out here a few years ago, from New York City to a small town in the Midwest, specifically to be closer to my wife’s great family. I said it was for my son’s benefit, and that’s certainly true, but the truer truth is that I’m a canary–I saw this coming and wanted to be closer to our support network for now. You could say I’m a canary who’s equipped with his own gas mask. Die in that mine, are you fucked? I’m outta here!
I just started reading your blog, and bought your book but haven’t read it yet, so I don’t know much about you. What is your typical day like?
…
HOLD ON A SECOND…
We interrupt this CFGKW to bring you a breaking bulletin:
I HAVE TAKEN CONTROL OF THIS THREAD
Ah, Meester Michel, you thought you could deceive me, yes? However I have long had what the French call <<un feeling>> that you are not all, shall we say, what you were cracked up to be, eh? Like a grey-market oeuf purchased in a dark allez in the 14e arrondisement, yes?
What am I saying talk about? Explain THIS, monsieur: http://beatendog.blogspot.com/2008/05/you-i.html
and then tell me how you have none of these what you call “political” views, eh?
You thought you could outsmart Clouseau! NOBODY CAN OUTSMART CLOUSEAU!
Is very much like what I am to be saying in “Le Mort d’Americain, n’est pas?
ANSWER ME YOU DOG!
JM – It’s a fair cop, dammit! The jig is up! You’ll never take me alive, copper!
*ahem*
It’s funny how that little rant comes back to haunt me. I think I just wrote that trying to get away from politics in all its conventional forms, and just trying to get down to an emotional core of how I felt. Because I find it very strange how people can define themselves, in any shape or form, never mind considering themselves to be this or that politically.
But yeah, the “power” and “control” bit does ring a wee bit similar to what I have seen of your book. My interest with these two little words ranges from the totalitarianism of fascist societies and how they have been born and how we let them and what need did they fulfill, all the way down to the way they govern our most intimate relationships (Not only in a handcuffs and riding crop/The Night Porter kinda way, of course. No, really.)
As far as I am concerned that comes down to my other little quirk of being shit scared of everything. A scaredy cat. Fear has defined my life so much that I ‘ve tried to understand the means of controlling it.
I do see humans as essentially cruel animals, I’m afraid.
On the one hand – dull, on the other – absolutely fascinating.
As the old Nick Cave song says, there is nothing “stranger than kindness”.
It’s the old story of left hand/right hand.
When it comes down to it, I’m just a bog standard shagging old crypto-fascistic social anarchist with extreme left ecologically dictatorial libertarian tendencies.
Nothing out of the ordinary there.
Although through the sweaty palmed madness of everyday life I do realise how much of a cunt Tony Blair is.
I’ve recently noticed that your highly intelligent and skilled Republican party have taken somewhat against my fair country’s crowning glory of a National Health Service.
I believe that the Queen of saucy librarian chic, Sarah Palin has dubbed it “Orwellian” and “evil”.
Tell me about your opinion, Tim?
TM – First, I think you should put “just a bog standard shagging old crypto-fascistic social anarchist with extreme left ecologically dictatorial libertarian tendencies” on a T-shirt. Definitely a babe magnet, that. I’d buy one–or at least I’d moan and bitch about your sell-out capitalistic oppression until I guilted you into giving me one for free.
I can’t get into any policy issues without projectile vomiting, but what you said about fear struck a chord. That’s what this is really about, at least as seen through the lens of the book: the argument isn’t about health care at all, but the violent, murderous rage that control addicts feel when people might be released from a small measure of fear, pain, suffering and/or death.
The media have already shit the bed of health reform in this country just as they destroyed the sane and decent Clinton plan 15 years ago, with psychopathic authoritarian bootlickers like Andrew Sullivan leading the charge (“Hey, he’s English! He must know what he’s talking about!”) So I won’t comment on the specifics, but let’s just say that the existence of a real national health plan would cause the biggest revolution in mass consciousness in this country since the Summer of Love. It would deliver millions from unnecessary fear over illness, job loss, moving, etc.–I believe it would actually stimulate the economy a tremendous amount, both through increased corporate profits and great risk-taking and entrepreneurship among citizens, and that is absolutely unacceptable to the madmen elite in this country. How America Died is really about learning to be less afraid; that’s its most subversive and serious agenda.
So what has made you so afraid in your life? What are you most afraid of now?
JM – One last note about the NHS. To all you Americans out there who actually believe Bill O’Reilly and his ilk. It was Thatcher who tried her best to destroy it, as she did to the Unions. She bled the Health Service dry of cash, while increasing the military budget. So, all those “horror” stories that your Right Wing press show about the NHS, are all the aftershocks of her reign. Thatcher was the closest thing Britain ever had to one of America’s Republicans and she left an indelible stain on our country’s psychology. Even the Labour Party (traditionally a socialist party) could not recover from. In fact, she was not even an “Conversative”.
What the fuck did she conserve?
She was a radical who brought the dogma of Privatisation and turned it into global policy.
She may well have been a necessary economic evil to get us out of the slump that the hapless Labour had plunged us into but it was of course at the price of the suffering of the nation’s poor and working class. As usual.
And be just as wary of your new Messiah Obama as you were of Bush.
*rant finished*
In reply to your question …, tell me, what does not to make you feel afraid?
That’s the real question to ask.
Beauty in the natural world- that fleeting glimpse of the awesome as we are able to bear it. Laughter to the point of losing control.
These are all good things, don’t you think?
What things make you want to get out of bed in the morning?
TM – “These are all good things, don’t you think?”
Yes! I have a strange constitutional deficiency–no matter how shitty my life has been at times, or how cruel others have been, or how lost/crazy I’ve felt, I’ve always been very happy to be alive. It’s my second most career-limiting disability as a writer after being a teetotaler.
“What things make you want to get out of bed in the morning?”
Before 35, ejaculation; after 35, urination.
JM – I, myself, have recently given up the pleasures of the vine and the hop along with that evil scoundrel nicotine.
I never wrote while I drank, though. Tried it once in a guest house in Bangkok and what a load of old cobblers came from it. No, just because it worked for Dylan Thomas, doesn’t mean it can work for me.
Ok, Tim, one last question.
What future do you see for your country, and its waning global influence?
I tend to agree with you and your analysis of the current crisis. Being a pessimist I’d say it’s gonna get a whole lot worse. Just you wait for the looming oil crunch, too.
TM – As I say in the book, to see the future you just have to buy the present a bigger set of clothes. So it’s more brutality, more hostility, more bubbles, more Christianist violence, more cowardly liberal-left authoritarianism, zeroer and zeroer tolerance for everything and everybody. My job as I see it is to fight with words, to get back at the meme manipulators and word weaponizers. It might not mean anything to anybody else but if I don’t then I’m letting the worst of the worst define me, and I refuse to let that happen.
Thank you, JM, for a wonderful and exhilarating ride.
JM – And many thanks to you, Tim.
Good luck with the book and remember Number 6 : “I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered! My life is my own.”
Who knows the beaten dog may join you from this side of the pond yet!
Tim Hall’s blog is here: UTP
His books can be found: here
How America Died can also be downloaded : lulu
Thanks again, Jason. I forgot to mention two important points:
1. How America Died is not about politics; it takes the issue of control and violence from a medical/health standpoint, channeling Wm. Burroughs and many other great prophets. The book does not mention any of our last 8 presidents by name –though LBJ gets kicked in the pants once or twice.
2. The “living book” concept means the book is open for submissions on an ongoing basis. If you read it, get inspired, and write something good I’ll pay you $25 for it. See: http://undiepress.timhallbooks.com
[...] Michel and I just completed a lively discussion over at the Outsider Writers [...]
Damn. This might just be the best conversation yet.
I think I have to admit that I’m biased, though. I am actually Tim’s bastard child. Seems in late1979 he and Bea Arthur had a trist. In August of 1980, I was born and adopted by my current parents. It’s a shame things never worked out between Tim and Bea, otherwise I could be living off a sweet inheritance right now.
Ahem.
Anyway, I loved this quote: “And be just as wary of your new Messiah Obama as you were of Bush.”
For those of us who are neither “left” nor “right” (and rightly) we are saddled with the burden of never trusting a President, ever. I haven’t read Tim’s book yet, so I’m not sure what his LBJ references were to, but I’ve seen a connection between the two people in a big way. Both had their “great society” programs and both ratcheted up the military-industrial complex by digging us further into unwinable wars.
Also, having read Tim’s blog for a long time, I understand completely when he says his book isn’t about politics. The virus of control is everywhere, not just in the most obvious sphere of politics. Anyone here belong to a religious sect or have a job or even surf the internet?
Tim, right now I’m reading Paul Johnson’s excellent survey of American history. It seems fitting that I finish that book and go straight to yours.
Whoops! By “two people” I meant Obama and LBJ.
Oh dear. Pat, I doubt I will survive the comparison to Johnson well. I mean, I’m just a paranoid neurotic visionary with aspirations of sanity, not a bloody Medal of Freedom winner.
Brilliant stuff. What a rush. top.
Great read. Always great to read about Tim Hall. Than from the words Jason.
Thanks, guys.