Original Essays
by Kevin Sampsell, December 17, 2015 12:15 PM
I'm extremely excited to be one of the recipients of the James Patterson Bookseller Holiday Bonuses. I was one of 87 folks to get one (out of 2,848 nominations), and I realize how lucky I am to be recognized in the vast, impressive landscape of booklovers working at independent stores everywhere. I wanted to take a moment to talk about how important this job is to me.
I started at Powell's in November of 1997. But only a few years before that, I was just a dude who never went to a real college, was barely interested in books as a kid, and probably thought Tennessee Williams was a baseball player. I had finally picked up the habit (the addiction!) of reading when I was 22 years old. I would choose books by the covers, their reputations in history (banned books were of particular interest), the stories of their troubled authors. I didn't know many readers when I started reading. I didn't know who to ask for recommendations.
It's funny how your trajectory as a reader can be forever determined by one book or one author. I recall particular booksellers in Spokane, Seattle, Fort Smith, Arkansas, and Portland who put books into my hands that would alter my brain and my life. In Spokane, that book was The Abortion by Richard Brautigan. In Seattle, it was Steven Jesse Bernstein's Personal Effects and Dennis Cooper's Closer. In Fort Smith, it was Mary Gaitskill's Bad Behavior. In Portland, it was Gordon Lish's Dear Mr. Capote and Kathy Acker's Blood and Guts in High School.
When I started at Powell's, I would observe how other booksellers would help customers with such kindness and intelligence. Specifically...
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Guests
by Kevin Sampsell, November 27, 2013 3:10 PM
In this special series, we asked writers we admire to share a book they're giving to their friends and family this holiday season. Check back daily to see the books your favorite authors are gifting.÷ ÷ ÷ If you know someone who likes to laugh and enjoys learning a few things at the same time, this layman's guide to the Christian Bible is a stellar gift choice. Mr. Russell's sharp, funny retellings of bible stories alongside Mr. Wheeler's sly New Yorker-ish cartoons will help anyone see the Bible in a new, irreverent way — without all that old-style language to confuse you. Plus, the production on this book evokes the look of a classic Bible: stitched-in red ribbon bookmark, silver-edged pages, etc. The event for God Is Disappointed in You at Powell's was one of our best and most entertaining readings of the year, and I was able to get a couple of signed copies, making these gifts even more special.
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Small Press
by Kevin Sampsell, November 7, 2013 2:00 PM
Describe your latest book. This Is Between Us is a novel about the many dimensions and moods that a love affair can take on. It's told in about 200 short scenes, each detailing the highs and lows of how the emotions and passions of this man and woman honestly shape their lives together, warts and all. What's the strangest or most interesting job you've ever had? Working here at Powell's is definitely the most interesting. When I introduce authors at events, I feel like an ambassador to literature, or sometimes when I recommend some of my favorite books (Home Land by Sam Lipsyte, Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower, Daddy's by Lindsay Hunter, A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews) to people, I feel like some kind of a life coach. When you think about it, it's an odd job being able to pick out what goes into someone's brain. Plus, since Powell's is such a famous destination, we get all sorts of celebrities shopping in here too, so almost every day holds some kind of surprise. Have you ever made a literary pilgrimage? In 2007, I won a bookseller contest and got a free trip to the Oxford Conference for the Book. Some of my favorite writers are from — or have lived in — Oxford, Mississippi, so I was especially excited about going. I was accompanied by Craig Popelars from Algonquin Books and a couple of other booksellers from other independent stores. Larry Brown was the focus of the festival that year, about three years after he had suddenly passed away and left a huge hole in the literary landscape of that region. I was a big fan of his books, so it felt unbelievable for me to be there, and to also meet his longtime editor, Shannon Ravenel, and his wife and two sons. We even went fishing on Larry's pond, near the writing shack he built before his death. I got to see his grave and I cried while watching a documentary about him the next day. In my three days there, I was also able to see Holly Hunter speak on a film panel, meet the mayor of Oxford (who also runs the great Square Books), and go to Faulkner's house. What's your biggest grammatical pet peeve? I think it's more cute than a pet peeve, but my wife often says "pretty muchly" even though she knows I'll poke fun at her whenever she does. Sometimes I may say something odd too, but I just blame it on growing up in Eastern Washington. Name the best television series of all time, and explain why it's the best. This is a close race to call, but I think for me it might actually be The Shield, which has been overshadowed by many other shows in the recent past. Michael Chiklis, C. C. H. Pounder, and Walton Goggins were so gut-wrenching and fantastic in their roles. That show would just leave me breathless so often, and I think the way it ended was as good as any show ending since — even Breaking Bad and Friday Night Lights (two other shows I adore). Growing up, I would have said The Night Stalker because I was so freaked out by scary stuff. How do you relax? I like to turn on all the overhead lights, put on some music (maybe something kind of mellow like Rocky Votolato or Richard Buckner, or something upbeat like The Drums or Mates of State), put my legs up on the couch, and read with a whiskey and coke. Or watch a basketball or football game on TV. Sometimes I go outside and shoot baskets on the hoop in our driveway. When it's nice outside, I'm partial to lawn chairs. Aside from other writers, name some artists from whom you draw inspiration. I love movies, and some of my favorite filmmakers are David Gordon Green, Atom Egoyan, and David Lynch because I appreciate the slow, strange ways they burrow into their characters and their situations. I also appreciate directors who are kind of abrasive sometimes, like Gaspar Noé and Harmony Korine. Who do you follow on Twitter and why? I think Blake Butler is one of the funniest guys on Twitter. He brings it to another level. His thoughts are perverse and surprisingly layered for such a small format. I also really like following poets because they're masters of short utterances and funny phrasing, or maybe they're just plain crazy. People like Mike Young, Sommer Browning, Carleen Tibbetts, and Sampson Starkweather. I often LOL at all of them folks. Five great books about the real nitty-gritty of love: These books may make you a little uncomfortable and seem almost too personal, but love isn't always neat and tidy. Coeur de Lion by Ariana Reines Into the Great Wide Open by Kevin Canty Monogamy Songs by Gregory Sherl Wedlocked by Jay Ponteri Breakup by Catherine Texie
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Small Press
by Kevin Sampsell, January 4, 2012 1:39 PM
A breathtaking suite of sentence-driven stories that are as refreshingly funny as they are emotionally eviscerating. Linked by themes of broken relationships and mistrustful lovers, Lutz's newest stories are full of descriptions and observations so bitter and dark that they're hilariously charred
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Small Press
by Kevin Sampsell, March 24, 2011 2:00 PM
About a year ago, a rather large and imposing man named Jason Breedlove came in to the store to see if we would carry his self-published book. He explained to me that it was a collection of writings he had done while in prison. I admit that I was skeptical of the book's quality at first. For starters I didn't like the title, MYcellF: Prisoner of the Pen. But after reading through parts of the book, I could tell that Breedlove was an engaging, honest, and promising writer. A couple of months ago he brought in a new book, a more focused memoir named after his prison number, 1065131. It's the kind of book that's hard to put down once you start. It's a clear, almost nostalgic, chronicle of Breedlove's three different stays at an Iowa Correctional Facility from 1998 to 2008 as well as an intriguing look at prison life and its often misunderstood culture. Breedlove often displays a sharp sense of humor and intelligence that makes the book a surprising pleasure to read. After he was released from his third prison sentence," Breedlove left his home state and now lives in Portland. Jason Breedlove will read at the annual Smallpressapalooza event on March 28th at 6:30 p.m. Kevin Sampsell: I'm curious if there were more personal reasons that led to your getting in trouble and landing in jail. Were there problems at home or elsewhere that got you on the wrong path? Jason Breedlove: There was no abuse in the home. I was addicted to making people laugh. I've always been a class clown. In high school I started hanging out with other trouble makers; it was the laughter that pulled me in. The things I was doing were funny — accepted — to them and vice versa. We validated each other through laughter. When you start breaking the rules to seek out laughter, it has to escalate to achieve the same effect. You cannot tell the same joke daily or do the same prank and expect to get the same laugh. It gets old. We went from breaking rules to committing crimes to chase the laughter. I'm sure there were problems inside of me that made me constantly want to laugh and make others laugh. Kevin: Were there people you met in prison who urged you to write about your life? Breedlove: My first book was mostly a collection of random thoughts. I read through pieces of it to several different audiences over the years. People loved it. Their laughter was all I needed to come up with more. I never sat down to specifically write any of it. I just lived my life and wrote things down as they came to me. It spans from 2002-2009. The idea for the second book didn't strike me until after the first was out. A story is easier to follow and it's what people prefer to read. I am now working on a third, which will consist of fictional short stories under the genre transgressive fiction. I plan to have one of the stories available in a pamphlet by the time of the Smallpressapalooza reading on March 28, 2011. Kevin: What books or writers did you enjoy in prison, and what do you read these days? Breedlove: I mainly read newspapers and magazines, but I mean on a grand scale; I read the Omaha, Des Moines, and Sioux City papers, USA Today... I read the bodybuilding and exercise magazines as well as Psychology Today, Esquire, Wired, and Maxim. I had a Merriam-Webster Dictionary and a World Almanac that I used daily. I especially liked the etymology section of the dictionary and I was studying etymology years before I discovered what it was called. People knew I had the almanac and would ask me to look things up for them, which I enjoyed doing. I did read Ernest Hemingway, George Orwell, and Mitch Albom. Nowadays, I work as a caregiver for my great-aunt. I read to her in the mornings. We like biographies of people who helped shape the world and country. We also liked the Malcolm Gladwell books. Our last three books were: The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt (Vintage), Scorpions: The Battles and Triumphs of FDR's Great Supreme Court Justices, and Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print, and Power. Kevin: You have a nice, almost relaxed way of explaining prison culture in your writing. Is it more pleasing to you to write about your penance than to write about the actual crimes? Breedlove: I'm not sure. Perhaps it was because I spent more time being punished than I did committing crime. Or, since I was sober, more of the prison sticks with me than the wild life leading up to it. I wasn't in the kind of place you often see on cable documentaries. I wanted to show some of the more simple aspects of prison life. Kevin: You talk about weight lifting and exercising in prison. Do you think that was a sort of survival activity for you or others there? Are the men who are more physically built the ones who are left alone? Breedlove: It's something to do, but also something that brings happiness. There are some very fundamental parts of life built into an exercise regimen: setting goals and working toward them. Working toward something is very rewarding and often times an addict never experiences that. When they want to get high, they take a drug. To pay for the drugs, they commit crime. Being big helps to ward off potential bullies, but if a big guy doesn't want to defend himself, he can be bullied just the same. All it takes is one confrontation for people to find out if he's a fighter or not. If he's not, others will rush in like piranhas. Prison is full of people with varying degrees of problems. It seems to be common practice to put someone else down in order to feel better about oneself. Some of the core issues and ways of dealing with those issues don't go away with the absence of drug use. The drug use is a coping mechanism in itself. Exercise is part of my support system to stay clean and sober today. In a lot of ways, I'm still in prison with my routine. I go to the gym, Safeway, and the library five days a week. Kevin: Since you moved to Oregon in 2008, have you had any trouble with the law? Does your reputation in Iowa follow you in any way? Breedlove: I got a reprimand by Trimet inspectors when I first moved here. I did have a ticket, but it wasn't for the amount of zones I was travelling through. I've been turned down for employment because of my record. I've used my past to write two books and help integrate myself into Portland. Th
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Poetry
by Kevin Sampsell, December 31, 2010 1:14 PM
This was one of those books that seemed like it came at just the right time in my life. I loved its muted sadness and the occasionally surreal descriptions of that sadness, and I loved the weird way the poems sample from each other throughout the book. It's like a book eating its own
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Small Press
by Kevin Sampsell, October 6, 2010 11:11 PM
There's a little place in the middle of the country called Ann Arbor, Michigan. It has steadily produced some of the most exciting literary voices for several years. From big names ( Charles Baxter) to rising stars ( Davy Rothbart, Elizabeth Ellen), the little college town has a knack for producing strong, enduring books. Two of the most interesting writers that have emerged from there in recent years are Matt Bell and Steven Gillis. Matt Bell is the author of the new fiction collection, How They Were Found. His fiction has been anthologized in Best American Mystery Stories and Best American Fantasy. He is also the editor of The Collagist, series editor of Best of the Web, and a senior editor at Dzanc Books. He can be found online here. Steven Gillis is the author of Walter Falls, The Weight of Nothing, Giraffes, Temporary People, and, most recently The Consequence of Skating (October 2010). His stories, articles, and book reviews have appeared in over four dozen journals, and his books have been finalists for the Independent Publishers Book of the Year Award and the ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year. Steve founded 826michigan before co-founding Dzanc Books with Dan Wickett. They recently had this conversation, which includes their thoughts on Pinter, Beckett, "Little Red Riding Hood," politics, and editing. ÷ ÷ ÷ Matt Bell: The Consequence of Skating starts with Mickey Greene listing some of the things he knows, and also some of the things he does not know. Let's start this off the same way: What are some things Steve Gillis knows? Steven Gillis: I know the things I don't know will always be more than what I know. I know the world can get hairy sometimes, even for a hairless guy like me. I know a certain madness will float your boat but a madness that is uncertain will sink you for sure. I know what is bad but not always what is good. I know the schedule I will keep each day but not always what I will do. I know I flash hot and when I flash hot it often leaves people cold. I know kindness is what matters and people who dismiss the effectiveness of social programs — right wing right wing right wing — are narrow-minded and don't live in the real world. I know I am a writer in my soul but sometimes the path from my soul to the page is a bitch. I know my kids are brighter than I am and that my wife endures in ways I can't even imagine. I know that in the end there is only the end absolutely, and what matters then is not what I write but how I loved. I know this yet there are times I fuck this up, too. Bell: In the book, Mickey wants to stage a production of Harold Pinter's Moonlight, and the pursuit of this goal consumes a good share of the plot. I don't know Pinter's work very well, so you tell me: Why Harold Pinter? Why Moonlight? Does it mean anything different to you than it does to Mickey? Gillis Pinter is God. I think Mick and I are almost on the same page, though Mick is drawn to Pinter the writer — as am I — but I also am drawn to Pinter the man. His politics blow me away; his Nobel Prize speech should be required reading in every high school and college campus. In short, Pinter embodies every aspect of what I am trying to achieve in Skating; from Mises's observations of human action, from the politics to the way people interact. I could write a book on Pinter, his application and understanding of language, how people talk but don't communicate. How he saw the necessity yet weaknesses of governments, how he opposed war and was not afraid to speak his mind. I chose Moonlight because it is one of Pinter's later and most obscure plays, yet deals so well with miscommunication and the difficulty of relationships. This theme lies at the heart of Skating, all that we know and don't know, the actions we take for reasons that are suspect. While we're talking about influences: Your novella "The Collectors" appears in How They Were Found. I love this piece. I also love Beckett and I sense a clear Beckett influence in the piece. Maybe some John Fowles, who has his own book called The Collector. I use the word influence in a very positive way as we as writers are all inspired by external sources. Can you talk a bit about the genesis for this work, whether there is some Beckett influence, and how — if at all — the relationship with your own brothers played into this narrative of the relationship between Homer and Langley. Bell: I'd never read anything by Beckett before I wrote "The Collectors," but I had enough people mention Beckett to me in relation to that story and others in the book that I eventually sat down and read his trilogy of novels and Murphy last summer. In retrospect, I can see why readers like yourself made that comparison — there's a review at Flatmancrooked of "The Collectors" that is almost entirely about its parallels to Beckett's work — but it's more likely that I've just been influenced by more contemporary writers who themselves were possibly
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Small Press
by Kevin Sampsell, July 28, 2010 3:50 PM
Gina Frangello reads from her new book, Slut Lullabies, at Powell's on Hawthorne this Thursday, July 29, with Zoe Zolbrod (Currency). In our newest installment of Small Press Conversations, Frangello, a writer, teacher, publisher, and editor, speaks with Davis Schneiderman, author of the novel Drain. This conversation happened before Gina and Davis's event in Iowa at "Live from Prairie Lights" on July 22, 2010. ÷ ÷ ÷ Gina Frangello: Given that so-called experimental writing has characterized certain major literary movements at least since the modernists, how would you define experimentalism a century later? And why, if writers have been experimenting with form, some finding great acclaim for that in the modern and postmodern eras, going on to be regarded as canonical writers, is formally innovative or avant-garde writing still regarded as a "fringe" part of literary culture? What characterizes the type of experimental writing that is primarily the arena of indie presses? Davis Schneiderman: Yes, oh yes, it seems that in 1922, a year that some have called a high point for modernism, with a capital M, we could still find a big difference between a writer type such as Thomas Mann with his mountain magic and the surrealists with their automatic writings magnetic fields broken trestles of nightmare trains chugging to Auschwitz not so many years off-then when a dada-collage a screaming poem word a poem life like that of Jacques Rigaut who announced his own suicide and then in 1929 made good on his words oh yes oh yes oh yes. Oh, no. Today, it's all modern or postmodern experimentalism. Actually, Gina, I don't think experimentalism is on the fringe as much as some like to think. Certainly not in visual culture where the cut-ups of Burroughs and Gysin suggested the mash-ups the jump cuts the less-than-a-flash quick shots in every commercial to infinity and beyond. Our pop culture drank its own Kool-Aid decades ago. In literature, we've elided so many transitions, so many slow moments of supposed human realism, that even the most realist novel of today might seem like a three-minute video compared to some über-tome of the mid-to-late 1800s. To address the last point, for me the indie press — if there is such a thing, really — makes work that can not or, at least for some period, should not be recuperated easily back into the mass of literary and popular culture. Naked Lunch still fascinates me 50 years later because it doesn't make any more "sense" (once you toss away the insufficient William Lee-quitting-junk explanation) than it did half a century ago. This is a highly unstable novel because it's not a novel, really, by any definition of the novel put forth in the last two centuries of literary criticism. As my colleague in all-things-William-S.-Burroughs, Oliver Harris, has shown, Naked Lunch emerged from letters, epistles. Accordingly, its genetic history disputes most of the author-centered discourse of our current age. The most interesting literature to me, and it need not be "experimental" or "postmodern," takes the author and makes her disappear or at least dissolve a bit into the Proustian tea. Now, I realize that this comes across as bullshit, since you've seen me read and I have a bit of a reputation for the booming-voice-gimmick reading. Recently, the night after we read at The Book Cellar (Chicago), I borrowed Cris Mazza's starter pistol and shot Artifice editor James Tadd Adcox, twice. The first time fit in with the text, a bit from my new novel Drain where Lake Michigan empties of water, but the second time was really gratuitous, pure superfluity. That's the excess I look for in literature, independent literature, and I hope to find this even when the literary style is spartan, spare, nothing. I think you have a different view of indie publishing. I see Other Voices Books (OV), whose works I love and keep by my bedside for easy access (I also have two copies of Slut Lullabies, btw), as publishing work that might have once had a home with the larger houses, yet has been squeezed out because of the dismal state of corporate publishing. Devil's advocate: aren't those types of texts, not necessarily from OV, but those perhaps not recognized by a bigger house yet still "good" according to its tastes, just reaffirming the values of mainstream publishing, and, in a cool Derridean twist, further eroding the audience for anything different? Frangello: That's a question within a question within a question, which I love. I'm going to go from the back and move to the front — so, first, when you say "its tastes" with regard to the bigger, corporate houses, I want to say that I think the "It" has radically changed, even just in the past couple of decades, so that there are different Its we could be talking about. To me, the It right now in big New York publishing consists of marketing departments (comprised of people with some kind of business degree) and corporate shareholders. So, in the bluntest possible terms — which always risks broad generalizations — we are talking about a group of people who do not define themselves as "literature lovers," necessarily, of any kind. Some of them may not even read for pleasure. We are talking about big publishing being defined, almost entirely now, by people in the business sphere, not the editorial/creative sphere. Editors at the corporate publishers hold almost no power anymore. Unless you're Jonathan Galassi or something, you have no ability to just love a book and thereby publish it. You have no job security, and you live and die by what the marketers and shareholders have to say about your bottom line fiscal performance: whether the projects you acquire make money. Period. Given that, I want to say that I don't believe editors of indie houses and editors at big houses are necessarily on opposite sides of a taste or culture fence — I just think that the choices we're making about how we live and work are radically different. I believe that many editors at the big houses are every bit as well-read, as interesting, as sophisticated in their tastes, as intelligent, as complex, as editors at indie presses — but they have chosen to try to make a living (not a great living, I should specify, but some living) from their work as editors, in a big arena where they have almost no control. Indie editors have other day jobs, such as being academics or freelance copyediting or something, and so we stil
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Guests
by Kevin Sampsell, April 16, 2010 3:33 PM
From Willy Vlautin, one of the most natural storytellers ever to come out of the Northwest, comes a heartbreaking adventure starring 15-year-old Charley Thompson. It's like Tom Sawyer, but with more drunks, death, and weird strangers. Another engrossing triumph from this underappreciated
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Guests
by Kevin Sampsell, February 17, 2010 3:28 PM
The long-awaited debut collection by Wells Tower does not disappoint. Full of masterful tales, brilliant humor, and soul-shattering pathos, Tower's work should place him at the forefront of American
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