Category: Uncategorized (Page 298 of 1086)

 

‘Zachary German’s nimble, catwalking, archeological, surface dwelling, emotionally unpaved prose is a thing of total wonder and my favorite drug, language-based or otherwise. Eat When You Feel Sad is so bright and pleasurable and full of excellence, it’s positively serene.’ — Dennis Cooper

‘Zachary German would have been eleven years old the year American Psycho was released in theaters, and though I don’t know whether he saw the film before he read the book, it’s highly likely that a trailer for the film alerted him to the book’s existence in the first place. He would have understood going in, then, that the ultra-violence was a kind of cartoonish excess, and that the whole thing was to be understood (on some level) as a comedy, but he would have probably been still too young to fully grok how (or even that) the pathological cataloging of brand-names was meant as an extension of the central “joke.”

‘I’m sure he understands that now, but first impressions die hardest, and often times not at all. I understood the film version of American Psycho as just that—a version, which is in itself the reason I didn’t go see it in theaters. I didn’t want to see some director’s weird re-conception of this monumental horror novel as a comedy. I wanted to experience the Real And Serious Book Itself. Consequently, I still cannot think about American Psycho without a shiver running down my spine, because what I remember is not the book itself, so much as my throwing it across my dorm room, and only later working up the courage to pick it back up and see it through to the end.

‘There was a segue that I was building towards, connecting my speculation about what the young Zachary German probably took at face value with the adult (albeit barely) Zachary German’s penchant for name-checking everything that catches his protagonist Robert’s attention in German’s debut novel, Eat When You Feel Sad. But wherever that connection has got off to, I can’t find it, and so maybe it never existed in the first place—or maybe it’s so obvious that I should just let you put it together (or not) for yourself. In any case, this um, tendency of German’s is just one of the things that makes Eat When You Feel Sad so very strange.

‘The book is written in a voice of militant composure. Only simple sentences are allowed, and each one consists of a subject, a verb, and then an object, in that order. Pronouns are allowed for humans (though they’re used sparingly), but are almost totally verboten for products and things. Paradoxically, this work of extreme minimalism rejects all forms of shorthand, and most of the colloquial. A can of “sixteen ounce Pabst Blue Ribbon beer” does not, once introduced, ever become “a beer.” It is referred to only by its full title, and so it goes with all the movies, books, songs, bands, albums, foods, drinks, and countless other items which are consumed throughout. Though actually, now that I think about it, I realize that “countless” is the absolute wrong word—and this mistake of mine is just one example of why (and how) this book and its author are both trickier than they first seem. In fact, each and every person and thing in the book is counted and catalogued, in an accurate and comprehensive index at the back of the book. In this gesture, German achieves some unfathomable level of triple-reverse irony normally only possible in laboratory settings for mere seconds at a time. Kudos to him for pulling this off—and to me for having figured it out.

Here are some selections taken at random from the text:

“Robert is in a community center. There is music” (11).

“Robert is lying on Alison’s bed” (21).

“Robert plays the song ‘Chickfactor’ by Belle & Sebastian. He turns off his bedside lamp. He thinks ‘My job is okay.’ He is asleep” (35).

“The DVD is Lost in Translation. Robert turns on the DVD player. He puts Lost in Translation into the DVD player” (57).

“Robert walks into his apartment. He walks into his bedroom. He lies down. He is asleep. Robert is awake. He takes a bath. He reads the story “Community Life” by Lorrie Moore. Robert rides his bike to Whole Foods. He buys arugula, broccoli, pasta sauce, portabello mushrooms and a baguette. Robert rides his bike to his building. He makes dinner. He eats dinner. He makes a video of himself eating dinner. He washes dishes. Robert uploads the video to YouTube” (71-72).

‘Despite what he’d sometimes have you think, Robert likes being alive. (To German’s credit—he does let Robert say so, from time to time, so the characterization of Robert is by no means a total snow job.) Robert takes genuine pleasure in the food he eats and the music he listens to, Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata” and Jean-Yves Thibaudet’s The Magic of Satie no less than CocoRosie and Lil Wayne. He smokes pot and gets drunk not because of his spiritual emptiness, though I’m sure that it helps, but because smoking pot and getting drunk are really fun things to do, especially when girls are around—which for him they usually are. (He has more friends and love-interests than the reader will be able to keep track of; another good reason for the index.) Even in his moments of deepest weakness—questioning his sexuality; throwing up on himself at a party; having any number of existential crises—Robert still seems somehow almost too good at being himself, which may or may not be the Patrick Bateman connection I was looking for.

‘If you’re waiting for me to render a definitive verdict on Eat When You Feel Sad, you might as well stop. I’m not going to, or else I already have. I can’t tell you whether I think this is a “great book” or whether it will “last” (though I’m going to keep both my galley and my first edition in good condition, just in case). What I can tell you is that it is a real book, wholly original and complete unto itself, and that within the admittedly narrow scope of its ambition, it has been almost faultlessly executed, and is therefore a remarkable success on its own terms. The world will have to make of it whatever it can. For my own part, though, I want to say that I very much enjoyed reading Eat When You Feel Sad, spending time in Robert’s weird calm company, and thinking about it afterward has brought me at least as much pleasure again. Let me put it another way: in the time I spent working on this review (the bulk of two afternoons, and a part of a third), I could have done a lot of things, several of which are due in the very near future, and at least two of which come with checks attached. But I chose to ignore all of those things, because I wanted to do this.’ — Justin Taylor

 

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Shitty Youth

‘Zachary German’s web presence was one I once compulsively checked-on for updates, that I consistently enjoyed, intriguing and funny, and now his web presence is gone, mostly, because he wanted it to go away.

‘Adam Humphreys’s new documentary, Shitty Youth, which shares a name with German’s possibly defunct “radio show”/podcast, portrays German as a willfully difficult or potentially alienating person socially who is very attuned to style and taste, the author of one novel, Eat When You Feel Sad, which got good attention and praise, who has released almost no writing since, in part because much writing, including his own, is not up to his very high standards.

‘The documentary combines footage from German’s trip to Florida with Megan Boyle to visit Alec Niedenthal and read at a reading with footage of him doing the often-awkward, often-hilarious Shitty Youth show, preexisting videos of German deadpanly reading and deadpanly trying on a dress, as well as new interviews with people who know him or of him: Tao Lin, Steve Roggenbuck, David Fishkind, Marshall Mallicoat, and Brandon Scott Gorrell.’ — HTML Giant

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Further

Zachary German @ Wikipedia
‘Eat When You Feel Sad’ @ goodreads
Zachary German’s Eat When You Feel Sad is a novel about a tone
No doubt many readers of Zachary German’s Eat When You Feel Sad …
German’s debut novel follows protagonist Robert, an emaciated vegan …
Zachary German’s debut novel, Eat When You Feel Sad, is blowing up all over …
Zachary German assuredly depicts young, modern life with his unique, minimalist prose …
TWENTY AND BORED AND ALIVE
QUICK QUESTIONS WITH ZACHARY GERMAN
Who Is Zachary German?
answers from Zachary German’s ask.fm
Zachary German, The Void Of New Literary Microcelebrity
ZACHARY GERMAN, CAFFEINATED ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES, AND AN INTERVIEW
A ZACHARY GERMAN/JAMIE STEWART COLLABORATION WOULD BE EITHER BE REALLY EPIC OR REALLY SAD
BLAKE BUTLER INTERVIEWING (ZACHARY GERMAN)
Buy ‘Eat When You Feel Sad’

 

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Extras

Zachary German’s “Eat When You Feel Sad”

“eat when you feel sad” by zachary german

Zachary German’s Eat When You Feel Sad

ZACHARY GERMAN WAVVES ROBERT EAT WHEN YOU FEEL SAD REVIEW INTERROGATION

 

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Interview

 

3:AM: How much – in a percentage – is Eat When You Feel Sad autobiographical?

Zachary German: One hundred percent, or zero percent. It seems like we’re all mother nature’s children, in a way, and so my story is your story is [something]. I’m being serious…

3:AM: How much – in a percentage – are you happy with the finished novel?

ZG: Ninety five maybe. Sometimes I think about things that could have been made more consistent. I never went through it thinking about the climate, and trying to make the weather correlate with seasons in a way that would make sense. So I sometimes fear there may be some inconsistencies there. There are other things I probably could have done, times when I should have expanded on dialogue or something.

3:AM: How long have you been working on it?

ZG: I worked on it from autumn 2007 to autumn 2009, pretty much, I think. So two years. The majority of that time was spent editing – I had written most of the text within the first six months.

3:AM: Since its publication, is there a part/scene that you are unhappy with, and wish you could edit out/change?

ZG: No. I think all the scenes work. For the Bear Parade draft there was one scene in which the narration went into first person, which a few people seemed to like, but in the end it seemed too inconsistent, so I took it out. Nothing like that in the final draft.

3:AM: Stylistically it is consistent throughout, written in a very pared-down, minimalist way – “Robert turns off the light. Robert turns on the light. (etc)” – Did you find these stylistic choices ‘trapping’ or ‘freeing’? How did you come to choose this style to write in?

ZG: I found that style very freeing. I am easily overwhelmed when looking at a blank Word document, and it is a lot easier if I know exactly what I’m going to write. So I can just say “This is what happens” and write that down, in a very specific format. The part I like the most is the editing I do later, where I change the word “Robert” to the word “He,” or vice versa, things like that. Having very small, specific choices seems fun.

3:AM: Is the character of Sam actually Tao Lin? And in Shoplifting From American Apparel, is Robert you?

ZG: Oh… it’s just a novel, Chris.

3:AM: Okay, I know what you mean. But I also feel interested in knowing a little more about that ‘overlapping’ scene in both books – page 117 in Eat When You Feel Sad and page 78 in Shoplifting From American Apparel. Was there some sort of conscious decision made between you and Tao at some point to include this overlap between events/ conversation/ names etc? Or did it just occur naturally, due to the autobiographical natures of both books?

ZG: [question not answered]

3:AM: What question would you most liked to be asked in an interview like this?

ZG: What is your favorite Blink-182 song and why?

3:AM: How often – if ever – do you think of the title of your novel as an acronym?

ZG: Between 1/3 and 2/3rds of the time, probably. Like when I think with sounds it’s ‘Eat When You Feel Sad’ but when I think with pictures it’s ‘ewyfs.’ Not sure if that is true, makes sense, sorry.

3:AM: You said you enjoy the line-editing part most. Do you have a specific memory of a time/place when you felt especially happy with how your novel was going? If so, please describe it.

ZG: No real specific memories of feeling happy with how it was going, more memories of feeling it sucked but could easily be so much better. One morning I got up early and lied down in McCarren Park in Brooklyn and read a printed out draft all the way through, making notes and line edits, and feeling really good, like I was a genius who had just found a really shitty book that I could quickly change into something just terrific. Then I made the changes and probably the next time I read it all the way through I thought pretty much the same thing.

There were a number of drafts like that, where I felt each new set of edits was a revolution or something. As time went by that feeling got less and less, until it started to just seem like a pretty finished novel.

3:AM: Similarly, was there some point during the writing of the novel when you felt something along the lines of, ‘Oh no, this a complete fucking piece of shit, I’m going to give up on it’? If so, please describe.

ZG: Oh, well, I think I only ever really thought about giving up on it in fall of 2007, soon after starting it. I forget why exactly, I know I had a gmail conversation with Tao Lin about it so could probably look it up, but yeah I was just tired of doing it, and that’s when I asked Tao if he thought I should just make it a Bear Parade thing, and he said it could probably be both, and so that’s what happened.

3:AM: How do you think you and your writing would be perceived by the following people: a) a 26-year-old Italian/American female poet/blogger, who occasionally reads online journals like 3:AM, HTMLGIANT, but who also cites people like Virginia Woolf, Emily Dickinson and T.S. Eliot as influences.

ZG: Probably negatively, a woman named ‘Oriana’ who I believe roughly fits that description has already written an in-depth scathing review on Goodreads.com.

3:AM: b) an American, somewhat alcoholic, on-the-brink-of-retiring, divorced male English Lit. professor, who at one time in his life had the desire to write fiction but never did so.

ZG: Feel he would either disregard it completely or like it a lot.

3:AM: c) an English, 38-year-old male, who reads “everything from McEwen and Palanuk (sic) to greats such as Dickens and McNab (ha ha)” – note: he reviews DVD box-sets constantly on Amazon.

ZG: Feel he would get a real kick out of shit-talking it on Amazon/not like it.

3:AM: d) ‘someone’s mom’

ZG: Damn, depends on if it’s ‘my mom’ or not. ‘My mom’ would ‘say she liked it,’ if memory serves. Others’ moms would probably not read it all the way, I feel. If they did they would probably feel disturbed … in a bad way.

3:AM: Your author biography on the back page of the novel reads: ‘ZACHARY GERMAN was born on December 17th, 1988 at Shore Memorial Hospital in Somer’s Point, New Jersey. In 2006 he dropped out of high school. In 2007 he published his first short story. In 2008 he moved to Brooklyn. In 2009 he works as a dog walker on Manhattan’s Upper West Side and maintains two websites: thingswhatibought.com, and eatwhenyoufeelsad.com, which collects videos of people eating while feeling sad’. Do you think you could carry this third-person sentence-per-year biographical description on to provide a speculative description of the years of your life from 2010-20/30/40/whenever-you-get-bored?

ZG: [question not answered]

3:AM: What is your favourite Blink-182 song and why?

ZG: ‘Untitled’ off Dude Ranch. Seems really catchy/memorable with several distinctive sections. Confused as to why I wrote ‘with distinctive sections.’ I have good memories of running around the track in tenth grade gym class with Colin Gilmore singing this song. Seems apt to a number of situations, lyrically. Don’t like how there’s a weird talking thing at the end of the studio version though. That should make it lose points. So maybe ‘Josie,’ also off of Dude Ranch.

 

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Book

Zachary German Eat When You Feel Sad
Melville House

‘Eat When You Feel Sad is a novel about Robert. Eat When You Feel Sad is a novel about a generation. Robert was born in the 1980s. He was born in the United States of America. In Eat When You Feel Sad, Robert feeds his cat, watches television and drinks beer. In Eat When You Feel Sad, Robert gets mustard on his clothes, rides a bicycle and talks on Gmail chat. Eat When You Feel Sad takes place in cars, houses, and apartments. Eat When You Feel Sad takes place in a school, a community center, and several Chinese restaurants. Eat When You Feel Sad is a selection of scenes from a life.

‘Eat When You Feel Sad will be found on a short shelf of short literary novels that includes Bret Easton Ellis’s Less than Zero and Tao Lin’s Eeeee Eee Eeee–where young people seek their own reflection, and face reality with humor and hope.’ — Melville House

Excerpt

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** CAUTIVOS, Hi. It was pretty much like any other day for me. I hope yours was fun. Oh, I didn’t get any gifts, but that’s fine. I like your idea of next year’s purpose obviously. Thank you. ** Marc Vallée, Hi, Marc. Good to see you! Love back from the blog and me to you. ** _Black_Acrylic, I hope your Xmas was a great pleasure. I heard something good about ‘Men’, and I forgot about it. I think it’s on my ‘free/illegal’ site, so I’ll try it. ** Mieze, Thank you so much for paying tribute to Joe. I hope your Xmas did everything you wanted it to. ** Derek McCormack, Very, very Merry Xmas a teensy late to you, great maestro! Love, me. ** l@rst, Hi, L. Yeah, his passing was a great shock. Everyone did a beautiful job of speaking about him and all of his wily ways, I think. Hope your Xmas did the trick majorly. ** David Ehrenstein, Festive! ** Tosh Berman, I hope if you did anything for that particular holiday what you did made the day qualify as a holiday. ** Sypha, I learned a lot too. I only met him twice, but I am certainly grateful to have had even those encounters. Thank you so much for what you wrote. ** Misanthrope, Love to you who masterminded the whole tribute, if I’m not mistaken. I hope your Xmas was both chill and a hug monster. ** jade, Happy day after Xmas. There are those who go the academia route and do great things, obviously, but, yeah, I am or was with you, and no regrets. I hope your family treated your dinner with them respectfully. Cool about the Kenji stuff. I don’t know, it seems it could be quite interesting to meet those people, no? I get social anxiety too, but I just try to smile a lot and not say something dumb. Oh, I mean, anybody can come in here, and please tell your friend that he’s very welcome, and I’m easy and friendly, and he has nothing to worry about. He sounds cool, I’d like to meet him. Really cool stuff on your playlist. I’ll see if I can get it to play. Thanks! Everyone, jade has made you and me and us a sonic Xmas gift. I’ll let jade explain: ‘merry christmas you guys! i made a psychotic little holiday playlist 🤍 i’d do this on spotify or whatever but i don’t have premium and they add random stuff to your songlist when you don’t pay them. anyway, the thing plays backwards from the last post to the first! please scroll to the end of the thread for the start.’ Happy post-Xmas! ** Jamie, Hi, J. Thank you. No, didn’t get to a movie. Zac and I did hit the Xmas fair, but it was so packed and the line was so long for the dark ride that we put it off for another day. And I met and had coffee with a young theater maker who recently adapted ‘I Wished’ into a theater piece, and that was really interesting. Did Xmas satisfy whatever request you had regarding its form? Ha ha, pissing with a hard-on, talented! Mesmerist with his eyes on your prize love, Dennis. ** World❤Princess, Hi. Thank you for the good words about Joe. Oh, no problem, just knowing you upped the ending is exciting enough. It doesn’t sound cringey at all, btw. Darger, huh, that’s interesting. I think I get it. My Xmas was easy-peasy and largely uneventful and totally fine. I hope yours was the epitome of an event. ** Bill, Yes, I read that Kim Ki-duk died. Sad loss, for sure. Hm, well, it has been five years since the Kim Ki-duk post, so maybe it would be okay to revive it. I’ll look into it. Good or at least tolerable Xmas? ** Dominik, Hi!!! My weekend was totally fine. Was yours? Ideally without many gerbeauds? Love making every food item in the world taste like a French fry at 2:38 pm CET today for exactly 15 seconds, G. ** Jack Dickson, Jack! You old scoundrel! It’s quite amazing to see you, pal. I can’t imagine you will answer my question, which is how are you and what are you doing, but I’ll put that out there symbolically if nothing else. Eternal love to you no matter what! ** malcolm, Hi, malcolm. Yeah, it’s a very sad thing. Thank you for your kindness. Did you have a weekend that would qualify as Xmas-y to the person who writes the definition of the word ‘Xmas’ in the encyclopedias? ** rigby, Hey, rigster! No, thank you, thank you! Everyone, Due the great limitations of what WordPress allows me to do in this space, Rigby’s tribute to Joe Mills this past weekend did not look like like it was meant to look. If you would like to see it as it was originally intended — and I recommend this — click here to see it in its full glory. I did my buche a few days ago, but Zac made me my favorite food (cold sesame noodle) as a Xmas gift, so I stuffed my face with that. New Zealand? You’re in New Zealand? Holy shit! It sure looks like it’s pretty down there in the movies. Love, me. ** Steve Erickson, Nice that you were living in conditions that aligned so precisely with the title of what you were reading. How often does that happen? ** Paul Curran, Belated Merry Xmas to you down therewhere I believe the wish for merriness is even more belated. Thanks for the good words. The DLs did a beautiful thing. Here comes the motherfucking future, Paul. Are you ready? ** Right. The book I’m spotlighting today is one of my favorite novels of the last decade or so. In fact, I really wanted to publish it with my old imprint Little House on the Bowery, but Melville House beat me out. I feel like the novel isn’t talked about or read nearly enough at the current moment in time, so I decided to do the blog’s tiny part in trying to change that. See you tomorrow.

 

Joseph (Joe) Mills was born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1958, where he would live for the rest of his life. He was the author of the novel Towards the End and the short story collection Obsessions. His short stories were published in a variety of anthologies, including The Picador Book of Contemporary Scottish Fiction, The Mammoth Book of Gay Short Stories, and New Writing Scotland 17. He was the editor of the anthology Borderline: The Mainstream Book of Scottish Gay Writing, which featured stories about gay life from luminaries such as Irvine Welsh and Alisdair Gray as well as many other up-and-coming and established Scottish writers (including our very own Jack Dickson). Joe also wrote the screenplay for Edie’s POV, a short film about Edie Sedgwick.

He worked as a librarian for Glasgow City Libraries where he enthusiastically promoted Culture, Leisure, and Homosexuality.

 

George Wines (Misanthrope): Okay, enough of that. I’m channeling Joe there in that first sentence. He would’ve said that he hated this attention but then would’ve talked about it glowingly for years and finally admitted that he was touched beyond belief. That’s how he was. Like, he and I would argue ad infinitum about politics and religion (he was an atheist and a socialist; I’m a Christian and a Libertarian—you can imagine how those convos went…), but then I’d get a short one-off message that read, “Georgie Boy, you know I love you more than you’ll ever know,” along with a link to a music video, usually:

(Joe loved posting his favorite songs and videos over and over. Just check out his Facebook page sometime.)

I first met Joe here on the blog in 2006. (Quick aside: I could wax poetic—or not—for ages about what this blog means to me and has meant to my life, but I won’t. However, I’ll say two things: I’ve met the best friends in my life here, and all the people here whom I’ve met offline have been exactly as they present themselves here.) My earliest memory of messaging with him in the Comments section is when he and David Ehrenstein were trying to educate me on the great gays of the past, everyone from Alexander the Great to Quentin Crisp and Gore Vidal (two of Joe’s favorite writers) to Andy Warhol (another Joe favorite).

I finally got to meet him in the flesh in 2007 at The Tramway in Glasgow, where Gisele’s and Dennis’ Kindertotenlieder was being performed. The UK blogsters all decided to go, and I was like, “Hmm, I think I know them well enough, so why not? And worse comes to worse, Dennis’ll be there….” So I booked a last-minute flight and was in Glasgow in a couple days.

My first encounter with him wasn’t very remarkable or anything, well, except for my thinking he roofied me, his making one of the loveliest people on the planet cry (“What? It was obvious I was joking—”), and the bite mark he left on my neck as we parted just outside The Tramway at the end of the evening.

Soon, we were emailing several times a week, a protocol that lasted until his last day. Tons of arguments about politics and many tons more agreements on so many other things. There were Skype calls mixed in too, though I had such a hard time understanding that thick brogue of his because of my shit hearing. (The last time we were all in London together, Joe said something I couldn’t understand, so I looked to Rigby, assuming that as a fellow Brit he’d know what Joe had said. Rigby just shrugged and said, “Fuck if I know, I can’t understand a word he says.”) And then there were the vacations in London. Four of them. First was in 2012 when I brought my niece along, and then in 2014, 2018, and 2019 (with my niece and nephew in tow).

During these trips, Joe would complain the whole fucking time. We walked too much. We walked too fast. We were late for this, too early for that. This was too expensive, that was an outrage! He’d check how much was on his Oyster card every time he got on the tube and every time he got off. He’d wait in line an hour and a half to get his £5 deposit back before he left to go back home. And then the week would be over and he’d be back in Glasgow and I’d be back in Maryland and I’d get an email saying, “That was the best time I’ve had in a long time. We need to do it again.” Huh?

Some funny Joe-in-London bits that’ll tell you so much about him:

He loved Princess Diana and just had to see the memorial in Hyde Park. He was wholly unimpressed. He just looked around and was like, “Hmm, this is it? That was a waste.”

And he didn’t believe that Kensington Palace was Kensington Palace. I approached the hostess on the ground floor there and said, “My Scottish friend here doesn’t think this is Kensington Palace.” She looked at him like he was crazy. “Of course, this is Kensington Palace. Why would you think it isn’t?” Joe looked around and said with a shrug, “A bit run down.” “It’s four hundred years old, sir.” “Fair enough.”

We stayed in the same hotel in 2018. On the way back one night, he stopped. “You don’t know where we’re going. You’ve got us lost.” “No, our hotel is right up there on the corner.” “No, it’s not. We need to get a cab. My feet are killing me. I can’t walk another step.” So we argued a bit more about this and then a cab came by. I hailed it. I gave the cabbie the address and he looked at me like I was nuts. I said, “My Scottish friend here is very tired and won’t go another step.” He looked at Joe and shrugged and told us to get in. Fifty meters—if it was even that far—and we’re in front of the hotel. I gave the guy five quid and we were out of the cab. Joe apologized. “Okay, I guess I was a bit rash.”

But it wasn’t all hijinks. We would do drag queen trivia night at the Retro Bar off The Strand when we were there. He loved that. It was his element. And he was very competitive and just torn to pieces when we’d lose. We did several museums, another favorite excursion of his. And we’d all spend the late nights together drinking and talking and watching movies. That was his favorite time.

Joe outside the Retro Bar in London 2014

Our last trip to London was in October 2019. Again, I got an email from him afterward saying he had the best time and wanted to do it again. (He also wanted to come to New York City and see all the Warhol sites and Woody Allen movie sites, but he was afraid our cops would kill him on first sight.) We all shared an Airbnb together for a week in London’s “Little Venice” section. Me, Joe, Rigby, Mieze, my niece, and my nephew. He loved that we were like a little family, dysfunctional as fuck but in a place full of love.

London, October 2019, L to R: Joe, my niece Kayla, Mieze, Rigby, me, my nephew David

I often say that it dishonors a person not to remember the bad stuff about them. I mean, they were so much more than just all the good memories. But there aren’t any bad things I can remember about Joe. Annoying things, yes. Irritating things, yes. But I know I annoyed and irritated the living fuck out of him, too. So that’s a wash. Thing is, simply put, he was a good man.

He stopped commenting regularly on the blog years ago, but he was always lurking and we’d talk about the posts in our email exchanges. He always made sure the Glasgow libraries acquired all the books the DLs (and Dennis) here got published. And he read them all too. He was really supportive of everyone here and wanted the best for everyone.

It’s so strange these days. Things happen throughout the day and my first instinct is, “Man, wait till Joe hears about this.” But he won’t. I check my last email on Facebook to him, hoping to see the little icon lit up showing he’s read it. But it’ll never light up. It’s incredible.

My hope is that he’s wrong and that we do go back to the stars or God or whatever and that he sees or feels all this and knows that he was deeply loved and that he mattered. At worst, his light will always shine because of the friends he loved and who loved him and who will remember him always. And Joe, as you used to always say to me, I now say to you (just as I used to), I love you more than you’ll ever know.

 

Mieze Zuber (Mizu): Joe and I had met through DC’s Weaklings blog, but we didn’t really bond until I came back to social media in 2015. He had a subtle dry humor and was a very solitary person, and somehow we just kind of meshed.

We finally met in 2018, when a group of us converged for a short time in London. He was 60 then.

When it was over, and we were both back home, that visit was all he could talk about. It had been his first trip out of Scotland for some time, and against his initial fretting, he’d really enjoyed those few days. He spoke of doing it again… London in 2019. Next time he would stay longer.

So the following autumn, there we all were again, this time in a beautiful AirBnb in Maida Vale. During our first night out I noticed he was shaky on his feet, having stumbled going up the underpass steps. I slowed down and stayed with him, as the others ambled on…. and it stayed that way through the rest of the visit. We’d unspokenly designated each other as walking companions, and he later joked that I was his caretaker.

We had some good times in that short week.

I remember being with him at the art museum, looking at the Nan Goldin exhibit and listening to the Velvet Underground piped through the sound system of a film viewing room. He stood at the entrance, his head swaying slightly to I‘ll be Your Mirror and Sunday Morning.

There was his intricate and massive undertaking of his roasted potatoes recipe. In the kitchen for what seemed like hours, carefully preparing everything and constantly checking the oven. Those potatoes were good, very good. He was quite proud of having fed us.

And the time at the sweetshop that Kayla spotted near Soho…. Joe’s eyes lit up at the sight of it, so we all went in and he scrutinized the shelves like the librarian he was, until he found some expensive wax-wrapped candies from his youth.

Joe and George’s niece Kayla in London 2019

Back out on the pavement to wait for the rest to finish up he dug into the bag and took out two and handed me one. It was raspberry-flavored dark chocolate; I could smell the heavy scent of it through the flowery wrapper.

Oh, thanks, Joe! That’s kind of you.
He had this little twinkle in his eye as he nodded his head and popped his in his mouth.
Oh, he said. That’s fantastic. I haven’t had one of these in years. Isn’t it good?

And it was.

So there we stood, rolling fancy sweets around on our tongues as they slowly dissolved, smiling at each other. It was sort of like a moment between little kids, when one shares something of theirs held dear with another and between them it creates a kind of sympatico.

Joe in London 2019

————————————————————————————-

The waiting was the worst.

I’d asked the local police for a wellness check on Joe, but I was afraid the request might have gotten lost amid all the other calls Glasgow Police Central deal with. The afternoon bled into the evening, and as night came on, I felt that I already knew what they were going to tell me… that he was not sleeping off a bender at home, nor had some emergency taken him to the hospital.

He’s gone, I told myself. And then pushed the thought away, but it came right back.

Fears almost in check and waiting nearly 24 hours before phoning again, holding on the line for what seemed like forever.

Finally an officer picked up and confirmed it. I‘m truly sorry that this news we have for you, he said. It almost sounded like he meant it.

I heard myself asking if they knew who‘d claimed his body, asked for confirmation that he’d been claimed and buried, asked if there was anything else they could tell me.

There was nothing. I thanked him, and my voice broke.

————————————————————————————–

I went through an illness and recovery this year that left me feeling down and out. There was a moment before I fully pulled out of it in which I was in the garden, smoking a cigarette and trying to focus on the next months, when I was suddenly surrounded by a flock of swallows. They came out of nowhere seemingly and overtook everything. The sky was full of them and they dipped so close I could have touched one if I’d dared. It was a complete anomaly. I had never seen anything like it before.

I’d been writing to Joe every week, regardless of how either of us felt, and so I wrote to him about it. And as it turned out, this was my final email exchange with him:

…Another odd thing from yesterday afternoon, right before Rigby phoned: I was back home and went out into the garden for a cigarette, and there was a flock of swallows all over; the sky was thick with them. I‘d never seen anything like it. Crows, yes. Blackbirds, yes. Never swallows. One flew past so low and close it was no more than maybe a meter from my head. It was… something. After they‘d dissipated 20 or so minutes later, I got curious and looked up the symbolism of a swallow. And it said, “souls of the dead, bringing good luck and happiness”.

Well. Wishing it for you, for me, for us all. Let’s see what the next month brings, yeah?

And this was his reply to me:

I’ve had something like that recently!
We’ve had loads of noisy birds and one of them seemed to be aimed straight at me. I hate birds. I don’t want my eyes pecked out. They are almost as human-less as insects.
“Souls of the dead bringing good luck and happiness”.
I’ll go for that!
We are all atoms and atoms can’t be destroyed.
Maybe someone will work out a way to bring all our atoms back together.

Strangely fitting. His last words are comforting—very much like Joe in-person, really. And so until the day when our atoms might be brought back together, Joe, I’ll be missing you. I still can’t quite wrap my head around the idea that my Scottish librarian is no longer here.

 

Jack Dickson (Jax): I first met Joe back in the early 2000s, when he very kindly asked me to contribute to Borderline, an anthology of gay Scottish short stories he was curating for Mainstream, a small now defunct Scottish publisher—although we didn’t literally “meet” until a year later. See, Joe’s day job was a librarian—in our local library, as it turns out (we lived just down the road from each other). We both had the same publisher at that point—the wonderful Millivers Books in Brighton—but small gay presses were increasingly becoming squeezed out by the big boys and as I was moving sideways into screenwriting, I recommended to Joe that he submit something for commissioning…and blow us BOTH down, did his 15 min screenplay about Edie Sedgwick not get made by the late-lamented Scottish Screen “Tartan Shorts” strand with a premiere at the Edinburgh International Festival?! The Big Day arrived, we got the train through from Glasgow: Joe was nervous, excited (if you ever met Joe, you’ll know that was a potent combination) and slugging extravagantly from a litre bottle of water…and becoming more relaxed by the minute. By the time the film screened he was totally on cloud nine (it WAS a great wee film but seems to have disappeared without trace) not to mention the life and soul of the afterparty…and I had to practically carry him back to the station for the last train home then pour him into a taxi at the other end. Yes, it wasn’t water in that Evian bottle. And, to be honest, I was a bit pissed off (…unlike Joe, who was just pissed) by the secret drinking: if I’d known, I could’ve joined in. But no: this was Joe’s thing. His secret. To my shame, I never really forgave him for getting legless at that event and we kinda drifted apart after that. He was a fine writer with an acid sense of humour. He was also kinda hard work, if I’m being honest. We both continued to live just round the road from each other, in the East End of Glasgow. I can’t believe we never bumped into each other over the ensuing decades but we never did. Joe once told me his favourite part of the week was when he finished work and could go back to his flat, lock the door and shut out the world. I’m sad and a bit guilty that he continued to do that—but I know the world came to Joe via his many MANY online friends from this Blog who made him feel part of a life he wanted to live. The first time he met you all at Dennis’s Kindertotenleider—after the tough Glasgow driver whose bus we took to Tramway, totally smitten by Wolf’s gorgeousness, stopped his bus, got off in order, ostensibly, to point out where to go to us but really to get to spend a few more moments with Wolf, Joe whispered to me “I feel so fat and so bald”: I laughed to encourage him to laugh with me. But he didn’t. I DO know, however, that he loved his time with the friends he met here and felt more at home with you than anywhere else. I hate that he died the way he did and we know so little about what happened in September. Maybe that’s signature Joe, though: always with the secrets. Maybe he’s watching now, from some alternative Dark Matter universe, cringing and rolling his eyes at all the cool things some super cool people are saying about him. But secretly pleased.

 

James Champagne (Sypha): I met Joe through Dennis Cooper’s blog around 2006, and we quickly became friends, perhaps because we both had a lot in common: both of us were lapsed Catholics, we both had an obsession with anything related to Andy Warhol (in fact, we even both considered Edie Sedgwick our favorite Warhol Superstar, though he had refined adoring Edie into an art form), and we were both writers. We also shared an interest in music in some ways. He was really into groups like ABBA, The Velvet Underground/Lou Reed, David Bowie, Chic, Liza Minnelli, the Beatles, Kate Bush, The Smiths/Morrissey, and so on, but he also liked newer stuff (for the time) as well, like Amy Winehouse (who he really adored, to the extent that I can’t hear any of her songs on the radio without instantly thinking of him) and Lady Gaga (he especially liked her song/video for “Judas,” along with the Barry Harris mash-up of Lady Gaga’s “Alejandro” and Madonna’s “Holiday,” the latter of which he was always linking me too, as he knew how much of an obsessive Lady Gaga fan I am). He didn’t publish all that much but was a damn fine writer: I highly recommend both his books, and wish he had done more! I know he had an unpublished novel or two lying around (one of which was a sci-fi novel), but for whatever reason he seemed to lose interest in being published as the years went by. In 2006 he also wrote a short film, EDIE’S P.O.V., though I’ve never seen it.

A lifelong Glasgow native, I sadly never had the honor of meeting Joe in real life, though we did Skype a number of times at one point around a decade ago (and was always charmed by his accent), and always kept in contact via e-mail and Facebook messaging (though past 2014 we pretty much exclusively communicated via Facebook). Talking with him was always fun, and our conversations covered a whole range of topics, from religion to politics to pop music to comic books to Audrey Hepburn movies to the haunted dog suicide bridge in West Dunbartonshire, Scotland. He was a very loyal reader to me, always buying/reading my books as they came out and getting back to me to tell me what he thought about them, and he made sure that the library he worked at would get a copy of them as well (he was also nice enough to write a blurb for my first short story collection Grimoire). He was also one of the only people in this world who read my unpublished Trinity fantasy trilogy. I mentioned/thanked him in the acknowledgment sections of most of my books, and even gave him a shout-out in my novel Harlem Smoke, where one of the characters spots graffiti on the wall that reads “Scottish Joe hearts Bowie.” Sometimes he would check out things that I recommended to him (I once lent him all 7 copies of Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles comic book), and I myself would pay attention when he recommended things to me, books like Quentin Crisp’s The Naked Civil Servant and Alasdair Gray’s Poor Things, or films like Roman Holiday.

Sadly, a few years ago he began to isolate himself more and more and post less frequently on social media, and our correspondence around 2018 became very erratic/sporadic, bursts of long messages (usually around the holidays) followed by months of silence: my last DM to him on Facebook was late December 2021 (when he thanked me for the Christmas card I sent him, and we briefly talked about Anne Rice’s recent death: he was an admirer of her work, especially her novel The Queen of the Damned). Our last Facebook interaction was February of this year, when he posted the Lady Gaga “Judas” video and I suggested he check out her more recent album Chromatica. This seemed eerily characteristic… I know he had been drinking a lot this year (well, more so than usual), and had spent some time in rehab/a psych ward (when I found out about this, I joked to a friend, “I didn’t think it even WAS possible for a Scotsman to become an alcoholic!”), so I guess things got pretty rough for him by the end. I hate the idea of him dying alone, but he will always be remembered by his friends, and perhaps will hopefully live on through future generations of readers… well, one can only wish! I just hope he’s finally getting the chance to meet most of his heroes and heroines in the afterlife.

requiescat in pace

P.S. Another thing that endeared Joe to me was he was one of my only friends to send me holiday greetings cards, several of which I’ve posted below. The very last photo is the last card I sent him, in December of last year, in which I did my own illustration of the cover of his novel Towards the End (a cover, it must be said, that Joe wasn’t crazy about: as he once wrote to me, “…who’s going to look at that drab dreary picture and think ‘Oh this will be great!’”)

 

Ben Robinson (Black Acrylic): The summer of 2019 feels like the dingy memories of a lifetime ago, before any worldwide pandemics or innumerable UK Prime Ministers being foisted upon the hapless Scottish electorate. In this distant world as it used to be, Permanent Green Light was a film by Dennis Cooper and Zac Farley and it was scheduled to be shown at the Andrew Stewart Cinema, part of the University of Glasgow, with the filmmakers taking part in a Q&A after the performance. My dad Pete and I had travelled by train from Dundee to be there at this screening, with him having no idea what to expect from the event.

The Andrew Stewart Cinema is a curious, uniquely charismatic building and we each took our seats ready for the show to begin. Various DC fans could be spotted by me throughout the room, their social media profile images each triggering a synaptic response from myself in that faint half-light. Sat on the row behind us, a broad Glaswegian-accented figure seemed to clock who I was, and I somehow instinctively recognised this person as being Joe Mills, familiar from however many Facebook discussions we’d had about Hi NRG Disco records over the years. He was however a stranger to me at that moment as I’d never before seen Joe’s face used on any of his online accounts; it didn’t take long before we fell into familiar chat about our mutual obsessions, be they books, films or Pop music from decades gone by. My dad was instantly engaged in our chat and despite his own preference for esoteric Jazz, he was always keen to take part in spontaneous discussions of this kind. Dad and Joe hit it off as if they were longtime best friends and I was most happy to have made their introduction.

As the lights dimmed, we settled down to watch the film, which was of course brilliant. In the days afterwards we’d converse via Facebook on our mutual love of this experience, and Joe and I would go on to share the YouTube clips of our favourite songs. A world without Joe or my dad is difficult for me to understand and their meeting that night in Glasgow is precious, seeming as if it were a lifetime ago.

 

Rigby (Rigby):

Joe aged 3 (he loved cats really)

Rare photo of Joe i snapped in Camden

Just a few of Joesph’s loves.. an avid frequenter of gigs from an early age seeing all the great punk bands both english and american he had a varied taste in music (i even dragged him to a Consumer Electronics gig once).
Although he gained a degree from Glasgow University in literary theory he didn’t much care for it.. describing it as “a circle jerk of sycophants”. So he went on to have his work published outside of that system.. which i greatly admired.

As a friend.. with his unflustered gentle lilt of a glaswegian accent he was lovely and funny to be around.. & very calming. we had some great times both in london & his home town where i’d turn up at his door mudded from an extended hike around the highlands & he’d usher me to the shower before we’d get down to drinking and putting the world to rights.

Here’s his description of the last time a bunch of us got together in that london:

Great week in London. An Air B’n’B place to stay that was near perfect.
Me, George, Mieze, Rigby and the “Mini Wineses” as Rigby labelled them – (Kayla and David).
Got off to a great start. On other visits there was always some mix-up at the start.
I expected them to be waiting for me at the train terminal but they were waiting outside.
Much confusion ensued. Far more confusion than necessary to be honest if we were all or any of us capable adults.

This time George was right there at the terminal. Great. A first! But then we lost each other 10 minutes later.
I got off the tube, turned around and he was gone. This became the Theme of the thing.
Everybody losing each other. I blame Rigby and George!
They walk too fast. They stride out in front with nary a look back at the rest of us.
(Mieze was my carer! She made a point of keeping track of me – awesome adorable support I couldn’t have done without – in many ways).
They even managed to lose the Mini Wineses – 18 and 24 – who ended up crossing London Bridge in confusion.
Have to add – they came running up behind us not much later.
David: “Oi mate why did you abandon us!”
Me to Mieze: “How did they get here so soon?”
Mieze: “Youth”.

I was always moaning about the endless walking. With good reason!
I’ve had a congenital heart condition – Scimitar Syndrome since – uh, birth.
And I know that’s tautology.
Plus a lung in half.
At one point I heard Rigby saying (thinking I couldn’t hear)
“We could WALK to Camden Market – but we’d never hear the end of it”

So we did Camden, which was great – shrines to amazing Amy Winehouse all over.
And The Tate Gallery. OK, but no Warhol that I could find. Though there were films with lots of Velvets stuff.
Then the 70s/80s gay bar ‘Retro’ for the pub quiz – which Rigby/Kayla/David’s team lost by a half point!
He got 17 and a half. But George and Mieze and myselfs team got 16 so not far behind.
(You get really caught up in these things).
Also George did this amazing drawing. It should have won.
The theme was Climate Change, which they went on about a bit too much for me.
I mean it was a pub quiz.
Outside there were all the protests and drum stuff – which we loved.
David: “I want to go over there!”

Met Sailor, who was amazing, like you’ve met in a previous life. Then Gisele’s “Crowd”…
At one point I was thrown off the bus because my Oyster Card didn’t have enough credit.
It was very late. George was brilliant. Jumped up and came off the bus with me at great inconvenience.
Of course we got lost and ended up getting a taxi two minutes from our destination.
Just like last year. Still, He’s my (Super) Hero.
Which reminds me! Kayla got us all hooked on The Boys – a superhero TV series about … oh don’t ask!
But it’s worth checking out.
David for some reason (stoned out of his head/headphones) decided to get on the tube going in the opposite direction to our target. Lost lost lost. Kayla rescued him.
The Wineses are real natural Rescuers – doing it unselfishly because it’s the right thing to do.
Maybe there is something to a Christian upbringing.

Best bit: me, George, Rigby, late night, red red wine, watching “Handsome Devil” on the huge TV screen, commenting.

I’ll miss him greatly

 

Joe Mills’ Works

Joseph Mill’s first novel—the story of Paul Robinson from his final days at school in a small Lanarkshire town through his first job in a bank, to his attempts to find companionship in the Glaswegian gay scene.

Order here.

 

A collection of strikingly original short stories which sharply observe aspects of gay life and the many obsessions which fuel it. Written with a wry wit and a nice sense of both the off-beat and the erotic. A new edition of a book with a proven track record.

Order here.

 

The recent renaissance in Scottish fiction, throughout the ’90s, was accompanied by an equally prolific rise in the profile of Scottish gay writing. Not only has there been a growth in new and exciting Scottish authors being published by gay publishers -Martin Foreman, Graeme Wollaston, Jack Dickson and Sebastian Beaumont, to name a few – but for the first time Scottish gay writers, freed from the shackles of machismo and chauvinism, are exposing readers to an entirely different aspect of Scottish life through more recognized channels and publishing companies. At the same time, the diversity of Scottish cultural experience has been celebrated in the work of the new, younger generation of – predominantly heterosexual – Scottish writers. From Irvine Welsh’s depiction of a young man’s chances of scoring in a gay disco versus a straight one, to a Janice Galloway character’s anxieties over a bisexual boyfriend, and to Gordon Legge’s portrayal of a young gay boy’s homosexuality, post-Boy George/Bronski Beat, amid an oppressive heterosexual environment, the continued attempts by these writers to redress the balance of cultural representation away from stereo types of hard-men and down-trodden women has done much to highlight the value, rather than negativity of, difference. This anthology also includes material from Scotland’s more established writers – quite often with unexpected results. The older writers here are equally determined to present a different view of Scottish life, in all its diversity: Edwin Morgan writes of a searing, brief encounter on a bus; Toni Davidson describes a similar event on a train; Alisdair Gray’s lesbian S&M fantasy “Something Leather” is a wonderfully celebratory piece of writing. As this collection shows, through a range of voices and experiences, there is no definitive outlook for any author/gender/sexuality/race these days – just one massive melting-pot called Scotland.

Order here.

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. Joe Mills was a distinguished local, commenter, contributor and large presence on this blog for many years. His recent death was a great shock and loss to many of us who live part-time in this space. Several longtime members of the DC’s community put together this tribute to Joe to remember him, and, in many cases, I imagine, to introduce him to readers of the blog’s current incarnation. I hope you’ll spend some time with the tribute and get to know Joe a little this Xmas weekend. Thank you all very much. ** CAUTIVOS, Thanks, pal. The format of this blog seems to allow me to imbed as many images and videos as I want, and I do sometimes feel bad for people with slow computers. Also, I think this blog is probably a big headache to look at on phones, and yet I continue to do it this way. I hope you have some kind of magnificent Xmas this weekend. ** Dominik, Hi!!! It was quite delicious, and my friends are, indeed, cool, sweet folks. Yeah, I can only assume that RM must’ve had some thoughts of note about his birthday’s proximity to JC’s, right? Ha ha, your love of yesterday was awesome, like a little experimental novel-ette. Love letting this cool looking young, street rat-style skateboarder I saw on the metro yesterday win some contest that he was telling his skateboarder friends that he desperately wants to win, G. ** Charalampos Tzanakis, Hi. Kevin’s poem is great, yeah, I agree. I just don’t have it in me to join another social media site, so Instagram should open itself up and allow visitors to look at it.  That would be a nice Xmas spirit gesture on their part. Mm, no, I don’t think I’ve seen ‘Lifespan’. I’ll look for it. Movie set in Amsterdam … huh, I can’t think of one that has stuck in my memory. That’s strange. I’ll have to think. I lived there for 2 1/2 years, so I know the place pretty well. A related post … interesting idea. I’ll give it some thought. Thanks. ** Ian, Hi, Ian. Buche was yum, yes, thanks. And we’ve been in touch via email, and all is set and great. I hope you have really good days-off/Xmas! ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, B. ‘Scrubbers’ isn’t her best, but it’s worth watching, for sure. Criterion put out three of her best films on DVD recently, and maybe they’re on the Criterion Channel? Oh, my God, a UK Xmas disaster fair! It’s been ages. How exciting. Thank you, I’ll be scouring that. Everyone, thanks to _Black_Acrylic, you can read about the latest in a long storied history of ripoff Xmas fairs/attractions in the UK aka ‘Mother stunned after paying £47 for two bags of sweets at Winter Wonderland’ here. Merry Xmas, buddy. ** David Ehrenstein, Was she? How curious! ** jade, Hey, jade. Ah, soon those papers will be finished, turned in, have done their jobs, and you will not even remember having applied your brain cells to their composition. Big heads can help as long as they don’t get, like, gigantic. Oh, yes, I’ve had pieces of Mire Lee’s work in a couple of my thematic posts, but I haven’t investigated her work in any kind of thorough way though. I will, starting with the interview. Seems like a good Xmas activity. Thanks a lot! Do you have any big or even little Xmas plans? (I don’t.) I hope the weekend inspires you somehow. Love, me. ** Steve Erickson, Yes, makes sense, right? I.e., JW <3 NG. ‘The Girls’ is really nice. I didn’t know there was a new McLaren bio. Huh. Well, those first couple of records he put out in the 80s or whenever it was had a lot of cultural cache, at least in the circles I ran in. They don’t hold up very well, though. I guess seeing ‘Avatar’ on Xmas makes seeing ‘Avatar’ at all make sense somehow. And how was it? ** Jamie, … and a bottle of rum, Jamie. The RT money stuff has to get sorted out. There’s no other option. It’s just a matter of how much suffering Zac and I will be forced to deal with as a result. No, I have tentative plans on Xmas to see a film and walk around and go to the Xmas fair in the Tuileries, and that’s pretty much it. I love that Tricky song. I don’t know why. It melts me. There’s no way my weekend could ever be as exciting as that bridge. Thank you for the ambition, though. You sound like you have a whole of Xmas ahead of your or already happening. May your Xmas be as exciting as Russell Mael’s sharp intake of breath about 3/4 of the way through the Sparks song ‘Happy Hunting Ground’. Manneken Pis tinkle love, Dennis ** Jeff J, Ditto, man, on the greatness. I think ‘Night Games’ is probably my favorite. There’s a link to it in the post. ‘Dr. Glas’ and ‘The Girls’ are really good. Thanks for the link. I’ve been meaning to read you guys’ conversation. Done imminently. Everyone, Here’s a link a conversation between Jeff Jackson and fellow amazing writer Meghan Lamb about ‘ performance, putting lyrics into other people’s mouths, using your body for musical translations, etc.’. Enjoy! Merry Xmas, Jeff. ** Okay. Have a thoughtful and melancholy Xmas here on the blog and a joyous and madcap Xmas when you’re everywhere else. See you on Monday.