Interview: Henry Baum

"I'm not a hippie, I'm not really a beatnik, I'm not even a punk rocker."



An A to Z.

"I never sowed my oats, do you hear? I married young. I thought it was a mature and literary thing to do. It would make me a man. And if I got divorced, it would also be a literary thing to do. I'd be another Mailer. But—cruel joke—I don't want to get divorced. I have failed a lot in my life but I don't want to make a legal document of my failure."
[Gentleman Reptile]

A for American Book
What is The American Book of The Dead?
It's the next novel I want to write. A couple years ago I got obsessed with UFOs, speculative physics, secret societies, and the like. All that's going into the novel. I posted some of it as a blog but stopped because I wasn't ready. I've put it on hold for a while because I've been working on stories, releasing North of Sunset and other things. It's going to take a lot of time which I don't exactly have right now. The story that was recently published, Gentleman Reptile, is part of the first chapter of that novel.

B for Bukowski
Bukowski was a fine chronicler of L.A.. How do you rate Bukowski and his legacy?
I would put him with the top ten best American writers. There's a reason most young writers read him, and it's not just because he writes about being drunk. Take away the subject and his sentences are still good. He's not just a novelty as some people consider him. A lot of writers are read young: Henry Miller, Kerouac, Hunter Thompson. They're also in the top ten.



C for Cloverfield
Tell us about Cloverfield Press (publishers of Gentleman Reptile). How did you hook up with them, and how's it going?
One of the editors, Matthew Greenfield, went to high school with my brother. I was in the middle of sending out Gentleman Reptile to lit mags and I got a random email from Laurence Dumortier, the other editor. They're a husband and wife team. Gentleman Reptile was rejected everywhere else and accepted by Cloverfield. Proof that there's something serendipitous about getting published and it's very helpful if it's in the family. I could be bitter because I've been rejected by so many places for not being close enough to the publishers, but the book looks so damn good. They treat short stories like they're novels.

D for decades
The epigraph you use for North of Sunset is by F. Scott Fitzgerald, who epitomised the Twenties. Michael Sennet, one of the main protagonists in NoS, yearns for the Forties - "Old Hollywood style that reminded him of the better past. The forties, that should have been his time." When's your time?
One person told me: the 30s, the Great Depression. But he was being funny, sort of. I'm not a hippie, I'm not really a beatnik, I'm not even a punk rocker. My decade hasn't happened yet. I'd like to go back to the eighties and see all the SST bands up close, but then I'd be living in the Reagan eighties. Same goes for the fifties: see Coltrane in the flesh but you'd be living in the fifties. Maybe the decade after 2012, if the Mayans are right. Or whatever decade I'm successful.

"Every book that's made into a movie lasts longer than a book that remains on the shelves. Movies make a book legitimate. More people go to the moives than read. Movies have mass appeal."
[North of Sunset]

E for entertainment
Is there an adaptation of a book-to-movie you like? And would you like to see North of Sunset filmed?
I would really like to see North of Sunset filmed. Probably won't happen because Hollywood generally doesn't like making movies about Hollywood. Blade Runner works. Actually I like the movie more than the book. Not my favorite PK Dick novel. What else? Fast Times at Ridgemont High. It was a book first. Short Cuts is great too.

F for film
I believe there's a short film of The Golden Calf. Could you tell me about that?
Matthew Greenfield, of Cloverfield Press, is also an indie film producer. He produced the movie The Good Girl. Ruben Fleischer was the assistant director on that movie. He liked my adaptation of the book and got into a director's lab program. He put a really great cast together. The mom was played by the woman from John Cassavetes' Shadows, one of my favorite movies. Ray was played by Kevin Corrigan. Also really cool. The scenes were nothing like I pictured. I would say that every single word was off. But I don't care whatsoever, movies are a different animal. Recently, another first-time director's gotten interested in the book. See what happens there.

G for gout
You mention on your blog that you've dabbled with drugs over the years, but gout? How fucking decadent is that? Explain yourself, sir.
Either decadent or the problem of a 19th century beggar. People make fun of me because I'm such a young old man. I lived in Paris for a year and all of a sudden I was drinking more wine than I've ever drunk in my life. I've got slightly fucked-up kidneys resulting from a horrible fever I had in my twenties—so hot that it sort of cooked my kidneys. Great. So I always feel sort of physically toxic. One night I woke up in Paris with the worst pain imaginable in my big toe. Like a knife being gouged into my toe over and over again. I limped my way to the doctor and I got a diagnosis. I've had it once a year or so since then. Honestly, I think my brain wills this stuff on myself so I can have an excuse not to leave my room.

"What's another word for boring? Pointless. It got pointless. L.A. was the easiest place in the world to get fucked if your face was recognizable. Maybe it was the easiest place to get fucked even if you weren't famous."
[North of Sunset]

H for Hollywood
You're Hollywood Kid credentials are impressive—school with Jack Black, pet-named by Jodie Foster, peed on Robbie Robertson's bed. Yet, despite your folks working in the industry, you've avoided the 'walk-of-fame abyss', the 'proud Hollywood smile', the 'fortune-paid' hypocrisy. A deliberate choice on your part, I'd presume. Would you ever be tempted to go down that route?
I've avoided it? I guess I have because I'm broke. But the fact that I just went to Jack Black's wedding party probably makes me sound like a Hollywood schmuck. I would go down that route in a second. Why, because you can make $50-100,000 or more overnight. I've got a kid, we need money. Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Fante did it, I would too. I don't hate Hollywood movies. I love movies. The church of celebrity is another matter.

"The whole world was collapsing with misplaced devotion."
[The Golden Calf]

I for Influences
Jim Thompson was an influence on Oscar Caliber Gun, as was Charles Bukowski and Paul Schrader (there's more than a bit of Travis Bickle in Ray, though Ray's a lot more sympathetic and OCG has more humour). What were the influences for North of Sunset and is there a living author you rate highly?
Thanks for the humor comment. Some people don't get the humor in OCG or North of Sunset. I mean, North of Sunset is about the Vanity Plate Killer. He kills people with vanity plates. That's ridiculous.

The influences for North of Sunset are not far off from OCG, though the writing is different—third person rather than hard-boiled first person. I see North of Sunset as more like Bonfire of the Vanities but darker and more fucked up than Tom Wolfe would ever be. The Player is in there too, but I wouldn't say that's a book that's informed my life.

I wish there were more living authors that I loved unconditionally. I think I am too jealous. I need a book to age ten years so I'm not reading it feeling shitty about someone's success. I've recently been reading Dan Fante, Tony O'Neill, Mark SaFranko and liking it. Generally, I am out of the loop and/or new writing doesn't impress me very much. A lot of new writing reads like a magazine article, you can't tell one from another. For a long while, Harry Crews was my god.

J for job
Ray (The Golden Calf) has his fair share of crummy jobs. What's the worst job you've ever had?
I worked for a horrible redneck in North Carolina at a magazine for Industrial Construction workers. The boss did so much cocaine that he had to snort periodically, like every ten minutes—to keep the snot from dripping out of his nose. He was beastlike. Prostitutes came to his office and left glassy-eyed, rubbing their noses. While his wife looked on, working alongside him. She had this horrible scar going from her mouth to her ear. I have no doubt it came from when he hit her. He told me the editor before me was fired for dealing drugs and surfing internet porn. After I was mercifully fired, the editor said it was all lies—that the redneck boss himself was dealing drugs and surfing porn. A demon of a man. I was glad to get the hell out of there.

K for Kinko's
Oscar Caliber Gun was the first colour novel printed by Soft Skull. How did that feel, and was it a lot of pressure to be published so young?
Soft Skull was still figuring it all out when my book was released so it got sort of lost in the shuffle. In some way, they learned what not to do with my book. I can't say there was a lot of pressure because it's not like my book was in every bookstore window in America. Which might have been exactly right for where I was as a writer/person. Still though, just having a printed book made me feel like a functioning writer. I had a book to show people, which was enough. The book was the catalyst to write more. I wasn't just some guy who liked to believe he was a writer, I was an actual writer. That was as good a sensation as getting published on a major press.

"L.A. was a warzone full of riots, fires, mudslides, a Biblical amount of tragedy. And every kind of foreigner in the melting pot. L.A. was like hell in America, all the way south and west. And then there was Hollywood. The pumping heart of the City of Angels. Celebrity was an ethnic group in itself, a dangerous minority."
[North of Sunset]

L for Los Angeles
Philip K. Dick, of whom you're a fan, lived and chronicled LA. He once said: "Loneliness is a particular problem in Southern California because of the high social mobility. People change jobs or are moved in their jobs, sometimes every year. Friendships are made and unmade instantly. In fact some people already find it easier to establish a relationship with a stranger than with someone they know." Hailing from New York, have you found that yourself?
Jesus, yes. It's been really hard for my wife and I moving back to L.A. We've been here for two years and haven't really made a home here yet. We have a three-year-old daughter so much of our time is spent in L.A. parks and kid things. Aside from what PK Dick's saying, the vibe is very, weirdly competitive among parents. We've also been close to broke most of the time so we can't afford to go out. We think of moving a lot. Honestly, I don't know if it's easier to befriend a stranger, it's not easy to befriend anybody. But maybe that's us. We're both antisocial people.



M for music
It comes across from reading your blog that you're sometimes torn between being a writer and a musician. For you, how do the two disciplines differ?
I usually trade off between writing fiction or music as the mood strikes. Normally, when I'm really in the thick of writing fiction, songwriting ideas come to me more easily. My main problem is writing lyrics. I don't like it. I write the music and melodies and get stuck writing lyrics. Too confining maybe. I've got a lot of half-finished songs where lyrics still need to be written.

I probably would have been a much more prolific writer if I didn't also write songs, and vice versa. I've also spent a lot of time playing drums or bass in people's bands. Sometimes I think it might be better to put all my energy into one thing, but then there aren't too many songwriting novelists. For a while, I felt like I was a fiction writer who happened to write songs. I've compiled enough songs and care about them enough that songwriting's become more important to me.

"Writing was a form of therapy and method acting."
[Gentleman Reptile]

N for North of Sunset
North of Sunset was written from the perspective of five different characters, and you capture their voices well. Did you find that difficult?
Thanks for that. I wasn't sure there was all that much difference in the voices, all coming from the same writer. It sort of made it easier in a way. When I wrote my novel God's Wife I was inside the head of a female porn star/prostitute/religious cult member. It wasn't so easy to be inside that head for the three years it took to write the book. With North of Sunset I never got locked to one character. Less exhausting that way, less imposing because I could just move on to another character.




O for Oscar Caliber Gun
OCG is a scathing attack on the phoniness of Hollywood machine, one of the symptoms being a peculiar type of fandom. John Lennon had Mark Chapman, and Tim Griffith has Ray Tompkins. Have you had any negative reactions from fans of the actor on whom Tim was based?
Most of the bad reaction I've had is: "What's the big deal? He's only a movie star." I don't buy that. Hollywood is a religion. People believe in pop-culture the way others believe in church. Millions upon millions of people go to the movies. It has a major impact on society and life. People hate America for our militant imperialism and our cultural imperialism. So that's my answer to those people.

I doubt too many rabid fans of Tom Cruise will have time for a novel like OCG, so I have yet to be called out for it. The first draft of OCG was actually about a stalker going after Tom Cruise. When Ray watches a movie, it's Top Gun or Risky Business. People recommended I change it for legal and even ethical reasons. Tim Griffith is almost Tom Cruise but not exactly. It's probably better for it to be a fictional character, so Tim Griffith can represent general celebrity, rather than one specific movie star.

"Sex could ruin a person. People liked sex because they liked to be ruined. For a half hour or whatever it took, they'd commit suicide, vacant, sweaty, and masochistic."
[The Golden Calf]

P for porn
Aside for writing for Hustler, Henry Baum is Shirley Shave. The response to her was positive (a story published in Best Sex Writing 2005) and Shirley's blog had a following. Was it the whole Frey/LeRoy thing that made you come clean?
I'll admit I've never read Frey or LeRoy. The Frey controversy kind of made the Shirley Shave project look more unseemly than it was. I "came out" about Shirley Shave because the blog had been dormant for a year and it was time. The blog is part one of my novel God's Wife. I didn't want to continue posting from the book so I revealed it because I finally wanted to get some credit for this thing I'd done.

People did get really attached to her and some might be upset that they were getting attached to someone they thought was female. There were a lot of comments and discussions after posts that were cool regardless of her being real or not. Maybe I'm a lying prick, I don't know. It was fun to post the book. The blog was just an experiment. I was sick of not getting published. The novel was written in the first person. The first part is a sort of a non-fictional account of the porn industry. It was sex-based so I thought it might have a better chance of getting some attention online. The blog got a lot more readers than I ever thought possible. Someone called it a form of performance art.

"There was art in entertainment. He was an artist, damnit. He was."
[North of Sunset]

Q for questioning writing and crossing genres
In one of your posts on Ash Tree in 2004, you said: "I still don't know where I fit in as a writer. I'm not a "New Yorker" writer where the writing itself reads like a book review. I'm not an academic writer because I can't willfully quote Homer or Keats. I'm not a mainstream writer because I can't write that way, but not that I don't need to. I can't be an underground cult hero like Burroughs because my life isn't interesting enough, and I'm too solitary to belong to a generation. I'm not a genre writer...The most important one: I am not a literary writer, which is a genre in itself. I am just not wordy enough." Have you changed your assessment of your writing, and if so, where do you see yourself now?
The same, I think. I wrote that entry before I decided to self-publish my novel. I'm basically in the same place. I'm still not convinced my novel's going to be taken seriously. If I've changed anything, it's my conception of what it means to be successful. I used to live by the delusion that I would hit it big at some point, like Brett Easton Ellis. Maybe every young writer does this, it keeps you going. Now I'm looking to get stories published here/there. I don't really expect to be all that successful, which is probably a good thing. It gets me writing rather than waiting around to be discovered and lamenting the poor state of publishing.

R for reading
The director in North of Sunset says: "Often I think it's better to watch or read something that's shitty and needs improving than something that can't be perfected. Teaches you how to rewrite rather than steal, which is just as important." Any guilty reading pleasures you'd like to share?
I really liked the Da Vinci Code. I think the subject's interesting. I've been reading a lot of people attacking it lately. Sometimes certain ideas need to be assimilated in pop form. Not that everything he's saying is true, but it's good that he's bringing up questions about the historical legitimacy of Christianity. People who immediately attack that book for being trash should look a little deeper.

S for Sci-fi
You're a fan of Philip K. Dick but not a fan of science fiction. What is it about Dick that does it for you?
The main thing is that Philip K. Dick writes from his heart and soul, while a lot of science fiction writes from the brain alone. He's a personal writer, which finally culminated in his Valis books later in his life. Those are the main inspiration for my next novel which is going to be science fiction, for the most part. I'm attracted to science fiction because it is not taken seriously. I look at small presses' submission guidelines which say, No science fiction. Really? That's so closed-minded. And you call yourself an underground press? To me Philip K. Dick is as much in the spirit of Charles Bukowski as an Asimov or Clarke, people who are interesting for their ideas but not so much for their writing. That, and his ideas are miles ahead of other science fiction writers.

"Obsession is boring."
[Gentleman Reptile]

T for Tim Griffith
How many of Tom Cruise's films did you have to watch for research for Oscar Caliber Gun? Are there any of them that don't make you vomit? What did you make of the water-gun incident in London? Did you have a JD Salinger moment?
I didn't have to rewatch anything. I have seen Top Gun, Legend, Risky Business, even Cocktail. The man was already in my mind, which was why the first draft of the book flowed out quickly. Risky Business doesn't make me vomit. It's a poetic movie in places. Magnolia, Born on the Fourth of July, maybe, I don't know, it's been a while. There is hypocrisy there, which I write about in the book. Going from Top Gun, which had army recruiting tables outside the theatre, to an anti-war movie.

In Oscar Caliber Gun, I tried to get into the head of an underground lunatic. North of Sunset is different because I actually tried to get into the head of a movie star, an overground lunatic. So I watched what was happening with Tom Cruise closely. Right as I was finishing up North of Sunset, he was having his public meltdown. It seemed every day there was another bit of weirdness—the appearance on Oprah, the water gun.... It was like people were finally storming the castle. People were saying to me, "You were right all along. Tom Cruise is a nutcase."

U for unpublished novels
There's been a gap of eight years between your first and second novels but, reading your journal, you haven't been idle: North of Sunset is the sixth novel you've written. Can you tell me about the others (I believe one of them's called Dishwasher) and what are you're plans for them?
My first novel, called Camera Shy, was an attempt to rip off my favorite writer, Richard Yates. Namely, his book The Easter Parade, which follows the lives of the Grimes sisters. Camera Shy follows two sisters-in-law. Not all that readable. I wrote it at 18-19. At least I found I could put a bunch of pages in a row.

After that, Dishwasher was my attempt to write a Bukowski-esque first person novel about slacking in Minneapolis, washing dishes. Trying to write a gen-X On the Road. My guess is a lot of writers have tried to do that. More readable than the first novel. I haven't really tried to write straight autobiographical fiction since then.

After that, Oscar Caliber Gun. That got published. I broke up with a girlfriend and soon after I started God's Wife, about a porn star/sex worker who joins a religious cult, which took me three years to write. The book almost broke me—both writing it and not getting it published after working so hard to put the thing together. There came a drought after that in which I thought, what's the fucking point? Why write so hard if no one's going to read it? I started North of Sunset a couple years later. No plans for Dishwasher yet unless I become extremely famous. I'm hoping the Shirley Shave blog will generate some interest in the God's Wife novel.



V for Vanity Plate
If you had to have a vanity plate, what would it be?
VNTYPLT. Wait, no I wouldn't have one. If I had any integrity, I'd have to kill myself.

"I could feel my veins pumping blood to my hands, telling them to pick up a pen and write. I thought this must be what it felt like to be an artist, eager to get back to the canvas. As though, if I didn't pick up a brush, I would feel like half a person. It was a welcome kind of pain."
[The Golden Calf]

W for writing
Reading your journal, your need to write comes across strongly, you're desire to be read even more so. Do you have a writing routine? And is was it frustrating to have to self-publish North of Sunset?
Writing for me is feast or famine. I wish I was more diligent. When I'm on a roll, I am very diligent. But then I can have bouts where I don't write. I wrote Oscar Caliber Gun in one month. I write things fast but then sometimes I'm spent by the end of it. I might be better off stretching it out over time. When I'm feeling unproductive as a writer, I might pick up the guitar and record something. That way I can feel like I'm not a complete waste of creative life.

I can't say I'm ecstatic about self-publishing but it's been a good experience too. I've gotten into contact with a lot more writers, lit sites, and the like trying to peddle this novel. I don't know if I would have gotten in contact with Dogmatika in the same way if I had a traditional publisher. Of course, it makes it a lot harder to sell books. It's hard to get a self-published book into bookstores and it's hard to get someone to buy a book that they're not actually holding in their hands, reading a few pages, seeing what it will feel like to own the book.



X for X-rated
Will Shirley Shave ever be revived?
I don't think so, not as a blog. It was an experiment, the experiment worked. I'd like to publish it as a book now. I really want to move on to work on other stuff rather than keep revisiting a novel that I started writing almost ten years ago.

Y for Richard Yates
Yates is a writer you like. What is it about him that inspires you?
When I was around 17, I found a copy of Eleven Kinds of Loneliness on my parents' bookshelf. I was a lonely teenager so the title alone struck me. I read it and it was the first book in my life where I thought, I wish I had written this. I want to write.

He writes like nobody else. He sees all the loneliness and insecurity that everybody spends all their time trying to shut away. It must have been miserable being him. I just read his biography, A Tragic Honesty, and he was such a mess. Gave himself entirely to the act of writing. Spent himself totally, like John Coltrane. Only John Coltrane went as far as he could go and died. Yates did it over many more years. A laudable devotion to writing, but not exactly enviable. He could barely function. I just love his sentences and his all-seeing eye more than most everyone.

"I’ll enter the future. Kerouac and Henry Miller were never getting published in real time. Blogging is an untapped medium. It may just evolve into a new artform. A kind of living, breathing fiction."
[Henry Baum]

Z for Zeitgeist
"Henry Baum's brain gets a literary workout in his regularly updated blog." (The Blog Review). You've embraced blogging full-on. What interests you most about blogging? Do you receive much feedback from your readership and who is a archetypal Henry Baum reader? Has the internet changed the way you read and write? And what's next for you?
The archetypal reader of Ash Tree is a super-genius who appreciates the same. Also humble people. Blogging has been a great experience. I'm a writer who needs to be read. People say, it should be all about the writing, it doesn't matter if you have readers. Doesn't seem practical to me. An audience is important, even if it's just an imagined audience. It gets me working. Now I've got a venue where I can post stuff if it gets published, I've been in touch with other writers and readers, I can hash out ideas that can be immediately read. I mean, look at this interview, it's full of stuff you got from my blog. It's been worth it.

My goal now is to publish a story on each of the major online lit sites. Which is another way of saying that I want to write a bunch of stories. Which is another way of saying that I want to stop being lazy.

"So don't treat me like an unwanted stranger. I'm not the person who comes up on the street and begs for money. I'm not the annoying guy at the party who asks you what's your favorite color. I'm not the lunatic. I'm on the good side. If this life is about good versus evil, I am definitely on the good side."
[The Golden Calf]

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Henry Baum was born in NYC and grew up in Los Angeles. He is the author of the novel Oscar Caliber Gun, retitled The Golden Calf in other editions. His second novel, North of Sunset, is out now, as is the story, Gentleman Reptile, available from Cloverfield Press. Currently, he lives and writes in L.A..