It’s been a while since I’ve produced works that strike me as in some way conclusive, but it just happened with three pieces on Jonathan Lethem’s excellent new book about the Talking Heads album Fear of Music.

photo from the 33 1/3 blog

For a while in high school, Talking Heads was about all I listened to. Through them, I discovered their contemporaries – Television, Blondie, Patti Smith – and then delved into The Velvet Underground, Brian Eno, funk. Even Al Green came to me through the band’s cover of “Take Me to the River.” All I had to do was work backwards, to find what influenced David, Chris, Jerry, and Tina – and this is a band who wears its influences on its sleeve – and there would be something I dug too. The sensibilities of the band’s sound – aggressive but clean, bottom heavy and percussive, thick and layered – still predicts the kind of music I like and don’t like.

Strangely, I sometimes hold my work on the page up to their example, though music and writing are so fundamentally different artforms. Writing must go first through the mind before it hits the heart; music goes right for the jugular. Still, I insist upon thinking, if I could somehow get something similar to the energy and fun and clarity of the early Talking Heads albums on the page, I’d be all set.

Some of my favorite authors achieve this, I think, with work that raises my pulse and echoes after I put it down, not unlike a great song. Jonathan Lethem is one. I discovered his work not long after moving to Brooklyn in 1999, a transitional point in my life on-par with my teenage days. When his novel Motherless Brooklyn came out, it was the talk of the web development studio where I worked. I loved the book so much – the sharp playfullness of the language, the neighborhood locales spun cockeye with noir tropes – that I checked out everything I could find by him. (As a sci-fi fan, As She Climbed Across the Table continues to be my favorite of his early novels.)

One of the highlights of my MFA experience was interviewing Lethem for my thesis project about how his reading influenced his writing. Lethem, like Talking Heads, who he’s a big fan of, sometimes deliberately allows other artists’ work to impact his own, and again like the band, he has no qualms discussing this. When the interview concluded, I asked him about Talking Heads. Lethem told me how he saw the expanded ten-piece line-up of The Name of this Band is Talking Heads and heard “Swamp” played live well-before Speaking in Tongues came out. I experienced a moment of geek fan bliss.

I had the opportunity to talk with him again about his book on Fear of Music, during which Lethem said, “I write to enter into a conversation that books on shelves are having.” Writing about his book, I found myself proud to have something interesting to add to the dialogue — a bit of expertise from having spent years mulling over and being inspired by both Talking Heads and Jonathan Lethem — a satisfaction I rarely feel when penning pieces about parenting.

You can find my review of the book – The Strange, Tense Power of Talking Heads ‘Fear of Music’ – on The Atlantic. An interview with Lethem about the project – Jonathan Lethem’s ‘Perfect’ Album – appears on Salon. Our conversation also led to an article – Jonathan Lethem on the Power of Talking Heads’ ‘Fear of Music’ – on The Daily Beast.

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Note: I originally published this post before The Daily Beast piece went live, but updated it to include that link.

Whatever the veracity of this anecdote, I took it to heart. Through most of my graduate school writing life, The Catcher in the Rye and The Sun Also Rises sat on my desk, and whenever I confronted a problem in my novel-in-progress, be it a sentence or turn of the plot, I’d flip one or both of them open and try to crib a solution. Seeing as I never completed my book, I’m not sure I can recommend this strategy. It did, however, lead me to wonder how other novelists allowed their reading to, or tried to prevent it from, influencing or guiding their writing; hence the interviews.

The authors I talked to presented a fantastic study, as each mine very different territory in their work.

David Gates, whose wonderful debut novel Jernigan was shortlisted for the Pulitzer, explores mostly male antiheroes, malcontents with wicked senses of humor who are somehow at odds with the life they find themselves leading.

Jonathan Lethem, particularly in his novels since The National Book Critics Circle Award-winning Motherless Brooklyn, throws literary realism, genre tropes, and a sense of the fantastic into a blender, binding it all together with a smart, culturally savvy tone. His essay “The Ecstasy of Influence” (which later gave title to a collection of his nonfiction work) is a bravura piece of theory that both proves and demonstrates – or more aptly, proves by demonstrating – how all art is indebted to what came before it, an idea he touched upon in our discussion.

Lynne Tillman, author of the profound American Genius, A Comedy, writes voice driven stories about eccentric, brilliant people who hide their insecurities behind facts and observations, just as she hides puzzle pieces of narrative amid breathlessly long sentences that seem ripped straight from the minds of her protagonists.

All three put to page some of the best sentences found in contemporary literature, and infuse their work with sharp humor, which perhaps explains why I love their books so deeply. The David Gates interview posted on The Iowa Review Online last September, the same month the Jonathan Lethem interview went up on AGNI Online. You can find both of them by following the links. I’m happy to announce that the Lynne Tillman interview, refreshed to address her latest short story collection, Someday This Will Be Funny, will be featured in issue 11 of Slice Magazine, out later this year.

Perhaps they hoped to serenade David Byrne, who, of course, also drew attention. The former Talking Heads frontman looked svelte in a dark blue suit jacket, his white hair contrasting nicely with his deep tan – according to his online journal he’s just back from judging the Venice Film Festival, and a trip to South America to discuss bicycle friendly city planning. Byrne made a quick circuit of the gallery, stopping to let fans take a few pictures, then moved on, I heard him say, to the Agnes Martin opening down the street.

Social Media contains two of Bryne’s pieces: a series of faux iphone apps that provoked more smiles than thought, and shots of parliamentary scuffles displayed in digital photo-frames called Democracy in Action. The besuited politicians belting one another in chamber echo lines from Byrne’s song “The Civil Wars,” from his 1997 album Feelings: “We are fighting with knives and forks / demonstrating how Democracy works.” A dim view of the grand Democratic experiment – a “Road to Nowhere,” perhaps.

Social Media also contains work conceived by writer, film maker, and performance artist Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher. Learning to Love You More literally came about via social media – participants were given an assignment that they then executed and uploaded to a website. Many of the shots in Social Media depict famous figures doing some pedestrian, humanizing activity. In one picture, Mitt Romney takes a nap on his futon after winning a primary. In another, Ben Bernanke decides to wear a blue shirt to a press conference. The piece challenges how we think of these political power-holders, as it does the concept of the artist itself. July and Fletcher act more as directors and curators, with many unseen amateurs creating the works. (Talk about outsourcing!)

Adam Bell, a photographer and instructor at the School of Visual Arts who helped to organize the show, said they tried hard to avoid gimmicky work. “We didn’t simply want to take art that exists online and put it in a gallery,” he told me. Instead, they tried to challenge how we think of the term Social Media, showing viewers that it goes far beyond simple Twitter timelines or Facebook updates. Indeed, the show contains work by Robert Heneicken that predate the Internet — copies of Time magazine that he transformed and then returned to the news rack, a literal form of social media before the online concept existed.

With boldness, intelligence, and wry humor, Social Media leaves one aware that everything we do online puts us in touch with and contributes to a conversation that is much greater than the sum of its parts.

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Social Media is on display at The Pace Gallery, at 510 West 25th Street in New York City, through October 15th

David Byrne’s installation Tight Space appears at 508 25th Street in New York City, through October 1st

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Photo credits, in order of appearance: From SVA MFA program, New York Magazine (Danny Kim), Aram Bartholl’s blog, and Matthew Farris Senior Portfolio

Not so in Helen Schulman’s workshop. She ran a tight discursive ship, requiring readers to separate their comments on language, story, and the overall feel of the piece. She encouraged people to slow down and respond to one another, prompting conversations rather than a flurry of unrelated critiques. One piece of story advice she gave still sticks with me – asking yourself, how is this day different for the character, why does the story pick up at this particular time and place?

I was thrilled recently to have the opportunity to talk with her about her new novel, This Beautiful Life, in a former haunt from my graduate school days. To prepare I entered into what essentially became a master class in Helen Schulman.

Reading her novels, you find the interior lives of the characters richly developed and textured in voice. More impressively, and refreshing, I think, Schulman doesn’t shy away from honing in close during their worst moments, not just behavior wise, but physically as well. They sweat and smell bad, they’re concerned about aging, they’re vain in utterly relatable ways. (At least for this reader, who, as I’ve written about over at The Good Men Project, has a thing for hair.)

In her most recent books – A Day at the Beach, This Beautiful Life – she doesn’t follow just one character, but explores entire relationships from multiple points-of-view. In This Beautiful Life, about a teenage Internet sex scandal, not just the family at the heart of the controversy, but also Daisy, the girl who sparks it, have a voice. Daisy’s sections bookend the novel, and make for a surprising and smart way to end the story.

I asked Schulman about whether this kind of decision, which breaks the consistency of the novel’s POV, actually makes the work stronger, even though in workshop readers pounce whenever story elements (like tense, the type of narration, or the POV) don’t align. Schulman responded:

That may be true. Writing should never be by committee, and sometimes you feel that pressure in a workshop setting.

I think that workshops are great for saving time. All the things you might learn on your own are illustrated to you early. You can get saved from going off on the wrong track. Also, you learn to dissect literature and discuss it, including live, growing literature in class, which is very useful. But at a certain point you should outgrow it.

It takes me years to show anything to anybody because it’s too nascent and fragile. If they tell me it sucks I’ll be so afraid to continue that maybe I won’t. And I want them to be able to hit me with everything they’ve got.

You can find more of Schulman’s insightful discussion on The Paris Review Daily.

Mr. F had been doing his thing – devouring crackers, flirting with the sprinkler, jacking water balloons – when two girls, a blonde and a brunette, caught his attention as they played in a toy house. I’m talking about the kind of structure that dots suburban yards, made of molded plastic logs with lots of rose colored shutters for kids to open and close and smash their fingers between. (How anyone lugged this bulky, boxy thing to our urban playground, I’ll never know.)

Ever interested in the opposite sex, my son followed the girls at top speed, getting to the house before me. The girls, sadly, did not reciprocate his interest. The brunette closed the door on him, pushing him away with wails of “Noooo.”

He teetered back onto his well-padded butt. Uninjured and undeterred, he tried wresting the door from her once more as I pulled up to the scene. I told her, “You’ve got to be gentle with the little guy. He’s a lot smaller than you.”

“This is our house. We want to play alone,” the blonde whined.

Sporting a pink bikini and a bratty pout, I couldn’t guess at her age. Six going on fourteen? She became the spokesperson for the pair, and I’m going to stop using the word whine to describe her voice, as she drew every sentence into a sing-song that at once expressed both self-pity and loathing of all things parental. She raised the hair on the back of my neck. Talking to her left me feeling soiled.

My son remained at the door, trying to get inside, but hesitantly. Surely the size of these two had him put off, or else he could smell their stank attitude. I put a protective hand on his shoulder and told the Lil’ Princess that if she wanted to play alone she should have stayed home. “The toys on the playground are to share.”

I gave the lightest of squeezes to my son, hoping that this message, which I’ve repeated to him countless times the past few weeks, would resonate for him as well. I hoped – though this is a long shot for a toddler, I know – that he might recognize that he was now the one being bullied and experience how it felt. That’s me, always looking for the goddamn teachable moment.

The Princess let out an over-exaggerated world-weary sigh, then said to her friend, “Let’s find a better place to play.”

They did not walk pass my son gently.

“That’s good,” I said. “We don’t like playing with mean girls anyway.”

It was all I could do to not stick out my tongue.

“I’m not mean! Gawd.”

The exchange brought me back to the classroom, dealing with smart-ass eighth graders. You give an inch and those kids take a mile. But while it left me feeling good—sticking up for my son in a peaceable manner, and for the spirit of sharing in general—I’m not sure my son gained anything, other than a few moments to make pretend chocolate cake in the house in solitude. Though who knows. He’s a sponge at this point, taking it all in. Not that teaching him a lesson was the point.

My experience, both in content and tone, echoes my latest project, Kung-Fu Daddy. If you enjoy reading about parenting, or kung-fu movies, and certainly if you are one of the rare breed who like both, then please check it out! I won’t flood this blog with promotional pieces about it, though you may hear a little more as it gets up and running.

When I moved to NYC in ’99, the Brooklyn neighborhood made headlines, as long squatting artists found themselves priced out of their warehouses by a wave of gentrifying youth – some of whom I knew. A friend lived on some dark, deserted street in an old spice factory. The place still smelled of cinnamon and clove. It wasn’t too far from Cokies, a dive bar with an in-house drug dealer. Sometimes my buddy would stop for a bump on his way home from work – a lil’ pick-me-up.

Not long thereafter the ‘burg became known as a haven for just-out-of-college hipsters. It was the place to spot trends before they happened, to marvel at extreme fashion, and scoff at the pretentiousness of it all. Irony – vintage tee-shirts, mullets, seventies-style handlebar mustaches – ruled the day.

Last night, I went back for the first time in years. As we walked down Bedford Avenue, now crowded with pedestrians and full of cafes, one of my friends cracked the old joke about not being dressed well enough for Williamsburg. But it lacked the punchline, because we were.

Aside from a couple young men with teased out hair and awesomely awful jackets in Hawaiian print, we fit in just fine. A family with a baby even sat across from us at the bar, and while you know my feelings on drinking with baby, I had to wonder – is there any part of the city where tots and shots remains passe?

Maybe that’s what happened to Williamsburg – the hipsters all had kids. Or maybe the rising real estate prices pushed the cooler fringe outward to Bushwick. Though my wife tells me the artists in that neighborhood don’t emit quite the vibe Williamsburg did in its heyday – it’s not the same fashion zoo.

I wonder if that moment has moved on, for Williamsburg as for New York City as a whole. The city is safer than when I moved here, or at least gives the impression of being so. But it’s also blander. The Disneyfication of uptown has slid down. SoHo is a mall. The Meatpacking District a tourist trap. They give out user-friendly gallery guides for visiting the LES. The Brooklyn waterfront sports big box stores. Maybe the whole city’s been blunted. We’ve lost our edge. Sold our soul. Or had it taken from us.

Guess this is a sign of being a real New Yorker. Pining for a city that once was, even though it probably never was the way you imagine it.

I ended running the sound during the reading, sitting on stage as it were with the authors.

The night unfolded in what could have been the set of a Woody Allen movie, this rambling Harlem brownstone with an expansive sunken kitchen dominated by a black behemoth of an oven, pop art sharing wall space with family photos, and books crammed everywhere, in some rooms from floor to ceiling. The lighting, somewhat yellowed at the edges, added to the filmic atmosphere. As did the audience, packed with writers, agents, and the like in various states of finery, from trim black suits to elbow-patched corduroy coats. Or in Siyanko’s case, a lovely dress that looked made of crimped paper. A good number of people spoke Russian. It could only be New York.

Kincaid lead the line-up, looking like a figure from the Harlem Renaissance in a long, powder blue dress and pillbox hat, with white socks turned down so their embroidered edges splayed over her brown leather shoes. She read an excerpt of a novel-in-progress—I didn’t catch the title if she even gave one. The narrative was in a modernist, stream-of-consciousness vein. She warned at the start that the sentences would be long and some of the references lost, and they were. But no matter. Her angular prose was resplendent. Its lyricism blurred into poetry, especially as the images gathered thick over the course of the rambling lines.

A story lurked in the details about the narrator’s sister, “the beautiful Penelope,” and his brother Herodotus, and something about a mother who he wished dead. A narrative of mythic proportion, to be sure. To hear Kincaid’s honeyed, slightly accented voice reading was both immersive – I felt like a kid, lulled by her cadence into a relaxed reverie – and extremely funny when she delivered a joke or cursed. Like hearing a queen say “shit!”

Kincaid’s interest in the sound of language – she said, for example, that the family lived in a house once occupied by Shirley Jackson simply because she loved the way Shirley Jackson’s name sounded when repeated throughout the piece – reminded me of the novelist Lynne Tillman. A couple of years ago I interviewed Tillman for my MFA thesis, and asked about how she developed the richly textured voice of her novel American Genius, A Comedy. She spoke about the rhythm of music, and Ray Charles in particular, and how she heard the narrator’s voice in her head as she wrote. She said that when developing the character, the sound of that voice preceeded the setting or the movement of the situation. Kincaid’s project seemed similar.

Poet Mark Strand took the stage after Kincaid, deadpanning that after Jamaica’s poetry, he was going to read rather pedestrian prose pieces about “nothing.” I immediately liked him because of this Seinfeld approach, whether the reference was intentional or not I don’t know.

His poems (for despite what he said, that’s what they were) blew me away. It was funny, always, and full of insight about relationships and masculinity and aging. Though a sorrowful pall hung over them, they never became depressive. My favorite involved a man who realized that his every word and action created a self who was not quite himself. He apologized to his wife, as she would never know who he truly was. But she dismissed this, saying that she could always see the real him beneath the multitude of fake ones that had passed before her during the years. It captured something real and tender about relationships, especially the way that men sometimes feel their wives understand them better than they understand themselves.

At one point in between poems Strand said he would read “a few more – perhaps twenty.” And while everyone laughed, I think we would have been game for him to go through his entire collection.

Three readers from Little Star took the stage afterward, the standout being Cynthia Zarin, whose wondrous house we were in. She read two pieces from The Ada Poems and one from Little Star #2, all were lovely. She also, like Kincaid and Strand, had a powerful presence. Gazing off a bit into the distance, her voice dropping just low enough so that you had to lean forward a bit to hear her. And no, that wasn’t a fault of my running sound, it was the way she managed her tone to draw you in. I would’ve loved to have heard more from her.

Afterward, the event devolved into wine and cheese and a lengthy conversation on the couch with my friend, super-agent Erin Harris. I dropped my persona and relaxed, happy to fade back into the crowd. After a while the chairs disappeared and the theater space returned to a sitting room, or perhaps a dining room. I accompanied Harris into the brisk spring night to find a cab back to Brooklyn. Though the specifics of the reading faded fast, as these things tend to when you haven’t seen the work on the page, the feel of the language lingered. Like a haunting film, I took the mood with me, and it colored how I saw the city on the ride home. New York never looked more beautiful, and I felt witness to a secret part of it.

When composing fiction, my mind becomes preoccupied with the characters and world of the story, and developing language to convey it. In many ways tapping into a narrative voice is like method acting. I strive to fully inhabit that voice, to hear its cadences and adopt them as my own.

My essay and blog writing occupy a different register. It takes time to throw off the sentence constructions of my fictional narrator and slip back into my own style. Bouncing back and forth between the two too quickly is not only jolting, but detrimental to the work.

But now, with one story revised and another at a solid – though early – draft, I’m at the point where I need space. This is a disconcerting feeling. I’ve read about writers mourning the end of the writing process, or feeling a little sad to complete a manuscript.

Though not completely done with these stories, I can relate. It’s difficult cutting the cord from this world I spent so much time thinking about, and hard to psyche myself up to work on something new.

Later, I’ll find it just as challenging to reenter the fiction, to retune myself to the narrator’s voice. But taking time away from a draft is a necessary part of my process.

How long before you allowed TV to be a part of the day?

Well, we started out with the “TV isn’t good for a baby” mentality, but that quickly changed.

There was this night in his second or third month that Mr. F refused to go back to sleep after nursing. My wife and I tried all the usual tricks for a while, but our patience was thin — we were in the middle of dinner and an episode of Battlestar Galatica. Fans of that series will understand: you don’t stop watching before the end. (Especially if we’re talking about the first three seasons.)

So we propped him in his swing chair and he watched it with us – seeming to pay special attention to the lovely Caprica 6, I might add – till he dozed off. After that, we had him in front of the TV every night!

No, I’m kidding. But that moment did mark the start of our anti-television stance eroding, in part because it gave us a reality check. The fussy kid calmed down and quickly fell asleep. It had us asking: Is exposing your child to television in small, controlled doses really such a big deal?

In part, such exposure is unavoidable – screens are everywhere.

The bagel shop down the street has a flat-screen mounted on the wall, as do our local supermarkets and even some cafes. Friends and family might have it on when we’re visiting, and in another person’s house I try to be a good guest, sublimating my personal preferences to those of my host. Or at least not making a big stink when the food isn’t organic, or I’m given paper napkins, or we prepare dinner with Cash Cab on in the background. That things are done different is part of the fun (and stress) of being away from home.

(I will put my foot down when my dad tries to watch Judge Judy with me, though. We all have limits.)

Besides these outside influences, the computer on our kitchen counter is nearly always on, acting as a reference for weather and recipes, and a juke box. Mr. F first became familiar with it as a way of connecting with family via skype or by looking at digital photos. The kid loves reviewing his short past.

As the cold weather rolled into town and then decided to stay for a brutally cold winter, we began showing him YouTube videos of Sesame Street skits. Then we found out when The Street airs on our local PBS, and from then on Elmo became a part of our daily life.

At the heart of any parent’s attitude toward television is both how you were raised and how you want to raise your kid. I grew up watching Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers while my mom did dishes in the kitchen or folded laundry nearby. Once my programs ended she switched off the tube, so television never dominated my day. Books, drawing, and fresh air held greater appeal. I’m not scared that Mr. F will become a screen zombie.

The amount of time you spend with your child also factors in. I’m sure parents who pay for full-time childcare can dictate “no television” and expect (or hope) that the provider abides. As a stay-at-home dad I’m my own boss — or should I say that Mr. F’s the boss. Sometimes I utilize the TV to keep him tethered while I prepare our lunch or complete some other chore. (Like pooping.) And when he’s in a bad mood or I’m tired, vegging out together helps us navigate the rocky waters.

Mr F is not yet two, and it’s rare for him to watch TV for longer than fifteen or twenty minutes before getting antsy. When he does sit for longer, its usually because I’m with him, talking about what we’re watching. I model viewing TV with a discerning eye and alert mind because I want him to be digitally literate, just as I demonstrate active reading or good hygiene.

So in moderation – which is an amount that will differ for every child based on age and temperament – I don’t think there’s anything wrong with television for a child even at a very young age. Of course, I’m no neurologist. Could be that I’m rotting his brain!

I’m fascinated by any glimpse into the process of making things, but for nine seasons I avoided and reviled American Idol. The power ballads, the time commitment, Paula’s inanity, Simon’s smugness. Nothing appealed. Until this year when, at first just curious about the new judges, I’ve become hooked.

For those of you smart enough to not be on the Idol bandwagon, Thursday night’s shocking results show saw the frontrunner failing to receive enough votes to continue. Pia Toscano had the strongest voice of the top ten and the beautiful grace of a pop diva. Like any star, she pulled your eye to her even among the crowd of talented competitors. So what happened?

Perhaps she was too good.

The cliché is that people are drawn toward flawed characters, and that’s what contestants become on these shows – characters in a narrative, a march to the finale and the crown of victory. As much as the judges might laud a performer’s critical merits, the winners rise based on their emotional appeal to the audience at home. They have a goofy sense of humor or a shy awkwardness that they transcend in performance, or they take risks that don’t always pan out. Better still, they start out shaky before they straighten out and soar. It happens time and again in these programs: the early standouts crash and burn if they consistently ride too high.

This applies to characters in fiction as well, and no author comes to my mind as practicing this better than Stephen King. His protagonists are smart but anti-intellectual, have strong values but are often anti-establishment, are sometimes down-on-their luck, perhaps dealing with some kind of addiction or else on the run from past demons (which in King can be taken both literally and figuratively).

He came up in my interview with Karen Russell, more of which was published last week on the literary and arts site The Millions. Russell said:

It’s weird to me that King is as popular as he is, you know? Because of the places he goes. That’s an acknowledgement of how weird we all must be, and how we love the dark. I feel like he’s some organ, doing extrasensory processing for all of us!

She’s right – King goes to some dark places, not only by populating his novels with the most horrible creatures in mythology and legend, but by creating characters flawed in psychology, situation, and circumstance. As familiar and true as the threats they face are unreal, they grab at our heart and pull us into the story. We want them to not only vanquish evil, but turn their lives around. And in his most affecting novels – The Shinging, Pet Sematary, Needful Things – they spiral downward, page after compelling page.

So maybe getting voted off Idol on Thursday will turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to Pia’s career. People love an under-dog, especially one fighting for the spoils she was due. But an over-achiever? Not so much, obviously.