Jaws

We watched Jaws tonight (on Netflix Instant--is there someone who keeps a list of amazing movies on Netflix Instant, to weed out the great stuff from the trash?) and I am agonizing, agonizing. Every scene of that movie is so well-thought out. Made in that way that movies don't get made anymore, with long lingering scenes and visuals that any 12-year-old would decry as fake in a second, but you know that's the way these things work in real life. One second you're just smokin' a cigarette

and the next, you're, well, lunch.

Then of course, because I am obsessive, I dove into Wikipedia and read about the Hollywood impact of Jaws (and read the complete Wiki summaries of its three sequels, which is probably as close as I'll ever get to watching them) (not because they're bad -- usually that's an incentive to watch movies, peoples -- but because of the no-time thing). And that studied, minimalist storytelling thing (there are, what, 3 scenes that comprise the entire last hour of the movie?)...yeah. It kind of doesn't show up in the sequels.

I'm the last person to say that fast and furious isn't a great way to tell a story. I like to think that Losers, in its 189 pages, is the two-minute punk version of a five-minute anthem. But slow can be good too. (Please don't take this theory and apply it to the Green Day musical. I mean, come on. Green Day. Made a musical. I'm sure it's good or whatever, but please don't tell me.)

It's also National Novel Writing Month. I've definitely written novels in a month before (Stephen King says to write fast, while the idea's fresh in your head, and edit slow) and I actually did the November 1 - November 30 thing once. But this November I'm taking it purposefully slow. I've been working on this book for ten years -- I remember because the main character used to seem way too old for me to write him, and now I keep wondering if he isn't way too young. And I'm writing a book where the main character is a dude. Why does that keep weirding people out?

(Okay, so realistically, of the 4 books I've published, 2 have had male protagonists and 2 have been female. But, of the boys, one was a memoir where the protagonist was me {well, more or less me} and one was basically a 14-year-old version of me. {There's a longer answer to that, essentially, that Jupiter isn't me, he's my best friend, only Russian and Jewish and not dead. But that's another post, I think.} And then my two ladies, Hava from Goldbergs and Candy from Candy in Action, are both basically superheroes. Which says something about how I variously idealize and torture the people in my books, right? How did I start analyzing my own books? I should stop. Now.)

Annyway. I planned to come on here and write about Jaws for a minute and then leap back into the book and as you can see, that hasn't really happened. But Bram from YIDCore is asking me questions about his new book and I have about 20 pages of tinily-lettered rewrites to type and two tiny children who are already plotting their evil ways to wake up at sunrise, which suggests that this should be the point where I jump into the water, make my own fingers-pressed-together shark fin, and do my slow descent.

Only, not slow anymore.

Paul Auster at Book Expo America

Paul Auster was at the book conference today, signing his newest novel, Sunset Park (which you should buy, and read). The line was surprisingly short -- I couldn't decide whether I was going to spend my entire 30-minute lunch break waiting to talk to him or just skip it and regret it for the rest of my life. Fortuitously, no choice needed to be made. He was perched on a high stool, looking particularly civil and caffeinated, in dark glasses, slicked-back hair, and every bit as rompy as one of his characters.

I asked if he was overloaded with books or if I could give him a copy of my book Candy in Action, which Soft Skull had just passed off to me. He said a pretty clear "overloaded," until his (handler? agent? mysterious female companion?) smiled graciously and said "I'll make sure he actually reads it" and slipped it from my hands. Then we talked about the comic he'd written that I'd read to my daughter the other day -- he cackled when he heard that. "She didn't get it at all, did she," he cackled. I said she understood it pretty well, but she was still checking for an invisible man behind her.

He said he didn't like the illustrations; I thought they were good, but strange, like smelling one thing and tasting another. Then he moved on. But it was pretty cool.

A minute later on the other side of the expo center, I ran into the Jewish Book Council crew. I was still bubbly about my new Auster book. Carolyn hooked into my arm: "Take us there," she commanded. I did. I stayed low because I'd had my moment and didn't want to spoil it, but I saw he still had my book sitting there. Naomi managed to snap a picture of Mr. Auster and my book, and there it sits above us in this post. If *ahem* when somebody makes it into a movie, I sincerely hope they cast Paul Auster as the shady character who gives Candy her missions. And that they pay him a million dollars to do it. I mean, it probably won't be as good as Smoke, but it will be a whole other kind of good. Unless they get Tom Waits to record the music too. Then it might be.

My new favorite photo ever from the Jewish Book Council blog, courtesy of Naomi and co. Thank you thank you.

Free Losers, and Stories for Drunk Baseball Fans

First of all: I'm doing a special deal thing. Order Candy in Action from me, and get a free copy of Losers along with it.

And here's a great reason why. The folks at Stanton Park Review have kindly reviewed Losers. It was pretty awesome of them to do so. The site was inspired by Chuck Palahniuk -- specifically, the idea that "What people consider to be good books are the ones that comfort and lull us to sleep. No, drunk baseball fans don’t want to hear about a kid dying of cancer but if you read them a story about consensual fighting or about waiters pissing in soup or about a guy being gutted in a swimming pool, those baseball fans, they will shut up and listen. Given the right stories, those drunk guys, they will really love books."

So, yeah. I'm pretty proud to be included.

Check it:

Matthue Roth's Losers is a fun read from start to finish. The main character, Jupiter Glazer, is a Russian immigrant who is trying to negotiate the pit falls of his first year in high school. Aside from the normal social awkwardness of high school, Jupiter has to deal with a bully named Bates who is determined to turn him into a human pancake.

keep reading

Watching the Signs

Today was funny and sad and moving and poignant and pretty awesome, all told, the kind of day that makes you question why you do what you do, and then shows you by smacking you squarely in the head. Here's the song I'd listen to if I listened to music, but it's still part of that time period where we don't listen to music, so I'm dwelling in the silence instead. Which might be just as well.

First was Young Adult Writers Drinks Night, which are definitely my 5 favorite words in the English language to say together. laughing and making merry with david the editor and coe booth and other good folks. and then i looked up from my drink and saw Richard Nash, who (until last month) was editor and director of my other publishers, Soft Skull Press. And then Anne and Denise, who took over Soft Skull, showed up too, and I had this uneasy realization that, if someone dropped a bomb on that bar, I would have no editors left in the world.

I went to the B&N on 66th Street and did a covert signing. (All they had was Candy, but hey, one book signed is one book maybe-sold.) I don't know if it was a good sign or a bad sign or what. Asked the guy who worked there if they could order more, and he said he'd try to remember to ask his boss in the morning.

Then I went to the Mimaamakim poetry text study. It was a pretty amazing feat -- 80 or so Orthodox folks going over Lucille Clifton and Seamus Heaney, analyzing their words like Torah and ripping them apart like Talmud. It was kind of glorious. Even the painful parts (well, the parts that were painful to an English kid like me) were glorious. People don't just read poetry these days. Especially Orthodox people. Except, they do.

As we were packing up, two girls came up and asked if I was me, and told me how they'd both read Goldbergs and about their class projects in yeshiva and they had no idea there were other people in the universe like them. I wanted to tell them all about Michael Muhammad Knight and how he hadn't known there were other punk Muslims in the universe -- and then I realized, I was the same way with punk Jews. This was kind of my signal flare to the universe, my "are you out there?" call. And, dammit, sometimes people reply.

Yes: it was a good night.

Now I should be asleep. But I'm waiting up for my family to get home. My family! I wonder what Hava would say to that.

Candy in Action: The Cover Story

Today on Melissa Walker's blog, she quizzes me about the cover of Candy in Action. Candy's publisher, Soft Skull Press, shared a bunch of the old cover versions and some of the original designs that inspired my editor Jody and I. If you've ever wanted a behind-the-scenes look at cover design, it doesn't get more behind-the-scenesy than this.

(And -- extra added bonus feature! -- here's the very first cover of Candy, which we talk about in the article, but which I stupidly couldn't convert into a normal file. But oh, do I have good powers of persuasion.)

"The moment that my publishers accepted the Candy in Action, I knew what the cover was going to look like. It wasn't even a matter of, what do I want it to look like. I just knew. It was going to be a sleek, glossy cover with black widescreen boxes at the top and bottom. Then the center was going to be a bright, vivid picture of the Los Angeles coast at night, taken from overhead--all neon lights and a million sparkling house parties--and then a black silhouette of a girl doing a kung-fu drop kick over it. That, uh, never happened.

"The publishers didn't ask for my input. I gave it to them anyway. My first book, Never Mind the Goldbergs, was with Scholastic. At most big publishing houses, if you're a first-time writer and you're really nice to them, you get to say 'no' once, and they might listen to you. I said no three times--I was a total diva. They were cool with it each time, though.

keep reading >

Why I Write about Models

Powells.com, one of the coolest bookstores on the internet, runs a series of original essays. They've asked Neil Gaiman and Dara Horn and Robert Thurman and now they've asked me...which is pretty damn cool.

It started as a dare.

The girl I went out with was friendly, funny, flirty — and all of this was confusing to me. I was a punk-rock kid on my better days, elegantly styled in unkempt hair and an artfully ripped t-shirt held together by a bare minimum of strands that kept it (barely) from coming loose from my shoulders, revealing something both embarrassing and dangerous, like my belly — but, more often, I was just a geek. She was popular, beautiful, successful — traditionally pretty, I mean, but actually beautiful, too. Except for the one random friend we had in common, there was no reason we should rightfully be talking to each other.

Except, of course, that we were.

What was weird was that we got along. Even weirder, we had similar things to say. Not about everything, but about a lot of things, including comic books (Madman, Hellboy, and all the X-Men spinoffs — the more melodramatic, the better), television (Veronica Mars), and food (vegan, lots of courses, served together and eaten separately). We weren't in lurve — we were barely in like — but we were intrigued by each other. We were interested.

And before we had the chance to question it ourselves — no, really, us? — she was sexually assaulted.

keep reading >

Candy gets covered

The open mic last night was insanely, smashably hit. The place was packed, both with performers and audience -- and we even had an open mic virgin come up at the end and ask if he could perform a song, which is how you know you're being inspiring. Danny Raphael, who's usually an M.C. of the highest order, was like "there's no mic? I don't mind" and blasted into an a capella set, over the course of which I didn't even miss the music. And then these wacky un-yeshiva boys came with their guitars and made a little soundtrack of their own. Yeah -- it was a good night. And I could actually eat the food, since it was kosher (and vegan!), which is always a nice change.

And I got an amazing note from Adam Luckwaldt, significant beau of last month's feature, who's wringing his own inner muse by the neck and making a comic a day. He'd read Candy in Action, listened to the soundtrack, and covered one of the songs (the one by Postal, Odin Smith, and me -- literally turned it into a comic.

Yay art. Yay collaboration. And yay -- continually -- Maurice Sendak.

Richard Nash Leaves Soft Skull

OK, I'm as freaked out as you are -- here is the story, if you haven't heard. The halloween candy-size version: Richard Nash, who took over Soft Skull Press and polished it and shined it made it (even) great(er), is relinquishing command.

My guess is as good as yours, people. I thought that, if it ever happened, Richard would blast off straight into some new Web 4.0 idea of Twitter novels or Books That Read You or something even more revolutionary. Of course, what he says on his site makes just as much sense -- that he'll be consulting publishers and working to save our industry.

According to their press release, Soft Skull will keep going. Candy in Action will stay in print -- and have I mentioned it looks great in paperback? -- and I'm still friendly with them, as far as I know....and yes, if "Orthodox Girls" gets made into a movie and I sell a million copies of all my books, I still want to put out all my future books on a tiny indie press. There is no back catalogue I have a crush on more than Soft Skull's, from Daphne Gottlieb's manifestos to Mike Doughty's couplets. And, praise G-d, they're still going to be alive (well, except for Doughty, who went out of print a while ago....dammit). And Soft Skull's associate editor is sticking around, which gives me hope for the future, as much as it does for the present.

So there is no reason to be afraid. And every reason to think that Soft Skull will keep going, and that Richard will get under the skin of other publishers and implant little Soft Skull-like parasites there and create new little Soft Skull-inspired life forms crawling through Random House and Harper's and even (gasp) Scholastic...Hey, here's hoping.

Brave New Candy

I should not be getting this excited over a cover, but please believe me, it is hard to contain myself and restrain myself from writing more. Today at work I received a huge box of somethings, which is usually computer parts or promotional keychains or some bizarre food product.

But, today, it was Candy.

That's right: Candy is in paperback.

I am utterly fetishizing the cover, and I don't feel apologetic about it at all. Richard, my publisher, said that if I could get a new cover done, and it didn't cost them anything, they'd do it, and the comic artist Fred Chao pulled through amazingly. (His own Johnny Hiro: Half-Asian, All Hero is a remarkable book...and, as I keep pointing out, he tied with Joss Whedon for the most Eisner nominations this year, which in itself testifies to how much geek cred he should be going on right now.)

And, boom, we have this.

I love the split-screen cover. The quote from Melissa Walker on the front, if you can't read it, says "Part James Bond, part Bond girl, Candy is one unforgettable heroine!" And the rose bleeds across the spine and onto the back, which is great. The title font stretches off the cover, kind of that old-school Superman logo feeling, but in an understated way, like a natural evolution after the credits to "Smallville"...and just the sheer number of drawings that Fred uses (there's another one on the back of Candy looking badass with a hair dryer) is astounding. Especially in this world where most cover designers choose one picture from a clip-art file and paste it around the book a bunch of times....with the amount of Candys that Fred drew for the cover, he might as well have made a whole comic. Hey, there's still time.

The spine, though, is what really gives me shivers. The way that Candy in Action snakes down with little circles and blips is just crying out for another book to stand next to it. It's stirring up all these primal urges within me to write a sequel. And, dammit, I just might.

oh, and....

coming this spring in paperback:

thank you, fred chao.

Orthodox and Undercover

So I kind of wrote an article about Losers, but it ended up being mostly about me. Go fig.

Six years after my first punk show (The Dead Milkmen, at the Trocadero, $6 if you were under 21) I showed up at a synagogue one Friday afternoon, wearing jeans that were ripped at the cuffs and the only sweater I owned. I stopped checking my email for 24 hours once a week, spent my Shabbos nights reading in the dark of my apartment's living room, and that was it. They say you're supposed to become Orthodox slowly, like wading into a cold pool. I jumped in over my head, and only started sinking deeper. Not that I was losing my individuality or anything—my t-shirts were still geeky and tight, I was still at the gay clubs and the punk-rock shows; I just made my Thursday nights longer and took the next night off.

I don't know what I could have been the poster child for, but I was the poster child for something. When all my other friends who wrote moved to New York, wrapped themselves tight into graduate writing courses, I moved to San Francisco and started teaching myself to write at open mics with a bunch of lesbians, all of whom I had crushes on, and none of whom would look my way. They were the best senseis of all. Michelle Tea, who had about as much in common with me as I had with a hamburger, told me to write about what I was obsessed with. She said to write about whatever I goddamn well wanted to write about.

read the whole article >

Just so you know

4:42 a.m.: Phone rings. It's Berwin. He gets disconnected after 5 seconds. In the morning, I realize he called back twice after, at 4:43 and 4:44. I also realize my phone was shut off, and the vibrate is not working.

(Berwin, if you don't know, was my only friend to come to my wedding. We'd hung out 3 times in our lives before. He said, "Australia? Cool!" and then showed up a few months later. He also, btw, is a professional clothing designer, and did all the characters' wardrobes in Candy in Action.)

In the morning, he calls while I'm bathing Yalta. Tells me "I would like to commission some art" and that's all I can listen to before (a) the phone jolts out of my hand and into the water and (b) Yalta grabs the phone, which is her newest favorite food and (c) all three in tandem.

Later, he clears it up by telling me that he wants me to write a screenplay for him and proceeds to list three movies, one big political event, and two band names that are supposed to be the movie's substance. Uh, yeah. We're having an official meeting tonight at this rock show in Greenpoint. The band's name escapes me, but it sounded like someone I was supposed to know about but, of course, don't. I'll let you know details when I do...if, you know, I ever understand this kind of thing.

Win free Losers!

No, my grammar isn't slipping up -- the indelible Melissa Walker is giving away an autographed copy of your favorite Russian Jewish immigrant geek novel as her weekly contest. She's the author of Violet in Private -- and you know us young-adult authors who write novels about unconventional girls who somehow get into modeling have got to stick together -- and, by the way, she's also going to be quoted on the new edition of Candy in Action.

But, for now, she's got a copy of Losers with your name on it. (Which, I know, sounds wrong, but still -- it's a free book. With a damn cool cover, at that.)

Here's the catch:

To enter to win this contest, you must buy someone a book for the upcoming holiday season. Seriously, books are the best gifts--how else can you buy someone a whole world for under $10? I'm getting a book for every single person on my list this year, which will mean lots of money saved and happy friends!

So go visit her blog already! And let me know what book you talk about....

Transitions of Power

Welcome to the new world. In his last few months as a lame-duck president, Clinton declared a huge territory in Alaska to be a national park, and could therefore never be drilled or mined, and it was impossible to be overruled.

I'm kind of fearful for what Bush might do with *his* last few months in power. (Or maybe, like Judaism says, I should judge favorably -- he could always devote billions to cancer research or starving children.) And I'm kind of excited about Obama, and if any of the totally unreasonable superhuman powers we've girded him with over the past few months come true, maybe he'll be able to protect us from whatever madness Bush has in store.

Meanwhile: somebody should make a reality TV show about Osama Bin Laden's pacifist, cougar-dating, dreadlocked son, Omar Osama, who is asking for asylum in Spain. Spain? There doesn't seem to be any logical reason, except that, when I was researching Candy in Action, I discovered Spain has one of the most reliably all-night party junkets in the world.

She's 55, he's 27, and he really is a rebellious son. He says he's proud of his father's name, but keeps urging his father to "find another way." There should be some cracks to be made about how his new wife is old enough to be his mother, but considering his father has four wives and anywhere between 12 and 26 children, she's also old enough to be his sister -- which, at least theoretically, makes it less bad (or less hot, depending on your point of view).

brother-in-law karaoke

today the masses of family-in-law converged upon our house, filling up the living room and dining room for possibly the first time ever. (here i should note that the terms "living room" and "dining room" are location-specific, meaning that, in new york city, the only way to divide a postage-stamp-sized living room from a postage-stamp-stub-sized dining room is by putting a bookcase that takes up half of both rooms but does, nonetheless, create the illusion that you have a normally-segmented (though microscopic) house.
annnyway....

itta spent the afternoon babysitting niece and nephew, and i spent it finishing the passably beta version of the candy in action website. then tonight, my in-from-melbourne brother-in-law dov and i went off in search of a bar.

i'd passed this lounge/bar/internet cafe a bunch, so we went there first. turns out the "bar" part was...well, false advertising. "we might apply for beer," said the hostess. "what do you think?"

we walked around. we found a place that, according to a hipster on the corner, "might be sketch or might be not." we took our chances. dov's tall. i have payos. who in brooklyn would be threatened by us?

so we went into the bar. dov asked them to put on the eagles game. three people worked the TV until green uniforms appeared. and, as the bartender returned with our drinks, she bore a deathly serious countenance as she told us:

"it's karaoke night. and you are both going to sing."

we did. eventually. dov kept flipping through the book, asking should we do this? we can't do this. and telling me that his voice wasn't good. then i signed myself up, and i told the host that he was going to sing "land down under" right after me.

i went up. we were the only white people in the bar, did i tell you that? and the only people who had gone before sang mary j. blige. i was freaked out. usually, when i do karaoke, i do cheesy white-people songs. the dixie chicks and madonna are my friends. alanis. god, alanis. but tonight i did stevie wonder. signed, sealed, delivered. and everyone started clapping along with me. after i was done, dov sang, and he even hit the whistling chorus. and then a middle-aged man sang a note-perfect rendition of luther vandross.

and we all felt like we'd earned our keep in this world.

candy, cooking, and what not to do at parties

before i forget, let me tell you that Candy in Action is signed, sealed, on its way to the printers, and you can pre-order it from me or from amazon through that link there. if you order through on amazon by clicking through my page, i get a very tiny percentage, so yes, it's cool if you do that. if you order through me, of course, mention if you'd like to have me write anything special.

a mere few hours before shabbos, and we are both in the kitchen cooking up a mad storm. as if there were any other kind of storm, especially in cooking. we have carrots so big, i almost stabbed itta's stomach with one. no hard feat, of course, since it's getting bigger than christmas, and hard to avoid, especially when carrying armfuls of spices with names like Pottery Barn colors.

last night at the Jewcy party, i spent a good deal of the night getting drunk with marty from ROI 120, and having him introduce me to people in the most abrupt of ways:

MARTY: "Hey, this is Izzy. She's the one who pays you and tells you when your stuff is shit."
ME: Oh. (pause) Was it?
IZZY: (longer pause) Erm, what was your name again?
ME: Matthue. Matthue Roth.
IZZY: Oh, no. Mostly not, anyway.
Me: (sigh of mostly relief)

toward the end of the night, i pitched them what i remember as being a sequel to my memoir in maybe a hundred and fifty columns. i remember being really excited about it, but i wasn't the person whose reactions i should have been watching.