Being Marginalized Is a Blessing: An Interview with Author Dan Kennedy

Popshifter: When I was looking at your McSweeney’s articles. They were really funny, but I noticed around 2005 they got really dark.

Dan Kennedy: (laughing) They did?!?

Popshifter: Yeah, the one where the three-year-old is the Devil or whatever? [Silly Things My 3-Year-Old Said That I’m Certain the Rest of the World Would Find Cute and Sweet—Ed.]

Christian Bale as Patrick Bateman
in American Psycho

Dan Kennedy: (laughs more)

Popshifter: I sent that to a friend of mine and he was like, “How does he know? These are the exact same conversations I have with my three-year-old!” So how did that happen? Why’d they get so twisted?

Dan Kennedy: 2005, oddly enough, was a really fun year.

Popshifter: (laughs)

Dan Kennedy: It’s weird that my work got dark in 2005 because 2006 kinda blew.

Popshifter: Maybe you were anticipating it!

Dan Kennedy: Oh! We were living in lower Manhattan and that area’s got a certain vibe. Mainly the heart of commerce—and arguably greed—and right across from the Stock Exchange. And then just behind the Stock Exchange they have the oldest graveyard in the city. Really beautiful and next to an old church, but yeah, there’s a lot of. . . although I kinda like it down there. After five p.m. it’s just a ghost town; it is an isolationist’s dream. It’s like a concert that has ended and everyone has gone home. I loved it; I liked the vibe it brought to my work, too. I liked feeling like I was living in a secret Batcave on the 20th floor. (laughs)

Popshifter: So your book—Rock On—was great. I actually got it and read it that same day. Do you like Douglas Coupland?

Dan Kennedy: I liked Shampoo Planet.

Popshifter: Me too, although I find that his books meander a lot towards the end, but I felt that Rock On was like if Douglas Coupland had a good ending.

Dan Kennedy: (laughs) I think I’m pretty guilty of meandering.

Popshifter: No, I mean, there’s an actual point; you knew that something was going to happen.

Dan Kennedy: Oh, that’s good. I must’ve brought it up a step since the last book.

Popshifter: Oh, have you been accused of meandering? (laughs)

Dan Kennedy: (Laughs) Yeah, well. . . yeah. It’s like, I kind of know it’s over when I just shut the lid on the laptop.

“Steve Martin is the kind of guy
who loves to write things about
himself on book flaps. In fact,
he has been known to write
entire books just so he
could write on their flaps.”

Popshifter: I also saw a lot of similarities to—and you’re probably going to think this is a weird comparison—American Psycho, but not gory, not like torturing women.

Dan Kennedy: (laughs) I am SO hanging my hat on that comparison.

Popshifter: Because it was just so frenetic and you were so paranoid and you weren’t sure what was going on— kind of like American Psycho was—in addition to being a great satire.

Dan Kennedy: Right, right.

Popshifter: I felt it was very similar in tone, but without axes and chainsaws.

Dan Kennedy: That’s cool!

Popshifter: I was also reading about some of your influences, where you mention Steve Martin and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson—

Dan Kennedy: (laughs) Obviously picking modest influences!

Popshifter: I assumed that based on your humor and writing, you would have to like Martin’s Cruel Shoes. [Cruel Shoes can be read online here.—Ed.]

Dan Kennedy: No one’s ever mentioned Cruel Shoes to me.

Popshifter: It’s so good.

Dan Kennedy: Cruel Shoes started it all for me. I mean, Cruel Shoes was—and I’m trying to put on my shoes as we speak—

Popshifter: (laughing) I hope they’re not the cruel shoes!

Dan Kennedy: (cracking up) No, these are good. . . good shoes. Cruel Shoes was one of the first humor books I remember ever even noticing. I was maybe eight or nine years old, and I remember being in a mall in Southern California and there was this book and I read the flap copy and I remember thinking, “This is awesome and totally wrong.” I remember him talking about how he just wanted to write a book to fill out the flap copy. And I thought, “This is just perfect and wrong.” I don’t think I’ve ever read the book! Just the flap copy.

Click to read more from Dan Kennedy on. . .

Cruel Shoes by Steve Martin
The alienation of the “college years”
The death of print media?
The Motown commercial and music now
Being in the slow lane
Definition for mayhem
What’s next?

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