Kind-Of Interview with Bud Smith on His Sort-Of Memoir, “Work”

by Jerome Spencer

“Do your beautiful thing. We don’t judge people who seek beauty in the dirt, we make fun of those who lay down in the dirt and do not dream.”

I was heading out on my lunch break with a copy of Bud Smith’s Work and some Oreos when my boss stopped me.

“Whatcha reading there? What’s it about?”
“It’s about this guy that works in a nuclear reactor facility, but he also writes a lot of books.”
“Wow.” My boss nodded, “Sounds electrifying.”
Silence.
“Get it?”
I didn’t.
“You can use that in your review.”
I did.

But Work is about so much more than that. Work is a memoir (of sorts) about splendor and how to seek it out every day. Work is about hanging onto your inspiration even when the monotony of the “real world” starts to grind you down. Work is a love story to the working class from the working class, and a love story about a man and a woman. Work is an instruction manual about keeping your head above water no matter how high the tide of capitalism rises. Or maybe it’s not that deep; I don’t know.

Somewhat of a non-sequential autobiography, Work tells Bud Smith’s story of growing up in New Jersey, working heavy construction, falling in love, moving to New York City after/because of a drunken argument and writing. What makes this story so extraordinary is how none of it is actually ever extraordinary. Work is compelling because it’s just so average; this could be anyone’s life, but, in the masterful hands of Bud Smith, it becomes so compelling that you can’t put the book down.

Many of the stories are anecdotal and funny in that heartwarming, been-there kind of way, but Work also becomes full of insight to anyone out there that has a dream beyond making ends meet. There’s a dialogue in which Smith is encouraging his co-worker at an oil-refinery to write a children’s book for his daughter as they drive through Jersey that effortlessly captures all of the beauty we all share yet rarely acknowledge. There’s a lot of idealistic languages here; big talk about how art can save us all and how we should never give up and persevere and follow our dreams. Yet it never feels pedestrian or corny or over the top. Rather, it seems hopeful and joyous and, at times, prophetic

Work is the story about a man going through the same bullshit as the rest of us and managing to find the beauty in the struggle and appreciate the love all around him and just keep doing what he’s passionate about. I messaged Bud Smith some sentimental shit about how this book inspired me and he responded:

“Aw thanks, man… I love being alive and every day is a stupid chance to make something”

And maybe that should have been the review. Either that or the thing my boss said.

 

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“Double Bird” Is Full Of Wonderment and Thoughtful Turns

by Jerome Spencer

“When the institutions climb inside the meager house that is your humble body, and claim your body as your property, all you have to do is show no pain, and puke them back up, send them flying.”

When writing a review, I like to select a powerful line or two from the book and lead in with that quote. That proved a daunting task with Double Bird, because so many sentences absolutely blew me away. An anomalous and intimate collection of short stories, Double Bird is a solid emotional rollercoaster masquerading as intangible entertainment.

Quite a few of Bud Smith’s stories may be easy to quantify as absurd, but none are ever incongruous or inane for the mere sake of absurdity. Even the most bizarre stories in the book – like Gling Gling Gling, a tale of running-over a pedestrian and running errands with him as he dies in the passenger seat – is heavy with purpose and allegory. While Double Bird will elicit laughs and has more than a few wild turns, it’s also full of thoughtful prose and powerful purpose.

For all of its sense of wonderment and buoyancy, Double Bird excels at emotive substance. Bud Smith effortlessly pens passages that just creep into your psyche and are absolutely ruinous. When Smith writes, “There’s always someone somewhere screaming, just on the edge of earshot. You can choose to listen or you can ignore it” in the captivating story Pentagram, the insight is blatantly clear and enduring. 

Stories like The Paralyzer and The Moon did more than break my heart, I felt like I misplaced a little piece of myself after reading them and I’m still unsure of where it’s hidden. That’s the true merit of Double Bird, though; it’s so full of subtle, almost reluctant splendor that lingers and disguises itself as something, anything and everything else until it burrows into our very souls or whatever we keep deep in our chest cavities, respectively. It feels a lot like being in the wrong place and the right time. Or is it vice versa?

“So what if life is hurtful? So what if the bullet didn’t even have your name on it?”
 

“The Garbage Times/White Ibis” Gives Fruitless Perspective on Doomed Beauty

by Jerome Spencer

“The night before, I’d opened an empty dumpster and a tiny rat was at the bottom, jumping up and down, trapped.
So I tipped the dumpster and let him go.
Which, for whatever reason, hurt.
Like hurt bad.”

The energy, pace and stream-of-consciousness writing in The Garbage Times/White Ibis pulls the reader along almost unconsciously.  You’ll find yourself digging in, hanging on to every frenetic word and turn of phrase, laughing out loud and flipping through page after page frantically and genially until – Oh shit. This is really sad.

Two (sort-of) interlocking novellas, The Garbage Times/White Ibis follows it’s narrator from the desolate, frozen streets of Chicago to the swamps of the theme park state without ever losing the author’s dry-wit and distinctive observations. While it goes from damp bar basements, shit-clogged toilets and sharing joints with homeless guys to family parties at the country club, evening bike rides and partying with Girl Scouts, Sam Pink never loses his fruitless perspective on all that is beautiful yet inevitably doomed within both worlds. And, yeah, that sounds fucked up; but is it?

No other writer captures the complexity of human emotion and the rollercoaster that is inner-monologue – particularly while simply observing the most mundane human interaction – like Pink. Often, while reading this book, I didn’t realize my heart had been shattered because I was distracted by my own laughter. Pink’s simple observations become metaphors or, perhaps, the basis for a new philosophy altogether. Whether it’s pessimism or deranged optimism, Pink always manages to sneak the wrong one (?) into every situation, prompting the reader to question everything. Or perhaps just accept things they way they are. The Garbage Times/White Ibis is almost insidious in its power, reminding us to seize and appreciate the beauty around us while it’s there because it’s only temporary. And it all falls apart in the end. Maybe.

It would be a disservice to Sam Pink’s impressive catalogue to say The Garbage Times/White Ibis is his best work, but, if you’ve never read his work before, it would be a great place to start.

“Animals Eat Each Other” Finds Sympathy in Shitty People

by Jerome Spencer

“I thought about how entropy seemed to be the natural state of the universe. How everything was coming apart, all the time, while also desperately trying to stay together.”

There are so many moments, passages and insights In Elle Nash’s powerful short novel, Animals Eat Each Other, that it’s easy to get lost in the story and forget to breath. It’s a penetrating account of a young girl’s three-way relationship with a volatile couple; A relationship so unyielding that the young girl’s real name gets lost in the surrender as the couple dubs her “Lilith.” This isn’t some quaint story about an innocent victim tormented by a Marilyn Manson-obsessed white trash couple, though. Animals Eat Each Other is a shadowy exploration of obsession, manipulation and the ruins of love and sexuality (even deeper, the fine line between the latter two). The stripped-down prose cuts through the clutter and the façade and tears you open like a dull, serrated steak knife.

Nash writes with precision and passion, narrating the tale like a retrospective and a confessional diary. Her insights are sharp and honest, exploring her own thought process with an almost bemused culpability yet showing little to no regret or remorse. Not to imply that she should feel any type of guilt, per se. Not one character in this book is what you’d call a “good person” by any standard. What they are, though, are real, complex and fully-developed people that illicit something resembling compassion and empathy. What Nash has done with this book is weave a story about shitty people doing shitty things to other shitty people that is somehow relatable and sympathetic, forcing its reader to exist in that hazy place in which right and wrong are subjective and perspective is the biggest lie and the only truth.

Animals Eat Each Other is dark, sexy and astute, the writing so concise and raw that it makes reading such heavy subject matter seem easy and intrusive. Nash’s evocative and intuitive prose pushes the story along, creating atmosphere and suspense. It’s like that train wreck in slow-motion cliché, but the beauty in this chaos that much more relevant and much more rewarding once you dig for it.