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81 Plays2 months ago
Joe and Mark are joined by the wonderfully original writer Tom Bradley. 3:AM Magazine describes Tom as "... one of the most criminally underrated authors on the planet."
Tom explains what it was like to be a six foot, eight-inch tall red-haired American, living in China and Japan and teaching at a number of English-language universities in both countries.
The peripatetic lifestyle allowed Tom to develop his own writing style and tackle subject matter that was not necessarily mainstream. "I think I've made about $35 in royalties in fifty years of writing," Tom jokes.
He’s worked with the artist that has inspired him: Canada's very own Nick Patterson.
They look at three of the illustrations in Family Romance, one of several books that Nick has worked on with Tom. [see below for the pictures they describe in the podcast]
These illustrations are "breathtaking in a disturbing kind of way" Joe says.
Tom describes the process of working with the artist – Nick created the illustrations and it was Tom's job to create a narrative linking the images.
They have a deep and entertaining conversation about being an exile, teaching abroad, writing, and where writers find their inspiration.
For more information, check out the show notes for this episode.
Re-Creative is produced by Donovan Street Press Inc. in association with MonkeyJoy Press.
Contact us at [email protected]
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Transcript
Introductions and Living Abroad
00:00:08
Speaker
do do do dooo do dooo do did do dooooo ah mark hi joe I'm still struggling with the cold, so anybody who hears that in my voice, that's what's going on. so Just to get that out in the open. Do you have a question for me today? or and I should. I should have a question for you, ah but it's it's now going on in my head because you just tried to sing Singer a little yeah we're gonna go with the the sing-along. Yeah the sing-along thing um I guess my question is we've talked actually about living abroad Places we both have lived abroad. That's right. Let me guess. Yeah, probably shut up frog you lived in France I've also lived in the UK. Are there places that you'd like to live that you haven't had a chance to live in?
00:00:56
Speaker
Oh yeah. I, I love change and and variety. So I'd be happy to live in many different places as long as it includes the, uh, a possibility of a hot shower and it's a, maybe a hamburger every now and then, you know, if it's got those two things, then yeah, I'm in, but yeah.
00:01:15
Speaker
yeah But I'd love to check out Rome, you know, and that's maybe Hawaii. I don't know. That's always kind of ah appealed to me. I liked Hawaii when I was there. Hanging out with surfers. I hung out with surfers for a couple of weeks and it was, yeah I know I actually didn't learn to surf because there was no surf to learn on, but.
00:01:35
Speaker
ah That was a bummer, man. Okay, so what about you, then, before we turn it to... Oh, God, yeah, there's lots of places I'd like to go. And one of the places, actually, I don't know if I want to live there, but I certainly want to go there. And I know that our guest today has spent some time there is Japan.
00:01:52
Speaker
I would be very interested in in Japan, and I'd love to talk to Tom a little bit more about his experience there.
Living in Asia: Experiences and Challenges
00:01:59
Speaker
I'm just reading today that it was, somebody called it a bit xenophobic, and I know it was in the 16th century. i I don't know if it still is today. Well, it probably is hard to be a giant barbarian in that place. I mean, I've been to other parts of Asia, so I kind of know what that's like, but I just always loved ah the poet Basho or Beisho. I don't know how to pronounce the name.
00:02:20
Speaker
um And I'd love to go to the northern part of Japan and just sort of do some hiking where he did the yeah hiking and yeah. It feels like a, yeah. And i just I just finished reading a fantastic book about 16th century Japan, Masashi, which made me really intrigued about it. Tom Bradley, welcome to the podcast. Hello.
00:02:42
Speaker
Hello. ah So ah Tom, you did spend time in Japan for what I remember. 30 years. 30 years. Yeah. And before that, I lived in China and um more than half my life has been spent in the extreme orange.
00:02:58
Speaker
Can I ask you how you got there? I've always wondered what what drew you to Asia because you're a tall guy. I think that's well established. you How tall are you exactly? Six foot eight. Six foot eight. And you had red hair when you were younger, I'm assuming.
00:03:16
Speaker
like me. Unlike me, i'm i was not I was never 6'8 nor even 5'8". So what was that like being in China and Japan? well those In China, i lived in this was before they they got as rich and modern as they are now. And I was living in a in a very undeveloped town down in the south. And every time I stepped out the door, it was like the whole commerce of the city. I mean, stops. Yeah, it was like, you know, it's the whole place is like a permanent outdoor rock concert. Anyway, there's so many people.
00:03:50
Speaker
but they all congregated around me. And the the the police told my university that I couldn't go outside. i had to If I was going to leave the campus, I had be to be driven in a car because it fucked up commerce of the whole city. ignored I ignored that. you know yeah But I'll tell you what, even though that happened in in China like that, when I went to Japan,
00:04:14
Speaker
the the reaction was the same, but it was much more, it was totally muted. They pretended like I wasn't there. And so I felt weirder in Japan than I did in China. I mean, I could walk down the street in Japan and not feel like I, you know, and and nobody gathered around me, but I still felt more alien there than I did in in China. Very strange to two different different places. yeah So were they you like some kind of ghost in Japan? Is that the children were terrified of me. Oh my god. Oh, that's interesting. Because the Chinese people very, very friendly. They mean they're so friendly. They, you know, they've
00:04:51
Speaker
They wanted to just come come in contact with me. Yeah, my experience in Nepal, which is probably the closest experience, is, ah you know, i I would walk into town with all the other white people. But because I had red hair and I also because I'm I'm i'm very pale at the time, I wore a zig oxide in my nose to prevent because I'd. Oh, and so I've got red hair. I've got this white nose. And I would have I would literally have children dancing and singing behind me. They were so excited that I was there. I was like, what is happening?
00:05:26
Speaker
That's wonderful. that That sounds like a good experience. it was actually Yeah, I actually
Independent vs Mainstream Publishing
00:05:30
Speaker
liked it. It was fun. yeah okay Now, before we get to too far along, so some listener feedback has has told us that we need to introduce our guests a little earlier in our in our episodes. um so now I was reading up on you beforehand, Tom, and before I knew your actual height, one of the quotes that jumped out at me was, you'd been described as a literary giant among pygmies.
00:05:53
Speaker
Oh, yeah, literal. But nohow how would you describe yourself and your your career? Oh, that's a hard one. um I guess this the only thing I can say is this I'm a writer. That's, you know, coming out of high school, it just hit me that that was going to be my whole life. And so aside from publishing or big or failing to get published, or, or when I managed to finally get start getting published, that's all incidental. What's what's been constant since I left high school is just that I've organized or disorganized everything.
00:06:26
Speaker
around saving and every mental calorie I had for writing. One reason why I went to China and Japan was so I could get stupid jobs in universities, where I didn't have to waste any any mental calories, because I had to put that all into my writing. So you know, teaching conversation doesn't require any um burning any mental calories.
00:06:49
Speaker
So it sounds like we both found the same solution for how to be you know a writer, which is to have a job teaching at a university. It does give you a bit more mental space for it. Yeah, especially if you go to stupid, terrible universities, which is what I did on on both sides of the Pacific, where there's absolutely no no requirement to do anything really. except show up, basically. See, i got I got that part wrong. I went to a good university and I actually expected me to turn up. so Oh, that's a big mistake. Yeah, I screwed up. I wish I'd talked to you before I did any of that. Right. You go to a university that has a reputation, the little professors expect you to sort of
00:07:28
Speaker
learn their little critical theories and things. you know Whereas if you go to a bad university, they're just glad to have somebody that knows how to write a sentence. Yeah, you got a pulse and you can write a sentence you're in. Right. And in China and Japan, you either what you know I was in China during the modernization, and in Japan during the internationalization, and they just want the biggest, freakiest, largest, of most obnoxious looking American they can find to make themselves look modern and international. They were delighted to have me.
00:07:57
Speaker
well so when I want to get back to that, but first, how did the writing go? like how did you i mean Because I've read some ah lots of praise about your your writing and and your career. Your writing is fabulous. but i I love your writing so much. Thank you very much. I've published a bunch of books and I've made maybe $35 in royalties over the past 50 years, you know, or maybe maybe $100, you know, so, you know, obviously, as far as commercial success, there's none of it, but I've certainly done what I wanted to do. And does does that matter? ah Well, I don't know if if I've never been successful, I have a feeling that it would be a huge
00:08:38
Speaker
gigantic change in everything that might very likely fuck everything up. Yeah, if you had you walk into a room and instead of people ignoring you, and you can pay attention to what they're doing. I assume that if you're famous, they start, you know, behaving in stilted ways. And so you really don't get a good idea what life is really like. i yeah I've never tried it. i've never tried this But this is a thought experiment. would it Would it change the way that you approach what you write? Because one of the things I most admire about your writing is that it is completely fearless, or it seems that way to me.
00:09:14
Speaker
So would it that would that change if you suddenly had commercial success? I don't know. Think think about if you had something to lose. You know, I have this, not only all this money coming in, but all this ego gratification and you've got these agents. so The first thing an agent does, apparently, is he assigns you to someone called a stylist. And the stylist's job is to figure out if you have anything in your book that's going to offend anybody.
00:09:39
Speaker
and you know And so if if I had all this fame and money at stake, I might be afraid to offend people and I might become just a ah hulking you know parody of a writer like a lot of famous people are. Because whole the whole key word of mainstream publishing now is not to offend anyone. you know And that's gotten to be a real disease, apparently.
00:10:01
Speaker
Well, I think that I would argue that's one of the reasons that the life of publishing is now in independent publishing. Yeah. In small companies like Joe's and independent publishers and self publishers. I think that's where the exciting stuff is happening. Because wasn't
Art and Influence: Nick Patterson
00:10:15
Speaker
Philip K. Dick ah mostly unsuccessful in his life? Hell, yes. I mean Herman Melville.
00:10:22
Speaker
was unsuccessful. yeah And of course Kafka. Kafka, like it's just like the number of- Mahoney, Rayner, Bradley, the list goes on. We're in good company. Yeah, exactly. We're a great company. didn't I think Whitman took a self published edition of Leaves of Grass in the ah railroad station as a means of self promotion. He wanted people to see him reading his own book in the railroad station.
00:10:50
Speaker
I think he actually yeah did many editions of that book, too. like He self-published a bunch of editions of those. books well Henry David Thoreau. He was so published. Yeah. like it's It's a fine tradition. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. So we're fine. if Fuck the agents. Can I say fuck? so yeah I'm sorry.
00:11:09
Speaker
so um The shtick of the podcast, Tom, is that we we ask our our guests to come sort of prepared to talk about an artist they really love or they inspired them. And and I think you have someone who's of the Canadian persuasion as well.
00:11:26
Speaker
so Yeah, and Nick Patterson. He's from Victoria. But yeah, you sent us some samples of his ah pictures earlier, and they are—boy, what is the word to describe them? I mean, i my initial response was, wow, because they're they're breathtaking in a disturbing kind of way. Yes, yes.
00:11:47
Speaker
Yeah. How would you describe the top? Like if you're if you're trying to describe the aesthetic of the, we'll put we'll post these pictures if we're allowed to on the on the web website. Yeah, you're allowed to, yes. Okay, so as as long as that's okay, um because they really are quite arresting.
00:12:06
Speaker
Yeah. Well, the the way I described them was I wrote an entire book. I got a I came across a whole stack of these pictures, about 100 of them. And that then they just they'd struck me as I wrote a whole novel based on these pictures, the pictures came first. And without any discussion, it's called a family romance.
00:12:24
Speaker
And it's um got 100 illustrations and a story is written around them. as you know As you can see, each picture looks like something has been happening before and is about to happen after. And there's this big weird moment that he's captured. And you know I talked to him. he said I said, where do the where do you get these ideas? Nick said, I pay attention to random thoughts.
00:12:47
Speaker
Wow. Yeah. And then what he does is he takes these random thoughts and of the things that never existed. And then he draws them, as you can see, with more detail and specificity than actual real reality. You know, so he's yeah very interesting. I've been working with him for about 11 years now, but but more than that, maybe closer to 15 years.
00:13:09
Speaker
Yeah, because when i when you shared these, I thought, I'm pretty sure I've seen these kinds of pictures before with your work, because he's he's ah illustrated a cover or two for you. A lot of covers, yeah. Yeah. Well, I've seen them before, too, in my nightmares. Now, I have to say, so you said a family romance. When I look at these pictures, those are not the words that come to mind. And so I'm going to try to describe. Can you describe these pictures, Joe? yeah Yeah, I'm going to describe them. And then I want to hear what this novel is about that came about as a result of them. So, OK, so the first one I'm looking at, it's ah it's basically three parts. There's like a monstrous serpentine head on top of a
00:13:53
Speaker
It's sort of an almost ah emaciated human head with an enormous a bloated tongue coming out of it. ah The neck of which is an arm turned into a hand and the whole thing is on spindly legs.
00:14:08
Speaker
yeah's Yeah, so that's the first good job. Good job. Exactly. Yeah. and And it's drawn in this in this style of, say, ah a Renaissance, maybe Leonardo da Vinci, a little bit like that a Renaissance. It is. yeah Yeah. Yeah. And you didn't mention the the fact that the the face of the creature on top is his his mouth is fully exposed so you can see all of his teeth.
00:14:30
Speaker
and Yeah, a little bit like gums from like a little bit of what each are Geiger's alien. I actually I felt a real strong Geiger vibe when I looked at these pictures. Yeah. Now the second one is a demonic moth atop a woman who's The head looks like it's just been ah receipt on the receiving end of a bullet because it's basically imploding with ah blood coming out and her hands out in front of her as if to say, what the fuck? So that's that one. That's me every Monday morning. Yeah. And then the the next one is, ah it's another color one. And oh my God, i how do I, okay.
00:15:18
Speaker
I don't even know how to begin to describe this one. Mark, you're going to have to tackle this. All right. i'm mean I'll go for the bottom up because I think that makes it easier. So it's a set of wings that are dark feathered wings. And out of that comes what looks like an alien rib cage and spinal column. yeah Then there's obviously some kind of skull on top of that, but it's like very spiky. yeah And then sitting on top of that is an alien creature with obviously the same skull features.
00:15:53
Speaker
Right? That's the same skull features, looks it's but it's alive. And it it doesn't have wings. It has ah two long tentacle legs and then two human-like arms, cradling the skull but not below it. And it's a little it's blue. And it's bluish. Yeah. And it's pretty disturbing. This is actually, I think, the most disturbing of them to me.
00:16:16
Speaker
I don't know, I think and to the the one with the woman's face being blown off is a little bit. Oh, no, I forgot about the last one. No, it's the most disturbing, the last one. Yeah, the last one. Maybe our guest should describe the last one. Maybe you could describe this one, Tom.
Inspiration Behind 'Family Romance'
00:16:30
Speaker
The one with ah this crazy lady on the horsey thing. Yeah, yeah. ah Which is not how I would describe it. She's an auto-defe lady with no clothes on.
00:16:42
Speaker
Yeah, skeleton. That's that that lady is his mom. She in this story. In the novel. She's the mom. Oh my god. And in this one, this is in her younger days. She started out as a yeah demonstrator at a arms convention. And what she's writing there is a mechanical, robotic, weaponized semi horse like creature, you know, which is like, it's partly machine and partly organic organism. Yeah. Yeah. So and my job was to make a ah coherent story out of all these images. And I, and I managed to do that. Yeah. It's okay. So, but maybe you can tell us what the previous three were then because the, cause we described them literally, but what we just, we're totally literal. And, and what did they, when you guys they did it exactly right. And I agree. The one with the feathers is strange. It's strange. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's a, there's a um there's that theme running through the book.
00:17:41
Speaker
about pathogens. And so there's a lot of oh situations where path. Now the the one with the exploding face. Yeah, that's, that's actually not a woman. That's a that's the the hero. That's the man, and the protagonist and he's he's wearing like a sarong. I find that the the garment he's wearing to be the strangest thing about the whole picture. And that moth on top of his head is a pathogen.
00:18:05
Speaker
And his mother has warned him of these sickness causing creatures and they'll, they'll cause you to sneeze. It's called the sneeze catastrophic. And that's why that's why his face is exploding.
00:18:19
Speaker
I had a real blast writing this. it was I can tell, yeah. no i've in With this code that I have, I've had a couple of sneezes like that i' in the last couple of days. Knees catastrophic. Yeah. Good way to describe it. Notice the way Nick draws hands. His hands are always, I've been told by other artists that hands are very, very difficult to get right, but he always manages to do it. I guess that's the only picture with hands. But if you do look at the book, there's a lot of Well, there's, yeah, there's a hand in the first picture. um Oh yeah, the one, the single hand. And it's actually interesting because it the middle finger looks withered compared to the main finger in the thumb and that. Now I just want to say with the the sneeze one, now my wife was a pharmacist says sneeze into your arm, not your hands. So he's doing it wrong there. Well, first of all, the hands are like six feet away from the, three feet away from the face.
00:19:11
Speaker
But, you know, hopefully his hand is in a place he can catch the eyeball that you can really see in the middle of all that. Yeah, maybe that's the important thing. I sneezed like that yesterday. It's the start of ah pollen season here in Ontario. And ine I sneezed like this yesterday. Yeah. Now, Tom, OK, so what tell us more about the novel because the novel is fascinating. What what is the how does it go?
00:19:34
Speaker
Well, okay, it's about this a family who live on the banks of a river called the Judeo Freites. And on the other side it' is a place where the a bunch of people call the Amalekites live, the relic Amalekites. And that's a reference to the book of Samuel, yeah where Jehovah tells the the Israelites to just completely wipe out these people that Amalekites is one of the first absolute genocides ever recorded in history. God tells them to kill the women, children, men, the animals, wipe the whole fucking place out. Well, it just so happens. These people, some of them survived, and they live right across the Judea, Freddy's river from this family. And this family includes the mom, who is the woman riding that horse, and the son whose face is exploding. And they also have the father, the father is that creature on the spindly legs that you
00:20:30
Speaker
that you notice with the group composite preacher. Well, he has waited across the Judeo-Phrades and has joined the Amalekites as kind of a traitor because that on either side of the Judeo-Phrades, they're having a fight and they hate each other. And they want each other to be dead. And so it's a vaguely familiar situation, you know. And so it's basically ah ah a parody of that whole situation where one ethnic group wants the other ethnic group to die and go away. But of course, it's mixed in with all these strange details like the strange pathogens and the creatures and things. The Amalekites have become mutated over the over the many and generations. And that's why, for example, the creature with the feathers. i think Yeah, think that that's one that has that's like the remains of one of them. They they tend to have feathers
00:21:23
Speaker
and strange long legs. All these things had to be based upon this, these established stack of 100 pictures. Yeah, that's so cool. I couldn't get with Nick and say, Oh, come on, Nick. Can you change this picture a little bit to go with my story? There was no, there was no conversation. That was, that was the parameter, you know?
00:21:42
Speaker
So I have a good time. Yeah, I haven't read that one yet, so I will have to get that because i've I think I've read four or five of your books and i I've loved all of your work.
Obsession with Mutation and Indie Publishing
00:21:51
Speaker
And that that theme of mutation, that's kind of a theme, right, for you? Yeah, it is kind of an obsession. Yeah, do you know why? Oh.
00:22:03
Speaker
ah Well, I was brought up um within distance of the first hydrogen bomb tests, brought up in Salt Lake City. And I remember in the first grade looking out the window and the sky was black in the middle of the day. And I'm pretty sure that was like one of the hydrogen bombs. the The fallout was floating right over the city in those days.
00:22:25
Speaker
way back in the 50s. And then, you know, the first thing I did was I went to Japan and lived in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, you know, so i've I've been around the notion of yeah radioactive mutations for a long time.
00:22:40
Speaker
Yeah, the the the book you wrote about, ah it's Hiroshima, I believe, a Bomb Baby. Yeah. I love that book. Yeah. it's it's and It really plays well with that theme. I appreciate that. Yeah. That that cover, that was David Harrison's cover. That's a fabulous cover. Yeah. Well, now, while we're on the subject of your books and the covers, um because I'm looking down on your site through your books and covers, all of your covers are amazing.
00:23:07
Speaker
and appreciate that yeah they're super cool and original captivating yeah whenever i get a publisher to take me on i i try real hard to to let them let me pick their cover and i've been lucky in almost every case you know well and None of them is what one of our ah previous guests called indie death covers. Which are basically you know like four cheap covers that yeah everyone's gonna go, yeah, I don't think I'll purchase this book. There's some stock art with a courier font on it. Yeah, these are covers that you're picking up the book, you're looking at the cover,
00:23:45
Speaker
you're And then you're gonna have one of two reactions. think You know, one is like immediately put the book down and go, I don't want anything to do with that. Or like, this is for me. And as soon as I saw this, like your website and the covers, like I'm super, I'm definitely interested in your books and I couldn't wait to talk to you. And so. Well, that's great. Thank you. I appreciate that. I have to ask you, you probably know the answer to this, but who did the cover for this one? A pleasure joint with one of the sex workers who don't exist in the People's Republic of China.
00:24:12
Speaker
Oh, yeah, that's that's one of those Cultural Revolution posters done yeah by committee and the and the People's are Republic of China. And they're all available with no um that there's no particular attribution. And you can just use them without any kind of copyright or anything like that. You know,
00:24:28
Speaker
So I got those social realism, you know, of the of the Cultural Revolution days. Now, my Chinese friends really hate that stuff. It reminds them of the battle days. Sure. Yeah. Meeting each other to death. You know, of course. Yeah. But I still I i just love that shit. Because my thought when I saw this cover is like, wow, they nailed that socialist republic, ah that socialist realism thing yeah perfectly. But that's why it's an actual poster by committee. yeah Oh, my God.
00:24:54
Speaker
Now, I want to give ah Nick Patterson his due. We've been talking about his images. drift to wild but she Tell us a little bit more about him and your collaboration with him. yeah I have the website, his website address. It might take a while to find it. um That's okay. Doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo. His website is it's called nickdjp.com. I see now that it's under construction. that's yeah that's Anyway, yeah, i I first met him when he was very young. I mean, I think he was still a teenager.
00:25:31
Speaker
I've I've came across this stuff on deviant art. gift ever you're familiar with Oh, yeah, I love that. so Yeah. And I just said, My God, this is amazing. ah The first my first idea was to use it, one of his pictures for a cover and then we got together and started working together. But um yeah, he's wonderful. He's ah right now he's an art student. But for a long time, he worked putting those You know how they put like decals on cars that covers the whole car with a picture? Yeah, yeah, his job was doing that. And he has a great sense of spatial dimensions, you know, like, I've seen videos of how he used to work with that. And you know, it's a matter of making the decal conform to a shape in a very precise way. And so you can see that as drawing a great sense of depth, you know,
00:26:18
Speaker
Yeah, I want to drive in a car with one of those pictures. Right. Well, he developed around it. There is one. As a matter of fact, yeah, one of the pictures from from family romance, he made him into a whole car decal. No way. Yeah, it's a little funny car. That's fantastic. Yeah. Oh, my God. OK, that needs to go up in the website. I imagine that he must have some tattoo artists who know his name.
00:26:43
Speaker
Right. that The one with the exploding face. Yeah, that seems like. um yeah Yeah, a guy made that into a tattoo and he's happy. He's happy to let that happen. Couldn't let that happen. Yeah. Now, let me ask you this. um is Is he sane?
00:26:58
Speaker
but Yes. nots As a matter of fact, he's the sanest person I've ever dealt with very mellow. I get the impression that you Canadians in general are much more mellow than we Americans. And he certainly is one he he doesn't get uptight. We had one really terrible publisher, who basically fucked us both. And I got kind of crazy, but he stayed no the whole time.
00:27:21
Speaker
no ah fit for him yes that's that's notice that that you kucts tend to be less crazy than us americans or am i just that Well, that's true, but we're way more passive aggressive.
00:27:33
Speaker
oh Yeah, we' we've got our own problems. Yeah, we have our own issues. Yeah, like, yeah, it's not, it's not a, it's not, Kanaka Stan is not a utopia. I'm disappointed. I was going to escape there. I'm sorry. Well, yeah you're welcome. We will. Well, yeah, we're just being modest. We're actually far better than, no, no, just kidding. Um, now can I, I want to ask because it is a kind of a subject for this, this podcast. Um, at least in interest of mine, how did the publisher screw you guys? Do you mind telling that story? Okay. I won't tell you the name of the guy. No, don't do that. No, yeah I said, okay. We we were, we're okay. I have a ah epic poem.
00:28:13
Speaker
that I wrote, and it was just gonna be a traditional illustration job. It was just, you know, he was going to draw pictures of the text. And so the text was going to come first, pictures next, and it was gonna be a big project. And we did it. You wound up doing all the work. And this guy just refused just for the fuck you. And he also he also said he's going to give us like,
00:28:33
Speaker
like 20 copies each of the book. The book is very expensive. It's like a 30 or $40 book. And he said, Fuck, you're not going to do it. And he didn't even publish the book for for years. you know So i you know I was going crazy. But Nick just was very philosophical about it. Yeah, and that's the thing is, he loves to do the work chair. Yeah. So but the book did eventually get out there. and Did it did make you any money? And did the at least give you royalties or?
00:29:00
Speaker
Well, nobody's he's not trying to sell it, so nobody's buying it, but you know, but it's out there. That's the main thing that exists. Any chance of getting the rights back and treating it properly? um I think this guy doesn't care. i think I think he doesn't care if we, I
China's Societal Changes and Historical Events
00:29:15
Speaker
don't think he would mind if we just did it ourselves you know again, but it's it's hard to find a publisher who's willing to do fully color, fully illustrated books. Yeah, that's it's expensive. They can't charge a cheap price for them.
00:29:26
Speaker
Now, I'm super interested in your the fact that you've lived 30 years abroad in in China and Japan, and obviously things were rough in in China for for quite some time. Did you live there you like during the tail end of any of that? or No, i became I went there at the very beginning of Deng Xiaoping's Four Modernization Drive. So they were still a very, very poor country, but there's no no violence or craziness. like that That was all during the 60s. So I was safely in America during that time. Just a couple of years before I left, they had the Chengman Square Massacre, and so all my students were there. And and they were ah they did not fare well, I gather.
00:30:10
Speaker
I lost track of them. I lost track of everybody. i they They basically told me I had to leave the country because I was sort of supporting the student movement in my classes by talking about it and letting the students talk about it. So they politely invited me to fuck off, so I did. And you wisely listened. But you don't, so you don't know what happened to them, yeah. Yeah, I assume that, I don't know, I have no idea.
00:30:36
Speaker
That's a shame. I just realized you have a doctorate. What is it in? i't I have no idea. It's in English, British and American literature. Okay. yeah So thats that's one reason why I had to go to China and Japan too. There's no jobs for that. Yeah, that's your but but somewhat of my demographics. You know, that's my excuse. But I didn't want a real job anyway. I mean, you know, I just wanted something, as I mentioned before, where there was no real work to be done.
00:31:02
Speaker
But you know, I remember my students were during the Chenman Square Massacre, they were talking about they were hoping that workers would get involved if the workers would join the demonstrations, they could blow the lid off the whole goddamn thing. And that's what I'm looking for today. And then in the demonstrations and university campuses today, I would love to see the proletariat get in there and just tear the fucking capitalist system down. I mean, it would be wonderful.
00:31:30
Speaker
It's such such a hard call though. like It's so hard for that to happen at this point. There's so many hurdles that have to be jumped over top of that. Yeah. yeah I just read a ah terrific book actually um about sort of generational trauma of Chinese immigrants to, it's called Feeding Ghosts, a graphic memoir about a An American woman who her her mother had grown up in Hong Kong and her mother had come from China, had fled from China, you know, just before around the the Cultural Revolution. Really great insights into because I think a lot of us aren't aware of what that country has been through. Yeah, it was amazing what happened. Do you mean like historically or just in the last
00:32:19
Speaker
70 years basically since the 1930 you know i mean it's yeah it's unbelievable i mean i i'm not even i don't know that i fully understand what's happened in that country are you able tom to maybe give a look yeah to really put you on the spot here your understanding of what that country's been through? Well, in the sixties, they had called the cultural revolution. Yeah. And they call it the 10 years chaos. And Mao Zedong just decided that there was going to consolidate his power by just telling this the high school students and the college students, they could go fucking crazy. They could do whatever the fuck they please. And the army would stand back and let them do whatever they wanted in the name of, you know, supposedly the Maoistic
00:33:01
Speaker
Mao Zedong thought, you know, so as long as they stayed away from the radio stations, they could kill their fucking teachers that could burn down the schools, they could raid the military armament depots and get machine guns and have machine gun fights in the street. I mean, I remember living in this town, there were still machine gun bullet holes in the walls and stuff was total chaos. And then after 10 years, they just said, Okay, nevermind, it's over. And they just stopped.
00:33:25
Speaker
And, you know, people were, it was amazing. It was an amazing time. And a lot of my friends just, they were my age, yeah teenagers at that time, they just stayed home and listen to the voice of America, and just fell in love with the English language, because it was, you know, the the one little source of any kind of sanity that could be that was actually quite common, quite common guys just stayed home for 10 years.
00:33:48
Speaker
And that was just one episode of insanity. Just like another one that the author of this book, Tessa Hulse, brings forth is, you know, at one time they decided it was necessary to kill all the sparrows because there were two new sparrows. Oh yeah, that's part of the culture revolution too.
00:34:04
Speaker
Yeah, so and then they cut all the sparrows, and then but with no understanding or scientific ah underpinning of the impact of that on the ecology, one thing leads to another and people are starving and yeah, just. Well, the same thing happened. They put out a lot of strychnine to kill the rats. They got rats there as big as raccoons, but of course the rats were too smart to eat the strychnine. What happened was the dogs and the cats ate it. When I was there, there was no there was no dog to be seen anywhere.
00:34:32
Speaker
and And not almost no cats either. I went all over the country. So yeah that's that's a that's a minor thing, you know. Well, I don't know. To me, that's the definition of hell, a country with no dogs, no
Post-Apocalyptic Themes and Cultural Comparisons
00:34:43
Speaker
dogs or cats. Come on. Yeah. That's why, you know, conventional heaven and paradise. It's like, no, no dogs. No, then I'm not. Yeah, I'm obviously not in heaven. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. go And then you you're not even talking about like the 30s, which is you know, that Japanese invaded their country in the thirties and they did some incredible things. it yeah Some of the most horrific things that ever happened. Right. And then the Democrats talk about that enough. I don't think. Yeah. Talk about it in Japan. That's for sure. It was just one thing after another for that poor country. And, uh, yeah. But now they're getting ready to kick everybody's ass unless, unless we allow our people to start a nuclear war, you know, which just looks like it might happen.
00:35:29
Speaker
Well, that. Oh, my God. OK, let's not go there. Yes, that's it's so scary. A topic we'rere returning Taiwan and do, you know, airstrip one like, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know how much television you watch, but I've been checking the series Fallout. Oh, yeah. Yeah. That's i' familiar with that.
00:35:48
Speaker
Is that fictional? It's fictional. Yeah, it's fictional. It's it's based on a ah a video game or ah yeah yeah. But it's brilliant. It's, uh, yeah, it's so well done. Yeah. yeah It's basically post-apocalyptic. Yeah. I'll check it out. I pulled my PS4 out of mothballs so I could load up, fall out and play a game after I finished finish the series. Cause it was so good. That's like, I want to be back in that world. Even though it's insane and part of the world building, I hate.
00:36:18
Speaker
because the premise of this whole thing is that there's life after a nuclear war. Yeah, but it's- And there isn't. Yeah, true. There are a lot of mutants walking around? Oh yeah, you'd love it Tom. There's mutants, there's ghouls, there's super mutants. The super mutants are hilarious. Oh yeah, they're great. It does seem like it would be up Tom's alley. It would be. Yeah, you'd love it. I'll check it out. Yeah, yeah. A good argument against any kind of post-apocalyptic scenario.
00:36:50
Speaker
So that's China, but then you've also lived in in Japan, and and you said that was somewhat a somewhat alienating experience. So I'm guessing you preferred China? Well, I go to China was perpetual diarrhea. There was no hot water. and and And when you did fill up a bathtub, the water was the same color as coffee. So you know that but that's the one thing I you know, perpetual diarrhea is kind of the base baseline for me. So but you know, Japan was in terms of creature comforts, the same as America. But the the people were I got along much better with the Chinese. that's So that's so interesting to me. Yeah, that's so cool. Yeah.
00:37:30
Speaker
There is the notion that that people are kind of people everywhere. They're they're the same. you know I take it you don't think that's true, that people are maybe different. and Because you've mentioned that you feel Canadians are different than Americans, Chinese are different than Japanese. Is that a truth? Yeah, the is different. But I guess you know individual people, when you get to know them, yeah they're probably about the same. They just want to earn their living, have a little bit of fun with their family once in a while, you know that sort of thing.
00:38:00
Speaker
Right. But on a macro level. Yeah. You can see the cultural. Yeah. Oh, they're all very, very, very different on a macro level. Yeah. Totally different. I need to learn more about Canadians, though, because mostly what I know about Canada is just it's just Nick, basically.
Writing Projects and Historical Research
00:38:17
Speaker
Well, you also know Kane, right? Oh, Kane Fosher. Yeah. Have you met him on the show?
00:38:23
Speaker
No, not yet, but we should have him on the show. Oh, he's brilliant. Oh, he's a colleague of mine. He actually works in the same faculty that I do. Oh, really? I had no idea. Yeah. There'll be time. We plan to do this podcast for another 30 years. We're doing this for, Joe promised me 30 years when we started this podcast. I think it was, so we got what, 27 more to go. We had 27 more to go. Yeah. I wonder what the technology will be like at that time. Well, we can just beam it into one another's heads at that point. Yeah.
00:38:52
Speaker
I think it really depends on the impact of the nuclear war. Or it could just be smoke signals. That's right. Yeah. Drums. drums Yeah, drums. Yeah. Can I ask you, to what are you working on now? Oh, this is a ah a book with many, many, many, many pages. And I think I have a slightly better than 50% chance of being able to finish it before I die. it's kind of I guess I don't want to talk about the details, but the manuscript at this point is
00:39:26
Speaker
about a million words, it's gonna be unpublishable. 3,000 page, yeah. and So why would you not then just break that up into different volumes? Maybe, yeah. I would like to see it in one one big giant volume that's impossible to lift. and i'll blow that back That's a great idea. I've been working on it for 20 years and you know taking breaks and writing other stuff. But yeah, just this year is my 20th year working on this thing.
00:39:55
Speaker
And okay. How much longer do you have to go? Oh, I hope not more than 10 years. Cause I'm 70 years old right now. and I, I'm the first man in my family on either side to make it out of his sixties. So I don't have much genetic chance of, you know, getting into my nineties, which is what so i'm I'm working as as hard as I can. well know winston churchill but Sorry. I was going to say Winston Churchill thought he was going to die young because all of his forebears had died young and then he lived to 89. Yeah.
00:40:25
Speaker
It was all the whiskey. Yeah, that's right. He was well preserved. It seems like if if you get to the but that position where you're sort of running the world, it's like, you know, you have this momentum that's derived from other people, which keeps you going like Henry Kissinger. you Oh, yeah, maybe. Yeah. So okay. And is that the only thing you're working on? Are you devote or like working on that exclusively or? There's another book about the same length, which I'm working on, too. I've been working on that for about 25 years. And that one, I'm pretty sure I'll be dead before I finish it. It's ah that one, I can tell you it's set in ancient Rome. And it's like the the book I was telling you about that we got fucked over. Right. That that book was is a is a
00:41:08
Speaker
Blank verse epic which is based on some of the characters in this second giant book. I've been working on I Think that one's a lost. I mean I'm gonna keep on working on it once I finish this other one, but What is it working working on two giant books right now? What is the Rome book set like what time period is that set it under the reign of Domitian? Okay. Yeah yeah It's about the same time as um St. John was on Patmos, writing the book of Revelation. Yeah. There's a whole bunch of famous shit going on there. Yeah. These guys basically wander around the world and meet a lot of people of various historical people. So it's very ambitious. It is great. Yeah. What's that?
00:41:49
Speaker
I'm just ah because I just finished listening to Mike Duncan's history of Rome. And of course, he covered Domitian, but I'm just trying to to place him. He was the. Yeah, he was basically the Mussolini of of antiquity. He was a real nasty guy, you know.
00:42:04
Speaker
so you're Okay, so you're writing up about an ancient room. ah Do you research it? into you Where do you get your... i ah Well, when I was living in China, I came back to America and I checked out about 120 books, filled a suitcase with them and took them back to China. Oh, wow. And just read the... Yeah, I did all the research from just hard copied library books.
00:42:28
Speaker
and'm sure I'm sure a lot of it is not current, but that's okay. I'm writing a novel. yeah Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. I know that one of my favorite books, ah a Little Big Man by Tom Berger, he said that before he he wrote that, which is of course all about the West and Cub boys and Indians and whatnot, he read about 50 books and just did 50 books and then sat down and wrote Little Big Man. Uh-huh.
00:42:51
Speaker
Yeah. And so that turned out quite well. But I think, don't you feel like that's everything you read does that? Like everything goes into that hopper.
00:43:02
Speaker
Yeah, I think so. But in this case, it's like cramming right beforehand. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. And i I think there's something to that as well, which is why I don't like reading fiction when I'm writing a draft. Like, I don't like to have fiction in my head when I'm trying to write fiction because yeah it's just it's I just I'm too suggestible.
00:43:24
Speaker
Oh, see, I say I feel differently because I feel like what I write is a part of the conversation. So I want to be up on the conversation. So if I'm like, you know, writing something about a particular subject, I'll read some influential work in that subject yeah so that I can kind of respond to it in a way, you know. Are you talking about writing fiction or nonfiction? Fiction.
00:43:45
Speaker
okay yeah it it is a conversation isn't it good sort it is yeah yeah i guess i just i guess i do that but i like some space before i start to write yeah yeah no and i completely get that yeah well actually in writing about this historical period that requires research but if you're yeah writing about your own period you don't really have to learn new facts or anything you know i mean unless you want to right but Well, I i think joe both Joe and I write science
Future Writing Endeavors and Farewell
00:44:15
Speaker
fiction. So I think I find that um there'll be sometimes I'll have an idea and then I'm like, okay, I think I know what I can do with that. But then I have to check out the science of it. And that's a rabbit hole usually. yeah yeah And sometimes it's really hard because I mean, I wrote a book that wasn't published, but um I'm very proud of the fact that I worked out the relativistic speeds
00:44:41
Speaker
of things so that I could create a small galactic empire based on Earth. but without without you know magic, without faster than light travel, without ah the ability to go. So, near relativistic speeds. so And that was really cool because when you dig into the science of it, it's like, oh, that's really interesting because that means that if someone gets a permit to go out there and then come back, they're going to be totally, first of all, they're going to be out of time.
00:45:16
Speaker
Because they'll have gone away and come back and it's going to be whatever it is, 100 years, 200 years, 400 years difference. And that is a dangerous thing if you're trying to develop a solid empire that can't be changed because but people come back with all kinds of funny ideas. That's mind boggling. Isn't it? Yeah, it is. Exactly. That's that's science fiction. that's yeah That's what it's like to write that stuff.
00:45:46
Speaker
Well, I hope that book gets published so I can read it. Well, I hope your book gets published. Yeah, me too. Because I just want to see if I am able to lift it afterwards. Doorstop. Yeah. Anything else you'd like to tell us about your your work or what you're up to before we um have to part ways? I think I've exposed it at all. Yeah, I think that's about it.
00:46:09
Speaker
I doubt that 70 years. I doubt that seriously. Actually, I seriously did. I have many more questions, but that's okay. I could ask you another time. Yeah. Well, I'm so glad we were able to, to get you on. We had a little, uh, you know, technical difficulties in the beginning, but it was absolutely worth the effort to, um, to make sure that we got to talk to you because, uh, this has been a great pleasure. Yes. I've enjoyed it very much. Thank you for having me. Lovely to meet you, Tom. Okay.
00:47:06
Speaker
Recreative is produced by Mark Raynor and Joe Mahoney. Technical production of music by Joe Mahoney. Web design by Mark Raynor. Show notes in all episodes are available at recreative dot.ca. That's re hyphened-creative dot.ca. Drop us a line at joemahoney.donovanstreetpress dot.com. We'd love to hear from you. Thanks for listening.