Writer Jack Skelley is in the hot seat with me today to chat about his new volume of selected work, Interstellar Theme Park: New and Selected Writing.
Interstellar Theme Park has already garnered strong praise from established voices. Dennis Cooper says, “In Skelley’s world everything and everyone is volcanic. Cities become backlots; celebrities become saviors. Sharp, always spectacular. One of my very favorite writers on the earth.”
Similarly, Amy Gerstler, author of An Index of Women, says, “We need Jack Skelley’s work now more than ever. Jack’s mind on the page helps parse our media-besotted, celebrity-drenched, digitized lives. Whether he’s writing a kaleidoscopic erotic prayer to a brand of salad dressing, or making textual bedfellows of Wagner and Betty Rubble, or soulful insider anecdotes from the short life of Rolling Stones founder Brian Jones, or musing tenderly on post-modern fatherhood, Skelley’s ability to syncretize pop culture, history, product placement, Catholicism and beyond is a necessary wonder of the contemporary world.”
Last but not least, Elaine Equi, author of The Intangibles, lauds Skelley’s remarkable ability to “discover the transcendent in the trivial, the mythic in the mundane.”
Bio:
Jack Skelley lives in Los Angeles, where he writes fiction, poetry and journalism, composes and performs music, and runs his urban-design marketing firm. Interstellar Theme Park is his long-awaited volume of writing from over several decades.
Jack’s books include: Monsters (Little Caesar Press), Dennis Wilson and Charlie Manson (Fred & Barney Press), and Fear of Kathy Acker (Semiotext(e), spring 2023). Jack’s work is widely anthologized. Collections include: Under 35: The New Generation of American Poets (ed. Nicholas Christopher, Anchor Books), and Sweet Nothings: An Anthology of Rock and Roll in American Poetry (ed. Jim Elledge, Indiana University Press). He was editor and publisher of Barney: The Modern Stone-Age Magazine, featuring major artists and writers. He is songwriter and guitarist for psychedelic surf band Lawndale (SST Records).
This is a “New and Selected” volume – 200 pages of poetry and prose, including literary fiction. So it offers both newer and older work?
Yes, the collection assembles decades of verse and prose. The earliest work – from the 1980s – comes from Monsters, my poetry collection on Dennis Cooper’s Little Caesar Press. That early book included the ode, “To Marie Osmond,” which has been anthologized many times over the years. It’s in this book, too. But a huge chunk of recent writing came during the pandemic and right up to this year.
There are also excerpts from what’s been deemed my “secretly legendary” novel Fear of Kathy Acker. That book will publish in April 2023 on Semiotext(e).
In the “Rawk” section are story-cycles on Led Zeppelin, on Brian Jones (the brilliant, tragic founder of the Rolling Stones), and on Dennis Wilson (of the Beach Boys) and his relationship with cult killer Charlie Manson.
What are some of the “adventures and attractions,” to use a Disneyland term, of Interstellar Theme Park’s poems and prose poems?
The verse veers through antiquity, technology and iconography. Making appearances are Plato, Wilma Flintstone, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, The Ramones, Yahweh, Lana Del Rey, Alfred Hitchcock, Satan, Pac Man, Vanna White and Andy Warhol. There are evil ventriloquist dummies and porn goddesses, sitcoms and celestial discos, martyred saints and Moby Dick, particle theory and “the singularity,” late-stage capitalism and – of course – global pandemics. There’s an entire section titled “Artificial Heart” that probes the rituals of sex and romance. The “Disneyland” chapter includes a list poem itemizing deaths at Disneyland, and a series of Disneyland dreams.
The epigraph is from visionary poet William Blake: “If a thing loves, it is infinite.” How does this cosmic line reflect Interstellar Theme Park?
The book orbits the insights of Blake and other epic poets who see cosmology – including mythology and its devolution into religion – as essentially a literary act of creation. The title satirically posits the amusement park as a metaphor for this act. I nearly included a second epigraph: Paul Valery’s belief that “the universe is built on a plan, the profound symmetry of which is somehow present in the inner structure of our intellect.”
That symmetrical plan manifests as a mandala-like map of Disneyland. In this context, much of my stuff references the universe as an ultimate narrative – a Divina Commedia… accent on comedy.
For example, there is longer poem, “The Gospel of Elon.” Writer and editor Tony Trigilio described it as “a mock epic mocking Elon Musk.” It has fun warping sexually oriented creation myths and Gnostic heresies into the language of corporate bureaucracy and venture capitalism.
So, is humor or entertainment another theme in your Theme Park?
Technically, it’s more of a mode than a theme… the tones and tropes of pop culture, rendered with a high-brow edge of bemusement. That’s the overarching motif: a perverse celebration of pop iconography. As I write in my Author’s Intro, “It manifests in love/hate liaisons with commodity culture, or elevates to symbology the preposterous yet tenacious expression of the mythic in the personal – the poly-verse of sexual personae that holds and molds our identities.”
Besides the good-old epic poets, I draw inspiration from contemporary scholars such as Camille Paglia, “post-feminist” novelists such as Kathy Acker (and others influenced by her), and thinkers such as Julia Kristeva.
What project are you working on next?
I’m collaborating with Semiotext(e) editors Chris Kraus and Hedi El Kholti on publishing Fear of Kathy Acker, my years-in-the-making novel. It’s a humbling honor to work with the founders of this press who have been so influential in bringing new forms of narrative to the literary world, and who have done more than anyone else to bring French theory to English readers. This was especially true of Semiotext(e)’s third founder, Sylvère Lotringer, who passed away in November 2021.
Of course, that’s only a slice of the range of this amazing press. In some ways, Fear of Kathy Acker is an outlier compared to the rest of its catalog. But in other ways it fits in nicely.
Can you tell us what to expect in Fear of Kathy Acker?
Sure. Here’s some of the catalog copy: “FOKA depicts Los Angeles through the eyes of a self-mocking narrator. Shifting styles and personae as he moves between Venice and Hollywood, punk clubs and shopping malls, Disneyland and Dodger Stadium, Jack Skelley pushes the limits of language and identity while pursuing – like Kathy Acker – a quixotic literary mix of discipline and anarchy. In this adrenalized, cosmic and comic chronicle of Los Angeles, Skelley’s ‘real-life’ friends make cameo appearances alongside pop archetypes from Madonna to Billy Idol.”
This is the first-ever complete edition of the book, which has appeared piecemeal in chapbooks and magazines. It will include new essays, playlists, and even a map of 1980s Los Angeles.
And can you tell us how you got your start as a writer?
I owe a tremendous amount to the inspiration and support of Dennis Cooper. I met Dennis in the early 1980s when I worked at Beyond Baroque, the literary/arts center in Venice, California. When Dennis ran the Beyond Baroque reading series he put it on the national map by presenting high-level writers and gathering a “gang” of writers and artists. He published many of them in his now-legendary Little Caesar press and magazine. They included Amy Gerstler, David Trinidad and Benjamin Weissman, who are publishing brilliant books today and who remain dear friends, as does Dennis. This group also included two astonishing writers no longer with us – Bob Flanagan and Ed Smith – and the late, great artist Mike Kelley.
This Beyond Baroque gang is enjoying a renaissance of attention, and more projects surrounding us are coming soon. So stay tuned!
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Thanks for being here today, Jack!