The Tale of Billy Pumpkins
The uber driver on our way to the Harvard bookstore didn’t know what a memoir was, and I’m still at a loss as to the chain of events that leads to someone being legally permitted to own and drive a car, but live entirely unaware of a dominant genre of artistic expression. Our driver and his all white Tesla seemed like exact kind of young man op-eds wring their hands worrying about—just unaware of the world enough to survive in it, but susceptible enough to the whims of gentle peer pressure from other, larger, men. When Lysh asked him about the fresh tattoo on his arm, he claimed he got it because all the other guys at the gym have them. Outlines carved into his skin to be coloured in later, which felt very apt for where he was in his life. A barrier looking for shading to create the sensation of depth.
To be fair and generous to him, what even is a memoir, really? This is me, stalking the stage of a TED talk I have no business delivering, Britney Spears microphone placed expertly on my face while my free hands reach for answers hidden in the sky, screaming in desperation. Asking what and who any of this is for. I wrote a memoir, it’s why I was going to the Harvard Bookstore to begin with — a reading/Q&A with Luke O’Neil (pre-order Luke’s beautiful new book HERE) — and still I stumbled explaining it. It’s stories of a life, but not all of them. Select tales. Just enough to build an image, but not so much that there is no stone left that hold secrets in their indecipherable shapes. The trick to memoir is to leave a little bit of yourself hidden safely away, some part of yourself that isn't for anyone else to see and dissect, and still tell stories of a life, one with a series of half-truths and careful lies along the way.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot in recent days, as I finished listening to the audiobook of Beastie Boys Book, written by surviving members Mike D (Mike Diamond) and the king Ad-Rock (Adam Horowitz) and narrated by a cavalcade of celebrity voices including Ben Stiller, Chuck D, Tim Meadows, John C Reilly, Bette Midler, former Beastie Boy/ Luscious Jackson member Kat Schellenbach and more.
The book takes great care to set up the relationship between the three Beasties, written and released after the ultimately passing of MCA (Adam Yauch) in 2012, establishing their youth and young adulthood in New York, their emergence in hardcore scenes and punk rock circles. Their discovery of hip hop, partnerships with Rick Rubin and Def Jam records, splitting with the same to forge their own divergent path. Releasing Paul’s Boutique through Capitol Records, starting their own label/magazine Grand Royal and more. Ad-Rock and Mike D take the mic to recount their own stories on occasion, but more often than not there’s another voice on the line. Pulp’s Jarvis Cocker reads through the exploits of the groups early experiences in the UK, actress Rosie Perez recounts the first time Mike D heard Afrika Bambaataa. Every now and then, Ad-Rock and Mike D will chime in on sections they are not at the front of, to clarify facts or playfully jab at the other in the language of lifelong friends.
It's a gimmick that shouldn't really work, but there's something about breaking the form of the audiobook industry, largely built on plainly narrated books instead of leaning into something dynamic that edges on chaos. By offloading the stories to others, they take on new life. It gives the book depth of flavour, accenting the boisterous, poignancy and/or absurdity of each turn of the page. Friends trading their favourite stories, building a world together. Also, at one point, Mike D recalls the time they co-programmed Lollapalooza alongside the Smashing Pumpkins and refers to Billy Corgan as “Billy Pumpkin” and it is a goddamn delight.
Stories move through eras at a rapid clip in Beastie Boy Book. Just as quickly as they are shithead party boys with an inflatable dick on stage, they are suddenly apologizing for their previous behaviour and setting up studios in Los Angeles, then New York again. MCA is finding buddhism. They meet the Dust Brothers, then Mix Master Mike. They never lose themselves in the minutiae of a moment, never linger too long on a stray thought. These are dynamic stories of a life recounted as such, and it’s only at the end that the mood turns somber and serious. As MCA gets sick, as they push to record what would be their final record together, and when MCA is gone so too is the story. The finale comes fast, almost unexpectedly, and at first listen I was left feeling a bit hollow at the end. Like stopping a pulp novel 100 pages in, reading who the killer is, and forgetting to pick it back up again. I wanted more stories and more details. I wanted shading and depth of colour in the outline, and it was only in watching another memoir of sorts that I felt differently.
Alex Ross Perry’s Pavements has hit streaming, a documentary project that employs layers of subterfuge to tell a story of half-truths and careful lies. There are layers upon layers within it; a jukebox musical, a museum papered with false testimony, a not-real but not-not-real biopic starring Stranger Things’ Joe Keery, and fly-on-the-wall reunion tour footage. It is an idea that reads as ludicrous and overstuffed, a preposterous scheme that only when committed to action starts to make sense. The project, like the jukebox musical that uses the themes in Pavement’s work to craft a heartwarming narrative, is an extension of Pavement’s approach to the heart hiding behind the velvet curtain in their own work. Stephen Malkmus prefers to wink and nod at the emotional centre of his work, never letting his guard down enough to really see the blood in his veins. I’ve said this before, but I think Malkmus is a kind of Wario Springsteen, which is to say that both men trade in overwrought emotions, but where one wears his on the sleeves of a rolled-up beefy tee with a pack of smokes tucked safely within, the other masks his with just enough ironic detachment to convince you he believes in very little and cares about the same.
It's a good movie if you already love Pavement, and I would imagine it will be confusing at first if you're unaware of them beyond someone repeatedly putting "Shady Lane" on a playlist and telling you it will change your life. It will, but you have to want it. It's a good movie if you can see the various degrees of artifice that make the whole machine work. That all of it is always lying just a little while also telling an endless truth. That there is so much heart, disappointment, betrayal, and triumph in the story of Pavement. That Malkmus never really wants you to know him too well, would prefer there to be a veil of detachment to mask tender hearts that might stray too close to the truth. I watched it and immediately wanted to watch it again, look for the truth hidden in there amidst the diversions and double-backs. I know more about Pavement now, but I don't know everything, and I likely never will. It's nice, in an age of too much knowing, to trust that I will always be a little clueless about the things I love. That art that has meant so much to me will never be over explained by their creators.
Pavements, and Beastie Boys Book, are works of memoir, but memoir shared like wild stories told around a table late in the evening. Stories traded over half-empty drinks and forgotten cigarettes. Stories told countless times before, that feel fresh with every new recollection. Sometimes with an extra detail, or a minor fact misplaced, but always engaging. They are less concerned with the hard facts and the deep dive than it is invested in telling the story they want you to see.
I wanted more at the end of both. I wanted belaboured explorations of albums and songs and moments that matter to me, and when they never came it took me a beat to realize that it’s not for me to dictate what I’m told in the movie adaptation of a life. Memoir is built of the desire of a story teller, sharing what they choose of themselves, letting you see exactly as much as they want you to. The sharing of their stories an extension of the art left in their wake, the half-truths and the stories left hidden away. The details that don’t matter as much as the pleasure of someone telling you exactly the stories they would prefer to be remembered by.
