"The world is peopled by ghosts."

"The Office Girl," a short story by Joe Meno.

Joe Meno

Can we please talk about Joe Meno for a few minutes?

I've posted before about his novel Demons in the Spring. I once recommended The Boy Detective Fails to a stranger at the Brooklyn Book Fair, and he loved it so much he wrote to me to say thank you. I dragged my roommate to see Meno read at the KGB on his Spring book tour, and she loved his reading so much she bought the whole book even though it was $27 in hardcover. An extremely thoughtful person I am lucky enough to know bought me a copy of Tender as Hellfire for Christmas and I recently finished it in an airport after my flight was canceled.

Here is what Meno always gets right: the complex and unusual way that characters think. There is a level of detail that he strikes that few authors can match. He never underestimates his readers. However, Meno's first novel is messy and unedited. It's a testament to his talent that his characters endure this, that they are as resonant as they are; that Val, the diner waitress whom Dough worships, can appear beautiful, disgusting, and tragic all at once.

Meno really hits his stride in The Boy Detective Fails, a book that combines the traditional with the modern. This book makes me think of The Royal Tenenbaums - it's equally dark and funny. Meno uses the traditional format of a children's mystery book, and practically opens with an unsatisfactory ending. He asks, what happens next? What does a famous detective do when he's past his prime? What happens when the source of your fame and identity unravels, and you feel it's all your fault? Meno weaves in a secret code on the bottom of each page, using ROT-13 (the geek term for A = 13, used in primitive computer coding). Not to mention the stories in Demons in the Spring, which are simultaneously heartbreaking and hysterical. The illustrations in this volume are the icing on the cake, making the book a valuable art object as well as a polished work of fiction.

You can read an interview with him on Bookslut, or listen to an interview with him on NPR.

He's also an excellent reader, and an amiable person. I believe firmly that he's got the right balance of traditional story-writing and the DavidFosterWallace/DaveEggers generation quirkiness to endure the weight of the recession.

I cannot tell you how excited I am to read his upcoming novel from W. W. Norton, titled The Great Perhaps.

His short story "An Apple Could Make You Laugh" was published in Ninth Letter, and you can listen to it read aloud on Ninth Letter's website. I would like to record this story aloud. I would like to read you, Dear Reader, a short story each week. I will think about this idea when I am back in New York with my (former boss's) Mac.

Honestly, he's worth it. Look into Demons in the Spring or The Boy Detective Fails when you next reach a bookstore. I'll let you know how Hairstyles of the Damned is when I've finished it - hooray!

Miniature Elephants Are Popular

(Illustration by Paul Hornschemeier.)

Sometimes I just really love a book and have to tell everyone I know about it. And maybe some people I don't know.

The thing getting me through the job search this month is a new book by Joe Meno titled Demons in Spring. I picked it up in an independent bookstore in Williamsburg, Spoonbill & Sugartown, and read two short stories that broke my heart. The editors who lectured at Columbia often said, "You cry, you buy," and that's how I felt setting down $27 of my grocery money at the counter. (Profits from this book are going to a writing/tutoring nonprofit called 826Chicago.)

It's absolutely worth it. My favorites so far are "Miniature Elephants are Popular," about a friendship between an old man and his tiny pet with charming illustrations by Todd Baxter, and "An Apple Could Make You Laugh," a story of an offbeat office romance illustrated by Geoff McFetridge. You can sense that this is a writer from the McSweeney's generation, but he's certainly the best of the bunch. You can read an interview with him by Bookslut from 2005. The stories are silly and a little post-modern, but he has a deep respect and reverence for each of his characters, which sets his writing above the rest and is a testament to his imagination.
Akashic Books did a fantastic job with the production also; the cover is beautiful, the inside cover is beautiful, the illustrations are beautiful - really, I applaud them!

Joe Meno's got a reading coming up in Park Slope on September 12th, and you can bet I'll be there.