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Canadian writer Corey Redekop is the author of Shelf Monkey, an amazingly funny, subversive novel about good books and desperate people, now available from Amazon.com.
Interview conducted by Matt Staggs
Naturally, Corey, I know who you are, but there are some of our readers who might not be as familiar with you. Would you mind introducing yourself?
My name is Corey Redekop. Scorpio. 5’11”. I am currently the director of the Thompson Public Library in Thompson, Manitoba. I have past degrees in law and theatre, and use neither as often as I can help it. I enjoy running, long walks in the park, and shiny things. Ooh, a nickel!
Can you give us a rundown of Shelf Monkey? What's the plot?
Shelf Monkey is what I like to refer to as a pulp novel about great literature or, if you prefer, a bookworm’s wet dream. It concerns a group of bookstore employees who take arms against a sea of ignorance, personified in their eyes by an odious American talk-show host. Basically, they pull a Rushdie on him. If you get the reference, you’ll get the book.
How did you come up with the idea for the novel?
I worked for a short time at Chapters, which is a big box bookstore up here in Canada, I suppose the equivalent is Barnes and Noble, or Borders. It was at a time when Oprah Winfrey’s book club mania was at its peak, which was great for some authors, and absolute murder for the rest. Seeing people ignore Palahniuk or Vonnegut in favour of Wally Lamb was one of the more
depressing experiences in my life, and fueled the intense righteous and completely misguided rage that permeates the novel. Was that too arrogant? Maybe, but the result, for better or worse, is the book. The title comes from my nickname for us sisyphus’ in the stacks, putting books that no one ever reads on the shelves, then taking them down later. I called us shelf
monkeys, sort of like the restaurant tradition of referring to dishwashers as dish pigs.
These are some characters who are absolutely fanatical about good reading. Is this an admirable trait, and can it be taken too far in real life? Is being a reading fanatic any better than being a stamp collector or model train enthusiast? Do you think that sometimes this sort of zealotry puts off regular, casual readers who might otherwise be interested in reading something off the beaten path?
I think that snobbery can always lead to zealotry, whether it be in politics, religion, or other, in the sense that “I am better than you” for whatever reason that’s important to me. I prefer reading, I live for it, and as for my world-view, I cannot comprehend the absolutely ridiculous emphasis on sports in North America. The mysterious allure of NASCAR continues to elude me. I think that it’s the extremes that drive everyone apart: my distaste for pro wrestling, the WWE fan’s refusal to read. I guess I am a zealot in that respect, but I try to temper it with an engaging smile and extremely easy-going nature. I never intended Shelf Monkey to become such a treatise on fanaticism, that’s just the way it turned out.
The characters at the center of the Shelf Monkey cult (for lack of a better word), seem to think that the best books are challenging in some manner, and appear to look down on reading for pleasure. Where do you stand on this? Is it difficult to draw the line between good literature and bad literature?
It’s always difficult, which is, for me, where the fun lies. I mean, look at Chandler or Spillane; they were vilified at the time for their novels, and now they’re looked upon as artists. There is absolutely nothing wrong with reading for pleasure. I cannot think of a better thing than spending a lazy Sunday afternoon with an 87th Precinct novel, or anything put out by Hard Case Crime. I think a well-told story is the greatest thing in the world, no matter what style or genre. I think the problem comes when people mistakenly define ‘literature’ as ‘indecipherable.’ It does demand more of one to get through a Pynchon or a Tom Robbins, but there is real pleasure in watching someone stretch what a novel can be. I just finished an ARC of Stephen Marche’s Shining at the Bottom of the Sea, a spectacular novel. He creates an entire civilization by writing an anthology of stories by local authors. It is such a precarious balancing act, but he is so precise in his language, the result is an absolute joy. He ends up reinventing the idea of
what a novel is. But there’s bad ‘literature’ as well, although it’s almost entirely subjective at that point, as the author of ‘literature’ often has enough craft to disguise the faults as a stylistic choice. Martin Amis has a great novel, The Information, about an author who writes a work of
literature so dense and indecipherable that it causes crippling headaches and spontaneous nosebleeds to anyone brave enough to read its first page.
Munroe Purvis has got to be one of the most disgusting characters I've ever met in the course of my readings. How did you ever come up with this guy? I'm still not quite sure what I find most repulsive about him: his physical description, his Barnum-esque predation on the worst qualities of his audience, or the kinds of authors he touts.
I never meant Munroe to be quite so repulsive; I sought for a way to make him more human, more nuanced. But the more I wrote, the more I realized that he can’t be more human, not if the satire is going to work. Some people have complained about Munroe’s over-the-top character, and would have preferred a more contemplative sort of character. I watched the documentary Outfoxed the other night, about the Fox Network. Not much of a doc, but it
does show how absolutely irredeemable people such as Bill O’Reilly and Ann Coulter are. You can’t give these people any shading and nuance, because they have none. They are bitter, vile people, beyond redemption, and the curse of them is that they are so over-the-top in reality that they are impervious to satire. By definition, I would say that you can’t ‘top’ over-the-top.
I know a lot of people might be tempted at first glance to assume that Purvis is a stand-in for Oprah and her ever-present book club, but the characters of the novel give her a certain begrudging respect. Is this how you feel as well?
I do respect Oprah, although I think that her show is far too often about trivialities, and not enough about what matters. Do we need another makeover show? She has such power, and I think she really is a decent human being (I don’t see Maury Povich opening up any schools *shudder), but the show is too much product, not enough substance. I think that anyone who
gets people to read Steinbeck, or Mistry, or Ann-Marie MacDonald, is deserving of respect, I just wish her show didn’t succumb to fluff and nonsense so often.
On the topic of Oprah and her club, I sometimes feel a rush of revulsion to see one of my own favorite novels on her list. I know I felt that way when I went to pick up a new copy of One Hundred Years of Solitude and saw the big "O" sticker on it. After that, I felt kind of guilty about being such a snob. Have you ever felt this kind of combination of feelings in this situation? Why is there such a culture of elitism in the literary world, anyway, and in what ways is this a strength, and in what ways is it a weakness?
I feel the same way about McCarthy’s The Road, although I will read it eventually. I think Jonathan Franzen summed it up perfectly when he turned down Oprah for her stamp on his novel The Corrections. He wanted the novel, and by extension himself, to stand as they are, and not to be viewed as being an Oprah brand. But there are others who refuse to read anything she recommends, and this too is a mistake of elitism. Take her opinion for what
it’s worth, but read what you want. I think any elitism in the literary world stems from the artistic temperament; it takes a great deal of balls to release anything you’ve written or produced to the general public for consumption, and it can lead to a swelled head, a feeling that anyone who disapproves of what you’ve created as ‘just not getting it.’ It’s a strength in that it insulates the author from pain, but it also results in a schism between the author and the audience that has to be fought. I’m not saying that every author is like this, but I think the ‘elitism’ of the literary world stems from such thoughts.
Have you heard from any real-life Shelf Monkeys? What has the response to the novel been like from those folks?
Most seem to really enjoy it, although they all admit to a certain shame at enjoying one or more of the authors the characters in Shelf Monkey loathe. I don’t think there’s any real reason for them to feel this way. I deliberately stretched out and enlarged the feelings of the Shelf Monkey because the results made me laugh, but I don’t have nearly the depth of hatred they have. For most authors. A few do raise my ire, I admit. The career of Dan Brown is a crime against humanity, there I said it.
I recently read that the rate of leisure reading in America is steadily declining. Are you guys doing any better in Canada? Some people take a somewhat indifferent approach to this, and say that this is just the way information acquisition evolves - that books are being replaced by video as a primary source for learning and entertainment. Do you agree? What are some of the possible consequences of living in a bookless world?
Everything evolves, and we are at a point of incredible change. Peter Kaufman (a big library techie) recently said that at the rate we are going, by 2020 we can have something the size of an ipod which can literally hold all media ever created. Every book, every movie, every magazine, every painting. How can you not but be awed by the prospect by holding the sum total of all human knowledge in the palm of your hand, and then accidentally wipe it clean when you walk by an industrial magnet? I think reading for pleasure is on the decline everywhere, and I can’t say I’m not upset about it. Maybe reading is an old person’s game now. I grew up in the computer revolution, and even now at the age of 30*cough, I still enjoy a game of GTA Vice City. But I think as this new generation matures, they will gravitate more toward the quieter art of reading. Books will remain, but it cannot be denied that they will be different. I don’t think we’ll ever be bookless, in the manner of Fahrenheit 451.
What can we do to encourage people to read more, and read "better" books as well?
Like everything else, if you try and force people to read something, they’ll end up resenting you and hating the experience on general principle. I think, like everything else, it’ll be up to the parents and educators. But let’s face it, Mike Judge’s Idiocracy is a satire that’s too close for
comfort.
Speaking of better books, I really enjoyed that you included the names of real books and authors as reference points in your novel - there were a few I had not heard of before, and am busy hunting down, like A Werewolf Problem in Central Russia. Why did you choose to do this rather than the more traditional route of making up that kind of information?
I figured that I was making enough stuff up. I always wanted the story to take place in this world, albeit with a heightened sense of the ridiculous. I always liked Stewart O’Nan’s The Speed Queen, which had a convicted felon writing her story to Stephen King. And W.P. Kinsella used J.D. Salinger as a character in Shoeless Joe, albeit to the consternation of Mr. Salinger.
Mixing the real with the imaginary is restricting, but its also liberating. Why make up a great novel, I’ve got seven on the shelves next to me as a write this. It was always a fantasy for me. Now, making up the bad ones Munroe publishes, there I felt I had to be more creative, to push the story farther out of our reality and into theirs.
What are some of your own personal "montags?" How about a top five list?
Ok, I’ve never actually burned a book. I did think about it once; in fact, my publisher and I talked about staging a burning, but we couldn’t get past some of the fire codes. I don’t know as I have the nads for a burning, but were I to, Dan Brown would top the list. He simply cannot write a decent sentence. The ‘Left Behind’ series are absolutely atrocious in their writing style, and make a mockery of the truly great and thought-provoking religious fiction of C.S. Lewis and James Morrow. I just read Ira Levin’s Son of Rosemary, and I cannot believe something so trite, so meaningless, so frankly incompetent, came from someone of his stature and talent. It made me want to re-examine my affection for Rosemary’s Baby, which should automatically call for its destruction.
The characters in Shelf Monkey often try very hard to encourage people to read a little deeper in their favorite genres, and to get them to buy something better than what they're looking for. Let's play a game. I'm going to suggest a genre, and I'd like for you to suggest a shelf monkey-approved title. Ready?
Bring it.
Horror?
Richard Matheson’s I am Legend still haunts me. And I’ll make the argument
that Paul Bowles’ The Sheltering Sky is a horror novel.
Science fiction?
Nick Di Chario’s A Small and Remarkable Life. Dan Simmons’ Hyperion.
Anything by Philip K. Dick or Theodore Sturgeon.
Romance?
Ondaatje’s The English Patient.
Fantasy?
Neil Gaiman’s Anansi Boys. And most of the works of Guy Gavriel Kay.
Mystery?
Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye – greatest mystery novel ever, bar none.
Historical fiction?
Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Trilogy.
OK, If there were five books of no particular genre or time period that you might want people to read, what would they be?
Saul Bellow, Henderson the Rain King
Jim Dodge, Stone Junction
John Irving, The World According to Garp
George Orwell, 1984
Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Cat’s Cradle
Do you have any plans for your next novel?
It’s still gestating, but I have an idea that’s been percolating for a few months. I need to do a little research first, see if it’s at all tenable, see how others have approached it. It may be too similar to Shelf Monkey at this point. It’ll be strange, though, that I guarantee.
Where can people find out more about you and your book?
The best bet is my blog, at shelf-monkey.blogspot.com. I keep it fairly up-to-date with reviews, readings, and everything else Monkey-related.
Anything else?
Just that it’s been a thrill, and I love the response. It’s more than I ever hoped for, and everyone has been amazing.
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