WED., JULY 02, 2008
eMusic Q&A: Frank Portman
by Elisa Ludwig
Tom Henderson finds a certain irony in the fact that Catcher in the Rye — a novel that ostensibly celebrates individualism — is unquestioningly revered by the very figures (Tom refers to them as "psychotic normal people") its protagonist Holden Caulfield would have scorned. Tom, the brainy, alienated, oft-beat-down, would-be rock star protagonist of Frank Portman's King Dork, considers the annually-required reading of Catcher just another one of the cruel tortures of high school — alongside the breasts he can’t touch, the fantasy albums he won’t record and the jock bullies that pummel him until he starts sporting a military overcoat and carrying guns and ammo magazines. But while he’s pretty certain that Catcher is a worthless book whose devotees must be part of a secret cult, he finds, in an old copy, some intriguing clues to his now-deceased father’s own adolescence. These inscrutable markings lead him down a path of mysteries and conspiracy theories and suddenly nothing — the official story of his dad's death, his high school's social hierarchy, even his seemingly dorkier best friend Sam Hellerman — is quite what it seems.
Frank Portman, founder of the punk-pop band Mr. T Experience, spoke by telephone with eMusic about his debut novel.
What was your initial concept for King Dork?
Well, an editor said to me, “Why don’t you turn your song into a book?” And the title King Dork was the title of one of my songs with a teenage narrator so I had the title of the book before I’d even written it. It’s much more successful as a book title than a song title. The original idea was to take this conventional notion of the teenage nerd you see in so many movies and books and make it more interesting and hopefully more resonant psychologically. When you look at those stories the narrator or character in question always has some kind of alienation that gets expressed as anger at everyone else — and usually the goal is to fit in with that despised society by winning a dance competition or something of that sort.
Tom started out much more bitter and self-regarding than he turned out [when I finished writing]. I was also thinking about other books in this category and I wanted to justify its existence. All books that have come after Catcher in the Rye have this wisecracking teenage protagonist. So rather than try to be mistaken for Catcher in the Rye I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be funny if I didn’t attempt to be subtle about it and just said, look here, Catcher in the Rye sucks.’ I wasn’t trying to make a great statement of art, but it’s fun to subvert things.
Was this story always going to be a mystery?
I started with what would be achievable given my untried and unknown literary powers and I looked at all the books I loved to see what it was that kept me reading. At first the idea was to reward the reader with jokes and to basically create a psychological portrait of the character. There was a semblance of a plot, but not really much of a mystery — more like a MacGuffin of concern to the character but not necessarily to the reader. As the book developed, though, the mystery part became more prominent.
How do you write from the perspective of a precocious teenager while keeping the voice believable?
You definitely don’t want a character’s dialogue to sound like an author’s contrivance coming out of the character’s mouth. Tom has a wry attitude but he’s funny in some ways he doesn’t realize. The balance was something I had to keep in mind but basically once I have the voice with all of the tics and his language there’s a sense in which it writes itself. It’s not like I deliberately did teenage brain exercises before I started to write, repeating, “I’m ugly. Everyone hates me. My parents don’t understand. I have acne.” I didn’t have to psych myself up or anything. The thing a lot of people don’t consider is that adults are still very interested in high school stories, teen novels and movies. And I think people are still interested because most of that stuff keeps happening — in a slightly different context, maybe. But unfortunately alienation is part of life.
I’ve gotten some criticism that I didn’t go far enough or people asking me “would a teenager really say that?” You have to make some choices. What you’re trying to do is create a window into an entire person and his worldview, so to speak. It’s almost like you can be too worried about that literal authenticity — it’s the general experience of it, the essential experience, that matters.
High school alienation is one of the only absolutely universal experiences in American culture.
Eventually Tom concedes a grudging respect for Holden Caulfield. How do you personally really feel about Catcher in the Rye?
One of the conceits of the book is that Tom resembles Holden Caulfield quite a bit more than he thinks. There’s a reason why that character is a big deal. It was never one of my favorite books. I didn’t hate it, but as a teenager — and even now — I continue to think that there is something a little strange about the devotion to it. Any time you’re in a room where 100 percent of people agree on something, that seems like a warning sign that something is wrong.
I just think that whatever made people adopt the book as a kind of emblem didn’t have anything to do with the book — it had to do with something else, something about that generation, which really casts a long shadow on people who weren’t even born then. The idea of escaping the straitjacket of conventional behavior is intoxicating to people, I guess. But it’s the same impulse when you take everything that is established and respectable and conventional and create a parallel version of it, which frankly is usually not very good, just so you can say “Fuck you” to your dad. Though that’s just a theory.
So how do you feel about your own success, then? Would you have the same suspicion if everyone in the room loved King Dork?
Nothing is for everyone but I think to the degree it has, in its own way, however grand or not, struck a chord with a certain sort of reader and pop culture consumer, I would like to think it’s because high school alienation is one of the only absolutely universal experiences in American culture, and the book gives you that with an off-kilter angle. I’m really gratified that people get it because I’m kind of used to people not really getting what I’m talking about. Though there is a perverse voice inside, that I suppress as much as possible when speaking on the record, saying something along the lines of: “If all these people like it what’s wrong with it?” But I’m trying to enter into this in the spirit of the thing, having a successful product for the first time.
How has the experience of publishing a book been different from putting out a record? Has your music attracted more attention or a new audience as a result of King Dork’s success?
With the records — and I love them all as I would my own learning-disabled children — they were deeply alternative in terms of the market, put out on a $300 budget by a very small label. To have a book published by Random House is very different. I took songwriting seriously but there is an inadvertently ephemeral aspect to music. With a book it feels much more significant and permanent.
With anything, you spend your time doing all these things and everything you do leads you to a network of people. Maybe they latch onto one of those things and if it becomes a cultural phenomenon to any degree, it does reinforce the other littler things you’ve done, so I think in the long term, having a successful novel, given that it shares the theme of so many of my songs, will draw attention to them and they will reinforce each other.
Are Tom’s favorite bands [AC/DC, Foghat, the Sweet, the Kinks] your favorite bands from high school?
Certainly not! That stuff was in the Top 40 when I was 14 and liking anything that was Top 40 went against my aesthetic rule. I was into punk at the time. Some readers have said that they didn’t believe a teen today would listen to '70s rock, but for a certain type of person anything that no one else in high school knows about is worthwhile. And if there is someone who’s interested in rock that doesn’t like the Kinks, then I would like to dissect their brain. The Kinks are a baseline for people into songwriterly music of any age or era.
Would Tom Henderson’s band — whatever the name — sound like Mr. T Experience?
No, I did write some of Tom’s songs [whose lyrics appear in the book], like “I Wanna Ramone You,” “Gooey Glasses,” “Thinking of Suicide” and “Still Not Done Lovin’ You (Mama).” The music is rather different from Mr. T Experience songs, though I guess there’s a Dr. Frank [Portman's alter ego in the Mr. T Experience] quality to some of them. They’re on the audio version of the book. But if you want to make a criticism about strict accuracy you could say that songs by an actual 14 year-old would have been a lot longer.
Frank Portman, founder of the punk-pop band Mr. T Experience, spoke by telephone with eMusic about his debut novel.
What was your initial concept for King Dork?
Well, an editor said to me, “Why don’t you turn your song into a book?” And the title King Dork was the title of one of my songs with a teenage narrator so I had the title of the book before I’d even written it. It’s much more successful as a book title than a song title. The original idea was to take this conventional notion of the teenage nerd you see in so many movies and books and make it more interesting and hopefully more resonant psychologically. When you look at those stories the narrator or character in question always has some kind of alienation that gets expressed as anger at everyone else — and usually the goal is to fit in with that despised society by winning a dance competition or something of that sort.
Tom started out much more bitter and self-regarding than he turned out [when I finished writing]. I was also thinking about other books in this category and I wanted to justify its existence. All books that have come after Catcher in the Rye have this wisecracking teenage protagonist. So rather than try to be mistaken for Catcher in the Rye I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be funny if I didn’t attempt to be subtle about it and just said, look here, Catcher in the Rye sucks.’ I wasn’t trying to make a great statement of art, but it’s fun to subvert things.
Was this story always going to be a mystery?
I started with what would be achievable given my untried and unknown literary powers and I looked at all the books I loved to see what it was that kept me reading. At first the idea was to reward the reader with jokes and to basically create a psychological portrait of the character. There was a semblance of a plot, but not really much of a mystery — more like a MacGuffin of concern to the character but not necessarily to the reader. As the book developed, though, the mystery part became more prominent.
How do you write from the perspective of a precocious teenager while keeping the voice believable?
You definitely don’t want a character’s dialogue to sound like an author’s contrivance coming out of the character’s mouth. Tom has a wry attitude but he’s funny in some ways he doesn’t realize. The balance was something I had to keep in mind but basically once I have the voice with all of the tics and his language there’s a sense in which it writes itself. It’s not like I deliberately did teenage brain exercises before I started to write, repeating, “I’m ugly. Everyone hates me. My parents don’t understand. I have acne.” I didn’t have to psych myself up or anything. The thing a lot of people don’t consider is that adults are still very interested in high school stories, teen novels and movies. And I think people are still interested because most of that stuff keeps happening — in a slightly different context, maybe. But unfortunately alienation is part of life.
I’ve gotten some criticism that I didn’t go far enough or people asking me “would a teenager really say that?” You have to make some choices. What you’re trying to do is create a window into an entire person and his worldview, so to speak. It’s almost like you can be too worried about that literal authenticity — it’s the general experience of it, the essential experience, that matters.
Eventually Tom concedes a grudging respect for Holden Caulfield. How do you personally really feel about Catcher in the Rye?
One of the conceits of the book is that Tom resembles Holden Caulfield quite a bit more than he thinks. There’s a reason why that character is a big deal. It was never one of my favorite books. I didn’t hate it, but as a teenager — and even now — I continue to think that there is something a little strange about the devotion to it. Any time you’re in a room where 100 percent of people agree on something, that seems like a warning sign that something is wrong.
I just think that whatever made people adopt the book as a kind of emblem didn’t have anything to do with the book — it had to do with something else, something about that generation, which really casts a long shadow on people who weren’t even born then. The idea of escaping the straitjacket of conventional behavior is intoxicating to people, I guess. But it’s the same impulse when you take everything that is established and respectable and conventional and create a parallel version of it, which frankly is usually not very good, just so you can say “Fuck you” to your dad. Though that’s just a theory.
So how do you feel about your own success, then? Would you have the same suspicion if everyone in the room loved King Dork?
Nothing is for everyone but I think to the degree it has, in its own way, however grand or not, struck a chord with a certain sort of reader and pop culture consumer, I would like to think it’s because high school alienation is one of the only absolutely universal experiences in American culture, and the book gives you that with an off-kilter angle. I’m really gratified that people get it because I’m kind of used to people not really getting what I’m talking about. Though there is a perverse voice inside, that I suppress as much as possible when speaking on the record, saying something along the lines of: “If all these people like it what’s wrong with it?” But I’m trying to enter into this in the spirit of the thing, having a successful product for the first time.
How has the experience of publishing a book been different from putting out a record? Has your music attracted more attention or a new audience as a result of King Dork’s success?
With the records — and I love them all as I would my own learning-disabled children — they were deeply alternative in terms of the market, put out on a $300 budget by a very small label. To have a book published by Random House is very different. I took songwriting seriously but there is an inadvertently ephemeral aspect to music. With a book it feels much more significant and permanent.
With anything, you spend your time doing all these things and everything you do leads you to a network of people. Maybe they latch onto one of those things and if it becomes a cultural phenomenon to any degree, it does reinforce the other littler things you’ve done, so I think in the long term, having a successful novel, given that it shares the theme of so many of my songs, will draw attention to them and they will reinforce each other.
Are Tom’s favorite bands [AC/DC, Foghat, the Sweet, the Kinks] your favorite bands from high school?
Certainly not! That stuff was in the Top 40 when I was 14 and liking anything that was Top 40 went against my aesthetic rule. I was into punk at the time. Some readers have said that they didn’t believe a teen today would listen to '70s rock, but for a certain type of person anything that no one else in high school knows about is worthwhile. And if there is someone who’s interested in rock that doesn’t like the Kinks, then I would like to dissect their brain. The Kinks are a baseline for people into songwriterly music of any age or era.
Would Tom Henderson’s band — whatever the name — sound like Mr. T Experience?
No, I did write some of Tom’s songs [whose lyrics appear in the book], like “I Wanna Ramone You,” “Gooey Glasses,” “Thinking of Suicide” and “Still Not Done Lovin’ You (Mama).” The music is rather different from Mr. T Experience songs, though I guess there’s a Dr. Frank [Portman's alter ego in the Mr. T Experience] quality to some of them. They’re on the audio version of the book. But if you want to make a criticism about strict accuracy you could say that songs by an actual 14 year-old would have been a lot longer.
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