In writing Beige Gore over the course of the three years from 2022-2024, I found more inspiration in movies than I did other novels; for the most part (though not always), the stuff I read to prepare for the project was outside of the realm of fiction. Research, basically. Instead, I found myself writing scenes and characters with an intensely visual posture, one that felt more in line with pictures. I’ll leave it to anyone interested in my book to suss out by which movies Beige Gore may be informed. And I’d be really interested to hear people’s thoughts on what art, if any, it evoked in them. What’s more, I’m always seeing filmmakers (particularly new ones) eagerly list off the handful of movies that informed their work. I don’t blame them; any time you can summon, I don’t know, Le Cercle Rouge in proximity, however plausibly, to your stuff, you gotta do it. Here, I’d like to mention 10 films that I saw in 2025 either for the first time or hadn’t seen in many years after completing Beige Gore and how those films echo some of the themes and ideas I was trying to convey. Call it retroactive inspiration. If you follow me on Letterboxd, I apologize, this will mostly be a rehash of the thoughts I’ve written there. In any case, these 10 films are well worth your time, and if you decide to read Beige Gore, my sincere hope is that it’s right at home with the titles I’ve selected.

The Blackout (Ferrara, 1997)

So many filmmakers want to portray coke as this energizing, soaring jolt to the mind and body; even when Scorsese is in that mode he’s rapid-cutting and whip-panning and all the characters are throwing back their heads, wide-eyed. Ferrara knows the reality is in the deep paranoia, the willingness to do anything and go anywhere, the delusions of grandeur, the desire to make some big important artistic statement, the droning extemporaneous speech patterns, the secretiveness, one day bleeding into the next, more bleary than charged. Call it Coke Expressionism. Ferrara has characters filming Matthew Modine throughout, Dennis Hopper manning the camera when Modine is in blackout, and Modine’s therapist capturing their sessions together, both total performances, extreme acting jobs on either side of the coin. Too personal, I think, to really be a searing indictment of Hollywood (which it certainly glances at), it winds up just being a super convincing, half-remembered and smeared depiction of the depths of addiction.

Demonlover (Assayas, 2002)

Built to confuse and, ultimately, to taunt. If the first half has you prepped for an international mystery with increasingly sinister, interlocking pieces, the back half wrongfoots you in a comprehensive way that scans as purposeful; I’ve seen some sour on the construction of the last hour, but to me it plays like flipping channels (albeit channels comprised of the same characters); a car chase here, a long conversation over shrimp tempura there, Chloe Sevigny playing Oni naked, a helicopter trip to the desert, sex, murder, espionage. It doesn’t strictly matter if it adds up, or how we got there, just that it’s all very recognizable as the trappings of modern society. Assayas’s approach can border on the obvious–a tussle between two female characters ends up with a murder attempt with a pillow, a handy item, yes, but also a symbol of sex; elsewhere, one character blows another’s brains out at the moment of climax (how French)–but his alchemy is heady, a sufficiently addled mix of methods of escape. Ultimately, though, this can be boiled down to a horrifying film about what it’s like to work in an office.

Red Rooms (Plante, 2023)

While I was watching this, my friend Danny Cohen texted me just as Kelly-Anne is being yanked out of the courtroom. The news was that David Lynch had died. As I processed what Danny was saying, it donned on me that I watching on screen a pointed comment about nature of identity. It felt like a dark joke in the wake of Lynch’s passing. (RIP DL.)

Video Violence (Cohen, 1987)

In conversation and, imo, league with the titles (Pieces, Blood Cult, et. al) it references and clearly reveres, especially when it moves away from its central concern for a while and hangs out in and around the deli, where the gore is ratcheted up and the broad-daylight goofiness really drives home a sense of derangement. It’s also where the picture offers something of a treatise, with a severed hand sliced into over-the-counter deli meat serving as a microcosm of the bigger themes at play: that the snuff films are an end point of an insatiable appetite for atrocity viewing, that you’ll be fed this kind of material whether you know it or not or like it or not and eventually you’ll become the guy on his couch drinking a beer going “Ooo, ooo” to a real video of a woman getting her leg sawed off. In this way it predicts a future of brain rot and casual acceptance of online gore/repulsiveness while simultaneously ensuring, through things like the wistful synth motifs, that one day someone could watch it and reasonably expect to feel nostalgia for 80s video store culture. Lovingly made, suitably nasty, and features a short film in the middle of which Jess Franco could be proud.

Thesis (Amenábar, 1996)

Really like that during the climax of a movie about the relationship between voyeurism and filmed violence, Amenábar keeps turning out the lights.

Evil Dead Trap (Ikeda, 1988)

Good double feature with Thesis, though Evil Dead Trap quickly moves well beyond any academic framing of violence and media and uses snuff as an entryway into a series of accelerating lurid and dizzy nightmares in a setting that invokes both the deserted building at the end of Cure and an illogical pervert dreamscape one of the A Nightmare on Elm Street sequels might’ve cooked up. Gives the Italians a run for their money!

Benny’s Video (Haneke, 1992)

(Rewatch) Sort of the structural inverse of Haneke’s own The Seventh Continent; in that picture The Unthinkable Act™️is preceded by rote preparation, whereas in Benny’s Video Haneke foregrounds the tragedy and then we watch as Benny and his parents try to go about their normal lives. I think TSC works better in that regard; even as that picture telegraphs its destination, the coolness with which the Schobers make their preparations ensures their goal will be as stark as possible (not to mention the way Haneke designs the final moments is, for my money, as disturbing as it gets). Here, Benny’s actions come as a bit of a surprise, and, shocking as they are, the picture then needs to either ratchet up the suspense of getting caught, or go down the path it was always going to choose, one of extreme detachment in the form of a “vacation.” Ain’t Mike a stinker? Still, this is terrific, and its interests—voyeurism; media’s desensitizing effect on violence; the culpability of filmmaker and audience—are and always will be right up my alley.

I Never Left the White Room (Schneider, 2000)

I would never blame anyone who accuses August Underground and magGot (and their ilk) of being so self-serious as to be parodic (mostly because I agree), but about an hour into this, during a sequence of what I think is supposed to be a kind of perverted and delusive salvation, a woman on a church’s alter sings, “Life is being alive” and it scans as a joke. I Never Left the White Room is an SOV digital grain hyper-saturated freakout with all the requisite tw: everything you’d have to expect going in, and for about the first 20 minutes really succeeds as a corroded, mildewy infinite looping nightmare of the outer-reaches of madness. But even the best of the best would struggle with keeping an almost-feature-length panic dream interesting throughout, and if you’re into in this stuff in the first place, even the most shocking tactics can wear thin after a while. Still, if extreme horror/gore is your thing, INLtWR has (a little) more to offer than your standard piss’n’puke fest shot in someone’s basement in suburban New Jersey. Tread lightly!

Possibly in Michigan (Condit, 1983)

There’s so much art that tries to get inside the mind of a killer/abuser and all the shopworn phantasmagoria that usually accompanies it; to invert that cinematic language to lay bear the sort of dazed, startled, and ultimately, forthright feelings of the (almost) victim is moving. The picture is eerie enough on its own; I was bowled over by the genuinely heavy recondite stuff around its circumference.

Sombre (Grandrieux, 1998)

Hard not to think Grandrieux is scoffing at his audience in some ways here; the feints towards metaphors that might help unlock the picture seem too inscrutable or, alternatively, too broad or accessible and oddly shaped. Should we look to the fact that Jean is a puppeteer? Surely the backdrop of the Tour de France of all things couldn’t be some comment on horrors happening underneath the nose of polite society or the tourist economy. Grandrieux instead asks you to question what you think you know about character and victimhood, and motivation, and desire and fear. He wants you to misunderstand him and recoil at your own feelings. This is a terrifically edited picture: the cutting in the nightclub scene where the pummeling music works in tandem with shots of the dancer and Jean’s frantic pacing is the stuff of excellent in-the-red queasy horror (see also: the ultra-menacing ballet of the eyes-wide-open-terrifying “after party” s.a. scene). If the edits weren’t so agitated, the (deranged) meditative and deliberate nature of the film makes me wonder if Schrader might have to update his map of slow cinema, the first serial killer entry I would have seen(?).

Bonus: The Black Tower (Smith, 1987)

The beauty of this is that its simplicity allows you to map your own issues onto it; who hasn’t felt looming, increasingly inescapable terror confronting you at every turn? As a long-sober person in recovery, I thought it was telling that as soon as the narrator departs treatment, the next shot we see is of a cloud, one that cruelly and instantaneously vanishes.

Bonus bonus: Hollywood 90028 (Hornisher, 1973)

Everyone is rightly obsessed with that final shot, but I’m concerned about the porno shop Mark goes to where he watches the movie of Michelle that has the dildos Saran Wrapped and on display like deli meat.

Bonus bonus bonus: Splatter: Naked Blood (Satō, 1996)

r/femalelivingspaces

Obviously a Japanese concoction through and through but so much of this feels decidedly French what with all the death-at-the-apex-of-climax stuff. I mean, Gaspar and Olivier Assayas must have been shaking in their Thierry Muglers and absolutely working their credit cards to make donations to Museum K.K. in the late 90s. Excellent if you can stomach it, and you should (but maybe not), as it genuinely has things to say about the concatenation of voyeurism, violence simultaneously as an escape and an all-consuming reality of daily life, etc. The gore is miserably tactile and definitely a barrier to entry but if you’ve seen some of the NJ SOV stuff you’re pretty much in the realm. Foley work goes crazy.

Beige Gore is available to order here and its prologue can be read here. Available now via Sunroom.

Do you “get better” at listening to music? The more you listen to and engage with a genre, do you find yourself listening to the most challenging music within that realm or do you just figure out eventually what you like? Electronic music, to me, has always seemed both deeply ingrained in modern popular music but also cordoned off in a chillier, more remote area, willing to be pilfered from but deeply protective of itself.

I’ve always liked electronic music, if “always” means having heard Aphex Twin in like 1999 and again in 2002 or whatever, and then stumbling across “From Here We Go Sublime” in 2007. But really for the past several years I’ve been obsessed with it, all the sub-genres and styles, the labels, the histories. And what’s thrilling is that I know I’ve barely scratched the surface. It’s also weird because the culture itself is not something I’m really a part of. I have rarely heard the music where it’s supposed to be heard — the clubs and basements and warehouses of the world. The shows I’ve always been to are rock shows. I don’t party anymore, not really. I wonder if this music is a replacement for that.

At the beginning of December, I decided to try to listen to all 22 volumes of Kompakt Records’ Total series, all 43 and a half hours of them. That was a very stupid idea, and rather than ruin my relationship to German (etc) techno/house, I stopped at Total 10. I figure that since The Field was the very first electronic musician I ever loved, I might as well go back and listen to what his label was doing and how it changed things and how it evolved. This post is hardly a journalistic exercise. No, this is just an old fashioned blog, the kind I (we) all used to do when, frankly, Kompakt was at its most popular. After Total 5, the compilations started doubling in size, bringing in many more contributors, and just generally becoming more expansive. The music on these comps is comfortable. It’s not particularly challenging. It can even be exclusionary, frankly. For the most part, these volumes are good places to start for someone just getting interested in electronic music, or familiar sounds to fall back on as a long time fan. From Kompakt, maybe you go backwards into the sounds of the pioneers from Chicago and Detroit (I hope you do); maybe you find the techno offered here too simplistic, too emotional, whatever, and seek out the gnarled and alien world of IDM; maybe you’ll look to the more recent past and the future, and find something to like on Livity Sound, West Mineral Ltd, TraTraTrax, etc; maybe one of the genres Kompakt flirts with — dub, jazz, electro, ambient — will get you moving and you’ll go down those rabbit holes. This is a worldly music; you can find its greatness and its innovation everywhere.

I plan on listening to the remaining compilations, and maybe I’ll write down some thoughts, but for now, here’s a very slapdash set of impressions/a primer on the tracks I thought I wanted to highlight. I’ll also put these cuts on a playlist and put that on Spotify. Merry Christmas, Happy New Year.

Total 1 [1999]

“How Great Thou Art”: Jürgen Paape

Jürgen Paape tracks on Kompakt Total 1-10: 10

The track: Not the best Paape track, not by a mile, but track 1 on Total 1, and it deserves mention. The world’s intro to the Total comps is pure shadowy drama: the first sound we hear are strings and the 4/4 beat that underpins every track on the label. It scuffles and plods along pleasantly and the strings and piano stabs definitely put it in the (less prominent) house side of the comps.

“Salz 2.1”: Salz

Salz tracks on Kompakt Total 1-10: 1

The track: MINIMALISM. Mechanical, fluttering, neon. A yawning robot. Track 2 on Total 1 and I was glad for it. The Paape stuff is very elegant, very sophisticated, but there’s plenty of slightly edgier streets-at-night shit to go around on these comps. Shame Salz only got one bite at the apple. Good duo.

“17 & 4”: M. Mayer

M. Mayer tracks on Kompakt Total 1-10: 10

Sounds like a vacuum in the background. Some overlaid sorta broken beat, which is a cool percussive twist you rarely hear with Kompakt’s techno. Total 1 is definitely the most straightforward and buttoned up of the comps. The little static-y drum pads, believe it or not, are one of the most out of pocket choices someone makes aside from the compilation’s closer, which I’ll get to. This is as good a place as any to mention that Total 1 feels like a label finding its footing. Total 2, while not as successful on a track to track basis, is hugely important in opening up the possibilities of what a Kompakt cut could sounds like.

“Infarkt”: Dettinger

Dettinger tracks on Kompakt Total 1-10: 4

The track: DETTINGERRRR. This man has the two best tracks on Total 1, has two more absolutely essential contributions after it, and is gone. Another cut of mechanical growl with some shallow water SONAR underneath. Love this sound. Minimal as hell. Couple tracks on Total 10 revisit what he’s doing here to great effect, especially after all the fucking disco dalliances happening on 8 and 9. Barely changes over 5 minutes, that’s how you know the basic construction is so good.

“Blond”: Dettinger

Dettinger tracks on Kompakt Total 1-10: 4

The track: Pound for pound maybe my favorite piece of music across the 170 some-odd tracks in the first 10 volumes. Also sounds unlike anything else on the roster. Droning, ominous wind in the distance, the softest, coolest breeze at your face. Shuttering 909 claps over your own heartbeat. Unreal closer that looms over the entire project. A simple and profound mood piece. No one dared to submit anything this meditative again. Religious, shamanistic, warm, frightening. An ingenious capstone to an hour of music that somehow rejects what came before it yet is both the best techno and the best ambient track on the whole thing and blithely transports you to the calmzone, where, unfortunately, another panic attack is right around the corner.

Total 2 [2000]

“Zu Dicht Dran”; Reinhard Voigt

Reinhard Voigt tracks on Kompakt Total 1-10: 10

The track: Can’t tell the story of Kompakt Total without Reinhard Voigt, the annoying brother of label boss Wolfgang Voigt. Am I “telling the story” of Kompakt Total? No. I don’t like “Zu Dicht Dran,” no one probably does, it’s a soulless precision laser cutting serrated metal with circus cymbals. There’s plenty of shit like this across German techno, no question, but for Kompakt, the track definitely serves the purpose of widening what a Total cut could be. The first handful of tracks on 2, while given over to the silliest robotic tendencies of turn of the century western European techno, do let some experimentation in which is essential to the series going forward. The dipshits Schaeben and Voss contribute a track that sounds like if Trent Reznor picked speed and motor oil instead of heroin. And Gebr and Teichmann want you to hear a chopped and slashed electric guitar filtered through a child’s distortion pedal and a bass line from Vectorman or something, combined with the worst vocal of the series, dance music for people who hate dance music and want to be listening to the worst Blur song ever conceived.

“Lemon”: Dettinger

Dettinger tracks on Kompakt Total 1-10: 4

The track: Elastic bands, broken beat. Backwards swirling silver synths. Livity Sound might put this out today. 2 is so weird, thank god for 2. I sorta think it’s the worst of the 10 comps, except maybe for 8, but again, it’s really important to establish track parameters, or lack there of, even if I don’t think the series ever got this strange again. I have one more Dettinger track to talk about later on.

“Storch”: Jonas Bering

Jonas Bering tracks on Kompakt Total 1-10: 7

The track: You can kind of hear the building blocks for what The Field would perfect half a decade later, the way Bering loops the gloopy and viscous synth/bass tracks while subtly adding elements where needed. I think I initially liked this becasue it sounded proto-The Field. Works itself into a pretty danceable number.

“Safety First 1”: Sascha Funke

Sasha Funke tracks on Kompakt Total 1-10: 2

The track: Pure Kompakt, baby. I don’t want to just highlight all the shimmering, propulsive body movers, because these comps have more to offer, but man does Kompakt do this kind of buttoned up and melodic techno well. Not even the best example of what I’m talking about, but this track comes near the end of 2, a collection that mostly annoyed or bored the hell out of me for long stretches and this simple track done well is 2‘s oasis.

Total 3 [2001]

“Ach Komm 1”: Schaeben and Voss

Schaeben and Voss tracks on Kompart Total 1-10: 3

The track: The dipshits Schaeben and Voss are at it again. They always have to insert some moaning vocal sample and we get a robust disembodied groan sprinkled throughout here. But I dunno! Parts of this track sound like Portishead to me. Very cool dusky/nighttime vibe. They won’t appear again.

“In Aller Freundschaft”: Reinhard Voigt

Reinhard Voigt tracks on Kompakt Total 1-10: 10

The track: Voigt you son of a bitch. I know Reinhard loves to goof around on these comps, the little goofball. And like I said before, I’m glad for it, even if his first couple contributions are frustrating. But then he turns around and delivers a real deal, straight ahead body mover like this and you realize this is an ultra talented producer who can work in any mode he wants. I mean this thing was made for peak time, man. That section at the end where he ratchets everything up for about 30 seconds? God bless this fucking imp.

“Teaser 1”: Lawrence

Lawrence tracks on Kompakt Total 1-10: 2

The track: The soundtrack to M that never was. A cartoon wolf stalking a cartoon herd. Slinky. Kompakt goes trip hip, vocal sample and all. Cig smoke at the city limits.

“Tranquilizer”: Dettinger

Dettinger tracks on Kompakt Total 1-10: 4

The track: Goodbye, sweet Dettinger. Four for four, you crushed it. The first artist to release a solo LP on Kompakt. The MVP of the first 3 Totals. Olaf…thank you. Honestly this is not that far off from the dusty melancholy Burial would perfect or the ashen industrial rubble someone like Andy Stott would excavate a few years later. Bus ride home music. Still some electricity in your veins.

“Tomorrow”: Superpitcher

Superpitcher tracks on Kompakt Total 1-10: 9

The track: Superpitcher is a major presence on these comps. Really spare track. I like the construction of this one because it’s built on a simple acoustic guitar figure and an almost-whispered vocal sample and those are the elements he drops out halfway through and brings back, like the inverse of a typical techno drop.

“Because 1”: Ulf Lohmann

Ulf Lohmann tracks on Kompakt Total 1-10: 1

The track: The deal with this post is that I’m revisiting songs I liked on the first pass of listening to these comps over the past 2 weeks. This one? I don’t know! Probably sounded cool in my car. Very low key, almost meek. Works itself into a nice, bright groove, though. Maybe I was in a good mood because I knew what was coming next.

“So Weit Wie Noch Nie”: Jürgen Paape

Jürgen Paape tracks on Kompakt Total 1-10: 10

The track: Gotta be one of the most famous tracks Kompakt ever put out. Immediate dance floor filler, supreme body mover, groove fucking central. In the top 3 tracks I’d point to if I was trying to convey what Kompakt is. Knows exactly where it’s going and knows exactly where you want to go. Pure pop magic. Dangerously infectious. Not my favorite, but you can’t talk about Total without it. (I think Paape’s crowning achievement comes a few volumes later on 6. Stay tuned.)

“Departures”: Closer Musik

Closer Musik tracks on Kompakt Total 1-10: 3

The track: High fructose “Kid A.” A little stiff but has enough sense to hit you with the cymbals. Glistens. Cool, slightly robotic closer to the best Total of the first three.

Total 4 [2002]

“Mit Dir”: Jürgen Paape

Jürgen Paape tracks on Kompakt Total 1-10: 10

The track: Too much Paape, and there will be more, but what do you want from me. That splattering snare thwack is one of the best drum sounds of the series so far, really livens this shit up. Bouncy bass line of your dreams. A Marianne Rosenberg sample you hear when you die. Paape’s tracks, more than any other Kompakt contributions, are vying the hardest for your pleasure center. Pure, un-stepped on endorphins. Raw joy. Shit will set your teeth on edge. His track on 5 is kind of the culmination of that approach.

“Falling Hands”: M. Mayer

M. Mayer tracks on Kompakt Total 1-10: 10

The track: Michael Mayer is the workhorse and the pro. Reliable. His Total efforts never make me freak the fuck out, but his floor is really high. Super consistent. This sounds like an athlete’s scouting report. Sometimes his compositions are so polished that I feel like I’m walking through a Banana Republic or whatever, but there’s really no substitute for his technical prowess and this track is just another dance floor masterclass from one of the great artists of the scene.

“Die Andere”: Reinhard Voigt

Reinhard Voigt tracks on Kompakt Total 1-10: 10

The track: You’ve no doubt noticed that so far the same names keep popping up and that’s because the same like 7 people contributed to the first four comps. That starts to change on 5 and really opens up after that. But: Reinhard again, the chameleon. SPED UP HAND CLAPS. The man is in borderline trance territory here, a zone more artists would fuck around in on later comps. Trailblazer. I think 7 gets pretty trance-y? I talk a lot of shit about Reinhard but then I look at my fav’d tracks and he’s all over it. Anyways, this cut is one or two cycles too long but it bangs.

“Maria”: Closer Musik

Closer Musik tracks on Kompakt Total 1-10: 3

The track: Super melodically rich track. Wistful closer to the comp. I really like Closer Musik in this mode, that Gui Boratto, Peter Grummich bright pinging sadness thing. Sneakily athletic drum work at the end of this one.

Total 5 [2003]

“All She Wants Is – SCSI-9 Mix”: SCSI-9

SCSI-9 tracks on Kompakt Total 1-10: 4

The track: Where the robots were once implied, now they’re sentient and they’re vocalizing, a purposeful way to start 5. But since this is Kompakt, the robotics have to be pop-oriented, and things can’t ever get too frosty, and so we soon realize this is a fucking Duran Duran sample. What a flex. Rides itself out on a lovely echoing piano figure and springing bass line.

“Wintermute – Burger/Voigt Mix”: Phong Sui

Phong Sui tracks on Kompakt Total 1-10: 1

The track: I think “Wintermute” was a pretty big deal in 2003, and the original Kompakt 12″ had remixes by none other than Superpitcher and Burger/Voigt. Pretty satisfying stomp, definitely one for the vanishingly few Kompakt-style house heads out there. I wish they provided more space for the microhouse stuff on these comps, especially when the fucking things ballooned to almost 3 hours apiece and featured by and large sophisticated and straight faced minimal techno. And especially since a couple tracks later we’re back to Reinhard Voigt’s stubborn, partying-machines-at-the-end-of-the-world stiffness.

“Speaker”: M. Mayer

M. Mayer tracks on Kompakt Total 1-10: 10

The track: The seriousness of German techno can get really oppressive. For all its faults, though, it would be hard to argue that the Kompakt brain trust didn’t have a sense of humor, and that they knew how suffocating some of their more austere contemporaries could be. How else to read the sample that runs through “Speaker,” the Chicago-style house cut from Michael Mayer? “I am your speaker, speaker, speaking to you. I am not talking, I’m speaking, speaking to you. I’m not a talker, I’m a speaker, speaking to you.” I actually can’t tell if this is supposed to be cool or if he’s fucking around. “While you’re talking, you’re talking, just talking to yourself.” Lol. Doesn’t matter. Self-serious or not, this is another high level exercise in building, adding one thing at a time until the room is just heaving in unison.

“Nie Mehr Allein”: Joachim Speith

Joachim Speith tracks on Kompakt Total 1-10: 2

The track: New blood. Hints at the disco infatuation of later comps. Lot of ideas here, sounds like 3 songs at once, but really well controlled. Bouncy as hell. Definitely one of the busiest tracks of the first 5 collections. Someone on Youtube wrote “einfach nur geil” in the comments which I think translates to “just awesome” but I’m also seeing it as slang for “horny” and I don’t see why not.

“Normandie 2”: Jonas Bering

Jonas Bering tracks on Kompakt Total 1-10: 7

The track: Humid. Stridulation of crickets. Not a ton of easy going warmth on the Kompakt roster, but Bering has it in spades here in my opinion. July porch, marijuana, tv on inside, hot still air, watching people dodge traffic in the street. Another comp closer that adds another dimension to what these tracks can provide.

Playlist: BONUSSNAKES I: Kompakt Total 1-5

COMING SOON, PART 2

In the winter of 2016/2017, I was living in Massachusetts and covering high school basketball for a local newspaper. I attended games, watched the action, took notes, and afterwards asked the head coach a few questions, the responses of which I recorded on my phone. Then I’d drive home, open a beer, and write maybe 600 words about the game using my notes, a scorecard, and the audio from my interview. I did this a couple times every week for a while. Twice, I wrote features on the team’s standout players. I covered one hockey game and a couple baseball games when Spring hit. When the papers came out, I’d see my byline and a lightly edited version of my game story. I did this for a few months; it was basically the most continuous writing I’d done since college. I think I earned $30 per article. It was definitely not the best time in my life, but I was writing and thinking about writing and trying to be good at it.

Somewhere along the line, I wrote a few paragraphs for a project. I had little idea what the project would be: a short story? just an exercise? nothing? There have been so many nothings over the years. Whatever it was, the thrust of it was “joke detective thing,” and I sent it to my friend Jake Stolz, who runs Sunroom (a print studio/tape label/online archive) along with Clare Byrne, thinking maybe he’d laugh and that would be it. And that basically was it. He wrote me back and said the paragraphs were funny and if I ever wrote anything more to let him know.

In April 2017, I moved to Philadelphia, leaving behind the newspaper gig and all but forgetting about the “project.” I got a job in a busy restaurant. I made friends there, the bonds easily made with long hours and hard work. My life babbled on. I tried to observe Philly, its people and places. The restaurant job helped with that. I tried to explore and talk to people and glean experiences. The Philly in my book is a tourist’s view. I was only there for 20 months. My version is an admittedly cartoonish simulacrum. Maybe I didn’t get it “right” but that’s impossible anyways.

Towards the end of my time there, in October 2018, I went to Chicago to attend my friends Dylan and Whitney’s wedding. Jake and Clare were there, too. At some point during the reception, Jake asked about my writing and what ever became of that thing I sent him over a year and a half prior. I said I didn’t really know. Nothing, basically. He said that Sunroom might be looking to publish writing, that I should keep going. He and Clare then said a few incredibly nice things that I won’t share here. That conversation, loose and informal at the wedding, is the reason I started work again on the “project” from early 2017 as soon as I got back to Philly. Of course, things stalled again: I left Philly for Massachusetts in December 2018. I went through a rough patch, tried to make a go of continuing to live there, and ultimately decided to leave. It all happened pretty fast.

Back in MA, I didn’t have a ton going on yet, so I looked at the couple of pages I had written (still meta joke private eye) and decided to turn whatever I had into a novel. What was more, I made it a goal that I had to finish writing it in one calendar year. I finished it at 3pm on New Years’ Eve 2019. Those first few paragraphs I sent to Jake in late winter 2017 are exactly the same as they are in the finished project, what I eventually started calling Detective Detective. It’s still joke-y and definitely still metatextual, but it became a lot of other things, too. The totality of it is something I’m proud of. I basically wrote the entire thing on a brown couch in my living room.

This is the longest way ever of saying, too: There were a lot of things I had in mind when writing Detective Detective, some conscious and easy, some arduously dredged out of my brain pan, some maybe inexpressible or accidental. I thought I’d share some of the books/ideas that helped me do this. I understand this is probably self-indulgent. But if you’ve made it this far, here goes: