David James Keaton, The Last Projector. Broken River Books. Halloween, 2014.
davidjameskeaton.com/
The Last Projector is a dense, convoluted, funhouse-mirror-Russian-nesting-doll work of absolute insanity and genius. It’s the hardest I’ve ever worked on a book. It’s taken its author years to write. It has been the underdog, shunned by stuffy New York presses. It’s hard to categorize, harder still to wrap your mind around, and I would venture to say it’s one of the best books I’ve ever read.
“In this hysterical fever dream of a novel, meet an unhinged paramedic turned porn director uprooted from an ever-shifting ’80s fantasy. Discover a crime that circles back through time to a far-reaching cover-up in the back of an ambulance. Reveal a manic tattoo obsession and how it conspires to ruin the integrity of a story and corrupt identity itself. Unravel the mystery surrounding three generations of women and the one secret they share. And follow two amateur terrorists, whose unlikely love story rushes headlong toward a drive-in apocalypse.”
“The Most Anticipated Book of 2014. Hell, it’s the most anticipated book since this podcast has existed.” – Booked
“Imagine Harry Crews’ grit-filled world head-butting William Gaddis’ dense, rollicking literary hopscotch and you’re firmly entrenched in David James Keaton country. His thrilling debut, THE LAST PROJECTOR, is the bubbling, epic story of how wonderfully screwed up America is.” -Patrick Wensink
“That thing called ‘voice’ authors are said to have? Keaton’s are legion. That ‘Tap, tap, tap’ you may hear issuing from this book? I wouldn’t open it up without a quick ‘Klaatu barada nikto’ for good measure.” -Jedidiah Ayres
David James Keaton’s The Last Projector is the kind of multi-layered narrative that challenges readers as much as it entertains them. At once an ode to films and music, a wild tale of possible “mother sisters,” a poke at the pornographic filmmaking industry, a strange look at what goes on inside a particular ambulance, and an exploration of identity, violence, and love, this is a wild debut novel that pushes against everything standard crime fiction is known for and emerges on the other side sporting a smile and shaking the debris of the fourth wall off its shoulders.
To try to give a short, coherent synopsis of The Last Projector would be like attempting to summarize David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest in a single sentence. The book deals with a paramedic turned porn director whose hatred for the ever-increasing presence of tattoos in the bodies of actors threatens to destroy his sanity, an awful mystery that surrounds three generations of women who may or may not be related in an unnatural way, and two amateur terrorists who are obsessed with punishing a cop and whose bizarre love story is full of surprises. While that sounds manageable, the narrative is also about a plethora of strange fixations, a collection of unrelated stories, accidents, the process of making low budget movies, how conversations can easily take on a life of their own, and dogs. Actually, it’s a lot about dogs.
Usually staying on point is something authors stress about. Not Keaton. This narrative uses dialogue to turn getting off topic into an art form. Instead of trying to keep deviations to a minimum, Keaton allows each conversation that deviates from the main narrative to take on a life of its own, to flourish, grow, and become a special momentary exodus from everything else currently happening in the novel. The result of running with each of these micro stories, memories, and jokes is that they collectively end up being a huge pro instead of a con. The conversations here are as wildly entertaining as anything in contemporary fiction, and that includes all genres. Packed with humor and obeying the nonlinear nature of real conversations, the talks the characters engage in are unpredictable, mirthful, and regularly include stories that are long enough to be considered subnarratives. Ultimately, the author even winks at the reader through his characters, allowing them to complain or question their interloper when things get too crazy:
“What was the point of that story again?”
“Didn’t you ask why I rescued animals?”
“Nope.”
Surprisingly, Keaton balances out the conversations with passages that show great economy of language. Usually delivered at the beginning of a new section, these fragments follow the script format more than the regular novel presentation and manage to convey a lot of information in few words and at breakneck speed:
Later that day. Massive car wreck. Fire, blood, screams, a “sandwich with the works,” the first responders call them. Three ambulances are lined up like they’re going to race later. Jack and Rick see a pile of men working on a trucker next to his upended semi, so they run for the other vehicles. They find the worst of them, a smoking Buick Regal folded almost in half, and a bloody and bruised couple fighting with police and paramedics inches away from the steam of their hood. Rick joins the melee, as jack attends to three young women crying near the curb.
While it serves to illustrate Keaton’s ability to place a reader and inform her with a single paragraph, the preceding lines also serve as an example of the brutal, bewildering, and unabashedly intense kind of prose that fill up the almost 500 pages of The Last Projector. The gore is enough to satisfy fans of hardcore horror, the sex and violence are always shown together with the honesty of an X-rated documentary, and everything from car accidents and vicious dog attacks to a broken penis and talks that include punches to the face are hurled at the reader without any time for rest.
Keaton has a unique voice that makes his characters seem slightly unhinged and revels in the gritty side of life. That being said, there are echoes of a diverse group of outstanding authors here, and that diversity makes reading The Last Projector a literary treat. For example, Harry Crews’ weirdness is here, along with Elmore Leonard’s knack for dialogue and a playfulness (especially when it comes to the name of the police officer the two young aspiring criminals want to scare) that brings to mind Cuban giant Guillermo Cabrera Infante.
Perhaps the most impressive thing about this novel is that it’s Keaton’s debut. He has published short stories in many venues and his short story collection, Fish Bites Cop!, received many accolades. However, a novel is a very different thing, and he pulled off delivering a powerful and strange narrative that demands attention. - Gabino Iglesias
GI: Fish Bites Cop! was amazing and weird. Everyone kept calling it a crime book, and it was, but it had enough bizarro in it to qualify as a bizarro book. If you had to define it in 1000 words or less, how would you do it?
DJK: Thanks! Yeah, I don’t know what genre it was. Still don’t. Just like trying to define bizarro. That’s like magical realism, right? But with shit and blood flying everywhere? If so, yes, I’ll be that, thanks. But to define it? I tried to do that once over at Elizabeth White’s page with an essay called “It’s Supposed to be Funny, I Swear!” and I still stand by that declaration. But the “funny” was there to disguise a genuine grudge against blustery law enforcement types and authority figures, so maybe it’s more satire. The authority bashing was sort of organic to most of the stories, and there wasn’t a set theme for a collection until I looked back at what I’d written over a period of three years and thought, “Hey, there’s a through line here.” The playful story where Dog the Bounty Hunt— er, uh, “C.A.T. the Skip Tracer” is brutally murdered for laughs was probably the most conscious authority bashing in the book. So is that a genre? Mean-spirited Slap Attack Fiction? It’s that.
GI: That collection was named the 2013 Short Story Collection of the Year by This Is Horror. That means it was also a horror book. Crime. Horror. Bizarro. Are you above and beyond categorization or just trying to get fans of all genres to hold hands and sing Kumbaya?
DJK: That award was a fun surprise, but it did make sense to me when I thought about it, as horror sometimes becomes that place where different genres do hold hands. Or at least thumb-wrestle.
GI: Why did you decide to go with Broken River Books with this novel? How much grief did J David Osborne give you? How much did you give right back?
DJK: Broken River Books recruited me on a rooftop in St. Louis after J.D.O and I had both read for a Books and Booze event. Osborne said, “I loved your shit! Send me more shit!” and I said, “I loved your shit! More shit will be sent!” At the time, The Last Projector was called Spunkwater, and it was in limbo at a couple places, but his enthusiasm after reading it was undeniable, so I pulled it and probably burned some bridges to work with him instead. But come on, those other guys had the damn thing for nine months. Nine months and no baby. Life’s too short and the indie scene is way too juicy right now to waste that kind of time. But yeah, as far as grief, we’re both trading some consensual grief. The book has gone through a few incarnations, but it’s all good. He’s a great editor, all joking aside. He found at least one typo per page, as well as a sheet of fun “Plot Inconsistencies” he made for me. They say things like, “Little Mike is burned to death but the motherfucker is having a conversation in the last chapter.” Whoops! This I fixed by making Big Mike talk to his finger instead. Because he missed his buddy!
Another example. Last night he called me drunk and said, “Hey! I was gonna put up the pre-order link for The Last Projector tonight. You want to really complicate things and promise you’ll sign them all?” I said, “Yes! As long as it really fucks things up.” “Oh, definitely,” he said. “Logistically, this will be a nightmare.” And I’m like, “I’m in love with this plan.” So now I have to sign hundreds of books and my apartment will look like Boxville, New Mexico. Luckily, we live close to each other. That was a lie, he’s a hundred states away. Oh! More grief that I’m not sure he knows about but will now – on the last round of edits I wrote him into the novel mostly to rub a balloon against his head. And I wrote one of the characters from his own novel into my novel just to screw up that character’s arc. One is easier to find than the other, which is probably why he hasn’t said anything yet. See that? These are the kinds of things you can probably only do at an indie press. Indie for life!
GI: Was that The Last Projector-Fish Bites Cop!-The Last Projector line of questioning confusing? Would you buy me a beer?
DJK: It made perfect sense! The books are intertwined anyway. Fish Bites Cop is the genesis of The Last Projector. All the paramedic stories ended up being expanded on in the novel, a lot of the “Jacks” are the “Jack” of the novel. Other times, “Jack” was just a way to avoid naming a character, which I always hate. And the opening story of Fish Bites Cop, “Trophies,” the one that follows a police officer’s head after it’s shotgunned off and bounces around the freeway and goes on adventures is also a mini-fable from The Last Projector. They were both written simultaneously.
GI: You write short stories and novels: do you prefer one over the other? Why?
DJK: I’m more into novels now, as it feels like I can consistently finish them. They used to seem like an impossible goal. But I wrote a couple screenplays a few years ago, which basically taught me how to outline a novel, something I never bothered with before. Not that The Last Projector is the result of any kind of reasonable plan or organization whatsoever.
GI: Your work has a cinematic quality to it that comes from your passion for movies. Also, you write scripts. What are you working on now and what role does that love for film play in your writing? Oooh, smart question coming: is TLP an homage to movies… and stuff?
DJK: Those screenplays that I wrote didn’t sell, after some agents and small studios wasted years of my life keeping me on the hook like it would happen “any day now.” So I turned a couple of them into novels. My goal is that someone wants to make a movie out of a novel of mine that used to be a script so I can say, “Ah ha! Back-doored your ass, suckers!” And also because turning scripts into books in order to make movies is hilarious. It’s like that race track I had as a kid that will make no sense to anyone but my brother right now: Big Detour: The Loooong Way Around.
GI: You have a thing for zombies. Are they passé now? Can we start calling ourselves undead hipsters now?
DJK: I don’t want to be the kind of asshole who says he was into zombies before they were cool. But I was totally into zombies before they were cool. And now that they’re enjoying this healthy backlash and unfashionable played-out phase, I’m sort of liking them again. I’m probably done writing zombie stories though. “The Ball Pit” in Fish Bites Cop felt like an ending to me.
GI: I already gave you unlimited word count to answer everything, so I’ll cut that back to ten words. You have ten words to tell folks what The Last Projector is all about.
DJK: How about a haiku instead?
The Last Projector.
What’s it about?
Canines. Jealousy. Movies.
No, that was stupid. Let me try the ten words thing. It’s like, instead of yelling “fire!” in a movie, it’s yelling “movie” in a fire! Okay, that was even worse, and not ten words. You’ll have to ask somebody else. I can’t sell it.
GI: You have an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Pittsburgh, but your love for pulp and horror arguably make you the antithesis of a large chunk of the MFA folks I know. What gives?
DJK: My schooling took about a decade longer than most, so let’s not get carried away with that “MFA” thing. In fact, the best writing I did had little to do with the workshop process. Here’s a weird story. I accidentally took at class in grad school that was half Spanish, and I was failing it (read the course descriptions, kids!). “Failing” in grad school means a “C” because they’re fucking ridiculous. And I didn’t want to drop it because it fit my work schedule and I was close-captioning full time. Anyway, the teacher assigned 100 Years of Solitude, which probably fits my earlier definition of “bizarro” up there actually. And him and I started talking about that book and Márquez’s little gold fish and then talking movies and how Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo was likely an homage to that book, with the boat in the jungle, etc. So I sought out that movie, and there was a scene in it where a drunken rich guy waves a wad of cash in front of the face of someone who could really use it, then throws it into a fish pond with some big-ass fish, and one of them swallows it down. And I became obsessed with that moment in the movie and turned it into “Nine Cops Killed for a Goldfish Cracker,” which then became the sorta title story of Fish Bites Cop (the original title of that story), and my first “real” short-story sale. I don’t know what the point of that story is, except it’s something about doing my best work outside of the typical MFA experience. I wouldn’t trade that “C” for nothin’.
GI: Who’s the sexiest indie crime writer alive?
DJK: Flannery O’Connor. Look into those eyes. Oh, wait, alive? Jed Ayres by a longshot. Dogfather of Noir at the Bar. The dude was immortalized as an ascot-wearing villain in the comic Mind Management for chrissakes. He also talks soft and spooky like he just got done eating a cake made of faces. -
Pig Iron. Burnt Bridge Press. Spring, 2015.
c o l l e c t i o n s
Fish Bites Cop!: Stories to Bash Authorities. Comet Press. May 1st, 2013.
n o v e l l a s
“Suckerpunchingbag.” Pandemonium. Spring, 2013.
“Tap Tap Tap (Snap Snap Snap).” Uncle B’s Drive-In Fiction. Fall, 2012.
Zee Bee & Bee (a.k.a. Propeller Hats for the Dead). Sucker Edition. Open Casket Press. January, 2012.
Zee Bee & Bee (a.k.a. Propeller Hats for the Dead). Expanded Edition. Bunyip Books. July, 2011.
“Zee Bee & Bee (a.k.a. Propeller Hats for the Dead).)” Deadcore: 4 Hardcore Zombie Novellas. September, 2010.
p l a y s
“Friction Ridge (or Beguiling the Bard in Three Acts).” Beat to a Pulp. April, 2012.
n o n f i c t i o n
“Egg Tooth.” Chicago Quarterly Review. Spring, 2013.
“Open Letter to Asshole Allergic to Turn Signals.” ManArchy Magazine. Fall, 2012.
”The Dish Farm.” Out of the Gutter #8. Winter, 2012.
“Road Dirge.” Bluestem. Spring, 2012.
s h o r t s t o r i e s
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