Profile and Interview by David Roy for DoctorBlog, October 2006
While fully engaged in the pursuit of her career as a novelist, Angela Carole Brown has actually spent the past two decades making her living as a musician in L.A. So it seems only fitting that her first literary release, would be a tale of music.
TRADING FOURS is the story of four musicians, whose lives collide in a single day. And it may seem like a natural fit, a musician writing about musicians, but the idea didn't actually come to Brown until four novels later.
"For years in this endeavor I've persevered through trying to write books that examined themes of people in search of their souls. Finally I thought to myself, hmmm, what about that thing you do for a living? It was just so right under my nose."
TRADING FOURS does indeed continue Brown's internal compulsion, spinning a day in the life of four people who must each face a crossroads in their lives. And yet it's also probably her most lighthearted effort to date.
"There's just a buoyancy to musicians," she offers fondly. "You simply can't keep them weighted down in pathos for too long." Which means that while it may indeed show its propensity for combing the depths, TRADING FOURS is, according to Brown, still designed to be a fun read.
"When I first announced to friends that I was writing this book I asked for anecdotes. Crazy things that might've happened to them on gigs, or just within the course of living this life. And stories came out of the woodwork. Some I was able to use, others not. But it told me, most profoundly, that musicians are hungry to have their story told. In the layman's mind, you're either Sting or you're the bad lounge act often parodied in sketch comedies. The vast vista of reality that lives in between those two extremes is largely unknown to most people."
She certainly has the vantage point of experience, having been a fixture on the L.A. music scene for two decades, recording jingles, voice-overs, and CDs for herself and others, authoring and starring Off-Broadway in her own one-woman show, working clubs and concert halls in the U.S., Europe, and Asia. And, more to the undeniable point, being a veteran of the wedding and bar mitzvah circuit.
"And there's the punch line, folks. No matter how fabulous you start to feel, singing for David Foster or touring the Far East, you're always guaranteed to be humbled by having to announce, 'and now ladies and gentlemen, the bouquet toss!' That's what TRADING FOURS is about. It can be a very schizophrenic life."
Bouquet tosses aside, and only reinforcing that musicians are indeed a persevering breed, today, thanks to TRADING FOURS, Angela Carole Brown now also speaks to us as a new voice in American letters.
Q. How autobiographical is this story of working L.A. musicians?
A. One of the characters is a "chick singer" that people will automatically assume is me. But I'm really lurking in all the characters, perhaps in ways not so obvious to people who know me. Likewise, the singer character is many women I know. The dynamic she has with her partner, for example, was very directly inspired by a girlfriend of mine. But people will assume. Every one of these characters is a composite of many.
Q. Do you think friends of yours will look for themselves in the book?
A. I asked friends for anecdotes when I was writing this, because there are hilarious antics that exist in a kind of musician Hall of Fame, and I wanted stories that I could weave into my premise. So, this one friend of mine kept giving me great stuff, but he’d repeatedly say, “you’re gonna change my name, right?” It took everything in me to try to explain to him that I wasn’t writing an exposé, that this was FICTION. I still don’t think he quite got it, bless his heart.
Q. What kind of writer would you say you are?
A. I like character studies, and I like feeling things very deeply. So my books all have sort of the same running theme, which is the search for one's soul. Except that soul has always been such a troublesome word for me. It's murky. Some attach it to religion, others simply to sentimentality. The best I can figure is that it's this unquantifiable something that has to do with our fundamental identity, our sense of right, our clarity. And because these things are of concern to every man and woman, it is the one word embraced by religious zealots and atheists alike. Frankly, I'm just on a mission to self-discover.
Q. Is that what writing is for you?
A. Absolutely.
Q. When did you start writing?
A. I started my first novel at 20. It took eight years to complete a first draft. And for the past twenty-something years I've been at it, till I've got four novels in my pocket, to date.
Q. Four in twenty-something years doesn't seem like a lot, does it?
A. Please, no, stop, the love is just too much! Just kidding. No, you're absolutely right. In the commercial world, it isn't a lot. An agent wants to hear that you're able to churn out one every ten months. Every ten months! That's the figure I actually heard at the seminar of this high-powered agent once. And if you're writing a genre book, something with a very specific formula and template, then every ten months is certainly doable. It's like connecting dots, you just assemble the pieces. But for better or for worse, I just don't want to write those kinds of books. I'm trying my damnedest to reinvent genre with every effort. I think that's what makes a great novel. And that's what I'm always trying to do. And that takes time.
Q. If there are other novels before this one, why is this one your first published?
A. Well, first of all, it’s not my first published work, just my first published novel. But why this novel before the others is because I'm publishing this book independently. I've had agents. None has been successful at getting me a book deal, though each has been in my corner in extraordinary ways. Finally I decided not to wait around any longer for someone else to tell me that I matter. And at the time of that decision, this was the freshest one out of the typewriter. Plus, because the subject matter is actually what I do for a living, I figured I'd have an easy built-in audience just among my comrades.
Q. If you had such a hard time getting a deal, did you ever think that maybe your writing just wasn’t good enough?
A. Okay, there you go with the love again. No, in all seriousness though, at one point my writing was not good enough. I've been through a lot of workshops, received a lot of feedback from some every sage minds, have been turned down by publishers who absolutely should have turned me down, and have learned a great deal about this extraordinary art form. Today I believe I am better-than-good enough. And at a certain point, you also realize that there will always be more you can learn, therefore don't let that unquantifiable everything, that you will, frankly, never reach, become a self-sabotaging crutch. You can fine-tune a thing to death, all just out of the fear of putting it out there for public scrutiny.
Q. Also, don't you think that the way the publishing industry has shifted has to have something to do with the difficulty that perfectly gifted writers are facing?
A. God, yes! A great novel used to matter to a publisher, and that’s just not so true today. Yet there’s still this stigma attached to “self-published,” as if to infer that the writing must not be good enough if no one will take it on. Well, that stigma may have once had legitimacy, back in the days when publishers actually cared about great books, and took pride in discovering and nurturing the next Virginia Woolf or Kurt Vonnegut. If you look at many of the books on store shelves today, you know without a doubt that standards have been lowered, and criteria shifted. It's all about revenue. It's no longer about, "let's give this book a chance because it's worthy, and we'll give the public no choice but to deal with quality." No one seems to be brave anymore. So the traditional book route has, in my mind, lost much of its credibility. And yet the stigma remains, and unfortunately that'll be the anvil on my back. All I can do is let the book speak for itself.
Q. So you'll publish the others?
A. Are you kidding? My fate is in MY hands now.
Q. The play Sideman, which was running last year, is also about musicians. How would your book compare with it?
A. I first heard about that play when I was writing mine, and all I could think was, "damn it!" But, in fact, that story comes from a very different angle than mine. And it's a play. A living, moving organism, which means that music, itself, is a part of the experience. I had a very different set of challenges ahead of me, because in many ways it's odd writing a book about music. The actual listening-to-music is not a part of the experience. Or so one might think. In truth, words are a stunningly powerful medium, and can absolutely bring alive a music in one's ears, or a vibrantly hued painting to one's eyes, or a savory taste to one's palate. That was my challenge.
Q. Is it just coincidence that you happened to use painting and food as analogies, or could it possibly be that two of your other novels are about art and food?
A. It's all just about shameless self-promotion, baby! Who else is going to do it for me? Look for The Assassination of Gabriel Champion and Voodoo Child next.
Q. What's your favorite novel?
A. Without a doubt, Crime and Punishment.
Q. Talk about a character study. Would you consider that one of your early influences?
A. It is, single handedly, what made me decide to write. The whole idea of being able to get inside this character, who is a pretty despicable guy, and really getting him, understanding what makes him tick, even empathizing with him. Some people are quite afraid, or abhorred to the idea, of empathizing with a bad guy, because they put all their beliefs in the comfortable, if simpleminded, archetypes of good-and-evil. The whole grey area is quite uncomfortable for them. But it is what makes me excited about a story. Also, a handful of contemporary novels lately have really influenced me and made me come back to them more than once. See, that's what I've never understood from people who say that they don't amass a library of books, because they don't keep their books once they've read them. To me, it's no different from a movie. Wouldn't you want to revisit that experience again, if it was a remarkable one?
Q. Well, some people can't watch a movie more than once either. They consider the experience redundant, and are about living in the present. What do you say to that?
A. I can completely embrace the idea of living in the present. It's actually everything that my own spiritual practice is about. But are you telling me that those same people never buy a record or a CD? Because, according to that idea, once you've heard Beethoven's Ninth, why ever listen to it again? I always go back to books that have given me an incredible journey. And I'll almost always, if it's great writing, discover something new with each return.
Q. What are some others you've gone back to?
A. Michael Cunningham's The Hours. His compositional structure was something I learned a lot from. It was his book that made me decide to play around with the idea of placing Trading Fours in third-person-present, as compared with the most common form, third-(or first)-person past. It won't work with every kind of tale, but can, if it does work, give a more intimate immediacy to the story. It can make the reader feel like they're there, going through this life with these characters. Also his way of creating symbiosis between seemingly unrelated scenarios. And Toni Morrison's Love, which blew me away the first time I read it, for creating a sense, a taste, a sound, and a smell of old lore, though it's a new story. There is always the power of the archetypal, the iconic, and the sense of legend about her writing.
Q. You said that Trading Fours wasn't the first work you ever published. What was?
A. Oh goodness! Well, I've actually had some poems published in compilations. But the very first published piece was this angry letter to Rona Barrett's Hollywood Magazine. I was, like, eleven. And I was pissed off at this great review she gave The Bad News Bears, and this terrible review she gave to Bingo Long's Traveling All-stars. I guess it was her baseball movie issue. Anyway, I think I called her a racist. I was eleven, and already this feisty little militant.
Q. Are you really a militant?
A. Me? God, no! I'm status-quo to points of banal. And I was just so ecstatic that they published it that I was theirs forever. Talk about a sucker.
Q. They say that the first book we read and the first music we hear defines the person we become. What was the first record and book you remember buying or reading as a kid?
A. First record was Danny Kaye narrating these folktales from Czechoslovakia. Utterly enchanting. First book, outside of the "see Spot run" books I was obligated to read in school, was this thick little dime store pulp novel, Iceberg Slim's Pimp. I'm not sure I want to know what that says about me.
Q. What was the LAST book and recording you loved?
A. Eastmountainsouth's self-titled CD. Their music is the perfect marriage of rural and European folk. And Toni Morrison's Love, the book I mentioned earlier.
Q. What do you want to say to readers out there?
A. Buy my book. Read my book. Tell your friends about my book. You will have my eternal gratitude. And to non-readers, please pick up a book, any book, and watch it change your life.
© 2005 by David Roy