It’s one thing to be a creative quadruple threat (film actor, stage actor, television actor, musician); it’s another thing entirely to excel as a quadruple threat for the better part of 43 years. From multiple Tony nominations—and wins—to starring roles on Fame and Treme, Michael Cerveris may be best known for his versatility as a thespian, but he proves just as formidable behind the mic on his long-awaited sophomore solo album, Piety. His sonic pedigree is unsurprisingly impressive, having shared the stage with the likes of the Breeders, Bob Mould, Teenage Fanclub and Frank Black. Cerveris will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read his MAGNET Feedback.
Cerveris: Scott McClanahan is the only thing that makes the tragically short life of Breece D’J Pancake bearable. And if you don’t know Pancake’s stories, put down your computer and go to the library right now. Like a weirder and more knowable John Kennedy Toole, McClanahan seems to mark down his every passing thought and says that thing you hadn’t realized you always or never thought but recognize immediately to be true. His characters are by turns terrifying, endearing, disturbing and heroic—sometimes all in one page. The most striking thing about him is the lack of pretense in his writing and, for all its bleak humor, even the darkest bits are still full of compassion. He can chronicle despair without making you fall into it yourself. Of all the freaky, fractured, fucked-up adjectives that you could use to describe his extraordinary Crapalachia, the one I keep coming back to is Beautiful. The way the most screwed up things are if they’re yours.
McClanahan is also a filmmaker and musician whose Holler Presents project and Holler Boys band with Chris Oxley serve as outlets for more passionate fractured transmissions from Appalachia beyond the written word.
As if all that weren’t enough, this summer, Ohio’s wonderful Two Dollar Radio, the fantastic family-run independent publishing house, is releasing McClanahan’s astounding collaboration with Spanish graphic novelist Ricardo Cavalo, The Incantations Of Daniel Johnston. I got to devour an advance copy, and it is as beautiful and heartbreaking, dazzling and giddy as you would expect a brilliant comic-book freestyle biography of Daniel Johnston would be. The love and affection for their subject is matched by a subtly keen dissection of the ways we mythologize troubled artists and mental illness. You don’t need to be a fan of Johnston to be blown away by the book (although, actually, you should be a fan of Daniel Johnston, just because).
Scott McClanahan keeps looking at people and relationships in ways that are so familiar and utterly unexpected at the same time, while also wreaking havoc on the conventional relationship between a writer and a reader. Reading Scott McClanahan is as thrilling, baffling, delightful and visceral as, well, trying to be human.
Video after the jump.
