I’ve known writer Jeff Jackson for quite a while now, and one of the pleasures of that has been seeing his creative endeavors expand. To wit: the work that he and his collaborators in the band Julian Calendar have released in recent years: haunting post-punk with an expansive set of influences and a penchant for deconstruction. I spoke with Jackson about the group’s new album Speaking a Dead Language and their evolution since 2020.
In our weekend reading: thoughts on books by Joy Williams and Kevin Barry, literal beach reads, and more.
There’s a long history of serialized fiction in the world, from Charles Dickens’s novels to Stephen King publishing The Green Mile in six parts. Next year, we’ll be joining that tradition by publishing VCO, a novel by James Jacob Hatfield, over the course of 40 weeks. James has more information on the project on his website.
In our afternoon reading: new writing by Hillary Leftwich, Jeff Jackson and Meghan Lamb in conversation, and more.
A lot of writers were in bands when they were young, but what about making music after you’ve published a few novels and are old enough for the romance of late night shows in dive bars to have dimmed? Is it something most people outgrow for a reason? A compulsion related to arrested development or midlife crisis? Or is performance intimately related to the act of writing in ways that are slow to reveal themselves?
In our morning reading: interviews with Jeff Jackson and Melissa Febos, looking back at Destroyer’s discography, and more.
Jeff Jackson is the author of Destroy All Monsters, a heady yet visceral take on rock music, violence, and the nature of communities. Jeff Jackson also plays music in Julian Calendar, a postpunk band whose music could also be described as heady yet visceral. Since 2017, the group has released 5 records, including 4 EPs in the Crimson Static series.As an admirer of Jackson’s work in both spheres, I reached out to him about discussing the evolution of his foray into music, and how it’s affected his writing.
In our afternoon reading: a review of Laura van den Berg’s collection, an interview with Karolina Waclawiak, and more.