To go with this interview, iambik will be offering a give-a-way. Please check their blog for details.

Keiper began his theater career in the fifth grade, singing in operetta and acting in child roles with the Cleveland Playhouse. He studied theater at Ohio State University, and has directed educational television, toured the country as a platform speaker, worked as an actor in New York, and directed and wrote shows for the stage, one of which has had 2500 performances.

He took a 30-year break from theater to work in business, and returned to acting because of his daughter, Alex Keiper. Since getting back into acting, he has worked in stage plays and film, training people in businesses to improve their presentation skills, and, of course, as a voice artist, including commercials, audio plays, and audio books.

Keiper is appearing in a new movie, The Sophmore, with Amanda Plummer and Patrick Warburten, out in January 2012.

Laconic Central: Hi Bob, thanks for doing this interview.

In your bio, you say you got back into theater because of your daughter’s love for acting. I’m assuming that her interest was sparked originally by your past–or did you stop before she was born?

Robert Keiper: My daughter got the theater bug all on her own. Then, taking her to an audition landed roles for both of us, and I got bitten again. So she’s more responsible for my theatrical aspirations than I am for hers.

But some of my fondest memories—and hers—are her childhood hours we spent in the living room working on monologues.

LC: Your bio mentions a theater piece you wrote that has had 2500 performances. Please tell me something about it.

RK: The piece was a one-man-show entitled Sons of Liberty. It included the voices of several characters, re-living events of the first year of the American Revolution. Patrick Henry speaking at the House of Burgesses, a British soldier at Lexington and Concord, a New England farmer telling what happened at Bunker (Breed’s) Hill, Joseph Reed, secretary to General Washington, and Nathan Hale. I wrote and produced it, but most of the performances were done by other actors on year-long Chautauqua circuit tours of high schools, colleges and clubs. Tours included mid-west, southern states, Pennsylvania, New York and New England. It also had performances at Lincoln Center, Faneuil Hall, and Williamsburg.

LC: How does working as a voice artist on audio books differ from performing a play on stage?

RK: The immediacy of feedback on stage is galvanizing, a creative condition when all my resources are simply there without effort. In film work there’s always crew, director and other actors to bring about that same “heightened state.”

Narration is a solitary effort as, I’m sure, is yours. The opening of resource paths requires more and more consistent effort. I am my audience, my admirer and my critic.

But the rewards are delightful and amazingly identical, so long as approbation doesn’t creep in. It’s never about me, it’s always and only about the story.

LC: I’m pretty thrilled that someone did an audiobook of my writing, and I love how it came out. But I have to say I was pretty apprehensive at first. It was very strange hearing someone else read my words. How did voicing The Painting and the City compare with other narrations that you’ve done?

RK: Even though I’d done several books prior to yours, I was still fairly new to this performing art as I started The Painting and The City. So I was making lots of mistakes, backing and filling, getting disgusted with myself and swearing I’d never finish the darned thing. Then I’d come to one of the interesting plot twists and get hooked all over again. I particularly remember the first time the puppet appears in the story, and the galvanizing effect that had on me. I was delighted with the character and my choice for a voice for him—but I knew he would appear again later, so I made a short recording of his voice and kept it handy as a reminder when needed again. Consistent character voices are as fundamental to the story as any other character traits, but when their appearances are far apart you have to take special care.

Yours was also the my first venture into fantasy/science fiction. I particularly enjoyed the story transitions from here-and-now to there-and-then. Altogether, it was a delight to work on, very different from some of the others, such as Franklin, the Essential Founding Father by James Srodes. That history was fascinating and I hope to do more of that sort. Not a fun romp, but gratifying. Give me more like that, but then one like yours to lighten my spirits.

LC: Interesting, because I know you as a voice and not a face, that the trailer for The Sophmore has you doing voiceover. Is that the case throughout the movie, or was it put together just for the trailer? Hearing the voiceover got me wondering if you voice work (invisible acting) has changed/influenced your screen/stage (visible) acting.

RK: My voiceover in the trailer is lifted from my on-camera lines as Cap, the history teacher, and were done, I suspect, to give continuity to the trailer segments. The audience must endure watching me in order to hear me in the actual movie.

I don’t think my voice work has influenced my stage or film work—but as I pondered your question I realized that my daughter’s acting work has. She is preparing for her opening in the lead in Proof, at the Walnut Street Theater in Philadelphia—an extremely demanding role. As we discussed her approach to it, I’ve appreciated again how much her strong work ethic has incented me to work harder and be more creative over the years.  And people think we influence our kids.

LC: What’s next for you?

RK: I have one little piece of an audiobook to finish. I’ll be giving presentation skills workshops in Oregon, then Costa Mesa, then Anaheim over the next few weeks while waiting for other audiobook or film opportunities to pop up. My wife and son and I will be going to see Proof next week, and I’m having lunch with my golfing buddies tomorrow.  I wouldn’t be surprised if something else interesting appears unexpectedly, too.

And last, here’s the trailer for the new movie that Bob is appearing in.

Crushed can from from http://smashedcan.tumblr.com.

Good article by C.A. Belmond in the Huffington Post last Wednesday: “Writers Wednesday: 5 Lies They Tell You About Writing.”

I particularly liked number 2: “Many writing instructors routinely discourage new authors from describing their characters and the world they inhabit. Why? Two reasons are usually given. One is that it isn’t “modern” to do so (Hemingway is often cited here); and the other is because it’s so darned hard to describe stuff (like sure, what are you, a writer or something?)…Perhaps that explains why so many writers use brand names in place of original description. Let’s call this for what it is: mere product placement, for which the authors didn’t even get paid.”

Aside from the vague statement “many writing instructors,” (how many? how surveyed? residential/non-residential programs? undergraduate/graduate?), I agree with what she’s saying. Brand names bore me. Brand names in fiction bore me. Including the name of a particular beverage doesn’t improve a story.

A critique of an early draft of Circus of the Grand Design by a writer I respect included the suggestion of using brand names in part one (which is set in the real world), to anchor the story because after part one it dives into the land of What the Fuck? and stays there till the end. The suggestion made sense, but I chose to ignore it; the final version did (I hope) convey the real-world better than the version he read.

“…do we really need to hear from yet another desperate housewife about her mind-numbing collection of Manolos and Choos, or the brand of bottled water she drinks?”

I learned from the comments to Belmond’s piece that she is referring to shoes. Maybe writers who use brand names etc. should have to pay licensing fees to the corporate owners.

Besides brand names, I don’t like to use pop culture references, contemporary jargon, sayings, and clichés. I find it jarring and uninteresting to read a story with, say, Facebook or YouTube in it. I’m even hesitant to use computers and cell phones in my fiction. I don’t need the world that I see every day to be reflected in fiction.

Grandiose it may be, but I would like the things I write to have meant something before current brand names, jargon, and fads existed. Yes, that’s unrealistic. English is always changing. There are words in common use now that originated from brand names or jargon. The main point would be that I’m not writing for the current moment.

But like any creative exercise, everyone is free to do what they want. If brand names get you exited, then pile them in. Fortunately for you, not all readers will have tastes as rigid as mine.

I’ll close with an example from Michael Cisco’s novel The Narrator, where you’ll find description that makes the familiar alien. No brand names here!

“Oh look another one of my outdoor cafés what about that. A handsome girl and brave asks me what I want and goes inside to get me whatever it is I’ve ordered.  Everywhere, the same thing. I see mouths in motion on all sides. Incessantly in motion, on all sides. There’s another; and now two more have joined us. They eat, and their jaws work the food around among the teeth, between the jaws, pressed this way and that so that the different kinds of food find the teeth specialized to destroy them. The tongue does this, and also churns saliva into the food, so that everything tastes like saliva. Although the tongue naturally tastes, while having no taste of its own to speak of, not that I’d notice. I watch this or that patron lifting a cup or glass to the mouths they come here to honor with this fine food and drink, and the mouths stretch themselves out toward the cups or glasses, reaching out to meet them before the hand has finished bringing it near, as the eye judges. These people, like me, are marked for death.  But not entirely like me. They can run.”

Here’s something Mansfield said about Aickman, which I would have said in my Aickman post if I had thought of it:

Aickman never spells out his meaning. His stories end abruptly and inconclusively, and in fact the “meaning” is less important than the utter mysteriousness of what happens. Like a true poem or a vivid dream, Aickman’s stories hover on the edge of being understood, but never quite are. They are meant to be listened to and wondered at, and their mystery grows stronger the more one puzzles over them

And an interesting interview at The Center for Fiction with a writer I’m unfamiliar with named Steve Almond. I like his attitude toward big publishing and the need for doing it yourself sometimes but not all the time. Some good bits like this:

That’s the fundamental design flaw in the publishing industry: It pairs an artist with a corporation. Occasionally, this produces a great piece of art that makes all parties involved dough. More often, a literary book loses money—all but one of mine have—and the writer winds up feeling like a loser because his piece of art didn’t move more units. That’s a pretty crazy way to measure success.

As I type, I’m listening to his 1989 album, Standing Eight. Which, if Amazon is correct, is out of print.

The first album I heard, after catching him live in Austin in ’93 or ’94, was Night Train, which has “Birches,” probably his best-known song. It’s a song that struck me a perfect short-short story, set to music. So I wasn’t surprised when he wrote a novel, Edson, which came out in ’96. I had some problems with it (mostly repetition that should have been edited out), but it had some impressive story-telling and characterization. He wrote a second novel that never came out in the U.S. It was to have appeared in France this year, but the publisher went bankrupt (soon after their edition of The Painting and the City came out—sorry Bill, if it’s my fault).

A couple of years ago, I read on his website that he had been dealing with alcoholism and depression. Depression that he had self-medicated for years with the alcohol. Which happens. I wish it hadn’t. He might still be here.

Circus of the Grand Design

Circus came out in hardback from Prime Books in 2004. Locus Magazine called it “a fascinating, deeply bizarre adventure.” Jane Andrews gave us permission to re-use her way cool painting “Moving On” for the cover.

The Infinity Plus page has links to the various ebook sellers so you can purchase one for yourself.

The book is made up of stories pulled from other collections. Other than a story (“The Hospice”) that I had read in an anthology (Masterpieces of Terror and the Supernatural, A Treasury of Spellbinding Tales Old & New, Selected by Marin Kaye), the collection was my first exposure to Aickman’s writing. It’s rare, at such an advanced and jaded age, to fall in love with a new-to-me writer.

Paul Charles Smith has a discussion of the title story here, which he posted, coincidentally, around the time I finished reading the story. He mentions how different the mood is compared to other Aickman stories. At the time I read Smith’s post, I hadn’t read enough Aickman to understand what Smith was talking about. Aickman stories show the strange in the everyday. They build at a pace that some might call slow. They bubble with unease and a feeling that uncanny or uncomfortable things exist just out of our sight. He used allusion (what some might call vagueness), grounding characters and setting while placing bits of strange, a grain here and there, grains that accumulate past the end. Grains that linger.

The Wine-Dark Sea is an excellent introduction to his work, and is available in paperback from Faber Finds, along with another reprint collection (The Unsettled Dust) and an original collection (Cold Hand In Mine). Tartarus Press has reprinted several of his collections, in attractive but expensive hardbacks (though less expensive than used copies of the original editions). I’m looking forward to reading them all.

We’ve always listened to music during the bedtime process, an evolving playlist of non-children’s music, usually albums with songs that I can sing to. These have included Don Walser’s albums, The Archive Series (Vols. 1&2). Walser was an old-time Texas country singer who died in 2006. I used to go hear him play a lot during my last couple of years in Austin, and once at the Mercury Lounge when I was living in New York. Walser mixed originals and covers, including some Bob Wills songs. At first, I would put a CD on at the beginning, but as my daughter got older, she started asking for specific songs on each CD.

I still don’t know what makes her pick up a particular song, things like Alejandro Escovedo’s cover of the Rolling Stones “Sway” from his More Miles Than Money album, Jimmie Dale Gilmore’s “Santa Fe Thief” (she liked the line “Look over yonder”) And Don Walser’s version of Bob Wills’ “Take Me Back To Tulsa”. Which led to my explaining that people do other people’s songs. I found a YouTube video of Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys doing the song (with Luke Wills singing). Which also led to a weirdly sped-up video of Hot Club of Cowtown doing it, and then videos of Hot Club of Cowtown doing “Big Ball in Cowtown” (also covered by Don Walser), and videos of Don Walser doing some of his originals (mainly “The John Deere Tractor Song”).

I found a Bob Wills tribute album put together by Jon Langford, with various alt-country types contributing songs (also a bootleg download of a South By Southwest live performance of the album. Listening to the live version of “Take Me Back To Tulsa” led to the point (if there is one) of this post.

The song is (according to Wikipedia) “a series of unrelated, mostly nonsense, rhyming couplets.” The wording varies in the versions I’ve heard; one verse in particular:

Little bee sucks the blossom, big bee gets the honey.

Poor (or little) boy (or man) picks the cotton, Rich (or big) man gets the money.

made me think about race and poverty–when I hear it, I translate “poor” as “black” and rich as “white”

In the live version (and on the CD), the singer (from a band called The Meat Purveyers, says: “Dark man picks the cotton, white man gets the money”. Hearing it, I assumed that they were singing what I had been thinking, that they were making a statement rather than following the standard version.

After my daughter’s accident, I got a Bob Wills CD from the library (finally going to the source), and discovered that the version recorded in 1941 has the line as:

Darkie picks the cotton, white man gets the money.

As does the version the band sings in the movie Take Me Back To Okalahoma in 1940.

Wikipedia says: “Modern covers of the song, in order to avoid racial offense, tend to replace above line with “Poor boy picks the cotton, Rich man gets the money.”

My thought was, offense to whom? Darkie is an offensive term, but the explanation sounds more like people were trying not to offend their white audience by pointing out racial economic inequality. Which is getting worse.

I have no idea what Bob Wills’ intent was, or his views on race. I borrowed a biography from the library, San Antonio Rose: the life and music of Bob Wills by Charles R. Townsend. Research will continue.

The Painting and the City is now out on audiobook, from iambic audiobooks.

Checking the audio proofs has been an interesting experience. I hope to conduct an interview soon with the main narrator, Robert Keiper.

So now I tell you how we fly to America. The first time we started we got-a half way there when we run out a gasoline, and we gotta go back. Then I take-a twice as much gasoline. This time we’re just about to land, maybe three feet, when what do you think: we run out of gasoline again. And-a back-a we go again to get-a more gas. This time I take-a plenty gas. Well, we get-a half way over, when what do you think happens: we forgot-a the airplane. So, we gotta sit down and we talk it over. Then I get-a the great idea. We no take-a gasoline, we no take-a the airplane. We take steamship, and that friends, is how we fly across the ocean.