Bucks County writers Christian Bauman and Damian McNicholl will explore the art of being ‘multi-disciplined’ at the 215 Festival.
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By: Jillian Kalonick
On Sept. 20, 1994, at 0300 hours, a soldier named Jersey prepares to man the Voodoo Lounge the machine-gun nest of an Army boat heading toward Haiti, on the eve of the American invasion. As Christian Bauman’s novel Voodoo Lounge (Simon & Schuster, $14) begins, the uninitiated are quickly thrust into the confusion and urgency of war. The book is about "addiction (real and imagined), and love (real and imagined), and Haiti, religion, the secret lives of soldiers, HIV, and a little bit of this and that," according to Mr. Bauman.
Jersey is not some guy from the Garden State but Tory Harris, a sergeant and the only female in her detachment. She crosses paths with an old lover during the invasion, and is caught in a love triangle with him and a Haitian-American intelligence officer.
Voodoo Lounge, which came out this month, follows Mr. Bauman’s first novel, The Ice Beneath You, about a soldier who returns to the U.S. following a stint in Somalia. Mr. Bauman served tours in both conflicts, in the U.S. Army Waterborne, and kept journals and wrote song lyrics during his time in the service. The novels came out 10 years later, which in today’s climate seems like a long turnover, he says.
"This year there’s this mass of war memoirs coming out, literally people who just got off the plane in Iraq or in some cases are still there," he says. "It was such a different environment in the ’90s. Now it’s almost instant gratification. It took me almost 10 years to process what had happened to me in Somalia."
In addition to being a novelist, Mr. Bauman, who lives in New Hope, Pa., is a regular contributor to National Public Radio’s All Things Considered, an editor for the literary Web site Identity Theory and a writer for online and print publications. He will discuss his literary multi-tasking as part of "Formats Are For Losers," a panel discussion at Voices & Visions Bookstore in Philadelphia Oct. 6. The program will include Kevin Smokler, Damian McNicholl and Mr. Bauman discussing their work in different media books, radio and the Web and the advantages of being "multi-disciplined."
The event is part of Philadelphia’s 215 Festival Oct. 5-10, six days of literary events celebrating both local and national writers, with an emphasis on what it calls "cross-pollinated performances," which often combine readings with music, comedy and film. Featuring events such as "Bullets, Bylines and Beer," a night with crime fiction writers who also are journalists, and "Bad Sex with Neal Pollack," in which the festival founder presents "an evening of inappropriate sex stories leaning toward the Jewish end of the humor scale," 215 aims to break away from stuffy, academic book talk.
Mr. Bauman also will read at Kelly Writer’s House for a WXPN broadcast Oct. 3, and be a guest on WHYY’s Radio Times with Marty Moss-Coane Oct. 4, along with his fellow panelists. The son of a DJ, Mr. Bauman was obsessed with radio as a child. On his last book tour, he recorded a piece at the studios of Minnesota Public Radio. For a self-proclaimed public radio geek, "that’s like Mecca," he says.
"Being able to do commentaries for ‘All Things Considered’ is just about the coolest thing that ever happened to me," he says. "That was what I wanted to do more than anything same thing being interviewed by Terry Gross. I’d been listening to her since I was a little kid. The radio connection has been a very cool icing to the whole writing thing."
With a resumé that includes stints as a folk singer, cook, house painter, clerk and sailor, Mr. Bauman’s work across media seems natural. Born in Easton, Pa., Mr. Bauman attended North Hunterdon High School in Clinton, became a father and husband at age 17, and joined the Army at 21. After returning he hooked up with his high school friend Gregg Cagno and toured on the folk circuit full-time for four and a half years, opening for singers such as Odetta, John Gorka and Cheryl Wheeler.
"One of the coolest moments of my life was singing a song with Woody Guthrie’s last surviving sister out in Oklahoma, and singing onstage with Pete Seeger," he says. Woody Guthrie is a major influence for Mr. Bauman in music and in writing, he says. As far as novelists, Tim O’Brien is a strong influence. In Voodoo Lounge the soldiers pass around a dog-eared copy of The Things They Carried, and add their own off-color list of what they carry a passage that’s "90 percent homage and 10 percent jab in the ribs."
A voracious reader since he was young, Mr. Bauman continuously wrote journal entries, stories and song lyrics, but never imagined himself a writer.
"It wasn’t like I spent all my childhood wanting to be a novelist," he says. "There were a lot of other things I liked doing, but I wrote though all of it. It was almost like it was there and I just didn’t see it. I was a musician, I played the drums, I was very into theater. The whole time I was writing, but I never really thought about it. It wasn’t something I was pursuing, I just did it. I stumbled into it and realized all along that was the art form I was definitely the best at."
Christian Bauman, Damian McNicholl and Kevin Smokler will be part of Formats Are For Losers at Voices & Visions Bookstore, Fourth and Ranstead streets, Philadelphia, Oct. 6, 7-9 p.m. Free admission. On the Web: www.215festival.com. Christian Bauman on the Web: www.christianbauman.com