You know that feeling you have been having lately? The one that tells you that something is missing, but you don’t know what that something is? It’s this book. Grab a copy and read it right now, and you will feel better. I am in love with this book.

The book is fiction, and not a medical or psychological text, despite what you might first think about when you read the title. It is about Wayne Fencer, a guy who is about to attend a funeral for his ex girlfriend. She committed suicide. Wayne learns later that his ex girlfriend had an abortion, and that the baby was his. He never knew. This sends Wayne into a search, trying to put together what this all means. What is the meaning of life? Wayne goes wandering to try and figure this all out. He goes to some interesting places, including Cuba, and The Burning Man Festival. The book is deep, and also funny in parts, and wonderfully written in a style that is unique to Listi. I think most people go through some point in their lives where they, like Wayne, are wondering just what the meaning of it all is. I found it comforting to read that I was not the only one who felt lost.

Brad Listi was kind enough to let me interview him. I am impressed by how accessible Listi is to his readers. Few authors take the time to respond to and communicate with their fans, and if they do, it’s sometimes in a form letter, or some kind of mass e-mailing. Listi makes direct communication into a fine art.

Below are my questions and his answers to them:

JEN THORPE: Your book is not called “Attention Deficit Disorder”,(referring to the actual psychatric term), but “Attention. Deficit. Disorder.” (which refers to something else entirely.) I bet you get a lot of people who think your book describes how to cope if you have Attention Deficit Disorder, or is about a main character who has Attention Deficit Disorder, or that maybe you are a writer who suffers from Attention Deficit Disorder. But, it’s not about that at all. What were you really getting at when you chose that title?

BRAD LISTI:The title of the novel is meant to be considered word by word. Each word has direct thematic relevance to what happens in the narrative. This is not a book about attention deficit disorder in the literal, medical sense; it’s about attention deficit disorder in a more abstract and euphemistic sense. It’s about the ways in which so many of us often feel as though we have A.D.D., even though we really don’t.

The title, and the periods in particular, refer to the way that “A.D.D.” has become a sort of catchphrase in our culture, a shorthand method of describing how we relate to our overloaded, hyper-mediated environment. And it’s about the irony inherent in how difficult it can often be to try to find meaning in the so-called “Age of Information.”

JEN: I know that this book is fiction, however, as I was reading I found myself wondering how much of it was something that actually happened. How much of this book, if any at all, is autobiographical? Did a particular event happen? Are any of the characters based on real people?

BRAD: The book is based on my life. Places I’ve been. People that I know, or have known. But ultimately it’s fiction. Everything is reconstituted. Everything is made up. The facts are always bent to fit the fiction, and not the other way around.

I lost a friend to suicide when I was in college. It’s reasonable to say that this was the point of genesis for the novel, and certainly it was a guiding parallel that I used when I was navigating the story’s emotional terrain. But again, what I’ve written here is a novel, and not a memoir. I made it up.

The characters in the book are usually amalgams of different people in my life, or exaggerations of people I’ve met before. And sometimes I just conjure them.

A couple of the characters are pretty one-for-one in my basic depiction of their appearance and so on, but the things that they do and the places that they go are pure fiction.

Ultimately, my feeling is that all fiction is autobiographical. Even fantasy fiction has its origins in an individual’s consciousness and is an “autobiographical” expression. In the end, it’s a matter of degrees. And layers. And willful obfuscation.

JT: What music, if any, did you listen to while writing this book?

BL:I listened to a lot of the Mantovani Orchestra. And I listened to Percy Faith. And I listened to ballad compilations by guys like Miles Davis and Stan Getz and Sonny Rollins. And I listened to a lot of the Flaming Lips.

From a tonal perspective, this kind of music really helped me out. It deals with heavy themes in a very honest way. But at the same time, the music somehow manages to leave you feeling buoyant at the end, despite the underlying gravity at the heart of the songs. It does that for me, anyway.

And this, in the end, was the trick that I was trying to pull with Attention. Deficit. Disorder. I wanted the book to walk the line between dark and light, the heavy and the funny. And this kind of writing often ends up being something of a tightrope act. If you venture too far to one side or the other, you can get yourself into trouble, and you can wind up leaving your readers in the breach. You go too far in the direction of darkness, and the book becomes an intolerable bummer. Head too far in the other direction, and you venture into the realm of slapstick, and you undermine the genuine pathos and humanity at the heart of Wayne Fencer’s journey. So you have to watch your step. Listening to music that does a good job of executing this kind of balancing act was a big help, and a big inspiration. It was instructive.

JT: If I ever go check out the Burning Man Festival, what are the best things to bring with me?

BL:Food, shelter, water, condoms, sunscreen, chapstick, sunglasses, laser guns, bullwhips, and a bike.

JT: Did you always just know that you wanted to be a writer, or did something specific occur to inspire you to become one?

BL: I always gravitated to writing, even as a very small boy. It’s something that I had a natural inclination for, but I didn’t really get serious about writing fiction until I was a senior in college, when I was twenty years old.

JT: I read your A. D. D. blog every day, and it’s always a treat. What would you like to tell my readers (few that they are), about your A. D. D. blog and the people who fill it with comments? What made you decide to start a blog on myspace? Is the response what you expected it would be?

BL: I’d like to start by thanking everybody who reads The A.D.D. Blog on a daily basis. I really appreciate the fact that so many people have found it and enjoy it and participate by weighing in on the comment boards, and so on. It’s been one of the most pleasant surprises of my recent existence.

I started the blog about a year and a half ago on the advice of my agent. She called me up one day in the summer of 2005 and suggested that I open an account. The site was relatively new to her, and it was completely new to me. And since then, the thing has absolutely exploded. I don’t think anyone could have predicted the cultural significance of Myspace in the present day. The thing is a beast. It’s an absolute phenomenon.

JT: What is the strangest thing that has happened to you while you were promoting this book?

BL: Oh God. That’s a tough one. So many strange things have happened. I’ve gotten a lot of weird letters. People telling me about their sex lives. Their checkered pasts. Their odd, sadomasochistic fantasies. The insane visions they had after eating three huge hits of blotter acid while naked in the desert. That kind of thing.

I’m sure there’s more, but my brain is kind of soft right now.

JT: I see that The Nervous Breakdown has it’s own myspace page now. What’s that all about?

Just trying to get the word out about thenervousbreakdown.com and the wonderful writers who contribute to the site. Myspace is a great place to do that kind of thing. We’ve got a good thing going on over there. It’s been a lot of fun.

JT: Just what are you going to do with all the letters you received as part of your Letter Writing Experiment now that the experiment has ended?

BL: Right now they’re sitting in my office, in a big plastic bag. I have no idea what I’m going to do with them. Probably just save them. I’m a packrat that way. And I think I might be kind of sentimental.

JT: What’s next? A book about what happens next for Wayne? A book about something completely different? More interesting experiments? A “Dear Listi” column?

BL: The next book is called City of Champions. Another novel. A kind of prequel to Attention. Deficit. Disorder., featuring a younger and more immature and more embittered Wayne Fencer. City of Champions is a broader comedy, a social satire about Middle American Values. And it’s a book about the concept of adolescence, and not just adolescence in a chronological sense. It’s about adolescence at any age. And it’s about the American Dream.

Thank you, again, to Brad Listi for taking time out to do this little interview for Bookwyrm U.S.

If you want to check out the A.D.D. blog for yourself, click here:
The A.D.D. blog

To read the NervousBreakdown.com click here:
NervousBreakdown.com

I hate this book.

I hate this book, the audio version, AND the corresponding DVD.

I hate, hate, HATE that everywhere I look, (and everywhere I listen), this book is being talked about.

Oprah, what have you done? Your influence has unleashed this evil on to the world, and now, it seems unstoppable!

For anyone who has somehow not heard of this book, let me explain a bit. It’s a New Age book, that tells “You” what the secret is to getting absolutely everything you want in life. Seriously. Its a magic “Fairy Godmother” bound between two hard covers.

It is evil incarnate.

Rhonda Byrne is at best condescending to her readers, and at worst, downright dangerous to them. In the first part of the book, she specifies, in no uncertain terms, that in parts of this book she capitalizes the word “You”. This means, she explains, that she is speaking directly to “You”. We must be morons if we actually need that explained in such a way. Don’t most books speak to their readers? Don’t most people have the basic grasp of how books “work”? But, I guess that Byrne is just so much smarter than her readers, that we need that clarified, or we wouldn’t get it. It would go right over our collective heads. Oops! I mean “my” head, since the book is talking directly to me, and me alone, right? Never mind the millions of other copies of this book out there, and the people reading them.

The marketing for this book actually makes me ill. The cover, of the book, audio book, and DVD, looks specifically designed to resemble The Da Vinci Code. (Don’t even get me started on that piece of crap!) So maybe, the same people who believed that the fiction book was somehow true in it’s entirety will pick up this new book and believe every word of it too. Preying on the weak minded. Makes me ill.

I hate that it is actually called “The Secret”! Who doesn’t want to be in on a secret? I mean, it must be something really important and interesting, or else, why would it be kept as a secret, right? Even if you really don’t give a darn about what this particular secret is that everyone is so hot about right now, you still might be compelled to find out. You don’t want to be the only person who wasn’t let in on the big secret, right? Let’s just go back to tactics that grade schoolers use for popularity, and high schoolers use to destroy each other’s reputations. Great idea. Oh, and lets use it to make money for ourselves! How high minded of you, Rhonda Byrne!

Byrne uses another tactic that one sees in every high school. Since she was basically unknown to the general public before this nasty book appeared absolutely everywhere, she name drops to make herself more accepted. She uses lots of well known self-help writers, etc., in her book. I mean, if Wayne Dyer thinks “The Secret” is something good, maybe I should check it out too! After all, Dyer is super popular. She used tons of people as validation to her crackpot ideas. Despicable.

What is the big secret? Well, it’s basically “The power of Positive Thinking”, with a new, catchier, name. With a sadistic twist, mind you. It goes something like this:

Byrne says that if you want something, anything at all, you can get it just by thinking about it. Nothing else is required, except thinking. Want a new BMW? Well, think about one parked in your driveway. Do it long enough, and correctly, and one day, you will open the door and a BMW will have magically appeared.

Bibbity, Bobbity, Boo!

But what if that BMW doesn’t appear? Well, it’s simply because you aren’t thinking positively enough. It’s not because you never saved up to buy one, or because you never got off your butt and even went shopping for one. It’s because you weren’t thinking positively enough. It’s your fault. You must have been still thinking about not getting that car, even a teeny bit, even subconsciously. Or, you must have spent too much time thinking about regular, less flashy cars. Or even looking at them as they pass by on the street. No BMW for you, loser!

Ok, now, it sounds rather silly, I admit. I don’t think many people are really going to believe that the power of their thoughts alone with get them a pimped out shiny new vehicle.

What I feel is completely immoral is Byrne’s application of this concept to weight loss. See, she lost a bunch of weight using this method alone, has never gained it back, and can eat whatever, whenever, she wants.

Want to lose weight like Byrne did? Here’s what she tells you (oh, excuse me, I mean “You”), to do. Think about yourself in your ideal weight. Don’t buy clothes in the size you are now, just in this size this “ideal” would be. You don’t need to exercise. You don’t need to change your diet. Just think about being that size you want to be, and *POOF* your weight will magically become exactly what you want. Oh, and you also will be able to just eat whatever you desire, all the time. Don’t make any lifestyle changes, just think, think, think! Byrne did it, right? Could she possibly have made this a more tempting message? What person who is struggling with weight issues or food issues is NOT going to want to believe that?

So, what happens if you try this Secret, and still find that you aren’t losing weight? Well, it’s because you aren’t doing it right. Byrne’s book actually says things to that effect. You must have still been thinking about your current weight. Or, you just don’t have the confidence to give yourself what you really want. Or, and this is the part that really pisses me off, you can’t lose the weight because you spent time around overweight people. That’s right! Byrne says to “not observe” people who are fat.

Let’s just take a group of people who already are having difficulties in life because of a weight issue, and make them non- entities. It’s not like this group doesn’t already struggle with prejudices, or self esteem issues. Let’s make it even harder on them! Because now, if I can’t lose the weight I want, and I followed the Secret, then it must be fat people’s fault! Never mind that I don’t exercise or eat right.

Way to go, Rhonda Byrne! Advocate picking on the one group left in America who it’s still politically correct to bully. What a saint you are!

I am fearful about what happens a few months down the road, when,(if there is a God!), this book is no longer a best seller. Millions of people across America are going to have failed at this impossible magic. And, if they believed the book enough to really honestly give it their best effort, they now will have been taught to believe that they are a failure. Suicides will skyrocket.

I sneer at the stacks of this vile book every time I have to pass it by in the Bookstore I work in. I cringe when someone calls and wants me to put a copy on hold for them. I swear at Oprah, who is now the reason I am forced to sell to the general public something this ungodly evil and wrong.

The cover says “The Secret” and “Byrne”.
Great idea!
*storm off to find a lighter and some kerosine*

And, if you don’t want to take my word for it, then check out this article from Newsweek:
Newsweek Hates It Too