Thank you so much for spending time with my words! Regardless of if you find them to be true, I’m so grateful! My hopes are that even if people don’t want to give me a chance—which is fully within their right—that it will help reframe the way they look at punishment and the court of opinion (and fact)! 💗
Wow HI I guess this is the magic of Substack in action!! What a delight. Kari, I have to imagine you're very busy right now -- but I would love to know to what degree you *intended* to come across as a variably reliable narrator. The tone of the book, overall, is really candid and intimate ... but there are moments where you appear to deliberately suggest that you're also pretty good at affecting intimacy and candor. (I'm thinking not just of the way you recount long-ago grifts, but of the passage where the cop tells you your charm is undeniable, the reference to being a good storyteller, even the title of the book and the echo in the closing line, etc).
Like -- was that a literary device in service of your larger points about perception and truth? Are you playing chess and I'm playing checkers?! This question has lived rent-free in my head for two weeks, so I am THRILLED you're in the comments ...
Also, assuming a bunch of Links readers are able to get off their respective Libby wait lists and read your book over the next two months ... would you come back for a Q&A? We'd love to have you. Thanks!!
Oooo, that's a juicy question that maybe assumes I'm way smarter than I actually am lol. I truly write the way that I speak, which subsequently means how I think (or don't think), so I suppose it makes sense that it can come off as unreliable. After all, how many people can recount things that happened nearly two decades ago with 100% accuracy? That being said, one of the most shocking things about the writing process was how much time I spent researching my own life and the time period, because it was *very important* to me that it was as truthful as it could be to the best of my knowledge. Also, I know that so much of what made this story a hit back in the day was the intrigue, so definitely played up the "fun" of that a bit.
In re: to the cops telling me my charm was undeniable--that's a thing that they and maaaaaaany others said to me all the time. At the end of the day, the people in power are just as susceptible to the cult of (anti)celebrity like the rest of us, and I certainly made the mundanity of jail a little zippier for everyone involved.
I am fascinated by the double-standards around charisma vs seduction, planning vs plotting, risk vs ambition, etc. Is it the outcome that makes the difference? A lot of this book was me trying to answer my own questions...and oftentimes coming up short. Such is life!
I put this on hold at the library the second I heard about it, but I am currently 43rd in line with an estimated 10 week wait time according to Libby! I'm trying to be good and not just buy the ebook, but it's very tempting.
I couldn't read the book in a day because I had to put it down every time I could remember where I was when a certain thing was happening—Les Savy Fav at McCarren Park Pool? I was in the park-park across Driggs, drinking Sparks with my adult kickball team :\ etc. etc.
Still, I went to the book to go on that ride and was pleasantly surprised by the second half of the book, which I found tender and real. I really appreciated all she had to say about the prison system, as well as her experience in South Korea and visiting the demilitarized zone at the border with the north. That turned my reading from a fun, frivolous experience to a worthwhile one.
Yeah, the specificity of some of those cultural references also really hit for me -- I lived in New York the summer after all this went down, and my entire social life during that period involved attending shows and festivals for my dinky college music blog. As a result, my reading notes for this book are peppered with irrelevant, nostalgic asides like "lol hooking up at a Girl Talk concert!!"
I agree that the prison discussion was among the most powerful parts of the book. The DMZ stuff ... moved me less?, but maybe I was reading too quickly at that point. I'll revisit!
There’s nothing better than knowing that I did an okay-to-good job at transporting people to that very special and chaotic place and time! Thank you so much for reading.
You did a great job! I also came up in a local punk scene and found all of that to be extremely relatable and transportive, too, even though I was on the other side of the country and it was very not sXe.
I don’t remember any of this! In 2009 I was preparing to leave NYC and head halfway across the country. Most of the time I spent revisiting all my old haunts and hangouts and saying goodbye to a lot of people. Everyone’s tilt-a-whirl is different I guess!
Hi! Thanks for keeping tabs on me! I actually settled the court case against the former building I was at (a massive city-within-a-city type luxury millennial retirement home) after they sued me for “non-payment” due to my creation of a tenant association! The building was not ADA compliant and flooded every other week, amongst many other glaring health and safety violations. They did everything they could to stop the meetings from happening (which is illegal in itself), and they came after me and dozens of other tenants. Whatever the case, it wasn’t included because it wasn’t very interesting but also because the book was finished by the time that all went down. Cheers!
Thank you so much for spending time with my words! Regardless of if you find them to be true, I’m so grateful! My hopes are that even if people don’t want to give me a chance—which is fully within their right—that it will help reframe the way they look at punishment and the court of opinion (and fact)! 💗
Wow HI I guess this is the magic of Substack in action!! What a delight. Kari, I have to imagine you're very busy right now -- but I would love to know to what degree you *intended* to come across as a variably reliable narrator. The tone of the book, overall, is really candid and intimate ... but there are moments where you appear to deliberately suggest that you're also pretty good at affecting intimacy and candor. (I'm thinking not just of the way you recount long-ago grifts, but of the passage where the cop tells you your charm is undeniable, the reference to being a good storyteller, even the title of the book and the echo in the closing line, etc).
Like -- was that a literary device in service of your larger points about perception and truth? Are you playing chess and I'm playing checkers?! This question has lived rent-free in my head for two weeks, so I am THRILLED you're in the comments ...
Also, assuming a bunch of Links readers are able to get off their respective Libby wait lists and read your book over the next two months ... would you come back for a Q&A? We'd love to have you. Thanks!!
Oooo, that's a juicy question that maybe assumes I'm way smarter than I actually am lol. I truly write the way that I speak, which subsequently means how I think (or don't think), so I suppose it makes sense that it can come off as unreliable. After all, how many people can recount things that happened nearly two decades ago with 100% accuracy? That being said, one of the most shocking things about the writing process was how much time I spent researching my own life and the time period, because it was *very important* to me that it was as truthful as it could be to the best of my knowledge. Also, I know that so much of what made this story a hit back in the day was the intrigue, so definitely played up the "fun" of that a bit.
In re: to the cops telling me my charm was undeniable--that's a thing that they and maaaaaaany others said to me all the time. At the end of the day, the people in power are just as susceptible to the cult of (anti)celebrity like the rest of us, and I certainly made the mundanity of jail a little zippier for everyone involved.
I am fascinated by the double-standards around charisma vs seduction, planning vs plotting, risk vs ambition, etc. Is it the outcome that makes the difference? A lot of this book was me trying to answer my own questions...and oftentimes coming up short. Such is life!
Happy to come back. Email me at kari@madewithoutwax.com
Thanks again for the review and constructive criticism! Gladly taken!
I put this on hold at the library the second I heard about it, but I am currently 43rd in line with an estimated 10 week wait time according to Libby! I'm trying to be good and not just buy the ebook, but it's very tempting.
Give in. Buy the ebook! JK—DM me and I’ll send it to you!
STOP, you just made my day!
What I'm hearing is that we should revisit this in 10 weeks!!
Or 1-2, depending on my willpower!
lol same. Except 19 weeks for me :(
I couldn't read the book in a day because I had to put it down every time I could remember where I was when a certain thing was happening—Les Savy Fav at McCarren Park Pool? I was in the park-park across Driggs, drinking Sparks with my adult kickball team :\ etc. etc.
Still, I went to the book to go on that ride and was pleasantly surprised by the second half of the book, which I found tender and real. I really appreciated all she had to say about the prison system, as well as her experience in South Korea and visiting the demilitarized zone at the border with the north. That turned my reading from a fun, frivolous experience to a worthwhile one.
Yeah, the specificity of some of those cultural references also really hit for me -- I lived in New York the summer after all this went down, and my entire social life during that period involved attending shows and festivals for my dinky college music blog. As a result, my reading notes for this book are peppered with irrelevant, nostalgic asides like "lol hooking up at a Girl Talk concert!!"
I agree that the prison discussion was among the most powerful parts of the book. The DMZ stuff ... moved me less?, but maybe I was reading too quickly at that point. I'll revisit!
There’s nothing better than knowing that I did an okay-to-good job at transporting people to that very special and chaotic place and time! Thank you so much for reading.
You did a great job! I also came up in a local punk scene and found all of that to be extremely relatable and transportive, too, even though I was on the other side of the country and it was very not sXe.
Not yet, but I will …
I’ve got the audiobook (read by the author ✍🏻) on hold at my local library 📚 ~12 weeks wait.
Ooh I bet the audiobook will be very fun!
Hi! DM me and I’ll send ya a link to download the audiobook. :)
I don’t remember any of this! In 2009 I was preparing to leave NYC and head halfway across the country. Most of the time I spent revisiting all my old haunts and hangouts and saying goodbye to a lot of people. Everyone’s tilt-a-whirl is different I guess!
Hi! Thanks for keeping tabs on me! I actually settled the court case against the former building I was at (a massive city-within-a-city type luxury millennial retirement home) after they sued me for “non-payment” due to my creation of a tenant association! The building was not ADA compliant and flooded every other week, amongst many other glaring health and safety violations. They did everything they could to stop the meetings from happening (which is illegal in itself), and they came after me and dozens of other tenants. Whatever the case, it wasn’t included because it wasn’t very interesting but also because the book was finished by the time that all went down. Cheers!