reading, writing, philosophy, bloody-midget porn, stumbling around drunk in the woods late at night, that kind of thing.
Music
Everything from Bach to Count Basie to the Black Keys
Movies
The Big Lebowski. Office Space. Waiting for Guffman. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. They Live.
Television
Not much.
Books
Charles Dickens - Our Mutual Friend
John Fante - Ask the Dust
Bohumil Hrabal - I Served the King of England
Budd Schulberg - What Makes Sammy Run
Wallace Stegner - Angle of Repose
Philip Roth - The Human Stain
Cervantes - Don Quixote
Voltaire - Candide
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men -D.F. Wallace
Wonder Boys - Michael Chabon
The Day of the Locust - Nathaniel West
Benito Cereno - Herman Melville
Blood Meridian- Cormac McCarthy
A Handful of Dust - Evelyn Waugh
Journey to the End of Night - Louis Ferdinand Celine
A Sentimental Education - Gustave Flaubert
The Brothers Karamozov - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
A Hero of Our Time - Mikhail Lermontov
The Iliad - Homer
Berlin Stories - Christopher Isherwood
The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
Lord Jim - Joseph Conrad
Call of the Wild - Jack London
Denis Johnson- Jesus' Son
Par Lagerkvist- Barabbas
Ragtime-E.L. Doctorow
The Sportswriter-Richard Ford
Sophie's Choice-William Styron
Trout Fishing in Amerca-Richard Brautigan
A River Runs Through it - Norman Mclean
Deliverance-James Dickey
Catch 22-Joseph Heller
Piere and Jean-Guy de Maupassant
Sam Lipsyte-Homeland
Elmer Gantry- Sinclair Lewis
The Magnificent Ambersons- Booth Tarkington
The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake
Where I'm Calling From - Raymond Carver
Middlemarch-George Eliot
The Corrections-Jonathan Franzen
Gargantua- Rabelais
Josh Emmons -The Loss of Leon Meed
Graham Greene - The Power and the Glory
Adam Langer - Crossing California
Carson Mccullers - The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
Ambrose Bierce- The Devil's Dictionary
The Natural - Bernard Malamud . . . i won't go on for now. i like books . . . okay, i lied, here's some others: Dog Soldiers--Robert Stone
The Known World-Edward P. Jones
Look Homeward Angel-Thomas Wolfe
Ironweed -William Kennedy
Dubliners-James Joyce
Places I've Done Time- William Saroyan
Letters from the Earth- Mark Twain
McTeague- Frank Norris
Leaves of Grass - Walt Whitman
All My Friends Are Going to be Strangers - Larrry Mcmurtry
My Life and Hard Times - James Thurber
100 Years of Solitude - G.G. Marques
Ficciones - J.L. Borges
Appointment in Sammara - John O'Hara
The Moviegoer - Walker Percy
A Death in the Family- James Agee
All About Lulu - Jonathan Evison (thought i'd slip that one in)
The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow
About me: I'm a happy guy. I like rabbits. I have eight of them. They're cute little fuckers with names like Javier and Little Turkey. I live out in the woods on an island in puget sound, where I spend the majority of my time writing and sitting in the bathtub. I make all my business calls from the bathtub. People are always saying: "What's that echo? Are you in a bus station?" I say: "No, I'm in my office." Pretty cool, huh? I'm developing something I call the sweats to pants ratio (SPR), by which success is measured relative to the days one spends in formal versus casual attire (formal being anything with pockets). By this measure, seven days a week in sweats is the pinnacle of success. I'm at about five-to-two right now. Pretty damn succesful. I think Rick Rubin holds the record. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
If you want to know more about me, or my writing, just ask:
Also, if you love books, check out my book discussion group (not MY book, but general discussion): . . . . . . . . . . . . http://groups.myspace.com/thefictionfiles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . my novel, ALL ABOUT LULU was recently released by SOFT SKULL PRESS, and is currently available in bookstores everywhere, as well as on amazon, powells.com. borders.com, etc, etc . . . it's only ten bucks on amazon, and even if it doesn't change your life, i'm told it makes an excellent door jamb . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . publishers weekly called lulu "a stunner--viciously funny and deeply felt" . . . somebody else called ALL ABOUT LULU "a freakishly charming tale of star-crossed would-be step-sibling love in a family of failed bodybuilders in suburban los angeles." . . . i can live with that . . . the movie rights have been optioned by crossroads films . . .maybe someday i'll get to have sex with bette davis (oh, wait, she's dead) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .here's what some book people have said about ALL ABOUT LULU in advance-- i didn't even pay them (much): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
"Most novels in which a boy must oil up his bodybuilder father for competition would merit our attention, but that detail is just one of many amazements on offer in All About Lulu. Will the Thrill is a great literary charmer, and through his rich voice Jonathan Evison has concocted a funny and painfully honest piece of fiction."
-Sam Lipsyte, author of Homeland . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
"All About Lulu is a novel of tremendous energy and heartbreaking, hilarious insight, a novel with a heart of gold. In a manner that is both breathless and effortless, Evison reminds us of life's beautiful oddity. A remarkable debut."
-Brad Listi, author of Attention Deficit Disorder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
"All About Lulu is an exhilarating, wholly original and brave novel about obsession, love and becoming. With Will Miller, Evison has created a thoroughly modern protagonist steeped in Dickensian complexity, pure yet conflicted, lost yet driven to find truth in the dysfunctional American abyss."
-James P. Othmer, author of The Futurist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
“At once exuberant and clear-eyed, scabrous and wise, Jonathan Evison's All About Lulu has something for every reader--love, betrayal, growth and, ultimately, redemption--all wrapped in the addictive voice of William Miller, Evison's fiercely likeable narrator. A fine debut from a writer to watch.”
-Keith Dixon, author of The Art of Losing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
"Evison's voice is as fresh as this morning's rain . . . read this book and realize you're not the only one knocked stupid for love."
-Tim Sandlin, author of Western Swing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
"Evison’s debut is an absolute knockout . . .this novel will invite its readers to redefine love and the functional family and the promise of America all at once. All About Lulu is a marvel, a book to savor and reread."
-Natalia Rachel Singer, author of Redemption Center . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
“All About Lulu is a fascinating meditation on growing up and growing inward, a wry portrait of the American family in all its excessive, dysfunctional, heartbreaking purity.”
-Josh Emmons, author of The Loss of Leon Meed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
"The star-crossed lovers at the center of All About Lulu forge a middle ground between Archie and Veronica and Kurt and Courtney. Evison has delivered a witty, understated, heartfelt, and, at times, almost unnervingly honest debut."
-Adam Langer, author of Crossing California . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
"Jonathan Evison is a killer talent, and "All About Lulu" is the kind of novel readers have been hungry for: Funny, smart, entertaining -- an all around delight. Literary fiction needs more books like this; maybe then people would stop talking about the Death of the Novel and just read and enjoy themselves" - Darin Strauss, author of Chang and Eng . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
"Evison keeps all kinds of balls up in the air, seemingly without effort. All About Lulu is the happiest sad story around, a meditation on the meaning of family, and how we fit amongst the people we love and misunderstand."
- Greg Downs, author of Spit Baths . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
UPDATE: my SPR has slipped back to 4-3 in recent days-- let's hope this isn't a trend. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
UPDATE UPDATE: back at 5-2 with me eyes on the prize, baby! sweats 24/7!!! . . . i'm going to stop washing them once i hit 6-1 . . . and maybe add an old bathrobe or a bedsheet to the ensemble . . .and a bottle of jack daniels . . . and once i hit 7-0, and i have nowhere to go but the other direction, i'll get one of those controlling business managers who ends up embezzling from me and trying to steal my wife . . . and i'll start collecting my urine in baby food bottles like howard hughes . . . oh yeah, and i'll invite people over for big yahtzee parties, and when i beat them, i'll make them cut off their pubic hair and put it in marked envelopes, and i'll keep them in a filing cabinet, so they can try to win it back next time . . . eventually, they'll come for me . . . i don't know who they are-- whether it will be aliens or dudes with butterfly nets or just some irs stooges, but somebody will come for me and take me away somewhere (either a spaceship, an institution, or just down to my office where i keep my tax forms next to my pubic hair envelopes) . . . i hope you guys will still be my friends after that happens . . .
cheers,
je
Who I'd like to meet: other happy people who like rabbits . . . optimistic people . . . people who wear the same ugly green pants to Christmas dinner every year BECAUSE they're ugly (or better yet, people who just wear sweats). . . an accountant who wants to work for free . . . prophets, i like meeting prophets (even if they talk to parking meters). readers, always enjoy meeting big readers. . . oh, and anyone who wants to buy me a beer . . .
Hi! Just wanted to make sure all my friends know that my 2nd horror novel SACRIFICE is now in stores everywhere, including Amazon.com! I hope you'll check out this debauched and demonic horror ride! Here are a couple reviews it's gotten so far:
“SACRIFICE is a full frontal assault on your senses. It is a dark, brutal, bloody and terribly frightening book. Everson went deep into some dark abyss to bring this book to the light of day.... I highly recommend SACRIFICE.” —Famous Monsters of Filmland
“John Everson manages in SACRIFICE to dispense buckets of blood, provide edgy perversity, and walk the tenuous tightrope of horror and sex without falling: It’s rather an amazing feat.” –Hell Notes
Hey Jonathan, just wanted to let you know I read your book. Actually it was more like I devoured it. Couldn't put it down and finished it in a day (a work day or it would've been one sitting). My hat is off to you. Good job, a very tight story. I've been telling my friends and I look forward to more from you. Thanks,Damon
Hi! Just wanted to make sure all my friends know that my 2nd horror novel 
