Working-class novelist Mike Magnuson is the author of The Right Man for the Job, The Fire Gospels, and Lummox: The Evolution of a Man. His novels have been described as intense, meticulous, disturbing, hilarious, and as being singularly Wisconsin-gothic and pretty much kickass. His miscellaneous writing has appeared in Esquire, Writer’s Digest, Fiction Writer, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, and other publications, and he has recently gone into the studio and recorded a Spoken Word CD entitled Loud!

He was born in 1963 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, was raised in Menomonee Falls, and spent a good deal of his twenties going to college and hanging around in taverns and working in a plastics factory in the west-central Wisconsin city of Eau Claire. He has also lived in Ohio, Minnesota, Florida, and Illinois, where he currently lives. He earns his daily bread teaching in the Creative Writing Program at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale.

Starting in third week of February, Mike will be taking this pickup truck on a monthlong bookstore tour of the Midwest and the South. See the tour dates below to see if he’s coming to a city near you, and check out our Lummoxopedia section for frequent updates and tour news.

The Lummox Pickup Truck Tour*

*Note: Precise times of events are subject to change. Please contact the venue to see if Magnuson is really gonna be there when we say he’s gonna be there.

April 6, Saturday

Madison, Wisconsin
Michael Feldman’s Whad’Ya Know.
For local listings: http://www.notmuch.com

April 17, Wednesday

Mount Vernon, Illinois
Rend Lake Community College
Time and contact info coming soon

April 21, Sunday

Port Huron, Michigan
St. Clair Community College
Time and contact info coming soon!

May 4, Saturday

Harrisburg, Illinois
Tunnel Hill/Cache River Bike Ride
Time and contact info coming soon

May 30, Thursday

Boone, North Carolina
Warehouse Books
Time and contact info coming soon!

June 8, Saturday

Pewaukee, Wisconsin
The TREK 100 Bike Ride
Time and contact info coming soon!

June 13-15

Carbondale, Illinois
Young Writers’ Workshop
Time and contact info coming soon!

Email your questions and comments to mike@lummox.org and look for his thoughtful and thoughtless answers in our Lummoxopedia section. Note: Your privacy is safe with us. We will not disclose your identity in Mike’s responses or use your email address for commercial purposes.

Mike has given readings and writing workshops at bookstores and conferences and universities throughout the country. If you’re interested in scheduling him for an event in your area, please email us at info@lummox.org or write to us at Mike c/o Lummox Productions, PO Box 521, Carbondale, IL 62903-0521. Serious inquiries only.

Send an email to lummoxnews@lummox.org to sign up for the Lummox.org News, an email newsletter featuring superimportant announcements about updates to this site and cool stuff that Mike Magnuson is up to.

Lummox.org sat down one evening with Mike Magnuson and had a few beers with him and talked about lummoxness, writing, hanging out in bars, Wisconsin, feminism, Oprah Winfrey, and the state of American literature, among other things. What follows is the complete text of the interview.

Q. You’ve been expecting us to ask this question first: What does the word lummox mean to you?

Magnuson. I have been expecting that, and here’s what I have to say: A lummox is like you’d find him in the dictionary, I guess. A lummox is a big, oafish man who’s smarter than he looks.

Q. Is that in the dictionary?

Magnuson. If it’s not, it should be, if only because everybody knows that’s precisely what a lummox is. Totally. We’re talking a lummox is a guy with maybe the big sausage-type fingers and maybe the beer gut, the guy who can never seem to look respectable in the clothes he wears. And he’s a bit on the irresponsible side, too, a bit lackadaisical in his personal affairs. He may stay at the bar with his buddies three hours longer than he’s supposed to and forget to call home, and he may not be too concerned about picking his socks up or cleaning around the house or remembering to send mom a birthday card and so forth. You know who I mean: We’re talking your typical bear-type, having-a-good-time-in-life guy. A lummox. He’s not an asshole or anything like that, either, or he’s not intentionally an asshole, but he’s for-shit sure not stupid. He’s just your good-natured guy who, from a distance, doesn’t appear to be sweating the details in life.

Q. Being a lummox, then, goes beyond being hefty?

Magnuson. Who among us wouldn’t confess to being heftier than he should be. Cut out beer, and the problem would end, but who wants to cut out beer? But you’re right: A lummox is basically any guy who doesn’t have problems with being what women call a typical guy. See, if you ask women--who, incidentally, seem to know much more about guys than guys do--if you ask women to think about their husbands or boyfriends or brothers or dads and to select one word that best sums up their collective assessment of these men: lummoxes. That’s what you’d get, for sure. Now, a given woman in your survey may not use the exact word lummox, but whatever word or words she chooses--bumbler, slob, boy in a grown man’s body, typical inconsiderate guy--she’ll be meaning lummox all the same. I don’t think it’s a derisive reference, not exactly. I think the lummoxy nature of typical guys is something that woman find kinda cute. Don’t you think? But that’s got a double edge to it. Because it is precisely this lummoxy nature that women eventually try to modify, if you dig what I’m saying.

Q. Are you a lummox?

Magnuson. Look at me. (gestures to his beer gut and his T-shirt with potato-chip crumbs on it and his wrinkled jeans) Unquestionably a lummox. There’s not one gray area concerning my lummoxness. Take one look at me, and if you don’t know anything about me beforehand, you’ll never go, "Here’s a person with an advanced education and a sophisticated range of intellectual interests! Here’s a goddam scholar standing before me!" No way. You look at me, and you’ll think I’m a custodian or that I’m a beer delivery guy or something.

Q. True. You certainly don’t look like an intellectual.

Magnuson. That’s correct. I don’t. I look like I’m setting up kegs behind the beer tent at the county fair, which is true: I am. Wanna beer? (laughs) But as a matter of fact, I am a scholar. I have multiple graduate degrees. I’m even a goddam Phi Kappa Phi: got that at the University of Florida in 1997. And at my job people call me Professor Magnuson, and that’s not their nickname for me. I am a professor.

Q. You go, girl.

Magnuson. Ha! But there we are: Unless I told you that I’m a Phi Kappa Phi--which isn’t that big of a deal, really: it just means I maintained a perfect 4.0 grade-point average in graduate school--unless I told you otherwise, you would never guess that I’m just as smart as Max Bickford, that professor Richard Dreyfuss has been playing on TV lately. Good show, by the way: One time, Max Bickford said his job is like "getting nibbled to death by ducks." I love that. That’s just so true of the professoring business.

Q. Just going out on a limb here, but do you think people’s impressions of you could have anything to do with your behavior?

Magnuson. (leans forward in a menacing way) Whatta you mean, behavior?

Q. It certainly could be said that you’re going out of your way to be a lummox. Look at your book jacket, for instance. There you are with a beer in your hand. Obviously, you want people to think of you as a beer-swilling lummox.

Magnuson. I do drink beer, hey. That’s not an affectation, if that’s what you’re getting at. I didn’t sit down one day and say to myself, "Magnuson, you should start partying your ass off, and in twenty years they can take a picture of you holding a beer and put it on a book jacket." Come on. But seriously, in the totemic sense, in the way that the beer bottle is representative of the inner Mike Magnuson, I’m totally serious when I say that beer is a major, major artistic influence on my life.

Q. Sorry, but that’s a serious line of bullshit.

Magnuson. For real. No bullshit whatsoever. This may sound affected to you, buddy, but I could not possible have become a writer or a professor or an intellectual--all of which I am--had I not hung around for ten years in a bar in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, called the Joynt. It’s still there, too, and still a very cool place. You can find it up Water Street a ways from the Fine Arts Center at the UW--Eau Claire, and that’ll basically tell you a lot about the bar, that it’s close the Fine Arts Center. Beer’s cheap at the Joynt, too, and they make a big deal about serving No Light Beer. And the bloody Marys they have: Ah! Anyway, back in the day, I’d hang out in the Joynt whenever I could. And of course I did bad things there like getting superdrunk too often and embarrassing myself trying to get laid, but the regulars at the Joynt were the best artistic and intellectual minds in Eau Claire. No kidding. And Eau Claire may not be a big city, but a lot of smart folks live there--you know, because of the university. Any night at the Joynt I could go up and down the bar and discover nearly everyone there was either a poet, a painter, a sculptor, a jazz musician, a philosophy professor, a stage actor, a sociologist, a newspaper reporter, and on and on. We’re talking a true salon-type atmosphere. And back then, the Joynt had concerts--this little narrow bar in Wisconsin!--and literally the finest jazz and blues musicians in the world would play there: Dizzy Gillespie, Ella Fitzgerald, Gerry Mulligan, Gary Burton, Queen Ida, Ira Sullivan--

Q. We get the picture. The Joynt’s a great bar. But what’s this got to do with your writing or whatever you were saying that beer has done for you?

Magnuson. When I was having my wasted twenties, I wasn’t just getting drunk. I was partying at the Joynt with artists and writers and musicians, with intellectuals, and say what you want about the evils of drink, if you party with intellectuals you can learn a lot.

Q. But then again, given that your experience is, as you say, "partying with intellectuals," you definitely don’t talk like one.

Magnuson. I do, too. I can say all kinda complicated shit.

Q. Exactly our point. You seem to revel in using, for lack of a better term, uneducated speech.

Magnuson. See, at the same time that I was hanging out at the Joynt and taking college classes and stuff, I was working in a factory. A company called Jennico, Inc. We made plastic bottles and filled them with pine oil and laundry detergent and dish soap, et cetera. It goes without saying that a guy can’t work in a factory--and get along with his coworkers --if he’s expounding on Keats in the break room. I’m totally not saying factory workers are dumb; it’s just that Keats don’t necessarily cut it with those people.

Q. So you couldn’t be Little Lord Fauntleroy the English Major in the Jennico break room?

Magnuson. No shit. And who’d want to run around behaving like an English Major in the first place? (burps, laughs, swills beer) So I don’t know: I made friends with the guys at work, and though I guess the factory manner of speech wasn’t natural to me, it became natural to me, and not only did that way of speaking become natural, that way of thinking did, too. There’s a certain uncivilized quality to the humor in a factory break room or in a factory tavern that you just never encounter among intellectuals at, say, the reception following the poetry reading. I’m not saying the poetry-reception crowd is bad, but I do admit that I have a much better time when I’m in the factory-worker mode of thinking. Factory workers aren’t uptight, is what I’m saying. They’re not required to maintain a conversational standard of high art and seriousness and all that clam dip and Chardonnay--.

Q. Excuse us, but is this why your work--particularly The Fire Gospels and Lummox--tends to be crass, both in terms of the language you use and the subject matter you dramatize?

Magnuson: Of course. What I’m doing is writing in the language that I speak, that people I’ve known over the years speak, which is not a civilized manner of communicating, at least not by the standards of civilized people. I swear a lot in my writing. I write fart jokes. So what?

Q. Who do you mean by civilized people?

Magnuson. The intelligentsia type, the artistic literate, the people who shape for the rest of us what constitutes quality art.

Q. So you think these civilized people don’t swear?

Magnuson. They do. Jesus. I keep digging myself into holes. (wrings his hands for a long time) Okay, okay. You’re asking me about the crass language in my writing, and I’m getting worked up because you feel the need to ask me about it in the first place. Hey, I know goddam well that my language, my word choice, is not appropriate in polite company, which, for one thing, pisses me off right there because why the hell should I worry, when I am practicing the art to which I have devoted my life, about creating something that’s acceptable in polite company. Fuck that. People aren’t polite, goddammit! Just look at world events recently--and throughout history--and tell me if people are polite. But I guess language is different from real life, right?

Q. Are you saying that your language will prevent your work from reaching certain audiences?

Magnuson. Not necessarily. Or I hope that’s not the case. Nevertheless, I do get extremely impatient with the tone that’s present in much contemporary writing. Or maybe I don’t mean tone, exactly. It’s something broader. You pick up a new novel at the bookstore and start skimming the pages, and invariably you’ll find this machine-made prose, this thing that describes the world so precisely that each observation obtains a languid quality, a way of rendering the world into a form that’s measured and restrained and perfectly lucid, and in my opinion, this kind of prose fails to capture what people are really like because people are never measured and restrained and perfectly lucid. Never. Get to know people, really know them, and tell me if they’re languid. In fact, if you ever meet someone who is, you can bet your ass that this person will be dull, dull, duller-than-shit dull.

Q. Is it literature’s artifice that bothers you?

Magnuson. No. You obviously have to accept that art is made from artifice; otherwise, you should be doing something else with your life. I think I’m talking about cleanliness, or about a presumption that literature should be not only clean but smooth-flowing and buttery in its articulation, when in fact life is not that way. Still, if you write a book with much harsh language and harsh subject matter and with jagged and nonstandard locutions throughout the prose, you are putting yourself at a bigtime commercial disadvantage. What’s considered to be a fine piece of literary writing--by its very must-make-a-profit nature--must be palatable to the largest possible audience, which means you have to write to the family-values standard, or you’re fucked. At least in the business.

Q. So you are saying that your language will prevent your work from reaching certain audiences.

Magnuson. No, I’m saying that what my books are about--in the intellectual and moral and political sense--is every bit as valid as what’s in books with more appropriate language. Well, maybe I’m kidding myself. Maybe I’m just using this crap as an excuse for my books not reaching a wide audience.

Q. Speaking of wide audiences, you have said that you’d gladly sleep with Oprah Winfrey if she’d make one of your books an Oprah Book Club selection. Would you?

Magnuson. Hey, I never said that shit. Who told you that’s what I said?

Q. A few of your students have mentioned it.

Magnuson. Well, if I did say it to my students, I was bullshitting them to make them laugh, which isn’t the worst way to teach, by the way. A little bullshit in the classroom, as long as the teacher knows it’s bullshit, can go a long way.

Q. But you certainly don’t think that your new book Lummox will become an Oprah Book Club Selection.

Magnuson. No. I don’t. I’d like that to happen. I would totally dig it if the message of Lummox--which I think is a comedic male variation on don’t judge a book by its cover --could reach Oprah’s audience. This is the truth: All of Oprah’s people have known and have probably loved a lummox over the years. Plus, Lummox completely ends on your life-affirming note that Oprah digs. But you’re right: Lummox won’t go the way of Oprah.

Q. What you’re saying, in any case, is that Lummox has a message.

Magnuson. Absolutely. Lummox is the story of a man whose physical stature--the way he looks--does not correspond with his mind. It’s about a man who is an intellectual in every sense but who looks like a pulpwood hauler. And the message, therefore, is that he should be judged by his mind, not his body.

Q. You think this message applies to women, too?

Magnuson. Totally obviously. Of course. People are people: Fill in their blanks, and they’re all the same. We are creatures whose minds are capable of imagining incredible beauty, yet our bodies fail us. We get sick. We get tired. We have bad breath. We take craps and piss and spit and have runny noses. We have sore muscles and aching backs. We’re fat, or we’re too skinny. Right? Something’s always wrong with our bodies, and we convince ourselves as a consequence that something must be wrong with our minds. By extension, if we look a certain way, society expects to behave like a person who looks a certain way, and there you have it: We are not judged by what our minds do. And as far as I can tell, that’s the precisely the message of feminism: that we must first approach people on an intellectual basis. The human mind is where the human being is at.

Q. But you must know that Lummox has enormous potential to offend women. Your portrayal of feminists, for instance, is not very complimentary, not in the least.

Magnuson: My portrayal of me, of Mike Magnuson, hey, is a hell of a lot worse.

Q. That’s debatable.

Magnuson. Oh, give me a break. Lummox essentially is about a bunch of young grownups doing all sorts of stupid shit, which is what all young grownups do; they do stupid shit. Folks in their early twenties are wild in their behavior and in their ideas, and that’s the way they’re supposed to be. Hooray for kids in their early twenties! Let em have a great time. But this doesn’t mean that fifteen, twenty years later they won’t look back on this period of their lives and think, well, geez, some of the things I did were embarrassing. This applies to the women in my book; this applies to the men in it. This applies to everybody everywhere in the world: People fuck up when they’re young, and they’re the wiser for it later.

Q. But it sure seems like you’re singling out feminists. In Lummox, for instance, you mention a field of university study called Hag Studies.

Magnuson. Ha! Hag Studies.

Q. You must be able to see how that might offend some people.

Magnuson. I’m kidding. I’m pulling your leg. Hag Studies is a joke. You can see that, right? Saying Hag Studies is, like, it’s funny is what it is. It’s something a male faculty member in an American university can never say. He can’t even privately contemplate the concept of Hag Studies. Were he to do so, he would be taken immediately to the university quadrangle, chained to a rack, and testicle-tortured. So you don’t think a reasonable person like me, knowing full well the punishment, would actually say Hag Studies and mean it? Goddam. I work in a university. I’m not stupid. But on the other hand, I am definitely not joking about that fact that were I to say Hag Studies and mean it, I would be taken to the university quadrangle, chained to a rack, and testicle-tortured. That’s the God’s honest truth: A guy’s gotta watch what he says at a university. Which is an entirely different kettle of fish--that there’s no such thing as Free Speech in an American University.

Q. We’ll try this another way then. What’s your view of feminism?

Magnuson. I have no quarrel with the essential thrust (laughs) of feminism. I have two daughters, for chrissakes, and I want them to grow up and prosper in a world where their gender doesn’t prevent them from exploring any type of life they may want to lead. Women absolutely deserve to have every opportunity in life that men have. I see on TV the images of Afghan women in their blue whatever-they-ares, see them get beaten in the streets and not given the opportunity to get an education or have careers, and of course I’m revolted. Of course I think that’s bullshit to treat those women that way. Total bullshit. So my beef is not with feminism, per se; no, it’s with the kind of feminism that exacts retribution against me and my gender because of various oppressions members of my gender have perpetrated against women in the past.

Q. A kind of oppression-in-reverse type of thing?

Magnuson. Exactly. I don’t like this business where people think Okay, you’ve oppressed me for a long time, now I’m going to have to oppress you. That’s wrong. That’s fucked up. That’s not forgiveness or understanding or love or human kindness or anything that will move people toward living together in harmony. That’s agreeing to go on fighting and hurting forever.

Q. You’re suggesting that people should just get over it?

Magnuson. There you go.

Q. We were off on that for a long time, weren’t we?

Magnuson. That we were, buddy. Let’s have another beer.

Q. Okay then.