Americans hold to the 1960's like a precious commodity they're scared of losing and as a consequence its images and artists come off like recycled culture. It seems everything post 1969 is viewed as a dreaded morning after to that era. Indisputably a watershed mark in our post World War II chronology, the late 60's were more than a series of snap shot love-ins and Jim Morrison's legend of excess. There was something else spawned from that era - from a very concentrated effort by very few, something like a burgeoning consciousness that still exists in spite of the collective hangover and commercialization in the mainstream.

Portland author Richard Melo has tapped into that consciousness with his sprawling novel of eco-revolutionaries, Jokerman 8, a work filled with ciphers and secrets and more than a few trap doors. The preoccupations of Melo's work evoke images of a handful of authors, most notably Edward Abbey, Jack Kerouac, Ivan Doig and Ken Kesey, luminaries of rollicking humor and keen observation. While the novel's cover easily evokes U2's album Joshua Tree (and hilariously riffs on that record) there is much, much more to it. Melo's fiction isn't clean and polished like a top ten record, and shouldn't be anticipated as such. Jokerman 8 sounds like something you've not heard before, a rough, unrefined piece of music that has found its way out a second story window. It sings to the anonymous faces on campuses, and to concert goers passing by in the voice of a rock-n-roll ranting aria. The characters he explores fought on the front lines long before adulthood and spent the rest of their lives sorting out the pieces.

In a Southeast Portland Brewpub (where an edited chapter from Jokerman 8 took place, ironically) on the eve of the Presidential Election I sat down with Melo, hoping to glean at least something from the dark wisdom or raucous humor from his novel. When I entered, I knew him immediately from his publicity picture. He was reading a book, something I'd planned on doing if I were early. After taking care of the cursory beer purchase and introductions, we sat down to talk.

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Cosmik: First let's talk about all the allusions that Jokerman 8 makes. You've got everything from obscure XTC songs to large cultural happenings like Norman Morrison (a devout Quaker who burned himself in protest of Vietnam, November 2, 1965). How do you write compelling fiction while maintaining what is a complex network of allusion?

Melo: My writing style is derived from music altogether. I'll get a song stuck in my head and either musically or lyrically I'll try and riff some kind of a fictional piece off of it. I think the XTC thing you mentioned, most people don't really get that. There's a lot of inside stuff for people to get. I was trying to speak to my generation, to people who have the same cultural experiences and touchstones that I've had, but at the same time try and make it something that someone a little older or a little younger could get too.

Cosmik: I think you accomplished that with the chapter about the Joshua Tree album for sure.

Melo: It was weird. You could walk in front of the dorms and someone would have their window open and they would be playing it.

Cosmik: Norman Morrison seems to be a large part of this book.

Melo: Originally I wanted to write about the levitation of the Pentagon, but found myself moving off of that. When I heard about that (Morrison) it was an incredibly poignant story. The fact that he brought his daughter there to the Pentagon when he set himself on fire, it was almost a footnote to a footnote in history.

Cosmik: Do you think that Jokerman 8 is a protest novel?

Melo: I think that might be the effect, but not really the intent. It does actually make a statement, but I was looking for the poetry in them instead of the creation of a manifesto. It's not trying to create a movement or anything like that. I am trying to entertain in a way that makes people look around and question. I was trying to write a novel where someone who was pro-logging industry could read it and get something from it.

Cosmik: This novel really seems to connect the smaller, back page news stories with the bolder headlines of the front page.

Melo: It's filled with a lot of historical footnotes. One of things I'm trying to do artistically is to take the action of a big story and take it somewhere there was very little happening. So rather than write all the big scenes, write the aftermath. One of the chapters is called "1991" the year of the first Gulf War, but the Gulf War isn't mentioned.

Cosmik: If there is such a thing as a protest novel, what role does it have?

Melo: The power is always there to move people, to persuade. I think it can serve as an antidote to the really fact laden books. Fiction can give someone possibilities.

Cosmik: I think it is undeniable that this book has found a niche in the cult of Northwest fiction. Where do you think Jokerman 8 falls in alongside Kesey and Doig?

[Pictured: Edward Abbey]

Melo: I was never too fond of Northwest fiction. I love Kesey and I love Kerouac. If anyone mentions this book with Kesey or Abbey, I'm extremely flattered. The Edward Abbey reference helps me find my audience really fast. If someone is looking for another Monkey Wrench Gang it is a really good conversation starter.

Cosmik: I feel like I know these people in your book, having met them in Co-ops and on the streets of cities all over. These people have literally walked in and out of my house and I recognize them. How did you create human beings for your characters instead of roles?

Melo: How I drew all the characters was basing them on someone I know. They're composite characters, take pieces of five people and turn them into one person. All the people are based on real people from my life. There are maybe seven main characters and they're based on fifty people I knew.

Cosmik: You avoid types in Jokerman 8, a rare feat. Most books seem to have characters that, instead of being fleshed out, they serve very limited roles like in a movie.

Melo: These people walked in and out of my house too. There are ex-girlfriends in here. People I know end up on every page. Sometimes someone says something, and years later it ends up in a book. It is those throw away moments that are so important.

Cosmik: This book has a post environmental apocalypse feeling to it, almost as though it anticipates the eventual cutting of the last wild tree. Did you intend that quality?

Melo: I think it was a natural consequence. It deals with that part of the environmental movement where you're putting everything on the line to save a forest or save a species. In that place you do imagine what the end result is. I feel like the environmental movement has waned. It crested around 1990 or so, when it was part of the overall consciousness. We were talking about saving our world then. Now people seem to have an acceptance that we're going to eventually have global warming, that the Bald Eagle has rebounded so now we can loosen the Endangered Species Act.

Cosmik: How do you feel about tomorrow?

Melo: I can't wait for it to be over. I've been on pins and needles, not sleeping as well as I should. It might not be done, but it will be past. November 2nd will be past.

Cosmik: As of October 6th your novel was #1 on Powell's Books Small Press and Fringe Lit List. In books and especially music, the word "fringe" comes with its own built in credibility. How do you feel that your fiction comes with that label?

Melo: I don't feel like it's limiting at all. All the vital stuff, everything that matters comes out of small presses. I'd go through a small press again.

Cosmik: Your website (www.misconstrue.net) says you're working on books two, three and four. How is that coming?

Melo: I'd written something about a group protest like the one that happened in Seattle in 1999, only that it happened in Portland. I had enough words for a book, but it wasn't finished. Then there was September 11th and that weird month after where nothing happened. Letterman was off the air, no one was making fun of Bush and that book seemed really inappropriate. Now that one is coming back around.

© 2004 - Erick Mertz