Ben Greenman

Greenman at the 2010 Brooklyn Book Festival.

Ben Greenman (born September 28, 1969) is a novelist, New York Times bestselling author, and magazine journalist who has written fiction and non-fiction books, as well as many collaborations with pop-music artists like Questlove, George Clinton, Brian Wilson, Gene Simmons, and others. His short fiction has appeared in the Paris Review, Zoetrope: All-Story, the Missouri Review, and other journals.

Biography

Greenman was born in Chicago, Illinois and raised in Miami, Florida. He attended Miami Palmetto High School and then graduated summa cum laude from Yale University, where he served as editor-in-chief of the The Yale Herald. After Yale, he worked as a film critic at the Miami New Times, attended but did not complete a doctoral program in literature at Northwestern University, and then moved to New York City to work as a freelance writer and editor. His journalism has appeared in such magazines as Rolling Stone, Mother Jones, Time Out New York, The Jewish Daily Forward and other publications. In 2000, he joined the staff of The New Yorker magazine. He edited the magazine's "Goings On About Town" section until 2014, when he became a contributing writer.^[1]

Works

Books

Superbad / Superworse

Greenman's first book of fiction, Superbad, was published by McSweeneys Press in 2001. The book is a collection of stories, some humorous, dealing with such issues as creativity, originality, and pop culture while also experimenting with fictional forms. Some of the stories were more serious—"No Friend of Mine," about a young poet's creative and romantic relationships in thirteenth-century Italy, appeared in the Paris Review. Superworse, published by Soft Skull Press in 2004, reworked some of the material from Superbad while at the same time adding a more novelistic structure to the book, mostly through the editorial interventions of a character named Laurence Onge, an intrusive editor who bears some resemblance to Vladimir Nabokov's Charles Kinbote.

A Circle Is...

Greenman in 2007

A Circle Is a Balloon and Compass Both: Stories About Human Love, Greenman's third book and second collection of short fiction, was published in the spring of 2007 by MacAdam Cage, a San Francisco-based independent publishing company.

Correspondences

Correspondences

In 2008, Hotel St. George press released a handmade and letterpress-printed edition of Greenman's book Correspondences that included an intricate book casing that unfolded to reveal three accordion books and a postcard. The project was reviewed favorably by the Los Angeles Times^[2] and Time Out.^[3]

Please Step Back

In spring 2009, Greenman published a novel entitled Please Step Back with Melville House Publishing. The novel, which tells the story of a fictional funk-rock star who shares some characteristics with such real-world celebrities as Sly Stone, Marvin Gaye, and Curtis Mayfield, was praised by Time, New York, The Village Voice, the Miami Herald, Publishers Weekly, and other publications.

For Please Step Back, Greenman also recorded a theme song in collaboration with the funk-rock cult figure Swamp Dogg.

What He's Poised To Do

In fall 2009 Greenman signed with Harper Collins: the first book will be What He's Poised To Do, an expanded paperback based on the material from Correspondences. In advance of the book's June 2010 publication date, Greenman launched a blog called LettersWithCharacter.com, which invites readers to compose letters to their favorite fictional characters. The book was named one of the best books of the year by several critics, including Steve Almond.^[4]

Celebrity Chekhov

In October 2010 Harper Perennial published Celebrity Chekhov, a book of short stories in which he replaced Anton Chekhov's characters with contemporary celebrities. Greenman launched the book with an event the Powerhouse arena with the author Neil Strauss.

"The McSweeney's Book of Politics and Musicals"

In July 2012, Vintage Books published "The McSweeney's Book of Politics and Musicals," a collection of satirical pieces about American politics that included contributions from many writers, the actors Jesse Eisenberg and Ellie Kemper, and others. Greenman's work provided the anchor for the book, with a half-dozen of his celebrity musicals (see Other Projects, below) and a half-dozen paradoxical infographics.

The Slippage

In May 2013, Harper Perennial published "The Slippage," a novel about a suburban couple facing a crisis in their marriage. The book also incorporated various humorous meta-charts that Greenman created and posted online. Some of those graphs were also posted online at the I Love Charts blog or at McSweeney's. The novel earned positive notices from a number of newspapers and magazines, including The New York Times and The Chicago Tribune.

Emotional Rescue

In September 2016, Little A published "Emotional Rescue," a collection of essays about music and relationships. The book, a collection of older music essays on the links between pop songs and emotional intelligence, was praised by Newsday and received a mixed review from the New York Times.

Collaborations

Greenman has collaborated with various entertainment figures on their memoirs, including Gene Simmons of KISS (Kiss and Make-Up) and Simon Cowell of American Idol (I Don't Mean to Be Rude, But...). In 2013, Greenman co-wrote Mo Meta Blues, a hip-hop memoir, with Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson, the drummer of The Roots and the bandleader for The Tonight Show; and in 2014, he co-wrote Brothas Be 'Yo Like George, Ain't That Funkin' Kind of Hard On You, the memoir of funk godfather George Clinton, the founder of P-Funk. He co-wrote the memoir of the actress Mariel Hemingway, Out Came The Sun, in 2015. And in 2016, he and Questlove joined forces again on SomethingToFoodAbout, a collection of conversations with American chefs centering on issues of creativity and innovation. In November 2016, Greenman co-wrote I Am Brian Wilson, the memoir of Brian Wilson, the chief songwriter of the Beach Boys. The book was another New York Times bestseller.

Other projects

In addition to his books, Greenman has penned a series of musicals that reflect on current-events and pop-culture happenings of the day (one example, If I Did It! The Musical, responds to the news that O.J. Simpson planned to publish a book speculating on the murder of his ex-wife Nicole, and others retell the stories of the racehorse Barbaro, the feud between Donald Trump and Rosie O'Donnell, and the troubles surrounding Britney Spears). Many have been published at McSweeney's, either on the Website or in print form. He has also invented the Conceptual Art Registry (in which he generates hundreds of ideas for conceptual art shows and then licenses them to young artists) and authored a series of epistolary stories that challenge the validity of commentary by the conservative talk-show host Sean Hannity. As a collaborative artist, he has worked with the band One Ring Zero, with the poet Mary Anfinsen, with the singer/songwriter Boyce Day, and others. He is also the inventor of 3*TYPE, a revolutionary three-dimensional typographical process announced in McSweeney's in March 2010.

At the 2007 The New Yorker Festival, Greenman moderated a panel discussion on superheroes in popular culture with Tim Kring, the creator of the NBC series Heroes; the comic-book artist and writer Mike Mignola; the comic-book writer Grant Morrison; and the novelist Jonathan Lethem. He also conducted an onstage interview and performance with the indie rock trio Yo La Tengo. At the 2008 festival he interviewed the horror movie directors Wes Craven and Hideo Nakata.

At the 2007 edition of Litquake, the San Francisco literary festival, Greenman moderated an onstage event, the Literary Death Match, for Opium Magazine; participants included the novelist Wesley Stace and the eventual winner, the author Daniel Handler. He was also the regular judge for the Literary Upstart live-fiction event, a participant in the Significant Objects project run by Rob Walker and Joshua Glenn (he presented a piece at Walker's invitation at the Museum of Modern Art in 2011), a regular contributor to Underwater New York, and more.

Greenman has moderated many live events, including 5 Under 35, an annual presentation of the National Book Foundation. In November 2016, he interviewed Padma Lakshmi at the Miami Book Fair International.

Bibliography

References

External links

• Official website