#cake train

                      I picked this up last week and read the first two stories. They didn't really grab me. I don't know why, but I wasn't thinking about them after I'd put the book down. That's a fair standard by which to judge something I think. Does it stay with you?

Then I read the third and fourth stories today, and they were both excellent. The third is called "The Promise" and it sort of sneaks up on you. The fourth is the title story and it's very clever and fresh.

Cake Train

Chelsea Peretti as "Karen"

If you watched the season two premiere of Kroll Show last night on Comedy Central, then you know exactly what the Cake Train is. You also wish the Cake Train was real. If you didn't watch, please do yourself a favor and watch it-- hopefully you or a friend DVR'd it because as of this writing, the clip isn't on Comedy Central's site. Suffice it to say Cake Train is proof that a very simple concept can yield great laughs. Also, Zach Galifiankis is in it. The entire episode is packed with laughs thanks to Nick Kroll's every-evolving sketch characters. The second episode, which premieres next Tuesday, Jan. 21 at 10:30 pm ET, is even better. But before then, I wanted to share the backstory of Cake Train, which I asked Kroll about during a recent conversation. I found it hilarious and fascinating, so I wanted to share. Here's what Kroll said:

That’s a bizarre one. Cake Train is an idea that came out when we were writing the pilot. And Chelsea Peretti, who was writing on the pilot, had the idea. She was like, 'I just want to see people chasing after a train that some guy throws cakes off of.' So it started there. We decided to do it for the pilot, but it was impossible. It was way too expensive. So we thought, OK, if the show gets picked up to series, we’ll do it. So the show gets picked up. Our producer Inman Young, who’s just an amazingly efficient and easy-going guy, was just like, ‘It costs so much money to rent a moving train.’ So we didn’t shoot it in season one. And then when we came in for season two, we were like, ‘Alright, priority number one is Cake Train, and then let’s figure out the rest of the show.' So the way it worked was like this: As we were going to locations – if we were shooting a 'Rich Dicks' sketch in a house that had a shower, we would shoot the girl running out of the shower. Or if we were shooting a hippie fight in a park— well, there’s a track there, so we’ll have a woman stretching and then hearing the Cake Train and then she runs off. Or we’re shooting 'Oh Hello,' we’ll have a guy underneath a staircase smoking weed, and then he runs off when he hears the Cake Train. So, we were shooting bits all throughout the season all towards the end goal of getting this moving train— which was probably the most expensive thing we shot. And to Comedy Central’s credit, they were like, ‘We really don’t get Cake Train. But if you guys want to make it, we’re not going to stop you.’ And that was the greenlight we needed. So to justify the train – it required a full day because we had to drive an hour away to get to a moving train – we then added another sketch. There’s a 'Wheels Ontario' sketch that turns into 'Show Us Your Songs: Toronto.' Part of episode two is about the actor who plays Legs in 'Wheels Ontario,' who wants to launch his music career just like Drake did out of [Canadian teen drama series] DeGrassi. So, we wanted to make a music video for him. So we were like, ‘Why don’t we just shoot the video on the train so we can justify using the entire day?’ And we did. It was great for the music video because it added production value; it made it look like a legitimate, high-end music video. And all of this was in service of the idea of Zach Galifianakis in a pink, leather baker’s outfit tossing cakes off of a train onto people’s heads. Cake Train is an anomaly within our show in that it’s absurdist and it’s not terribly character driven. But it’s in the spirit of our show in that if we find something funny we’ll play it as hard as we can. And Chelsea was the driver of the sketch. She’s someone I’ve known since I started doing comedy. Seeing her face that day, catching cake – there’s that slow motion shot of her catching a cake and eating it – she was so happy and I was so happy. It was such a fun day. It was one of the crew’s favorite days too because they were just like, ‘What are we doing. This is so crazy.’ It’s one of those days where I thought that I can’t believe I have my own TV show and I get to do this.

TREASURE ISLAND!!! has been praised as insane, bizarre, and hilarious.  The humor of the writing does come from a narrator of strong wit and perspective.  However, there are several more subtle forces in the writing that contribute to these same effects- one being the contrast of energies between the intensity of the narrative voice and anything she faces (i.e. a supportive mother, a quiet father, an emotionally committed boyfriend).  Where does your interest in the distinction between the bold and the sensible come from?   Has it been praised as insane, or simply called insane?  The fun of boys adventure fiction, the vigor and enthusiasm with which boys cast off the burden of consciousness, and just run around in the open air, enacting their desires—that struck me as seductive but also, in some ways, impossible, being a person who usually prefers to sit indoors, motionless, for long periods of time. I suppose I love a book whose plot depends upon a set of polar values—Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, for example. In Treasure Island!!! the whole playing field is tilted, of course, in that it remains a question: does the narrator embody boldness?  

The narrator of TREASURE ISLAND!!! is nameless and the novel’s setting, although clearly suburban America, is not named. Why is that?   It never felt right to give her a name. I wanted to think about the ego and its devious workings more than I wanted to think about a girl with a proper name and a zip code.  And I supposed that if I gave her a name, I'd be giving the reader an easy handle to pick her up and throw her out: "Oh my god, I hate that Amy Kulpinski!"  Of course, a reader might still say, "I hate that narrative voice!" but you can't wedge the same degree of spitting hatred into that phrase, can you?  If I could get the reader to go along, turning the pages even while muttering, "Who is this person?", the gap between reader and narrator might occasionally narrow. You might, in other words, recognize a tiny piece of yourself. As for setting, I have a feeling the story takes place in a land-locked state with no chance of sailing in sight.  But as soon as I write the word "Nebraska," a set of unwanted associations traipses in and leaves mud all over the carpet.  So I left location out.   

What did you anticipate the relationship between the reader and the narrator would be? The narrator is at times, difficult, how did this voice come to you and why turn it into a novel? What was your own relationship with the narrator?     I didn't anticipate, I don't think. I knew the tradition I was writing in—Dostoevsky's Underground Man, Nabokov's Despair, Toole's Ignatius O'Reilly, all of Thomas Bernhard's unhinged narrators—and I hoped the work would be legible as part of that tradition. But I was a bit naïve about how difficult it would be to push a woman's voice like this into today's marketplace. A woman can be "sassy," "spunky," "feisty," or "cheeky," but gleefully deranged?  I'm grateful that Europa Editions made a place for her.  

The voice was born when I was living in Iowa City and teaching in the MFA in Nonfiction program. A colleague had asked me which essayists I liked, and I mentioned Robert Louis Stevenson. I was thinking of "Apology for Idlers" and "Aes Triplex," these wonderful and relatively obscure little essays, but my colleague was about thirty years older than me and also a man, so when I said RLS's name his eyes lit up and he said, "Ah! Treasure Island!"  My first response was a dismissive,Not that.  Then I thought, Maybe it would be funny to write an essay about notliking Treasure Island—assuming it was going to be unpleasant—so I picked up the novel.  To my surprise, it was great. So there went that idea.  With essays, you really do have at your disposal a range of voices, but in general you aim to sound thoughtful and well-modulated. The subject of a woman reading Treasure Islandseemed to call for an immoderate approach. So I said, I'll just try to write a story about this material. I didn't call it a novel.  I called it "an attempt to fuse the break-neck speed of boys adventure fiction with the spiraling expository movements of the essay, in order to meditate on gender, reading, and a life gone comically wrong."  That went over really well at parties. 

A wonderfully rewarding dynamic occurs in TREASURE ISLAND!!! when the narrator's inner thoughts on a situation run between direct responses of dialogue from the characters involved. A sense of intimacy develops between her and the reader. Did you have a certain reader in mind when writing this voice?   Thank you.  Yes, I wrote it for Chris, Judith, Jennifer, and Daniel, but I'm happy for any other readers peering over their shoulders. These are the friends whose responses, both real and imagined, cheered me on.  If I tried to write for any larger audience, I'm sure I wouldn't have a thing to say.    

TREASURE ISLAND!!! is very much about the extent to which a book can rule, or ruin, someone’s life if taken too seriously. Surely you don’t want to discourage people from reading, so what more salient point can be taken from this?   No, I wouldn't willfully discourage anyone from reading. Don Quixote or Madame Bovary probably didn't put people off reading either, and yet they're also about reading gone wrong. I think Treasure Island!!! is more about the nihilistic wiles of the self-insulating ego than it is about reading. Readers who know Stevenson's Treasure Island may notice how my narrator often gets Stevenson wrong.  Some of the errors are pretty broad; she doesn't, for example, consider Long John Silver an important character. But more dangerous, it seems to me, are the facts that she's oblivious to how much of Jim's adventure depends on good luck—what Henry James called a "record of queer chances"—and how often Jim is—what Henry James would not call—a pansy.  Instead she finds in the book what she needs to find there: evidence of Jim Hawkin's everlasting boldness. I know she's a poor reader, but I think most of us go through our lives making similar mistakes— clinging to a comfortable story, refusing to entertain evidence if it doesn't fit the original thesis.  I swear I didn't set out to make a "salient point" when I wrote the novel, but I will own up to a certain preoccupation with perception.  

The narrator of Treasure Island!!! is derided by her best friend and her sister for reading a “book for boys.” As the mother of a daughter, have you noticed a tendency on behalf of publishers and parents to steer young readers towards certain “gender appropriate” reading?

  My seven-year-old daughter is particular in her reading tastes, so I've been buffered from some of this. But even though this year all we've read are A Peanuts Christmas and I Went to College and It Was Okay, it's impossible not to walk into a chain bookstore and note the prevalence of hot-pink books about Barbies, ballerinas, princesses, My Little Ponies, and fairies.  Independent bookstore offerings are better; one feels the intelligence of the book buyers and wants to throw oneself into their arms, weeping. One fears, however, that one might be arrested or misunderstood.    

What are you working on now?   A collection of short stories about bad mothers; a book-length essay; and a new novel.