Agent Palmer

Episode 171 features Bill Sweeney, who is back because five years ago he sent me a graphic novel and last year he sent me a book, and I read them both in the last few months and it’s time to talk some book talk!

While we will get into the weeds on Maus by Spiegelman and The Eyes of the Dragon by King, we also tangent elsewhere…

Mentioned and Helpful Links from This Episode

AgentPalmer.com

WickedTheory.com

Being Jewish colors the black-and-white history in Maus

Eyes of the Dragon made we want more from Delain, but maybe not from Stephen King

Other Links

My First Blind Date Arrived with Goodies

Unplug for your health and read Age of Earthquakes

Bill Sweeney was a Special Guest Executive Producer

Music created and provided by Henno Heitur of Monkey Tongue Productions.

–End Show Notes Transmission–

–Begin Transcription–

00:00:00:01 – 00:00:21:05
Agent Palmer
Previously on Agent palmer.com. Mrs. Agent Palmer is having a blind date with a book. You may want to unplug for your health and read. Age of earthquakes and with a young child change is constant. That’s the update. This is The Palmer Files episode 171 with Bill Sweeney, who is back because five years ago he sent me a graphic novel, and last year he sent me a book, and I read them both in the last few months.

00:00:21:05 – 00:00:32:42
Agent Palmer
And it’s time to talk some book talk while we get into the weeds on Maus by Spiegelman and The Eyes of the Dragon by King. We also tangent elsewhere. Are you ready? Let’s do the show.

00:00:32:47 – 00:01:02:19
Bill Sweeney
I wanted to give you, as broader spectrum of reading suggestions as I possibly could. People seem to have problems with books that make you think. Stephen King is like more of a simple setup guy, whereas Clive Barker’s like, I’ve got an entire world. Maybe what you need is a sampling of Stephen King. That is not his horror stuff.

00:01:02:23 – 00:01:12:03
Bill Sweeney
It’s a it’s a clever, simple story that he wrote for his daughter. 60 books just flashed before my eyes.

00:01:12:08 – 00:01:36:05
Agent Palmer
Hello, and welcome to the Palmer Files. I’m your host, Jason Stershic, also known as Agent Palmer. And on this 171st episode is my friend Bill Sweeney. He’s here because over the last five years, he sent me two reading recommendations, Maus by Art Spiegelman and The Eyes of the Dragon by Stephen King. Bill’s back to broaden my reading horizons as Spiegelman broadens the medium of comics, and King the meaning of evil in a villain.

00:01:36:10 – 00:02:00:43
Agent Palmer
More on those to come. Aside from those two books, what we thought of them, and a little about their origins, we’ll talk about reading plus the nature of independent art. Clive Barker publishing author’s banned books, being trapped by success in the genre. And is Bill ahead of the curve? Another thing of note is that both of my reviews for these books are on Agent palmer.com, and were written and completed before this conversation.

00:02:00:48 – 00:02:27:24
Agent Palmer
Just like with the Star Trek episodes I record with Ed, I may soften or change my opinion or tune based on the conversation you’re about to hear, but I do not retroactively change my initial reviews. They are what they are, and this is what’s next. You can use them to see some progression on occasion if you like. So before we get into it, remember that if you want to discuss this episode as you listen or afterward, you can find all related ways to contact Bill and myself in the show notes.

00:02:27:28 – 00:02:46:08
Agent Palmer
You can find whatever Bill is up to at Wicked theory.com. Don’t forget, you can see all of my writings and rantings on Jim palmer.com. And of course email can be sent to the Palmer files at gmail.com. So without further ado, take a look. It’s in a book.

00:02:46:12 – 00:02:54:38
Agent Palmer
Bill, you sent me. A graphic novel, volume one and two and a book many years apart.

00:02:54:43 – 00:02:55:12
Bill Sweeney
That’s right.

00:02:55:17 – 00:02:58:21
Agent Palmer
But I read them.

00:02:58:26 – 00:02:59:12
Bill Sweeney
About.

00:02:59:16 – 00:03:02:41
Agent Palmer
Two months apart. Three months apart? Okay.

00:03:02:41 – 00:03:04:05
Bill Sweeney
Yeah. All right.

00:03:04:09 – 00:03:24:09
Agent Palmer
That. That’s kind of the way it works. The first thing you sent me was, the the the two volume complete collection of Maus. And then for reasons we’ll get into, you sent me a Stephen King novel, right. I, I, and I remember.

00:03:24:14 – 00:03:37:22
Bill Sweeney
I wanted to give you as broader spectrum of reading suggestions as I possibly could. Well I, I and he brought her and it would have been like, here’s a coloring book. And I just remember the source.

00:03:37:34 – 00:03:43:16
Agent Palmer
You were like, I want to send you the Stephen King novel, but. Are you going to read it in?

00:03:43:18 – 00:03:43:39
Bill Sweeney
Yeah.

00:03:43:40 – 00:03:58:50
Agent Palmer
I writers and look I for let’s start here. I loved Maus and I, and I loved the eyes of the dragon. But Maus because of the subject matter. I just kept pushing it.

00:03:58:55 – 00:04:00:27
Bill Sweeney
Right, right. Yeah.

00:04:00:32 – 00:04:10:24
Agent Palmer
And because of that I moved the, the eyes of the dragon right to the top of the list because I was like, I’m not going to do this again.

00:04:10:29 – 00:04:22:35
Bill Sweeney
Well, I did tell you to. I was like, I know you keep pushing off Maus just just because of whatever. And I was like, but it’s not a long read. Yeah, I mean, it was, you know, even if it was like, oh, man, I think it took you.

00:04:22:37 – 00:04:26:02
Agent Palmer
I think it took me a week. I think it was like, because I well.

00:04:26:02 – 00:04:29:15
Bill Sweeney
That’s a that’s of your own doing. That’s not a book that takes a week to read.

00:04:29:16 – 00:04:43:11
Agent Palmer
No, no. Well, I guess it depends. My the reason it took me a week was because I would put it down to process. There was some stuff within it that it was like, I mean, there’s been.

00:04:43:11 – 00:04:44:05
Bill Sweeney
Needs to be processed.

00:04:44:05 – 00:05:04:26
Agent Palmer
Sometimes. Yeah. And there’s, there’s been other books I’ve had that are like also maybe not graphic novels, but they’re also short books, but they’re heavy in some capacity. And like. All right. Well, yeah, I could read this in maybe half an afternoon, but it’s like, I’m not reading this to read it. I’m reading it to process it, like to learn something, to experience.

00:05:04:26 – 00:05:29:06
Agent Palmer
So it’s like, all right, I gotta I gotta put this down. That actually, I think volume two of Maus, took me longer, than volume one because of the generational discussion that the, And it’s unsaid, by the way. But the unsaid generational rift, so to speak, was, a lot for me.

00:05:29:11 – 00:05:46:26
Bill Sweeney
Yeah, I think even for me, if I remember correctly, like the second one, it’s just it’s, it’s there’s more going on. It’s, it’s, it’s a, it’s the heavier probably read, it’s a little longer. It might even be, a little slower kind of thing.

00:05:46:27 – 00:06:17:41
Agent Palmer
I also think for anyone who’s creative reading the second volume of Maus, he’s dealing with his own success and, and legitimately the burden of his own success. And I think for you and me having, like, attempted things before, regardless of how we define success. Right, it’s still something you carry with you. And so like, he’s juggling like, oh, I did this thing and it was really good.

00:06:17:46 – 00:06:41:45
Agent Palmer
And you’re like, yeah, I know what that feels like. Like that’s that’s tough. That’s not the I don’t think people quite especially people that aren’t in the creative spaces, I don’t think they understand there is a weight to success in any definition. And popular success might be the weightiest of all successes.

00:06:41:50 – 00:06:43:11
Bill Sweeney
Yeah, yeah.

00:06:43:16 – 00:06:58:48
Agent Palmer
But I, I, I suggest it for a lot of people. I, I’ve, I’ve suggested Maus since in fact since I read it Kristen Maier read volume one and is waiting for volume two to be available at her local library.

00:06:58:53 – 00:07:00:00
Bill Sweeney
Oh, okay.

00:07:00:05 – 00:07:08:34
Agent Palmer
And that was apropos of nothing like I just saw it on her, books I read last year. I was like, oh, I read that too.

00:07:08:39 – 00:07:32:10
Bill Sweeney
Well, you know, it’s, Well, here’s the thing. You know, it’s, it’s certainly one of those books that doesn’t probably get a lot kicked around in the conversations anymore. Of, well, the fact that I suggested it to you and had you read it, I think it to me is indicative of the fact that it’s kind of like out of the general conversation out of so many years have passed since it was published.

00:07:32:11 – 00:07:38:10
Bill Sweeney
But to hear and and to hear that somebody else actually has it on their reading list is a little bit of a surprise, and I’m glad to hear it.

00:07:38:10 – 00:07:42:45
Agent Palmer
You know? Well, I, I would say you were ahead of the curve because.

00:07:42:51 – 00:07:44:17
Bill Sweeney
Finally, about something.

00:07:44:17 – 00:08:13:27
Agent Palmer
In between you gifting me that and my reading it, it popped up at least three times for me separately, as books were being banned because it was always on the list. And I was like, oh, that’s I kind of I got to get to that at some point. And it was there. So there were other reminders in like, the weird cultural what, I don’t know, war that’s going on with banned books where it was like, oh, oh, it’s the everybody.

00:08:13:27 – 00:08:18:18
Agent Palmer
That’s one of the ones they always talk about. Yeah, it’s always tops of the list.

00:08:18:31 – 00:08:30:50
Bill Sweeney
Yeah. People seem to have problems with books that make you think or make you confront ugly history. You know, I think maybe we should frame it a little bit for anybody who’s listening who is not.

00:08:30:55 – 00:08:32:05
Agent Palmer
Like, familiar.

00:08:32:10 – 00:08:42:32
Bill Sweeney
Yeah, familiar. So when we say Maus, we’re we’re spelt. It’s spelled M-A-U-S it’s from is a German actually root for that spelling. Probably just.

00:08:42:37 – 00:08:43:05
Agent Palmer
Be German.

00:08:43:05 – 00:08:54:14
Bill Sweeney
For that. And it’s written by Otto Spiegelman. Came out in the 80s originally. You know, he did the work that’s in it over a period in the 70s. I think, what we.

00:08:54:15 – 00:09:15:00
Agent Palmer
Usually do, you know, like that that’s the part like there are definitive sections like, like this is a graphic novel, a collection of other pieces. And I just keep thinking, like, it would be weird to be reading like it, like there’s there in my brain canon. There’s no place this fits where it’s not like, like in.

00:09:15:00 – 00:09:15:40
Bill Sweeney
Trade.

00:09:15:40 – 00:09:19:46
Agent Palmer
Or in the Sunday comics or whatever you come across. You’re like, what?

00:09:19:46 – 00:09:59:51
Bill Sweeney
Certainly not. So it’s it’s a comic. It’s a it’s it’s a retelling of, you know, his his family’s story and issues and history of the with the Holocaust and his interaction with his father, who was a survivor. Yeah. At the same time, it’s telling, you know, how I quote unquote present day he’s, you know, trying to, like, connect on some of these historical things from his dad and trying to put into perspective how he was, you know, just kind of casually told things or overheard things as a child living with Holocaust survivors growing up in New York City.

00:09:59:56 – 00:10:29:10
Bill Sweeney
So, yeah. Not your typical comic book thing, but the comic it was printed in was an indie, you know, obviously very indie, avant garde kind of comic called raw and that, you know, serialized a bunch of different things or, you know, from, I think, like weird humor to like deep, heavy stuff. Okay. But very much in that, you know, was like an a collection book, kind of a thing that came out, I think, every month or so.

00:10:29:15 – 00:10:31:15
Bill Sweeney
Maybe not. I’m not sure of like the kind of like.

00:10:31:15 – 00:10:42:35
Agent Palmer
Heavy metal where like there were some like there would be some things that you’d catch every month and there’d be some things that you’d catch every. So often. Not every month. Right.

00:10:42:35 – 00:11:06:32
Bill Sweeney
Okay. And then that material also, you know, amongst itself in the comic ran the gamut, you know what I mean? I gotcha and I think for the most part, you know what I mean? I don’t think it was all like super serious stuff that was in there. You know, I thought it was I in my recollection, or understanding it was like more like at the time I thought it was maybe beatnik kind of stuff, okay, like that kind of stuff, but I tend to probably not.

00:11:06:37 – 00:11:13:08
Bill Sweeney
But, you know, it was it was indie comic stuff that was popping up in New York and,

00:11:13:13 – 00:11:36:19
Agent Palmer
Which really, honestly sets it apart from what I know of indie comics because, not not for anything. I mean, I don’t know where this comes from, but all of my indie comic knowledge comes from the West Coast, from like, Arkham type stuff. And I know hearing you say that this is from the East Coast is like eye opening, because I was like, I didn’t know we had indie comics over, like, now.

00:11:36:19 – 00:11:40:52
Agent Palmer
Yeah, but in the 70s and 60s, like, everything’s focused on.

00:11:40:56 – 00:11:41:23
Bill Sweeney
Yeah.

00:11:41:28 – 00:11:42:14
Agent Palmer
Cisco.

00:11:42:19 – 00:11:48:08
Bill Sweeney
Yeah. Like that kind of art scene. Yeah. Does seem to be kind of like, you know.

00:11:48:13 – 00:11:48:53
Agent Palmer
It’s like the.

00:11:48:58 – 00:12:13:56
Bill Sweeney
California. Yeah, yeah, the California side of things. And, well, the more you know, the more you realize. Well, certainly during that time, anything that was not Marvel or DC was just indie because those were the big two. And even like other superhero stuff made by small publishers, it just wasn’t, you know, available to the level because of it being from smaller publishers.

00:12:14:08 – 00:12:50:11
Bill Sweeney
Like, anything could have been indie, you know, the real you know, if you know, you know, indie stuff is stuff that’s even like more like this, where it felt like, oh, just like four people in a garage put this together, like, you know, like, how did how did this even get to a printer on time, like, you know, so and then nowadays you know, Marvel DC is still the big two, but it’s easier to say, well, maybe there’s like 4 or 5 considered like the main publishers in comics now, and it’s still like indie scene, but it’s just, you know, times have changed and it’s harder and more expensive and so.

00:12:50:15 – 00:12:54:38
Agent Palmer
Well, some of that stuff is online. I mean, I well.

00:12:54:38 – 00:12:55:05
Bill Sweeney
There’s that.

00:12:55:12 – 00:13:22:37
Agent Palmer
I know there was oh, was it 20 years of Homestar Runner or something along those lines? And it’s just I, I immediately it’s not the same by any stretch. But I think of that as like, that was my era’s underground comics because it was a flash cartoon. But it was, it was indie, like, I, I even know people my age who were hanging around me and were in my circles that missed.

00:13:22:37 – 00:13:41:41
Agent Palmer
Yeah, that missed it completely. So it’s not that mainstream. Not mainstream at all. And if you I guess if you are in the room when we were watching it, maybe you liked it or you didn’t, but if you didn’t like it that one time, you were not going to crowd around when the new one came out with us and so you’d never remember it.

00:13:41:41 – 00:13:42:42
Agent Palmer
It’s that one thing you.

00:13:42:49 – 00:14:01:02
Bill Sweeney
Yeah, it’s that thing that it was like, oh, this is under the radar for most people. Even at that time when Homestar was running where it’s like, even if you were, like, very internet savvy. Yeah, anything could be under your radar. So, like, you just like that, you ran into somebody who, you know, caught a reference to something like that.

00:14:01:17 – 00:14:20:39
Bill Sweeney
You know, it’s like like following an indie band scene and, you know, walking around with a t shirt and someone going, oh my God, you listen to them, too. It’s it’s very much like that. Yeah. I mean, look, you know, the first time I walked into a comic shop and it was like, yeah, sure. Like, you know, I was probably like, you know, ten or so, or maybe little, little old or not much.

00:14:20:44 – 00:14:38:27
Bill Sweeney
And at that time, yeah, sure, it was Marvel DC, but it was like, what is all this other stuff? Like, I didn’t even know that there were other, you know, you know, because sure, like, you might see one of these kinds of comics in the wild, but you just don’t, you know, you don’t know the scene, you don’t know the the world and the era, but,

00:14:38:37 – 00:14:57:43
Agent Palmer
Even even a comic shop is mostly going to have the big two anyway. So without having what I would consider the right comic shop or the older brother. Some of this stuff is like an indie band. You’re it, it you, it will never cross you. You’ll just, you’ll go through your whole life and not know. Yeah.

00:14:57:57 – 00:15:22:04
Bill Sweeney
Most of the stuff at that time was self-published to like you know like it was either something like, you know this magazine that these were collected in probably, I think, by a group. But like a lot of like other like indie publishers at the time were either like, hey, like I just want to make it myself. And so I’ll just do it completely myself or like there was some guys like, you know, throughout the country that like owned comic shops.

00:15:22:08 – 00:15:56:26
Bill Sweeney
And then because they would see people coming in who could write and draw, but just, you know, they weren’t getting work at a publisher, they would like, start their own little imprint. And I think First Comics, well, a couple, a couple of them started like that. They’re not around anymore or they’ve been absorbed, but, yeah, there was, you know, there was always like, this underground ness to almost anything outside of, you know, it’s like when you go to a record shop for the first time and like, you know, if that’s your scene and it’s just like, oh, like, sure like it.

00:15:56:38 – 00:16:06:10
Bill Sweeney
I knew that there was more, but I just didn’t know there was this much. And that also like, it was all so different than the mainstream stuff I knew.

00:16:06:10 – 00:16:08:52
Agent Palmer
So the first time you pick up Maus.

00:16:08:57 – 00:16:09:33
Bill Sweeney
Yeah.

00:16:09:46 – 00:16:21:58
Agent Palmer
Is it is it, is it the is it the cover because this is the first this might be the only thing, in my entire house. And I would say this is probably true of a lot of people.

00:16:22:11 – 00:16:22:44
Bill Sweeney
Who write.

00:16:22:53 – 00:16:24:07
Agent Palmer
With the swastika on it.

00:16:24:16 – 00:16:26:08
Bill Sweeney
Like, yeah, fair enough.

00:16:26:13 – 00:16:27:55
Agent Palmer
It’s a bit, you know.

00:16:28:04 – 00:16:28:42
Bill Sweeney
Yeah, yeah.

00:16:28:42 – 00:16:30:26
Agent Palmer
It doesn’t hide what it is.

00:16:30:30 – 00:16:55:08
Bill Sweeney
No, it kind of jumps to cover, kind of jumps out at you a little bit. So for me, because this had already been published when I started getting into comics, I just kept on seeing it referred to okay as one of the best things. And, and, you know, award winning thing in comics, like if you’re, you know, these lists of like, you know, what’s the best stuff, you know what I mean?

00:16:55:08 – 00:17:23:56
Bill Sweeney
Or the most like, you know, worthwhile things to read and comics, you know what I mean? The Maus was always in those conversations on, on those lists. And so eventually at some point, I got a hold of a copy. But one of the things that like because I was just like, so into comics as a medium, okay, even in of itself, like I always had like this, inside or outside of pride of like certain aspects of comics.

00:17:23:56 – 00:17:45:36
Bill Sweeney
And one of them was like, you know, like, hey, you know, America only has like, certain things that they could consider true American created art forms. And one of them is like jazz and maybe like the blues, I think. But like, comic books is one of them. Like, superheroes are not like comic books. And I think maybe you could argue it, but it’s usually credited as being a thing that it was created here in America.

00:17:45:36 – 00:18:01:01
Bill Sweeney
So that’s like a factoid that I always latched on to. And one of the things that always kind of was a thing for me was the fact that, like, Maos won a Pulitzer. So to me, that was like a recognition of the art form in and of itself.

00:18:01:07 – 00:18:03:32
Agent Palmer
Transcending, like just spandex, basically.

00:18:03:32 – 00:18:23:04
Bill Sweeney
Yeah. Like besides the content in the material of the story, the fact that, like, oh, someone actually took that serious, like, you know, because like, I was reading comics when comics was still very much I mean, you know, they probably still are to a large degree now, kind of like dismissed almost outright as a form. Yeah. Like, you know what I mean?

00:18:23:04 – 00:18:31:49
Bill Sweeney
Because it’s just carries all this baggage from the 50s forward of being a kids thing that nothing serious or worthwhile.

00:18:31:58 – 00:18:33:06
Agent Palmer
Comes out, it.

00:18:33:11 – 00:18:52:03
Bill Sweeney
Comes out of it. And so the fact that something won a Pulitzer and it’s like, well, it happened to me. But like, you know, the Holocaust and then, you know, Nazis in Germany and survivor stuff. So like, it makes sense that it it would. And so like, I always kind of knew it was on my list of a thing that I had to get my hands on at some point, you know what I mean?

00:18:52:03 – 00:19:09:07
Bill Sweeney
So I don’t know if I ordered it special through a comic shops that I was going to at the time because it had to be a reprint, or if I found a maybe on a Barnes and Nobles or something like that. But, that was like my drive for want to read. It didn’t really know a lot about it.

00:19:09:12 – 00:19:30:26
Bill Sweeney
I’d seen maybe a couple of panels in those kinds of magazines or publications that were talking about it, and it was always pointed to is, you know, hey, if you want to read something and get a little history lesson at the same time. Yeah. Here, I will say that like it’s probably one of the only things I’ve read about, the Holocaust experience.

00:19:30:26 – 00:19:33:18
Agent Palmer
So can I ask then based on timing?

00:19:33:23 – 00:19:33:42
Bill Sweeney

00:19:33:55 – 00:19:44:45
Agent Palmer
Would this have been would you have read this before you watched Schindler’s List. Would this have been your first like. Yeah. So this was your first like real dive into.

00:19:44:50 – 00:19:45:22
Bill Sweeney

00:19:45:47 – 00:19:54:38
Agent Palmer
That conflict that side of that conflict other than like when it started and when it ended based on like what our history lessons would have been with just the facts and figures.

00:19:54:43 – 00:20:19:36
Bill Sweeney
Yeah. Yeah. Like for me like all I had going on was like the exposure to like, you know, the skimming kind of through history that you get at a high school. Yeah. We were covering World War two at school. And they, you know, we’ll talk about it, but we’re not getting too crazy deep. Yeah. And then maybe, you know, for some people this will be different than others.

00:20:19:36 – 00:20:37:55
Bill Sweeney
But like and then maybe like in your English classes because you’re reading a certain book, you know, you will discuss and get it didn’t get it to maybe some of the heavier, elements of it, but like, you know, the jamming so much, you know, world history, we ain’t got time to get it to all of it. So we’re just going to.

00:20:38:00 – 00:20:41:40
Bill Sweeney
So yeah, like, for me at the time.

00:20:41:44 – 00:21:18:04
Agent Palmer
But so for me, I have met survivors and have heard firsthand survivors stories, but I’ve also heard the, you know, we were thankful not to be in the old country stories or share, you know, so it’s weird because, like, obviously growing up Jewish, Schindler’s List is like, well, I’ve heard that story for maybe not that one, but like, you know, it’s like, oh, your great grandfather’s here because you know, of an Italian who did a thing or like because of a Swede who did a thing like this.

00:21:18:09 – 00:21:28:39
Agent Palmer
So that part of it’s not unique. And that was the weirdest part about reading. It might be why it took me a week to read. Because I was like, okay, I’ve heard this before and.

00:21:28:51 – 00:21:29:18
Bill Sweeney
Right.

00:21:29:27 – 00:21:49:50
Agent Palmer
Most of it was like people within like a Jewish community I was in when I was much younger and there were more survivors alive or like, you know, you you’d be at a summer camp, a Jewish summer camp, and they’d have a survivor come and talk or whatever. Right. So, so, but but I’m reading this going, like I’ve heard this before.

00:21:49:59 – 00:22:10:07
Agent Palmer
Look, I haven’t heard this one before, but, like, it feels so familiar because all those stories. And then the other thing, this is the thing. This was the thing that got me the most is the way he wrote his father is the way that that generation and the generation under it told stories.

00:22:10:18 – 00:22:10:41
Bill Sweeney
Right.

00:22:10:41 – 00:22:34:54
Agent Palmer
It’s something about the way he wrote the text that he got, the pacing. I couldn’t do it like I couldn’t write it, but I but if somebody were to talk like that, I’d be like, that’s, that’s my grandmother. Or like, that’s that’s so and so like, I know I can hear a very specific kind of old Jewish person.

00:22:34:55 – 00:22:58:44
Bill Sweeney
There is a it’s on display here, and I’m just going to speak as if I know it firsthand. But there is a matter of fact in this as a shorthand in a way that they talk about a lot of things and anything to each other that is all contextual with the, you know, their old days during that era.

00:22:58:44 – 00:23:17:09
Bill Sweeney
I mean, so like, you know, it’s been a long time to read it. And thankfully, because I skimmed the wiki, you know, this is easily at the top of my brain. But like, you know, the opening chapter, we’ll call it sequence because it’s broken up into like all these sections, you know, small, small chapters that published, you know.

00:23:17:13 – 00:23:35:50
Bill Sweeney
Yeah, piece by piece. But the first one has to deal with, like, you know, he’s Art Spiegelman as a kid is with his friends, and you know, they’re down by the lake or the ice or something like that. And his friends old ditch him. And, you know, when he runs to tell his father, his fall is like friends.

00:23:35:50 – 00:23:54:45
Bill Sweeney
Like your friends, you know, you lock them together in a room and let’s see how long, like, you guys all stay as friends. And it’s like a weird thing, like, because the kid doesn’t have like that full context of, like, what do you mean by like, locking them in a room together? Yeah. And like, you know, the dad means it in a very different way.

00:23:54:50 – 00:24:33:08
Bill Sweeney
But you know, because because the book does this thing where it jumps forward and backward in time of him, present day remembering those kinds of conversations of things being like only half explained to him and so implied and so much of it kind of like going over his head as a kid. But a lot of it not. And like, because, because the adults are doing that thing that adults tend to do in general, which is around kids, which is that like when you get to a certain age and they don’t realize what is going over your head or is not going over your head anymore, but they’re still kind of talking to you and around

00:24:33:08 – 00:24:50:56
Bill Sweeney
you of like, you know, I’m going to talk to you like this and you’ll get it one day. Or, or they also are going to talk to each other, and we don’t think you’re going to get it. And we might walk around you anyway and like, be damned if, you know, this kid’s going to piece anything together.

00:24:50:56 – 00:24:54:45
Bill Sweeney
But, you know, that’s a good portion of the story.

00:24:54:50 – 00:25:16:49
Agent Palmer
And, and then the other, the other like very important section, I think, which kind of piggybacks on that is the end where he’s trying to draw the story out of his dad because he got sidetracked like he was like, hey, know, like what happened when you were in Warsaw? It’s like, well, but about that other no, no, no, no.

00:25:16:54 – 00:25:38:56
Bill Sweeney
Like dad doesn’t plan out. And for all his kvetching about it and and spontaneously bringing it up. Yeah. When he’s asked about it. Yeah. Like it’s the last thing. Like he wants to consciously. Yeah. And discuss with his now grown adult son who’s like coming. You know, I think.

00:25:39:01 – 00:26:03:48
Agent Palmer
I think there’s a part of it too where. And this is not cultural. This is maybe creative, like a creative regret. Like podcasting didn’t exist for me, you know, 21 years ago, 22 years ago, when I lost my last two grandparents within a span of eight months. But I think, like, and I’ve had my parents on the show and that’s important to me.

00:26:03:53 – 00:26:34:08
Agent Palmer
I, if for want of a different time, I would have had my grandparents on because there are, you know, I, I, I see within the comic art trying to get his dad to tell stories. And I know that if I don’t get my parents back on mic, even if it’s not for the show to tell me stories that they remember from my grandparents, my kids never going to hear those stories because I don’t know enough of them.

00:26:34:13 – 00:26:59:18
Agent Palmer
I only know like a few humorous anecdotes, but I don’t know those stories. And so there’s a part reading art kind of draw out, especially in part two, where he’s trying to get the rest of the story from his dad, where I’m like, oh, the amount of stuff I just don’t know about my family. And the same is true of, like, there are pictures not even like picture albums.

00:26:59:18 – 00:27:09:54
Agent Palmer
There are pictures in my parents house where it’s like, this is a this is five people from like two generations removed. And I know two of them.

00:27:09:58 – 00:27:11:03
Bill Sweeney
Yeah, well.

00:27:11:03 – 00:27:24:34
Agent Palmer
Why should you and I should. So there’s an amount of that, which is again, it’s why volume two took me so much longer because I’m like, sure, man. Like, I’m never going to get these stories or I’m not going to know. There is a point where there’s a photograph and it’s like, who is this?

00:27:24:43 – 00:27:52:17
Bill Sweeney
Yeah, well, there’s always that. I think in almost every family where like, you know, as a kid, you grew up with all this prehistory. Yeah. That you just don’t find out about. And, you know, sadly or interestingly, you know, for your commute, for the Jewish community, there’s a lot of mutual history, you know, tied around this event and these, these goings on where, like, by default, a binding element.

00:27:52:25 – 00:28:23:29
Bill Sweeney
Yeah, yeah. In that like, you know, me, you know, oh, Christian, Catholic, whatever the frick. I don’t even remember. I’m so far removed from it. But like, you know, I guess Irish Catholic, you could you’d have to want me in. But, like, you know, I don’t have this particular cultural thing or anything remotely like that or, you know, and in some ways, like, I think some people might have, like immigrant story and immigrant history kind of thing to kind of bring them together.

00:28:23:29 – 00:28:37:00
Bill Sweeney
But those things don’t bring any. Well, not always anyway. I should say less. Less often they don’t have uncomfortable baggage. They hold the way in, which makes like we have the conversations we like.

00:28:37:02 – 00:28:47:57
Agent Palmer
We like to add to it to we love to add to it because. So there’s a part where one of Spiegelman cousins, brothers, whatever goes to Israel.

00:28:48:02 – 00:28:48:57
Bill Sweeney

00:28:49:01 – 00:29:11:36
Agent Palmer
And it’s like, well, why don’t you just go. So we’re talking about a very bad thing and people who survived. But there is in every family, well so-and-so went to the Holy Land, why didn’t you? And so we like to add these levels of guilt to the story, because someone within the family or extended family did a thing.

00:29:11:41 – 00:29:18:17
Agent Palmer
And how come you didn’t write? And it’s I know the cliche is like so-and-so is going to be a doctor or a lawyer.

00:29:18:22 – 00:29:18:43
Bill Sweeney
Right?

00:29:18:49 – 00:29:47:19
Agent Palmer
But there’s also the so and so did go to the Holy Land or like, you know, it’s just like all these, we add so many extra layers to what is already a very defined, like cultural unifying thing that we made it a circle. It’s not a dot anymore because everybody’s got a, this, a that or a cousin, an aunt, an uncle like we’ve.

00:29:47:24 – 00:29:49:32
Bill Sweeney
We’ve it’s never simple. Yeah.

00:29:49:34 – 00:29:57:28
Agent Palmer
We add to it. So like every time he takes an aside. Spiegelman. Dad I’m like, oh, I’ve heard this too. Like, it’s not.

00:29:57:36 – 00:29:57:57
Bill Sweeney
It’s not.

00:29:57:57 – 00:30:15:10
Agent Palmer
Just a survivor story I’ve heard, which is. Anyway. Look, we started at the top. There were two books, and one of them is slightly, slightly more uplifting than Maus, but not by much. By the way.

00:30:15:15 – 00:30:23:16
Bill Sweeney
Sure. Yeah. This is it’s not it’s it’s not as heavy and deep we could say that.

00:30:23:20 – 00:30:25:50
Agent Palmer
But it is dark.

00:30:25:55 – 00:30:28:14
Bill Sweeney
I would like to say. Are we shifting gears?

00:30:28:19 – 00:30:29:07
Agent Palmer
We have to because.

00:30:29:07 – 00:30:39:01
Bill Sweeney
We’re okay if we don’t want to say, I want to see if anybody that’s, like, remotely curious who’s listening. Yeah, there are things to appreciate about the art form. I would like people to experience.

00:30:39:15 – 00:30:40:02
Agent Palmer
In cat.

00:30:40:07 – 00:31:07:06
Bill Sweeney
And Maus that that are transcendent of the art form. Okay. So there’s like there’s this meta component to it. As you know, it’s quasi biographical. Art Spiegelman is unpacking his own life in his own experience with his dad through this thing. It’s a great example of how, like, how to understand comics, I guess you could say, like quietly and simply, it’s it’s doing a lot of things you can only do in comic books.

00:31:07:11 – 00:31:21:41
Bill Sweeney
Okay. So like, there’s, the representation of the Jews, it’s mice and the Nazis, it’s cats. It’s it’s anthropomorphized kind of thing. It’s got going on. It helps to soften the heaviness to a degree.

00:31:21:41 – 00:31:29:15
Agent Palmer
It also kind of ratchets up a little bit of the lightheartedness when the Jews wear cat masks to be Germans.

00:31:29:20 – 00:31:48:22
Bill Sweeney
Like the the fakers. Yeah. The ones hiding amongst right. Yeah. So the so this is the cleverness like that that comes into how the story is told. Yes. So that it is in case anyone gets the sense that it is a heavier than where.

00:31:48:27 – 00:32:19:58
Agent Palmer
Yeah, it describes not nearly as heavy as I put it in my brain as while I was putting it off for many, many years. Yeah. Which is why when Bill sent me the second book, I put it at the top of my list because I was like, I’m not going to do this again. But. Right. We know if anybody’s listening, this podcast is the reason and conversations from this podcast, maybe not a specific episode, is the reason that Bill sent me.

00:32:20:02 – 00:32:38:07
Agent Palmer
The eyes of the Dragon by Stephen King, because I think it was on this show. But I know in private when we just talk on the phone, right. I had said, I’m not really a horror guy, which I’ve said on this show many, many times, so I didn’t think I’d ever have a reason because I, you know, I don’t know enough about him.

00:32:38:12 – 00:32:44:43
Agent Palmer
So I didn’t know he wrote fantasy. Right. And so I was like, and you were like, well, here’s this one.

00:32:44:48 – 00:33:05:11
Bill Sweeney
Hit the 1 or 2 times that he did. Well, here’s his well, here’s here’s that’s yeah. My coming to suggestion. This is I remember it okay. So when we were talking about that we were talking about general authors or the fact that we both have read some Clive Barker. And so the fact that we had that was a mutual thing.

00:33:05:11 – 00:33:28:47
Bill Sweeney
But I thought it was interesting that you have read some Clive Barker stuff, who is and was touted for the longest time as the successor to Stephen King as far as horror goes. And Clive Barker’s horror stuff for most of his regular stuff is just like, headgear and and and like, more verbose in a way. Yeah.

00:33:28:48 – 00:33:54:35
Bill Sweeney
Superfluous sometimes in his execution and style. And I was just like, well, I’ll be very surprised you haven’t read any Stephen King at some point, even like some of these things that maybe, you know, are considered like his more, easily digestible, less horror based kind of things. And you were like, no, it’s I really like it. And to me it’s like, well, you’re mentioning that like, you kind of put them off to the side because he’s a horror guy.

00:33:54:39 – 00:34:02:18
Bill Sweeney
And to me, I’m like, there’s no more horror guy than Clive Barker, the guy created and directed the fucking Hellraiser movie, which I.

00:34:02:18 – 00:34:04:11
Agent Palmer
Haven’t, I haven’t watched, by the way. Like, I mean.

00:34:04:11 – 00:34:07:20
Bill Sweeney
Well, I mean, who I mean, you know enough to know that it’s whacked.

00:34:07:20 – 00:34:22:05
Agent Palmer
Okay, I mean, like, but I mean, this is the other thing. This is why it’s Clive Barker’s are hilarious overlap, right? Because I come to him from his fantasy stuff, which, which he wrote quite a bit of. And while there are maybe little bits of horror elements.

00:34:22:19 – 00:34:23:13
Bill Sweeney
It’s dark fantasy.

00:34:23:13 – 00:34:24:45
Agent Palmer
It’s dark fantasy and.

00:34:24:45 – 00:34:29:06
Bill Sweeney
It’s weird fantasy. It’s never straight. No, that’s true. It’s not knights and dragons.

00:34:29:07 – 00:34:39:57
Agent Palmer
That’s true. I mean, I sent you a magica, which I’m having read that this past year. Like, that’s a there are some dark things in there and I. Yeah. So,

00:34:40:09 – 00:34:42:44
Bill Sweeney
And we, we bonded over the great.

00:34:42:44 – 00:34:43:34
Agent Palmer
Secret show.

00:34:43:48 – 00:34:50:43
Bill Sweeney
The great and secret show, which is, like, just whacked out ness of just, you know, a million different ideas kind of all.

00:34:50:47 – 00:34:51:13
Agent Palmer
Together.

00:34:51:13 – 00:35:19:10
Bill Sweeney
Smoosh smooshing together. And it’s just this darkness, this horror, and it but it’s not like, you know, like straightforward thriller horror where it’s like a simple Stephen King is like, more of a simple setup guy, whereas Clive Barker’s like, I’ve got an entire world that is all of it. Like, it’s messed up and screwy. He’s much more of a world builder than King tends to be.

00:35:19:10 – 00:35:22:19
Bill Sweeney
Yeah. Can you? It’s like a weird idea and runs with it. Yeah, yeah. I mean.

00:35:22:23 – 00:35:40:50
Agent Palmer
You know, now that you say that, it’s specifically like I’m thinking of it. Magic for sure. But like, my favorite and first Clive Barker was Galilee, and he builds at least three different worlds. And in just that book. Yeah, yeah, I know, I know.

00:35:40:58 – 00:35:48:15
Bill Sweeney
Let me tell you something. We’ve world is about a microscopic world, not just in your carpet. I know, okay I know, and.

00:35:48:15 – 00:35:51:35
Agent Palmer
That was my second, by the way. That was my second Clive Barker.

00:35:51:40 – 00:36:06:35
Bill Sweeney
Acrobat is about like it’s like his Wizard of Oz kind of thing, but it’s all based on, like, islands. And every island is a representation of a different hour on a clock. So there’s 12 islands and like, you know, so like he he’s, he’s he’s out there.

00:36:06:35 – 00:36:07:04
Agent Palmer
Doing all right.

00:36:07:04 – 00:36:31:39
Bill Sweeney
And so like so for me to bring it back around, I was just like, oh well maybe what you need is a sampling of Stephen King. That is not his horror stuff or just something that definitely feels different. And to me it was like, well, it doesn’t get more different than eyes of the Dragon because, well, and we’ll get to the story stuff for, but for me, I meet that book.

00:36:31:44 – 00:36:34:09
Bill Sweeney
So my mother is a voracious reader in my house.

00:36:34:18 – 00:36:34:51
Agent Palmer
Okay.

00:36:34:56 – 00:37:03:03
Bill Sweeney
And when it was like fourth grade going into fifth grade, I think Tommyknockers came out. Tommyknockers is one of Stephen King’s, like, kind of most shat upon books. Okay. It was written kind of like during the heyday or the very tail end of like his drinking beer and doing coke and just writing books in a, in a in a fueled frenzy that I don’t quite remember much of.

00:37:03:03 – 00:37:21:40
Bill Sweeney
It’s kind of like how he’s quoted Tommyknockers. He’s like, I don’t remember writing most of that. Okay. And so, you know, Tommyknockers not that great. But as a kid where like, I was always reading. And so eventually I was reading ahead of my grade. And my mother was a voracious reader and had no problems with me reading anything, you know, I mean, like just.

00:37:21:40 – 00:37:36:32
Bill Sweeney
Yeah, sure read, you know what I mean? Like, my brothers kind of read too, but not as much as I did. So she was just always kind of like, yeah, read, reread. So all these Stephen King books would be around the house and they’ve all got some crazy book cover. And so I grabbed Tommyknockers and gave it a go.

00:37:36:32 – 00:37:52:14
Bill Sweeney
But like, the book’s not that great, you know what I mean? So, like, it kind of loses its steam and a little long. And what would it be like? The longest book I’d probably read at the time. So I lost steam. But at that same time now, by the time I get to that book, the Eyes of the Dragon had just come out.

00:37:52:16 – 00:38:11:17
Bill Sweeney
So she’s like, well, give this a shot instead. Okay? You know, it has some fun with this. And so I read that and I was like, oh, this is great, this is great. But I knew full well because my mother was a big Stephen King fan. But this was not his typical stuff. And like, he’s not going to turn into a, token type guy.

00:38:11:17 – 00:38:15:04
Bill Sweeney
And all of a sudden like, this is like, you’re going to see more of this. So this is a standalone thing.

00:38:15:18 – 00:38:18:12
Agent Palmer
I’m sad it is. I’m so sad it is, by the way.

00:38:18:16 – 00:38:38:28
Bill Sweeney
Yeah. So to you, I’ll say if you are interested in anything that’s similar to that from Stephen King, jump into the Dark Tower stuff. Okay. And that’s a whole separate thing. But that is his fantasy epic. That is a mash up of a lot of different genres and stuff like that. It’s his long form story. It’s like eight books, you know?

00:38:38:28 – 00:38:48:29
Bill Sweeney
And, you know, anything that length has obviously some stuff that’s like, well, you know, better than others. But yeah, to get into eyes of the Dragon.

00:38:48:29 – 00:39:15:46
Agent Palmer
Yeah, I, I so man, I tell you what. So I said the dragon. I did like it. But like I, I immediately go to like, okay, well, that might be the darkest villain I’ve ever read in a fantasy thing. Like, you know, like, it’s it’s like just just the the most evil, darkest villain. I think in just maybe in all of fantasy, I don’t know, like.

00:39:15:51 – 00:39:19:04
Bill Sweeney
It feels almost a little too dark for the story itself.

00:39:19:04 – 00:39:28:16
Agent Palmer
It’s like, you know, you know how when, like, you watch Disney movies as an adult and you’re like, there’s no way the hero wins without a miracle, right?

00:39:28:20 – 00:39:28:28
Bill Sweeney
Right.

00:39:28:31 – 00:39:36:36
Agent Palmer
That’s the way I read eyes of the Dragon. Like there’s no way they defeat him without some kind of miracle.

00:39:36:40 – 00:39:37:21
Bill Sweeney
Thing with.

00:39:37:25 – 00:39:39:21
Agent Palmer
So overpowering.

00:39:39:26 – 00:39:51:55
Bill Sweeney
Yeah, the thing with flag, that’s his name. Is that, like. Yeah, sure. Like he’s a he’s like a 400 year old wizard or something. But he might also be the devil.

00:39:51:59 – 00:39:53:47
Agent Palmer
There are, you know. Yeah, there are.

00:39:53:49 – 00:40:14:07
Bill Sweeney
You know, I mean, there’s a lot of, you know, beating around the bush and little, like, kind of like innuendos and stuff. And you know, to put it mildly, King was not done with flag. Oh. At the, at the end of this book. Oh God flag flag rears its head and I’ll just leave it at that. You know, in other in other things.

00:40:14:12 – 00:40:16:20
Bill Sweeney
In other things. Okay. Mostly Dark Tower.

00:40:16:32 – 00:40:16:52
Agent Palmer
Okay.

00:40:16:57 – 00:40:17:39
Bill Sweeney
But,

00:40:17:44 – 00:40:24:13
Agent Palmer
Yeah, because it feels like, you know, like the end of this book feels like the beginning. This feels like the beginning of a series.

00:40:24:18 – 00:40:30:05
Bill Sweeney
Yeah. It does. Like in today’s perspective, it would be like, oh, this feels like a thing. That’s like, we’re going to revisit this place.

00:40:30:10 – 00:40:31:14
Agent Palmer
We’re coming back.

00:40:31:19 – 00:40:33:45
Bill Sweeney
Yeah. We kind of really, you know.

00:40:33:50 – 00:40:35:41
Agent Palmer
But I like the, the I.

00:40:35:41 – 00:40:39:33
Bill Sweeney
Mean, it’s a it’s a clever, simple story that he wrote for his daughter.

00:40:39:37 – 00:40:39:57
Agent Palmer
Yeah.

00:40:39:57 – 00:40:40:48
Bill Sweeney
It’s the time.

00:40:40:50 – 00:40:57:59
Agent Palmer
It’s so weird. Bill, I finished this book and I, I stay away from dust jackets and back covers when I read stuff as much as possible. Because I feel like sometimes they give too much away trying to sell the story.

00:40:57:59 – 00:41:00:12
Bill Sweeney
Sometimes the trailer gives you the whole movie. Yeah.

00:41:00:12 – 00:41:03:52
Agent Palmer
You know, and so I, I, I didn’t know a lot of that stuff.

00:41:03:57 – 00:41:05:06
Bill Sweeney
Sure.

00:41:05:11 – 00:41:22:34
Agent Palmer
I will say as much as I like to this book, the story of this book is fascinating. He writes it for his daughter. He writes it because he feels pigeonholed as a horror writer in relation to, the.

00:41:22:39 – 00:41:23:13
Bill Sweeney
Success.

00:41:23:26 – 00:41:53:41
Agent Palmer
The success of other types of books. And like, that’s all they want from him. And it’s, you know, for me, that’s that’s amazing because so as an example. Right. I read through all of Leonard Dayton’s catalog. I read a few different spy series. I read nonfiction about World War Two a few times I read a weird kind of thriller ish mystery set in Hollywood.

00:41:53:45 – 00:42:27:10
Agent Palmer
Like Len Deighton as an author was not pigeonholed at any point. And he he had series he had a four series thing that was based that was what Agent Palmer was based on, or Harry Palmer was based on. He had Bernard Sampson and those were standalone. Then he did a whole bunch of nonfiction, and then I’ve got authors that I love, like Klosterman does essays, but he’s also written fiction stuff like I tend to gravitate a Barker’s all over the map, but like, I only bring this up because I’ve fallen in love with these authors that aren’t pigeonholed.

00:42:27:25 – 00:42:53:41
Agent Palmer
Right. So and I don’t I mean, Dayton’s probably the only one that kind of overlaps mostly as far as publishing dates with King. Okay. But it’s one of the things where I look at this and I go, I just feel bad for Stephen King because I’m like, I don’t know why. Ignoring the success, but like, I don’t know why he would feel pigeonholed, like he should have been a big enough name to just be like, I want to write another one of these.

00:42:53:45 – 00:43:22:14
Bill Sweeney
Well, I’ll tell you, it’s only because he was the size of writer he did that. Is that his publisher put it out? Yeah, because I think the thing, too, is just that, like, you know, the more I understand about publishing, it’s just that, like, you know, it’s it’s getting publishers sometimes when you’ve started to develop yourself will actually tell you, like, you know, you should like, I just watched a, an interview with Dean Koontz and Dean Koontz is like, you know, super, you know, prolific and all that stuff.

00:43:22:14 – 00:43:23:02
Bill Sweeney
And Koontz and.

00:43:23:02 – 00:43:50:56
Agent Palmer
Baldacci also haven’t read. So, for that matter. And if you don’t count the Patterson that, he finished the, the, the that Crichton didn’t finish eruption and Patterson did. I’ve never read Patterson like. And now now you’ve got me because of this. You’ve got me thinking like, well, you know, I can sit here on Mike and say, I’ve never read Koontz and I’ve never really read a Patterson like a true Patterson or a Baldacci.

00:43:50:56 – 00:43:58:52
Agent Palmer
You know, I’m thinking, like. But Bill did find a king I liked. So, like, there must be in with some of these other authors.

00:43:58:57 – 00:44:19:46
Bill Sweeney
I think there is. I think there’s a thing to say about Koontz is that, you know, he’s he’s another one who’s like, trying hard to not let himself get too pigeonholed because it’s like, you know, look, it just doesn’t seem to be a thing where, like, certain writers are like, look, I don’t know where the story’s coming from.

00:44:19:46 – 00:44:46:41
Bill Sweeney
I’m just chasing it, and, it is what it is. And if that means it’s outside of my normal, quote unquote, normal genre, what am I supposed to do with it? And, others stay right in their lane, you know what I mean? But what I’m going to go back to is that, like I was saying about Koontz in this interview, was like he was saying how like, he’s got to in his more recent years, he’s developed a character named Odd Thomas Thomas Odd, and the character has some interesting traits about him.

00:44:46:41 – 00:45:02:15
Bill Sweeney
Anybody is interesting, can be looked at, but his publisher was like, you know what? This is very different. We should put this to the side. And it might not even have been our Tom, so might have been something else earlier on, to be honest with you. But anyway, his publisher was like, we should put this to the side for like seven years.

00:45:02:20 – 00:45:28:51
Bill Sweeney
And when you’ve built yourself up where like, it doesn’t matter, we’ll, we’ll we could put this out. And so I think it was odd Thomas now. So the rest of the story goes that eventually he’s like well I don’t well I don’t know what to do with it. I’m finishing it. So if you’re waiting for something else to come along sooner, I’m going to finish this up and pushed back and it was like, now he’s by now he’s written like eight of those, Thomas books and without all of his other kinds of writings.

00:45:28:51 – 00:46:02:22
Bill Sweeney
But the point being that, like, he kind of like is another one where it’s like he kind of is like shifting all the time. But to bring it back to Stephen King Kings kind of wrestled with this before, where earlier on he had some stuff that’s collected into the Bachman books when he wrote his Richard Bachman. And the whole point with those four novellas was more or less that here are these kind of like grittier, not not really horror, kind of like gritty thriller type things that follow like a certain kind of set up, but like, I don’t know what to do with them, really.

00:46:02:27 – 00:46:33:24
Bill Sweeney
And, hey, is this watching? So for shits and giggles, let’s put them out on a smaller publisher under a pseudonym, okay? And like, just test, test the skills and see if people end up gravitating towards them in any particular way. And he gets found out. And basically some, bookstore clerk kind of puts it together by the copyright pages, finds the connection in the legal ease of how.

00:46:33:24 – 00:46:56:58
Bill Sweeney
Oh, yes, this definitely is Stephen King. Some people had already kind of suspected it. Okay. A couple of reviewers were like, oh, this guy is kind of like writing in that verbiage and that wheelhouse that Stephen King tends to write in. It seems like he’s very influenced by him or is just of that ilk. And this other guy was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, it’s this copyright or this author’s posted that, so I forget exactly what the what the actual detail was, but figured it out.

00:46:56:58 – 00:47:19:32
Bill Sweeney
So Stephen King was like, okay, yeah. So we put those out. Now they can come out in the collected version of the Bachman books, but you know, it’s Running Man, the Long walk rage and, road work, I think. And each like, road work is like a revenge story, I believe. Rage is a book that it’s a short story that he doesn’t publish anymore.

00:47:19:32 – 00:47:35:35
Bill Sweeney
After Columbine, he had to pull it out. And it’s basically about a young boy who kind of, like, takes his classroom hostage and, I remember reading that at the time because I was young and I was like, I know why now. Stephen King doesn’t put it in. He sure, because as of time I was like, oh, I get what this kid’s talking about.

00:47:35:39 – 00:47:51:50
Bill Sweeney
I can read, I can relate to some of this crap that he’s feeling like, you know, how you when you’re a young guy, supposedly you read catcher in the Rye and it’s like, oh, I get it. Then you read it when you’re older and you’re like, Yeah. And a long walk in the running man. Long walk has now just been made into a movie.

00:47:51:50 – 00:47:56:26
Bill Sweeney
And you know we all know the Running Man. But see they’re not horror stories or not.

00:47:56:30 – 00:47:58:24
Agent Palmer
Sequel to remakes out now.

00:47:58:24 – 00:48:17:59
Bill Sweeney
I mean I think that’s true but they’re not, you know, horror stories. Yeah. And so I think by the time I was the Dragon was a thing, you know, it’s like, well, you know, I read for my daughter and obviously I can survive the weathering of the fan backlash, which she did get because his fans were kind of used to.

00:48:18:04 – 00:48:27:38
Bill Sweeney
Well, like every year he’s putting out like some great horror book, you know, Cujo and The Shining, and you know, all these things that are very much like.

00:48:27:43 – 00:48:30:58
Agent Palmer
Well, they’re they’re considered classics now. Yeah.

00:48:31:02 – 00:48:43:16
Bill Sweeney
Yeah. And I don’t know exactly how much of like, you know, it’s been a while since I looked at the eyes of the dragon. The verbiage might be a little bit more, you know, old English speaking.

00:48:43:17 – 00:48:44:43
Agent Palmer
You know, it’s it’s.

00:48:44:44 – 00:48:46:46
Bill Sweeney
It’s it’s kind of not. It’s pretty standard.

00:48:46:46 – 00:49:08:55
Agent Palmer
It’s the the weirdest thing about it is it feels. I think I wrote this in my review, but I can’t remember like what I used specifically, but like, it feels like a story you’re telling. You’re you’re making up as you go along to a kid who doesn’t want to go to sleep because it the beginning meanders through like, you know, little by little by little.

00:49:09:06 – 00:49:17:40
Agent Palmer
But the last maybe so 80% of the book is set up, but the last 20%, everything happens. You’re like, oh, oh, oh, oh, like, it’s almost like if the.

00:49:17:40 – 00:49:19:21
Bill Sweeney
Payoff stuff is great, if.

00:49:19:21 – 00:49:38:05
Agent Palmer
You imagine him telling this story to his daughter, it’s like, oh, oh, she’s falling asleep. And and then this happened and this happened and this happened and this happened and this happened like the way it’s broken down, it would be like in a ten episode mini series on TV, it would be nine and a half.

00:49:38:05 – 00:49:43:23
Bill Sweeney
Boring kind of meandering episodes. It is a bit of that. It is a bit of that, but and.

00:49:43:23 – 00:49:47:44
Agent Palmer
That and but I like that because that’s kind of the way stories are told to kids.

00:49:47:51 – 00:49:53:58
Bill Sweeney
Like he’s got just the right amount of like foreshadowing and leaving you behind the eight ball.

00:49:53:58 – 00:49:57:37
Agent Palmer
And he just in front of it. It’s written as a narrator. He gets.

00:49:57:37 – 00:49:58:01
Bill Sweeney
To.

00:49:58:06 – 00:50:01:47
Agent Palmer
Yeah, occasionally in a little winky.

00:50:01:47 – 00:50:04:36
Bill Sweeney
It’s a little bit like the voice of the narrator’s, a little winky princess.

00:50:04:44 – 00:50:10:22
Agent Palmer
It’s almost Princess Bride ish, right? Like, do you want me to skip this? Like, not quite, but kind of.

00:50:10:27 – 00:50:28:41
Bill Sweeney
Yeah, yeah, yeah, he’s known to do that once in a while. And certain types of stories where it’s like, the narrator might just break in and say, well, folks, if you’re a little squeamish, you might want to skip the next little bit and jump to the beginning chapter where you’ll know what happened. But you don’t have to read about it if you don’t want to.

00:50:28:46 – 00:50:48:47
Bill Sweeney
And like so. And because of the nature of this particular kind of story, it’s very easy to do that because, like you said, he’s doing a very deliberate narrator who does get a little winky. Yeah. And is a little bit like, oh, and that’s when, Peter started requesting things for the top of the needle, and we’ll get back to that.

00:50:49:00 – 00:51:14:53
Bill Sweeney
Yeah. You know, and because that’s what he does, he’s like. And, you know, maybe we’ll explain why he’s doing that. Folks. And meanwhile it’s like, okay. But he does that just enough where, you know, not that the story is like really that languid because it’s not a long book, but it does position characters where it’s like, oh, like our hero is actually like trapped in a steeple for most of the story.

00:51:14:53 – 00:51:39:13
Bill Sweeney
And that’s not our hero. Oh, our hero is supposed to be the little kid, and we’re going to follow that kid. How is that kid going to stop the evil, crazy dark wizard? You know what I mean? But, like, so, like when you talk about The Princess Bride, it is of that ilk. Yeah. It’s, it’s a it’s a good amount less comedy and it’s a little bit more grown up, so.

00:51:39:13 – 00:51:47:35
Agent Palmer
But now it’s not like you’re talking about like maybe Princess like as an example, if Princess Bride is for eight year olds, this is only for ten year olds. It’s not.

00:51:47:35 – 00:51:48:45
Bill Sweeney
Yeah. Yeah. It’s it’s.

00:51:48:45 – 00:51:52:35
Agent Palmer
Degrees. Like there’s a lot you know, you grow a lot in those two years.

00:51:52:35 – 00:52:02:16
Bill Sweeney
But know you can you know, you know, I would even say maybe even a little bit older but like not by a whole lot, but I. Yeah. What you’re saying and so and and that’s the fun of it.

00:52:02:22 – 00:52:05:09
Agent Palmer
So you’re two for two, bill. You got any other?

00:52:05:14 – 00:52:28:15
Bill Sweeney
I probably do, you know. I mean, I’d have to wait and see, but I think I took something up. But I think my interest would probably to give you another Stephen King book, because the assignment that I took upon myself with this was to loosen you up just enough where I could get you to read something like two Joe or, some other book.

00:52:28:15 – 00:52:55:14
Bill Sweeney
He’s got so many books that my brain was like, the dark have all the talisman, you know, like 60 books just flashed before my eyes. But, something that’s a little bit more horror, but not as like, you know, I think the reputation, because he leaned into it so hard back in the days. Okay, you know, as much you would like to get off the American Express cards and ads and all this kinds of shit, and, like, he’s got no problem with being, like, the creepy smile and the lightning in the background.

00:52:55:14 – 00:53:18:46
Bill Sweeney
Hello, I’m Stephen King, like, you know, and it’s like, oh, okay. Creepshow. So, like, people are like, just think it’s all hard blood and guts, you know, kind of thing. And and then you get the movie versions which like these condensed things and you forget sometimes they’re like, oh, you know, the books are of anything are always better because, you know, there’s more to it that you just gets left on the floor, like.

00:53:18:51 – 00:53:19:31
Agent Palmer
Yeah.

00:53:19:36 – 00:53:43:59
Bill Sweeney
Because as much as, like, Kujo is about the dog, the story’s not about the dog. You know, the stories about the mother trying to protect her kid the whole time. And so, like, it’s a thriller, for sure, but it’s a survival tale kind of thing, you know? I mean, and Stephen King’s greatest trick is making you believe his characters and that when you’re in their heads, it’s like you’re in their heads, you know?

00:53:44:01 – 00:54:04:32
Bill Sweeney
Okay. And so it is a thing where it’s like, you know, a lot of times the, the set up be damned, but he’s the king, you know, he’s, he’s the pro at it like a simple setup. And I think his true strength comes from the fact that, like, he broke his bones, I mean, well, he did I mean, he made his bones writing short stories.

00:54:04:36 – 00:54:29:22
Bill Sweeney
So his muscles were developed in a way that’s like concentrated ideas. But the ideas tend to be really kind of like, I’ve got a I’ve got a hook of an idea and how do I unpack that? Whereas like, you know, somebody else is like, oh, like, I want to write a character study about type of person who does X, Y, and Z.

00:54:29:25 – 00:54:49:18
Bill Sweeney
Meanwhile, he’s like, I want to write about the fucking vampires, but I want it to be like my version of vampires. Sure, but he does the same magic of of of unpacking realistic characters that are just like, oh, they talk like real people. The descriptions and everything and the breakdowns and everything aren’t like heady. And so it’s like, it’s not hard reading.

00:54:49:28 – 00:54:59:25
Bill Sweeney
It’s not complicated reading. He does it. He’s not like a guy where like, oh, every two pages. It’s like, I gotta underline that word and look it up in a dictionary later, you know? Well, highly approachable.

00:54:59:25 – 00:55:20:29
Agent Palmer
Approachable. I will say it. You come to me in the right space though, right? You know, I, I talk a not a lot, but it comes up enough when I talk about books, like I’m reading all the books in my house. But as anybody who’s kind of collected books for long enough knows, like there’s some weird crap that we collect whether we mean to or not.

00:55:20:29 – 00:55:45:29
Agent Palmer
And so I think when we were having the initial conversation before you sent me eyes of the Dragon, I had said, I’m in the best reading shape of my entire life. Right. Meaning that, like I’ve read so many different things, I’m, I’m I’m in a place where. Look, and I don’t I’m not denigrating people who are like, I read romance or I read science fiction should read fantasy.

00:55:45:38 – 00:56:00:38
Agent Palmer
But like, because I’ve read so many different things by so many different authors, like, I’m almost at a point now where, you know, as far as being in reading shape, I don’t think there’s a book I couldn’t get through.

00:56:00:43 – 00:56:25:59
Bill Sweeney
Yeah, I think that’s also two. Why? Like, I kind of feel like it’s easy for me to feel comfortable with suggesting anything to you because because you do read this broad spectrum of types of book. Yeah. As opposed to people who kind of like, you know, my mother, God bless her. Like, you know, only really was reading horror, paperback, horror, thriller ish kind of stuff.

00:56:25:59 – 00:56:38:36
Bill Sweeney
You know, maybe I think some real thriller read, kind of like Patterson and all these kinds of guys at a certain point, you know what I mean? Because she was so voracious, she was just like, oh, I’ll just start reading this guy, too. I’ll start reading that guy too. Like, you’re just, you know.

00:56:38:36 – 00:56:50:01
Agent Palmer
Oh, I mean, there are definite like I mean, like, that’s one of the reasons I’m kind of thankful that not every author I really likes prolific, but it’s a slippery slope because I.

00:56:50:08 – 00:57:00:37
Bill Sweeney
Well, you were also seem to be like when you kind of start to like one of them, you turn into a completist where it’s like, well, all easily got 35 books. I could read them all.

00:57:00:37 – 00:57:10:24
Agent Palmer
Yeah, yeah. No, I get my my next potential completist, author is just insane.

00:57:10:29 – 00:57:11:26
Bill Sweeney
Why? Well, does that.

00:57:11:32 – 00:57:35:33
Agent Palmer
My second show a long time ago, I read The Source by James Michener, and this past summer I read Chesapeake and I loved it. And now I remember loving The Source two. But Michener’s we’re talking about like maybe 5700 plus books, like seven, like lost page books, right? Like, and there’s like at least 50. I mean, I don’t know, well, I guess.

00:57:35:33 – 00:58:04:22
Agent Palmer
Yeah. Yeah. And they’re all I know. They’re all like, really in-depth and really good. Sure. And I have, similar to what I did with Barker where I just got a lot of, like, a lot of a lot of books, maybe like 8 or 10. I did the same thing when I was trying to get one specific book from Michener where I was like, oh, I can buy it by itself for 20 bucks, or I can get it in a lot of eight went for less, like, all right, well.

00:58:04:22 – 00:58:07:14
Bill Sweeney
I did what what a deal, I resist. Here you go.

00:58:07:25 – 00:58:21:25
Agent Palmer
There you go. But like, if I do decide to sink my teeth into him at some point, it’s like, oh, but like, I thought Dayton was long. And like, I thought Barker had a lot of stuff. And I was like, no, not really. Like, I mean, nobody can see it, but behind me. In my.

00:58:21:25 – 00:58:22:58
Bill Sweeney
Mind, yeah, I can see it is.

00:58:23:10 – 00:58:49:31
Agent Palmer
Is my, my collection of Douglas Copeland. But like he’s not writing 500 word books. I mean the difference is maybe four of the Copeland books are similar in that they’re novels, but everything else is kind of like just whatever he wants to write. I think this goes back to a little bit of me feeling bad for Stephen King and being a little bit, and even tying it to Maus, where he was dealing with his own success.

00:58:49:36 – 00:59:17:07
Agent Palmer
One of the reasons that I try my very best to keep this, the blog, as open as possible in the podcast, as open as possible, is like, I have these conversations with you, or have a stranger on or talk business or music or whatever is because I don’t want to get trapped. Because I’m very aware that, like, if, if, if I was a Stephen King type and I got typecast into a specific thing, I would just end the podcast.

00:59:17:12 – 00:59:33:32
Agent Palmer
But you can only talk to this kind of person. I’d be like, I think I’m done right, like, and so I’m not trying to tie it all up. It just kind of comes out this way. It’s just like, that’s where I’m at right now. It’s like, all right, well, like, let’s, let’s talk to different people, let’s read different things.

00:59:33:32 – 00:59:34:04
Agent Palmer
Let’s try.

00:59:34:04 – 01:00:04:35
Bill Sweeney
And you I’ll yeah, I like what I think too, is an interesting thing too, maybe to kind of like pack it up too, is to say like, you know what I, what I like is the fact that, like, we covered two books that couldn’t be more different. Yeah. And from two creators, I couldn’t be more different. But what they do have in common is they’ve both had careers that, like, they got to express themselves in their medium any which way they wanted to.

01:00:04:40 – 01:00:26:48
Bill Sweeney
Yeah. So with Stephen King, people, you know, always surprised to find out. Oh, he wrote Shawshank Redemption and he wrote Stand by Me and, the Green Mile, you know, which is, you know, more fantastical, but it’s like, you know. And that, like, his short story collections are not always just horror short stories. The majority of them are, especially the older stuff.

01:00:26:52 – 01:00:44:41
Bill Sweeney
But like, you know, the life of Chuck that just came out, which is, you know, a mixed bag movie, maybe, but like a short story that’s like a very semi literary like. Yeah. I mean, and, so and with Art Spiegelman, I need to be reminded of this by watching the documentary. This documentary I got, it was.

01:00:44:46 – 01:00:45:26
Agent Palmer
Like, I still.

01:00:45:26 – 01:01:01:17
Bill Sweeney
Yeah, PBS put out, but like, he’s the Hebrew, he made this. And he’s also like the brain behind Garbage Pail Kids. And, folks, if that doesn’t make you want to watch the PBS doc that’s available on YouTube, you know, you’re I mean.

01:01:01:22 – 01:01:05:58
Agent Palmer
And so that moves that up to the top of my list, though. Now.

01:01:06:03 – 01:01:28:39
Bill Sweeney
But it just goes to show like, you know, don’t throw away your ideas because some idea you have because it exists outside of what you normally creatively do, you know. So like, hey, you know, maybe you will do nothing with it but chase it down, make a thing out of it. If it ends up in a drawer and ends up in a drawer.

01:01:28:44 – 01:01:48:30
Bill Sweeney
Some of King’s best stuff sat in the drawers for 20 years and then he finally pulled it out. Was like, yes, this does read like crap, but there’s good ideas in here. Let me rework it. You know, and, you know, it’s, you know, revitalize some of his stuff. And, you know, for someone like Spiegelman, you know, like I said, you went through his career and stuff and it’s like, well, here’s a lot of, like, jovial, fun shit.

01:01:48:34 – 01:02:15:44
Bill Sweeney
And then, like, most known for, you know, a series examination of the Holocaust amongst his family, you know, but, these are the kinds of things I think, that make following certain creators and the creative endeavors in general so worthwhile is just that, like over the course of someone’s lifetime as a creative, you’ll just get to see variations.

01:02:15:56 – 01:02:39:48
Agent Palmer
This is, this is that is my that is the exact reason why when I do get like really, really interested in an author or an artist, I, I go all in because most of the time, man, that journey from wherever you start to wherever you finish and all the zigs and the zags in between, like, that’s it’s very rarely a straight line.

01:02:39:53 – 01:02:44:21
Agent Palmer
Right? And if you like them, it’s always work to. Right?

01:02:44:26 – 01:03:06:58
Bill Sweeney
Always because you at least you learn something even by something that’s like, oh, like, okay, this was a little bumpy spot in their career. But like, you know, if you appreciate the process or the development of someone over the course of a lifetime, it’s like, okay, great. Like I got to take a sampling of this era or this point of their life or career where it’s like, okay, maybe didn’t hit all on all cylinders, like, but.

01:03:06:58 – 01:03:19:25
Agent Palmer
I know why what came next came next. So, right, right.

01:03:19:30 – 01:03:41:29
Agent Palmer
First, let me reiterate what Bill just said. Don’t throw away ideas that seem odd to be coming from you. You can do more than one thing. I know it seems odd in today’s content world, where everything needs to be done for a reason other than the fulfillment of doing a thing, but that is hustle culture run amuck, and you don’t have to buy into all of that.

01:03:41:34 – 01:04:02:07
Agent Palmer
You can just do something because you want to. That’s it. And do you know what else you can do? You can give your friends reading recommendations, but you can also go one step further and just send them the book. Sure, maybe some of you will put off reading for years what you could just read today, but I think it’s more likely that you won’t wait as long as I did.

01:04:02:07 – 01:04:17:03
Agent Palmer
For Maus. Bill is not just a great friend of the show. He’s a great friend of mine, but that he thinks I might like something and goes out of his way to get it into my hands, which has only been twice. But that’s a lot more than most other people who suggest a book and never follow up. There’s something to that.

01:04:17:13 – 01:04:34:22
Agent Palmer
I’ve also sent him some books too. We may or may not do so again, but let this be a lesson to you. What’s the worst that could happen? If you send your friend a book that you think they should experience, they could not like it or they could not read it. I’ll let you ponder which one is worse.

01:04:34:31 – 01:04:54:33
Agent Palmer
In the meantime, thanks for listening to The Palmer Files episode 171. And now for the official business. The Palmer Files releases every two weeks on Tuesdays. If you’re still listening, I encourage you to join the discussion. You can find all related ways to contact Bill and myself in the show notes. Bill’s internet shenanigans of the past and perhaps the future can be found at Wicked theory.com.

01:04:54:38 – 01:05:13:29
Agent Palmer
Bill Sweeney was an executive producer for this episode. The music for this episode was provided by Henno Heitur. Email and comments can be sent to this show at The Palmer Files at gmail.com. And remember, you’re home for all things. Agent Palmer is Agent palmer.com.

01:05:52:59 – 01:05:55:43
Agent Palmer
All right, bill, do you have one final question for me?

01:05:55:48 – 01:06:17:37
Bill Sweeney
Yeah. Since we’ve been talking about writing and books and stuff like that, and I know that you and I have both dabbled in writing our own stuff, and I know very well what I tend to put out when I attempt writing. I’m curious, as for you, since we mentioned this earlier, that like, you know, you’ve got a broad spectrum these days.

01:06:17:39 – 01:06:49:49
Bill Sweeney
Yes. I don’t mean necessarily older stuff necessarily. Okay. Like where you’re at now with any of that that comes to mind, do you find yourself getting ideas these days, period. And if so, like, do they tend to be more in a nonfiction type? Maybe I can write a book about this kind of thing or into like, oh, here’s an interesting idea that maybe I could do something with for fiction or like, does any or maybe that’s not really a thing that happens for you.

01:06:49:54 – 01:07:02:31
Agent Palmer
So I can it. I’ll start with this. Right? Jason Zapata has continued to bother me as far as.

01:07:02:31 – 01:07:06:06
Bill Sweeney
What I hate, what friends bother me to do, things I want to do.

01:07:06:06 – 01:07:07:20
Agent Palmer
Oh, let’s not go there.

01:07:07:20 – 01:07:11:38
Bill Sweeney
Film that can’t. You’re not the only one who does that.

01:07:11:43 – 01:07:20:08
Agent Palmer
Yeah, I did just just to peel back the curtain. I think it was a couple days ago. I, I gave Bill two hours on, like, when when are you going to start building stuff again?

01:07:20:13 – 01:07:22:08
Bill Sweeney
When are you going to get to. When do you get your crap together?

01:07:22:16 – 01:07:42:31
Agent Palmer
So, No, Zapata, you know, I I’ll, I’ll be the first to admit that usually I try and blow them off as much as possible. And just, like, let him say his piece and move on to whatever’s next. But honestly, it is a bit of like a brush off where my answer to him, because he’s like, how come you haven’t written any poetry?

01:07:42:33 – 01:08:10:04
Agent Palmer
Like, I haven’t read any verse at all, writing or even. And he’s read some of the short fiction, the short stories I wrote way back, way he way back. He’s like, but how come you haven’t written any verse? No poetry, no nothing. No, no, no fiction. And I obviously, you know, in the context of Agent Palmer, there’s one, you know, I did write that one, two, three, four challenge that sure, we were all going to do.

01:08:10:04 – 01:08:31:37
Agent Palmer
And I’m the only one who did it. That’s a whole different thing. I did a whole solo episode of that, but. So outside of that, like, I haven’t really written anything. And one of the reasons I call when Joe Potter brings it up, I do a brush off is because originally in one of my go to responses was, well, I do scratched the writing itch with the blog.

01:08:31:42 – 01:08:47:21
Agent Palmer
Anybody who’s read my stuff has to know that I’m not like I do. It is a little artistic, like there is a little bit of a flair for sometimes I’ll use some alliteration where it’s completely unnecessary or you know what I mean? Like just.

01:08:47:21 – 01:08:47:51
Bill Sweeney
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:08:47:55 – 01:08:54:32
Agent Palmer
Things I will do and I’m not talking about titles. I will do that in the paragraph in like paragraph five of 12. Right.

01:08:54:32 – 01:08:57:16
Bill Sweeney
Like, yeah, you’re having fun with it.

01:08:57:21 – 01:09:12:28
Agent Palmer
So some of it is and genuinely it’s not a brush off. Some of it genuinely is. I get it out by writing, you know, just like how come you always paint, you know, flowers. It’s like, well, I don’t feel the need to paint anything else, but.

01:09:12:35 – 01:09:31:26
Bill Sweeney
Well, well, that’s the thing I used to say about the podcast too. Was that like during that whole period, I didn’t have a lot of creative inspiration or pull because I was doing the podcast, which was a facsimile in a way. It was satiating all those things. I got to do a little graphic design. I got to hang out with friends.

01:09:31:31 – 01:09:33:16
Bill Sweeney
So. So I get that aspect.

01:09:33:16 – 01:09:59:18
Agent Palmer
But but I will say, you know, because I’ve, I’ve come clean with it, even though, thank God there’s no dates and deadlines, you know, as we’re recording this, I don’t, and probably when it releases, we’re about two years removed from me getting the first riff for a song that I wrote music to. And there are now more songs.

01:09:59:22 – 01:10:23:35
Agent Palmer
Okay. There there are there are no lyrics to this, yet. But again, I do I do want to make an album at some point. So that came out of nowhere. So apropos of nothing, right. Like the blogs, you know, decades old, the podcast is, you know, getting up there and age where, you know, in triple digits for things and all of a sudden I just find some weird riff or a collection of chords.

01:10:23:35 – 01:10:27:18
Agent Palmer
And now I have like five songs I’m technically working on.

01:10:27:23 – 01:10:28:27
Bill Sweeney
Right? Right.

01:10:28:31 – 01:10:41:47
Agent Palmer
I wasn’t searching for it. It just it just kind of happened, like up until that point. It’s not like I wasn’t playing guitar, but I’d play like a song, like, by someone else that you hear on the radio or something, right? Yeah.

01:10:41:48 – 01:10:43:11
Bill Sweeney
You were like, think a riff or whatever.

01:10:43:11 – 01:11:01:30
Agent Palmer
It just came out right, completely left field. In fact, I, I had, I had, unwittingly kind of went down the path of creating three different riffs that I was like, these don’t belong together. These should all be separate pieces of art, I guess.

01:11:01:35 – 01:11:02:31
Bill Sweeney
Yeah.

01:11:02:36 – 01:11:16:46
Agent Palmer
And it was like, all right, well, now I think I want to now, I think I, I always kind of thought about maybe doing it. But now it’s like, oh, well, now I have some pieces. I have the groundwork for like three tracks. Like if I put 12, if I get 12 of them, I can put out like, and, yeah.

01:11:16:46 – 01:11:17:55
Bill Sweeney
Hey, you know.

01:11:18:00 – 01:11:39:21
Agent Palmer
But, you know, it comes out of absolutely nowhere. That’s in fact, the fact that I have three. Well, now I have, I don’t know, 5 or 6, it’s like still beyond me, right. Like I wasn’t looking for it. I, it wasn’t like you went to Potter. Where, like, how come you don’t write your own music, right? Like.

01:11:39:26 – 01:11:56:40
Bill Sweeney
Right. I mean, it’s it’s not like it wasn’t always like a continuous hobby of yours that you were kind of, like, always chasing it. So. Yeah, it’s very it feels very kind of like you said, apropos of nothing in a way where it’s like, oh, I don’t I’m not known to be the guy who, like, comes up with songs and writes music.

01:11:56:42 – 01:12:02:50
Bill Sweeney
Yeah. I mean, it’s always been a skill you could have. So it’s, it’s it’s just I love to hear it. I want to hear it, you know?

01:12:02:50 – 01:12:20:37
Agent Palmer
But to that same extent I do because I add it to Potter’s stuff. And so I do get it. And look, maybe some of that, you know, and I’m not blaming him and I love editing his stuff because I think the collaboration that we have as like maybe poet and editor, I don’t think you get anywhere else. Right.

01:12:20:37 – 01:12:41:14
Agent Palmer
And I, I can he he sent as an example. He sent a text message to me and my wife, with like three lines. And I sent him back a note. He wasn’t looking for an had it, but I just sent him back a note like, hey, if you change these two words or one of these two words, it makes it more personal then the, the, the collective you’re talking about.

01:12:41:19 – 01:13:01:42
Agent Palmer
And in the end, he at the time he went with my edit, he made it more personal. And so I get a little bit of collaboration as far as being in verse with him and thinking about that. There is a part of me that would love to get back to it. I did try journaling. That wasn’t for me, so I don’t know.

01:13:02:27 – 01:13:19:06
Agent Palmer
I guess I, I guess my answer to you is that I’m not against any of it. I’m open to it, but it’s going to come from wherever the hell that music came from. And I wasn’t looking for it. I don’t know where, you know. So yeah, I, I’m a purist.

01:13:19:10 – 01:13:30:13
Bill Sweeney
That’s there and that’s, that’s that, that’s, that’s as good as the answer that I, I was kind of hoping for like, you know, in the back of my head, I was hoping for something like, I, I, you know, once in a while I get an idea, maybe I don’t really.

01:13:30:17 – 01:13:31:01
Agent Palmer
I do.

01:13:31:01 – 01:13:56:33
Bill Sweeney
The idea that, like, there is some kind of creative thing that is kind of going on here or there because here’s the thing. Like, I just kind of feel like it’s one of these things where it’s like it’s the old what you take in is what you pump out. So I always used to say to my mother, you know, you read so much, you could probably be a decent writer if you ever, like, wanted to, like, you know.

01:13:56:35 – 01:14:19:33
Bill Sweeney
Yeah, chase it down and, you know, she was, you know, but she wasn’t really a writer type, you know, a really creative type until, like, later on. And it was just, like, crafting stuff. But she had an arm for it, and she never really leaned into it. But, the thing I was most hoping to hear was that, there was, something going on, something rattling around.

01:14:19:34 – 01:14:47:30
Agent Palmer
I’ll say this, I, I have gotten better in the last maybe two years. Writing down ideas, period. So, like, I have, over the course of, like, a few documents to do lists, whatever, where it’s like there are probably 20 blog post ideas that I haven’t even or maybe I’ve thought about doing, or maybe some of them I did.

01:14:47:39 – 01:15:00:23
Agent Palmer
In fact, last year I wrote, my favorite Bob’s, which I followed up with favorite fictional Robert’s. Right. Like I had no problem with it. Yeah, but like, that was an idea for a while, right. And so.

01:15:00:23 – 01:15:00:48
Bill Sweeney
Right.

01:15:00:55 – 01:15:22:27
Agent Palmer
I only bring it up to say if there was an idea for a verse or a piece of fiction. I’m now in a place in my life where I would write it down. Sure, sure. Now, it took me six months to get to the Bob’s post. Like from what I initially had, the idea to when I sat down and actually wrote it out.

01:15:22:32 – 01:15:36:34
Agent Palmer
So. But I’m in a place where if I do get an idea for a short story, I will be writing it down somewhere. I’m not in a place in my life where I’m like, I’ll remember. If it’s worth remembering, it’s worth for me. I’ll remember it. It’s like, I don’t believe that.

01:15:36:39 – 01:15:39:04
Bill Sweeney
And I’m the same way, I’m same way. These days.

01:15:39:04 – 01:16:01:28
Agent Palmer
I write it all down. If I get an idea for a verse or a short story or even a novel. Yeah, I mean, I would write it down and I, you know, me, I work ahead as much as possible. And part of that is because sometimes I get a big post or a big solo thing or a big, a big whatever in my teeth that I want to work on.

01:16:01:33 – 01:16:20:00
Agent Palmer
If I’m going week to week to week, I’ll never have time for the big thing. But I’m not like as we sit here right now, I’m maybe a month out on the podcast and two months out on the blog. So if, if I did get a short story idea tonight when we hang up the mics and I wanted to spend time on it, I have that ability.

01:16:20:04 – 01:16:43:02
Agent Palmer
And that’s kind of the other reason that I try and work so far ahead so feverishly is because I don’t I don’t know what’s going to happen, and I don’t know when. And when that inspiration is going to hit. But I also know and maybe, maybe this is something that like, you know, when we talk about being creative, like when it’s flowing, let it out, like just let it out.

01:16:43:02 – 01:17:11:45
Agent Palmer
So that’s probably where somewhere in the depths of my soul, where the music came from. I would hope that given all of the reading I’m doing, I might be able to write something other than a blog post. For now, it’s enough. But I know it would be if, if the question was what I like two 100%, I would love to write another short story or a poem.

01:17:11:50 – 01:17:30:23
Agent Palmer
I just don’t have it in me. And I. I won’t even say it’s not the time. It’s just I know what it’s like to bang my head against the keyboard or the pad and paper in order to write a thing that I know I need for five weeks from now, to do it for something I don’t know what I’m going to do.

01:17:30:25 – 01:17:33:17
Agent Palmer
It is not worth it. So if the if the muse comes.

01:17:33:26 – 01:17:35:03
Bill Sweeney
I will be willing, but.

01:17:35:18 – 01:17:53:35
Agent Palmer
I’m not going to force it unless I have the idea. But I’m. But I’m open. I’m not again, I wasn’t I, I, I didn’t expect I’d ever be talking on mic about like working on writing some songs, but here we are. So, you know, I’m sure you’ll be the first to know.

01:17:53:40 – 01:17:55:05
Bill Sweeney
The door is always open. It’s never.

01:17:55:05 – 01:17:56:22
Agent Palmer
Closed. It’s always open.

–End Transcription–

This transcription was processed by PalmerTech 3.1 and may contain errors for HUMINT (human intelligence).