Matthue Roth: Losers, a novel

2008-12-15T09:58:00.000-08:00

"Charming and irresistible...a quick, lovable read." - Metro (link)

Jupiter’s parents emigrated from Russia when he was seven years old. Now, at 14, he’s feeling the burn. He doesn’t understand what he’s doing wrong—why broom-closet rendezvouses with girls don’t seem to be happening, why his teachers can’t understand his English, and why he and his best friend Vadim can’t seem to fit in, either with the indie-music-obsessed Americans or the otherworldly, leather-jacket cool Russians kids at school.

Maybe it has to do with their X-Men addiction and their near-obsessive behavior reading the blogs of their classmates. Or maybe it has to do with life dealing Jupiter the worst hand of cards ever. He’s named after a dead Roman god, his hair is on permanent Jew-fro status, and his parents live in the only housing that the Philadelphia Jewish Federation could find them—the top floor of an industrial warehouse.

Then Jupiter discovers the city. And then, forced to become a social animal by his sudden accidental sidekicks—a speed freak who’s never touched drugs in his life, a gay metalhead named Bates, and the most untouchably hot JAP in East Falls—Jupiter turns into the most popular kid in school. And realizes that, maybe, being a loser isn’t so bad...if he can just figure out how to stop being so popular.

Losers is the new novel by Matthue Roth, an “Orthodox paradox” (J Magazine) — a Hasidic Jew who embraces the modern world, who’s filmed for MTV (Rock the Vote) and HBO (Def Poetry Jam) as a performance poet. His first book, Never Mind the Goldbergs, was about an Orthodox punk-rock girl who ran away to Hollywood and starred on a TV sitcom. It was named one of the Best Books for the Teen Age by the New York Public Library and a Popular Paperback in Religion by the American Library Association, and nominated as an ALA Best Book.

DVD extras - Chapter 4: A Night Like This

2008-11-18T17:56:00.000-08:00

Another Cure chapter. The song "A Night Like This" is a beautiful song in its own right, track 8 on "The Head on the Door," which some poet-friends in Melbourne performed a track-by-track jam of poems influenced by the songs. But there's another Cure song that my best friend Mike put on a mixtape for me that was just Robert Smith's voice and a brilliant string section and tympani drums that's called something like "Other Nights Like This" -- the handwriting was scratchy. I never remembered to ask him, and now it's too late. Now the tape's broken, and I keep googling the first words, but I can't find anything.
At bad parties, the only people there are your friends; at good parties, everyone in the universe is there. David wrote: Isn't it the opposite - aren't the best parties the ones where your best friends are? But all my favorite parties have been equal parts people you love, people you hate, and people you start to love when you get in that hazy, sleep-deprived zone of 2-3-4 A.M. when you're all sitting together and heads are rolling around.
“I can’t deal with Flaming Orgasm -- it sounds absolutely gross. Just make me a Sex on the Beach.” I have heard this line. Numerous times. No -- serial times.
When I move, you move. What? It's a line from a song? Thanks, I hadn't realized -- no, I give due props to Mr. Chris Bridges in the credits. While we definitely have our differences of opinion, especially as far as "Pimpin' All Over the World," I think he has a really wild handle on vernacular language (I have a weird fascination about how he spells mouth "mouf") -- and the moment was too perfect. The description of Devin teaching Jupe how to speak is one of the most sensual passages I think I've ever written. And, hey, in the music video, they're even partying in a factory.
Crash Goldberg. His name is probably influenced by Crash Mansion, a concert space in New York; my novel Never Mind the Goldbergs; two friends from Central named Wurm and Snorey the Miserable; and a dream I had once. But the most influential part was probably Jody, my editor on Candy in Action -- Candy's last name was originally Resnick, which was also the last name of one of the stars of Goldbergs. She said, you can't do that! I told her it's going to be a crossover -- they're first cousins, and one day Candy is going to have to protect Moish's girlfriend. Jody put her foot down. But I was like, no way -- and, dammit, one day you're gonna see how Crash fits into Goldbergs reality.
Self-braggery: I got a string of three solid smile-faces from David with no changes in between. Here:
- Since then, Reg had moved on to bigger and better while I had somehow managed to stay true to my loser roots.
- "That’s Crash Goldberg. You know him, I guess—Crash, get your hands off her, she’s gay!—and these are the guys."
-
- I don’t even know why you’re the greatest but you are, man."
Margie's reappearance. I know this is a mystery story, and one of those did-it-happen? things that authors love to do, but it really happens, too. In the Northeast especially. There are only like 50 kids in the entire 350,000-person neighborhood, and you always run into each other. Especially the mystifyingly beautiful people who you don't know. And it gets progressively more awkward.

<- 3. yards and yards away

Chapter 5 is on its way...if you're wondering anything, write and ask.

Press & Praise

2008-10-02T08:40:00.000-07:00

actual press

Metro
"Charming and irresistible...a quick, lovable read."

Presentense
Losers is quintessentially an American story, a tale of immigration and acculturation, of generational differences and of coming to terms with one’s “baggage” — be it social,cultural, or religious.

Helium
"More than a little crazy....There are universal life truths in here in this short and unputdownable book."

More Bullies in More Books by C.J. Bott
Um, yay? Jupiter and Bates were mentioned in this book: "Jupiter Glazer and his parents left Russia seven years ago and now live in an empty warehouse outside Philadelphia. Now in junior high, Jupiter wants to avoid the insane bully Bates and find a way to fit in. For him, the first step is to lose his accent."

Teen Book Review
"It rocks. It’s hilarious. It’s more than a little crazy, yet manages to ring true. There are universal life truths in here among Jupiter’s escapades, and you’ll find yourself rooting for Jupiter wholeheartedly. And the writing! Even funnier. Descriptive and gritty and captivating. Matthue Roth can write."

Bookami
"As the volumes of YA novels published each year continue to grow, it's going to be less and less about what happens, and more about how you say it, and I think Matthue Roth knows how to say it."

Forward
They like me ("charming," "idiosyncratic") but most of the review is spent discussing how I'm not like Philip Roth. Which, duh -- I could've told you that.

JVibe
"The book manages without a lot of plot or adventure to keep readers glued...What defines being a 'loser' isn't an environment, but an attitude."

YA New York
"What’s amazing about Matthue’s book is that it’s not only funny, but also a pretty decent breakdown of high school cliques. Of how the people in them are maybe not so evil. Of how everyone, even the bullies, are just trying to find a place for themselves."

The Bloody Snow
"Losers...shows that not all kids want or like to be popular, that some strive for something more meaningful, and that awkwardness is an art form. The resulting product is a story of not only meaning, but also hilarity."

interviews / guest appearances
YA New York
"I always wanted to live in a factory. I actually really wanted to move into the basement, which was a big area that had a few couches and a lot of pillows and some seventies furniture that no one had used for years. I thought the wall would be filled with books and the floors would be filled with gigantic Lego sculptures. I spent a lot of time alone as a kid."

Middler Books and More "[Losers] rang true to me...a sensitive and broad exploration of the post-immigrant experience, socio-economic labeling, and the normal emergence of male sexuality (no pun intended) without any graphic sex or promiscuity."

Oy!Chicago
"Over the course of the book, [Jupiter] learns and makes connections with people. That’s religion to me, this process of discovery where you never actually discover anything –the process is where the love is."

Jewlicious: The Losers interview
Shemspeed: Are you aware that people are going to now be making Loser jokes to/with you from now till you are 120?
Matthue: Are you kidding? I’m the one who started most of them. Good thing the sequel is called “#1 Hottest Rock Star On the Planet.”

Primal Scream Therapy
A five-part series between me and Marty Beckerman, the author of Dumbocracy, in which we alternately pat each other on the back and rip each other to shreds.
"In one of the first chapters, this girl teaches him how to flirt by teaching him how to lose his accent, and it's a scene I'm hugely proud of -- not because it's masterful or well-structured or anything, but because, well, Jupiter is so overwhelmingly bad at whatever he does."

Daylife
This is the blog of Alex DiFiori, photographer and Philly punk. "Okay, I'm NOT jealous of Alex getting to grow up on the single hottest block of Center City Philadelphia. I just think it's something about each other that we can't totally relate to. Like being black (him, not me). Or having fashion sense (him, not me). Or knowing how to shoot amazing....okay, you get the point.

Chapter 3: Yards and Yards Away

2008-09-29T04:15:00.000-07:00

Death Eats Everything: I wrote a short story - first called "Vampire Velvet White;" I think it's retitled "Rob Roy's Last Night in Northeast Philadelphia - about a goth/industrial/freaky underage club that opens in the Northeast (which is what the Yards is called in real life). It's published in the slipstream sci-fi/music anthology One Step Beyond - anyway, in the story, nobody's sure what Joshua's new band is called, a death metal band that covers John Denver songs. At some point, they're almost convinced it's named Death Eats Everything.
Liz Gozner. Yes, she's a real person. Liz's name popped into my head from the beginning, when I was trying to alphabetize Glazer together with something. She was the roommate and possibly BFF of Rachel Kate Bair, one of the best writers I'd ever met, who I'd been trying to track down for years. I figured putting Liz's name in the book was like a distress flare. I actually managed to get in touch with RKB independent of that -- she's doing great, which is awesome, but hasn't written in forever, which kind of scares me -- but it was too late to change and, besides, Liz is awesome.
The chapter title is supposed to be an allusion to a song by the D.C.-based band Rites of Spring, which was actually called "In Silence/Words Away." It's one of those lyrics that you think is there until you actually go through the song, line by line, and realize it wasn't.
Mr. Denisof Half tribute to Alexis Denisof, who played Wesley Wyndham-Price on Buffy, and half evil slam at him for being Willow's boyfriend. Because nobody will ever be good enough for Willow. (Yes, I realize that (a) she's not Willow in real life and (b) it's totally unfair to coflate them. But, c'mon, it's freaking Willow.)
When Jupiter goes outside thinking it's the end of last period and, really, it's the beginning of last period....totally manufactured. It's never happened to anyone I know personally. Especially not, uh, me.
Ms. Fortinbras' role is a tiny tribute to all the teachers I've ever had who are both saintly and hot -- the ones who swoop in and rescue you from all manner of trouble with that down-to-earth wisdom, and who you are totally harboring a secret crush on because 30 years old is not that far away from 18.
U really going? I never thought that cool kids used words like "u." This was always a mark of hip-osity for me: writing "yr" for "your" was punk-rock, and therefore respectable; writing "ur" was the equivalent of wearing pink and sequins. (And not in an ironic way, either.) But then I've started corresponding with Joshua Gee, who was kind of the source for Jupiter (or, anyway, parts of Jupiter), and he writes "u" constantly. I don't know. It's a dilemma.

<- 2. the waitress 4. a night like this ->

Chapter 4 is on its way...if you're wondering anything, write and ask.

Chapter 2: The Waitress

2008-09-12T10:19:00.000-07:00

The Country Club Diner. Yes, this is a real place. No, this did not happen there. Yes, there have been waitresses with the same gum-poppin' 'tude as Margie in the book. Yes, there were waitresses who worked there who were named things like BERTHA and MARGIE. No, I did not get with them either.
The Waitress is one of those titles that isn't taken from a Cure song. It's a Tori Amos song, off her second album, Under the Pink, which I got as a present the week it came out for my 14th birthday from Alissa Epstein. The party was in my parents' basement, which pretty much tells you everything you need to know about when I turned 14.
“Whaddyawant?”....I counted the words in my head. What. Do. You. Want. Four words, and she’d managed to condense it into a single syllable. There had to be a Nobel Prize category for that. I grew up speaking this way. Really. (I don't sound like that anymore -- well, not really -- if you're really curious, check out some spoken-word concerts from the Internet Archive.
Sometimes I hate to know what characters look like, and sometimes I'm desperate for more. But this ain't called the DVD extras for nothing. Not that this has anything in common with real life -- so let me hereby state for the record, legally or otherwise, that "Losers," the character of Jupiter Glazer, and people who end up living in warehouses has nothing in common with reality, and as far as I know, nobody's ever lived here.

But we used to drive by this factory all the time when I was a kid, and it's right near my bubbie and zaida's house, and this is where I figured Jupiter would live right from the start:

You can't really see it, but note as best as you can the shiny, smoky windows....imagine staring straight up at about 50 feet of them. Gorgeousness.
Where the Wild Things Are: There are a few things I try to work into every book. One of them is a character whose name is almost Matthue. I won't tell you the others,, but they're pretty easy to figure out. I don't think there's a Maurice Sendak ref in every book, but I can think of at least three offhand.

<<< 1. speak my langugage ... 3. yards and yards away >>>

About Matthue

2008-09-08T04:16:00.000-07:00

Matthue Roth is a performance poet, and the author of the novels Candy in Action and Never Mind the Goldbergs, and the memoir Yom Kippur a Go-Go.

He's filmed for HBO’s Def Poetry Jam and Rock the Vote, performed with Deepak Chopra and Carlos Santana, and completed three national tours with his own brand of poetry that isn’t quite hip-hop and isn’t quite storytelling, but still manages to be funny and sweet and brutal and brutally honest. He’s lectured and performed at high schools and universities nationwide -- including, bizarrely, Yale and Harvard, neither of which he was accepted to -- and tours regularly.

You can find out about books Matthue's been published in or his performance poetry or even Matthue's science-fiction hip-hop band. Or you can just go to his secret online diary at www.matthue.com and poke around.

*
* *

The novel Candy in Action sets forth a worldview so unlikely that it can’t help but ring true: a world where James Bond is a sexually vulnerable gay man, the Penchen Lama metes out fashion advice, teenage computer hackers who live in Goldilocks towers are rescued by MySpace-surfing supermodels, and the most spiritual awakening of all occurs to the least traditional of characters: to the bimbo-ey blond who’s so popular that she can’t help but feel alienated.

And all of this comes from, perhaps, the most unlikely place of all: from the mind of a straight, twentysomething Hasidic punk-rock boy. Matthue Roth was prompted to write Candy after a friend was stalked and raped. After the incident, he says, she felt withdrawn, depressed, but most of all powerless—powerless to stop it, but also powerless to do anything else.

“This book is kind of my fantasy,” he says. “Not of what could have happened, but of how I wish we could’ve expressed ourselves. It was more a coping mechanism, a dream of what could happen in another universe…a universe where real life drops into kung-fu battles at the drop of a dime.”

Candy in Action is Matthue Roth’s take on fourth-wave feminism -- a feminism that’s going to come from the most unlikely of places.

a night like this

2008-09-08T03:57:00.000-07:00

Right across from my bedroom window was the rooftop of the next factory over. I could never get the window to close all the way, and even in the summer there were drafts that kept me up late at night. Where else in the universe got drafts in the summer? Only the Yards, I guess—only inside this little piece of heaven in the shape of an industrial warehouse. So I was meticulous about oiling my window twice a month (I borrowed some castor oil from the assembly line downstairs), and that night when I pushed the window open, the hinges flipped open without a sound.

It was a four-foot drop to the roof next door. Fortunately, the walls hugged each other tight. Not more than six inches separated the two buildings. My feet touched down. From there, I used a ladder that went from the roof to the ground.

Once my feet touched pavement, I was running free.

The address from Devin Murray’s website was a few blocks away. Mostly I used the back alleys. In a few, people were out, sitting on bridge chairs around a streetlight or a backyard light, playing cards or listening to beat-up boom boxes or just chilling out in wifebeater shirts and sandals. I almost stumbled over Mr. Diggory, the wino who sometimes slept out here, but realized I was about to step on a breathing stomach and jumped a foot to the left, knocking over his wine bottle. I stopped and reached into my pocket for change to replace it, but he started to chuckle. “Don’t worry about it, kid,” he told me, not unkindly, as he dusted off his pants. “You probably done me a favor, anyway.”

That was one of the things I liked about the Yards: No matter how screwed up everyone was, we all still met each other’s eye.

You could see the party from blocks away. My first indication of its existence was a bunch of lost-looking kids in club clothes looking at a printed-out set of directions on a corner. On an opposing corner, some drug dealers that I went to middle school with last year were laughing at them. The air was cool, stiff like winter, as if signaling the approach of an oncoming cold. Tonight seemed especially foreboding—the beginning of school, the first weekend of a new social scene, all of this curious information about my new high school’s online underground social calendar.

*

You know the difference between bad parties and good parties? At bad parties, the only people there are your friends; at good parties, everyone in the universe is there. And this party definitely, definitely had everyone. Tonya Murray certainly knew how to network. The trance kids were spinning music, the AV nerds were projecting a lightshow on the wall, and the jocks were busy trying to lift a massive, sumo wrestler-sized beer keg out of the back of one of their minivans. So far, the effort was being met with little luck. Not that it mattered. Sajit, the class’s token gay stay-up-and-party prima donna, was tending bar, mixing lavishly-colored drinks into elaborate martini glasses, serving them up and trying to lecture people on each drink’s name and social relevancy. Right now, a bunch of the soccer team girls were staring him down, looking disgusted while he tried to convince one of them to try a Flaming Orgasm. “Forget it,” said one girl, finally. “I can’t deal with that name -- it sounds absolutely gross. Just make me a Sex on the Beach.”

I breathed a sigh of relief. Sajit was the closest thing to a friend I had here. We grew up in the Yards together and, in elementary school, we used to get beat up together. We rarely actually hung out together, but common black eyes was the sort of bond you don’t just take for granted.

“Jupiter, my dear friend,” he said once he saw me, following up his words by wrapping an arm around me and taking me behind the bar. “How in the hell did you end up at a dump like this?”

“I live in a dump like this, Sajit,” I said, looking around to see if anybody heard. “You’ve been to my house, remember?”

“Honey, do you think that tonight just happened?” Sajit asked. I knew he was exaggerating his Pollyanna ’tude for the night, but I think he was only doing it for the effect. “Tonight is a gift from heaven. You might live around the corner from here, but tonight, you get to pretend you have no idea where the hell you are.” He pointed at my chest, then turned over his hand, cupped it, and blew into it like he was blowing pixie dust all over me.

“What do you mean?” I asked, knowing full well what Sajit meant, but feeling the need to keep him talking, to hold onto my conversation partner and to keep pretending that I knew what was going on here.

“You could be from downtown, South Philly, East Falls, even. You could have borrowed your parents’ car, or rented one of those limos outside. It’s the first weekend of school. Nobody here even knows who you are — oh, Jupiter, don’t look like that; nobody in this place is going to recognize you from that scene with Bates. It’s too dark and mood-lit. And, even if they do, whose side do you think they’ll be on? Forget about the first first impression you made. Right now is when you make your real first impression. You’re already wearing the coolest clothes of anyone here.”

“What, jeans and a black t-shirt?”

“What, do you not read Vogue?” Without waiting for an answer, Sajit took me by the shoulders, spun me around, and gave me a soft kick on the butt with his foot. “Now, stop talking to me and get out there and mingle.”

DVD extras - Chapter 1: Speak My Language

2008-09-06T23:24:00.000-07:00

Jupiter's name is actually Russian, although nobody believes this. It means "Jupiter." (It's pronounced "Yupiter," but it means the same thing.) I always knew he was going to have a weird name, and I didn't go into his name having chosen it; I just started writing. I figured, if I'm gonna put this kid through hell, the least I owe him is a name any geek would die for.
geeky Russian sweatpants - That is, $4.99 sweat pants, always in gray or navy blue, that you get at the local Marshall's, Kmart, or store of comparable embarrassing-when-you-walk-out-of-it factor.
Chapter titles: Most of them are named for songs by the Cure. The whole book is kind of a tribute to my best friend, who died recently, who only listened to five bands, and three of them were the Cure. There are two chapters that aren't. Those, I'll leave you to figure out (for now, anyway).
The spectacular Ms. Marie, a librarian in New York, writes in:
i told my life with the thrill kill kult tonight that one of the characters in your book is wearing one of their shirts within the first few pages. And they asked me "what's the name of the book?" and I said "Losers" and they said "oh great, that just about sums it up" and i said "oh, but the character isnt a loser, he's a gay metal head"
And they found it a compliment.
Nail and Anarchia. Nail is a name and a character I totally lifted from my friend CAConrad's genius book Advanced Elvis Course, which has since been sold to Soft Skull Books and is coming out this spring. (I'm super excited -- my friend Annalisa gave me the ms right before I got on a plane to move to San Francisco, and this is the only book I read for 3 months after moving there. I read it again and again.) Anarchia used to be named Lxuren, until David The Editor said that it looked like a typo and was unpronounceable anyway.
The girls' soccer team: My locker in high school was right across, right across, from the girls' locker room. Anyone else would kill to have this locker. I almost died of embarrassment. Every day of 9th grade, promptly during my big switch-up from 20-pound Bio book to 20-pound Algebra book, the girls' field hockey team wound stream out of those doors, uniforms aflutter, and I felt like a perv for just being in the same hallway.
Chapter 2 (and a little bit of chapter 1) were originally excerpted in the anthology This is PUSH. There are a bunch of things -- the line "My head slammed against the locker door" -- that I had written one way, and David The Editor changed to something else the first time around. Then, when we were working on the novel, I handed it in with his change s already made, and he said "wouldn't they sound better like this?" and it was the way I'd originally written it. Ha.

2. the waitress ->

Buy a Loser

2008-09-06T23:06:00.001-07:00

free: pre-order Losers from Matthue and get a bonus zine with an exclusive Jupiter story! Not available much longer...

Here's where you can buy yourself a copy. If you use the links below to go to Amazon or Powell's, I get a microscopic cut of the sale - which is still a cut, so that's cool. I recommend buying from me - I'll send it out doubleplus quick, and I'll throw in some fun stuff, too. There are also some other things I wrote in the main store, so check that out, too.

{buy from me} {buy from Amazon} {buy from Powells}