With his band Oxbow, Eugene Robinson has become known for his simple, primal lyrics howled over increasingly complex arrangements and for his fearsome live performances. But with his first novel, A Long Slow Screw, the howls have been translated to a new format, and live readings take the place of the concert hall.
In his novel, a tough crime saga set in late-1970s New York, Robinson draws upon his experiences as a former bodybuilder and bouncer, previously detailed in his wonderfully titled Fight: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Ass-Kicking But Were Afraid You’d Get Your Ass Kicked For Asking.
As Robinson explains about writing fiction, “We all, that is all of us who dare to do so, draw on our own experiences.” He captures the spirit of the era through the raw intensity of his prose, a sense of energy derived from his lifelong devotion to fighting.
Writing in one format after years of writing in another can be difficult, but Robinson explains how, for him, writing a novel differs from songwriting: “With my lyrics, I have striven to make them simpler, simpler, simpler. With my books? The exact opposite. Or rather: more complex while seeming simple versus the other way is what I am looking at. But you know, if you’re actually reading a novel, you’re willing to give it more time than a record, and so I exercise that luxury.”
Of course, a novel is not the same as a song, but perhaps they’re not all that different. Robinson’s book is a noir-inflected story of a bank heist that goes from bad to worse, a sort of Raymond Chandler roughed up for a new era, and its hard-boiled narration recalls that immediacy and edge of Oxbow’s music.
Speaking of that, Robinson’s live shows are an event not to be missed. With a passel of musicians backing up his beat-inspired dramatizations of the novel, the live show performs a crucial element in drawing the reader in and bringing the story to vivid, snarling life. These shows provoke a variety of reactions, as Robinson recalls: “When I did a thing in Texas and some guy said he had gone to his truck to get his gun [because] he was so upset, I figured I was onto something.”
And like the music of Oxbow, A Long Slow Screw is meant to be a heady rush, a plunge into a world that many of us would never touch, but one that Robinson seems intimately familiar with and is ready to lead us through.
Looking back on his work, Robinson notes the importance of the novel as a unique art form, even in today’s climate of Twitter updates and blog entries: “Any idiot with a pen can write a poem and get up on stage and screech out some sort of paean to grand self-involvement. But a novel — the maligned novel at this point — is still, I think, the top of the mountain, involving as it does a constant and continual application of effort.”
“And there really are so few good ones,” he adds. “It seems [that] if you are tough enough, you must write one.”
With that challenge, I ask if he is going to write more novels. The answer? “Of course.”
Eugene never fails to surprise.