Interviewed by Lindsey Pharr
In his introduction to that venerable doorstopper of an anthology, The Art of the Personal Essay, Phillip Lopate says the writer of a personal essay “seems to be speaking directly into your ear, confiding everything from gossip to wisdom.”
Brian Lee Knopp is not so much confiding in the readers of his new collection, Dreams I’m Never Gonna See: The Takeover of WDIZ Rock 100/FM and Other Essays (Cosmic Pigbite Press; 2024) as he is inviting us to conspire.
Like some rock’n’roll pied piper, Knopp leans out the window of a deathtrap ’79 Plymouth Fire Arrow, beckons us into its Aqua-Net fogged interior, and away we go. Down sizzling Florida blacktop, winding Appalachian backroads, always careening around the hairpin turns of his unconventional mind.
The essays in this collection run the gamut from the guerilla tactics-inspired hijinks of the Ida Lupino Liberation Organization to reflections on the art of Thomas Kinkade, with several stops between to contemplate the wildness within. His devotion to this inner wildness drives the collection: Knopp’s experience of mind-melding with a wolf, his admiration of oddball heroes like Philippe Petit and Christopher Smart, his horror when the subterranean machinations of Disney World are revealed in all their dystopian glory.
Dreams I’m Never Gonna See is a misfit anthem. It’s one for the makers of what the late, great John Lewis called “good trouble”, a power ballad for the chaotic good inside us that howls for a better world. I got to catch up with Knopp over email and ask him a few questions…
Lindsey Pharr: At your recent author event at Malaprops Bookstore in Asheville, North Carolina, you described this essay collection as an “oops baby.” Would you care to elaborate on that?
Brian Lee Knopp: Yeah, this was an “oops book.” It was neither the book I had intended to publish in 2024, or even one that I thought was possible at the time. At the end of 2023 and up until the spring of 2024, I had been working on several writing projects: an illustrated fable celebrating neurodivergence; a short story; and ghost writing a true crime book. First my illustrator bailed on the fable. Then I bailed on the short story (for the present). And my true crime client put the brakes on her book. The doubloon I had nailed to the mast was for a book published in 2024. So I wrote some new essays, selected others that had been published previously, and slap! Wahhh! The Oops Book was born.
Pharr: What was it like speaking for the collective members of the Ida Lupino Liberation Organization? I’d love to hear more about how you balanced your own experience with the recollections of the rest of your fellow “True Believers” while writing the book’s title essay.
Knopp: I am very proud to have been a member of the ILLO, and prouder, still, to have finally brought the 1981 takeover of WDIZ Rock 100 to light. I was “the word geek” even back then (read: the consummate bullshit artist). So the other members were glad to have someone else finally put the story together. I had conferred with the other members, pooled and verified our respective recollections. When The Ace (Tim Boylan) died in August 2023, the surviving members felt the story should get more attention than a Facebook “remember when?” anecdote, and hopefully, it will and already has.
Screenshot
Pharr: The essays in this collection span the course of a couple decades. How do you think your writing has evolved from when you wrote “Building the Perfect Mouse or How Pinocchio Gave Abe Lincoln His Chance” to today?
Knopp: I think I’ve finally accepted the dwindling attention span—or rather the diminishing attententive time and space—for even the most dedicated readers. So I hope my writing is tighter, more edgy, less obsessed with adjectives.
Pharr: Mayhem in Mayberry was the top seller at Malaprops in 2010, a mighty success for an indie-published book. What advice would you give authors who plan to go the indie publishing route?
Knopp: Self-publishing was something I fell into, so I don’t know if I am either the best spokesperson for or skeptic against it. With Mayhem in Mayberry I was committed to taking the well-worn path of collecting rejections innumerable, but a mysterious and near fatal illness compelled me to self-publish or perish unpublished—literally—and so Cosmic Pigbite Press was born. And it worked out rather well for me, so I did it again with Dreams I’m Never Gonna See.
Speaking only from my own experience, I think if you keep your expectations lower than your fear of failure, you won’t be disappointed. As primarily a nonfiction writer, I share the same imperative as The Whos in Whoville: “WE ARE HERE! WE ARE HERE!” We are all looking and hoping for the right Horton(s) to hear us. You know the old saying in the music industry that on any given night, the band you are watching and listening to might be the greatest band ever? That is what I have striven for in writing: that somewhere somehow some reader might think something I wrote was the best they had ever read about the piece’s particular theme or experience.
Self-publishing allows me to focus more on craft, more on how to please the reader and and less on how to please all the minions involved in the book industry. That could be a recipe for disaster and dark anonymity, for sure. But so far so good, even if it is only a means to an end. Mark Twain, Margaret Atwood, E.L. James, Beatrix Potter, Rupi Kaur, James Redfield—all self-published one time or another in their creative lives.
Pharr: Which writers have influenced you the most in creating your authorial voice?
Knopp: Ah, you know, I have usually dodged that question, or complicated it so much with overthinking that my answer was a complete mess, like trying to pick up one fishhook out of a bowl of fishhooks. But I am older now, no more places to hide and less energy to find new ones. So… here goes.
The first culprit would be James Herriot, the Scottish veterinarian and author of All Creatures Great and Small. Dickens and Steinbeck, for sure, but not so much stylistically but rather as an outlook on life and championing the underdogs. Ken Kesey—huge huge influence. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest—the struggle of one working class man standing up against The Combine—informed all of my life choices if not all of my writing endeavors. My favorite author quotation and daily writing philosophy comes from Kesey, a line taken from Sometimes a Great Notion: “The job of a writer is to kiss no ass, no matter how big and holy and white and powerful and tempting.”
Pharr: What’s next for Brian Lee Knopp aka Thing One?
Knopp: Find an illustrator for my fable. Finish my short story. Write some more personal essays. Keep getting into and back out of trouble.
(Editor’s Note: Knopp’s Hippocampus Magazine essay, “The Toughest Texan” (March 2024), has since been adapted to the radio via a reading on NPR’s Snap Judgement. Listen to it here.)
Lindsey Pharr (she/her) lives and writes in the woods outside of Asheville, North Carolina. She received her MFA from the Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing. Her work has been published in River Teeth, Southeastern Review, SmokeLong Quarterly, and elsewhere. A full list of her publications may be found on her website: www.lindsey-pharr.com.
