Conversation #16: Generator – The Ed non-Tech (EnT) Podcast

One day and one month ago I had the immense privilege of conversing with San Diego, California writer Jim Ruland… AKA… LA Times Bestselling Author, journalist, and a writer across multiple formats, platforms, and genres! His latest book Make it Stop is a work of dystopian wildness which interrogates American healthcare… and is required (summer) reading in (dystopian) times such as these!

Much gratitude and respect to Jim for joining a stranger through the Instagram DM’s for this chat! As one enthusiast to another, that is punk as fuck!*

*As per colloquial usage common to punk and associated subculture(s)

California versus British Columbia = radness, no matter how you slice it! #ednontech #bogmonstermusic

Demolishing the system! One audio-file at a time! #ednontech #bogmonstermusic

Matt’s Notes

I will cop to sitting on this interview for one month and one day… which may be longer than it took to arrange our chat in the first place!

The in’s-and-out’s of my summer have demanded attention to relocation, long unseen children, new geographical and professional environs… and so while it’s been just a month, it’s been in dogs years!

I have been a serious fan of Jim’s since reading his fascinating and passionate collaboration with Bad Religion, Do What You Want: The Story of Bad Religion. This is a case where the writing adds significantly to the story being told! It’s what all of us who have written about punk music over the years in various ways and formats aspire to! That wild, collaborative spirit is part and parcel of his book with legendary Black Flag, Circle Jerks, and Off frontman Keith Morris My Damage: The Story of a Punk Rock Survivor. The third book in this loose trilogy (as Jim put it) is about legendary and storied LA hardcore label SST Records Corporate Rock Sucks: The Rise and Fall of SST Records and it is essential reading for anybody who wants to understand the how’s and why’s and what’s and who’s of one of LA’s most daring music and cultural experiments of the past fifty years!

Furthermore, Jim is a longtime writer at Razorcake zine… and many other outlets in California, the US, and internationally! He has published short stories and a previous novel Forest of Fortune prior to last year’s excellently thoughtful and hilarious and by turns emotionally moving Make it Stop… all of which (and more!) are available through Jim’s website! He also has a Substack newsletter Message from the Underground which is highly radical and definitely worth subscribing!

This is all to say, Jim is a writer’s writer! As we discussed during the recording, a college writing course was significant in putting Jim on the path that he’s currently on… namely, a decades-long practice as a writer across a multitude of subjects, formats, and platforms! Throughout my life, I’ve had various literary outputs… poetry, short stories, longer fiction… along with whatever you’d call these podcasts! To that extent, I totally got to fanboy out hearing about Jim’s process and experiences as a legit, busy, working, published novelist, journalist, and “other”… particularly as deeply into the culture of guitar-based music as he is! When you recognize a fellow lifer for this music, it goes a long way to establishing dialogue on the quick… and I think the same can be said of the writing endeavor as well! Finally, as an English teacher setting foot back in the college classroom for the first time in nearly ten years… hearing about Jim’s formative times as a college writer really landed for me… as a writing teacher who aspires to inspire!

I’d be doing a disservice to the episode to speak further here, I think… particularly after such a long gap between recording and publishing the episode and these notes!

Much appreciation and respect to Jim for joining us! We wish you every success in your multiple literary and artistic endeavors, and we hope you’ll consider coming back soon whenever you have another project ready for public consumption!