It Could Happen Here - CZM Book Club: Locust House, by Adam Gnade (Part One of Four)

Episode Date: July 5, 2026

For our longer summer read, Margaret reads you a novella about punk houses and identity and growing up written by a master of the mediumSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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You're the only person I know that loves a yellow starburst. It's lemonade. This is Sweet 305. Here, oversharing is encouraged. Listen to Sweet 305 with Lle Pons on the IHard. radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. My husband is at a spa resort with his mistress right now, and I'm calling the hotel to confront them both.

Wait a minute, Dakota. She's calling the hotel while they're checked in together. Yeah, that's right, Sophia. And it gets worse. It's Vacate to Vacation Week on the Ok Storytime podcast, where she caught him buying gifts on Amazon and then taped the 10-page letter inside his luggage before he flew out. So she planted evidence before he even took off? And spoiler.

Two years later, karma hits so hard. He's calling his ex-wife in tears saying about his mistress. What a mistake that was. To find out what happened, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. American soccer is exploding. The knockout rounds are here. The U.S. won their group, and now every match is winner go home. I'm Tad Ramos. And I'm Tom Boger. On our podcast, Inside American Soccer, we'll talk about the real story. Discuss the tactics that actually decide matches. And give you the truth about the U.S. national team from inside the program. Whether you're a lifelong fan or this is your first World Cup.

We've got you covered. Listen, Inside American Soccer with Tom Bogart and Tab Ramos on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever you get your podcast. Allzone Media. Buclub, Buclub, club, b' club, but club, but club. Hello. And welcome. to the Cool Zone Media Book Club, the only book club where you don't have to do the reading

because I do it for you. I'm Margaret Kiljoy. That's the I in the I statements I make because this introduction is written in first person, which is the grammatical tense. And this week, we are starting another four-parter, a summer beach read for everyone anywhere near a beach, whether it's an ocean or a lake or a creek.

We're doing a four-parter, but a punk rock summer beach read, because this is one of the most punk rock stories we'll ever tell you, because it's literally about punk rockers. We did one last year. We did Hermetica by Alan Lee, aka Peter Gelderluse, and it was nice to be able to save up the episodes

for a road trip or a long hike or something. So we're going to do it again, and we're going to read another novella. This year, I'll be reading Locust House by Adam Gannati. and, okay, spoiler alert, there's not actually locusts in this. That's the name of a house. That's why it's called Locust House. This is the name of a house.

This novella nominally focuses on a punk house called Locust House and the people around it, but mostly it's a reflection on what it means to live in a place and how we hold on to what we believe when the world tries to file down your edges. It's set in the San Diego punk scene where Gannati lived for a while. And I like this book a lot. I picked this book with Hazel's help because I read it on my own for my own enjoyment. I went to see Adam speak a while ago sometime last year, and I kind of bought his entire collection of books because I was so impressed by what I saw when I saw him give a reading.

And I picked up this one because I had an intriguing title, and I sat down and I read it. And I didn't get back up until I finished it, which was, a while later, as you all will discover, because it was really good, and it made me think a lot of things. It made me feel a lot of things, and maybe you too will feel some things when I read you this story. Maybe you won't. Maybe you have a different kind of connection to 2002-era punk scenes than I do. Most people have a different connection to those things, but 2002 is when I became a punk. I didn't like punk in high school. All the punks in my high school.

There was only one and he was right wing. And he was concerned I was going left wing. So he put headphones on me. And he was like, Magpie. I'm going to pretend that was always my name. Magpie, you got to listen to this. And the lyrics of this right wing punk song were down on your knees with a gun to your head.

You're better off dead than fucking red. And that's not the punk that I cared about at all. And I didn't like punk because that guy was a jerk and I hope he's recovered from that particular version of punk rock, which is a very small portion of punk rock, especially by that time, as we've talked about a bunch on different shows in the 80s and 90s. Punk's did a really good job of removing the right-wing threat from within. If only everyone else had listened to their methodology. Anyway, in 2002, I discovered punk rock and it changed my life. And I spent a lot of time in Baltimore punk houses.

RIP to Food Not Bombs House and Love Not Bombs House, where I would go watch shows in the basement and see amazing bands sing about fighting Nazis. This is about San Diego, California, 2002. And just as a heads up for everyone listening to this, this one does contain, especially part one, contains some serious misogyny and some sexual assault, and I believe that the author has written it in a way, that is earned and a way that is worth including in the story because that is a story that so many of us have experienced. And to deny that in our writing complicate certain kinds of writing.

Not saying we should put in every style of writing, but I think that it seems like it does belong in this piece. But just as a heads up while you're listening. Without further ado, Locust House by Adam Ganadi. Chapter 1 The Adventures of Agnes McCanty Looking back, Agnes McCanty would come to see March 29th, 2002, as a day broken into three stages. One, standing at the gravesite of Michael the Bear. Two, a view of the sea from atop the roller coaster, then sex with Stephen Boone in the back room of the Halloween store.

Three, the final night on E Street, and how much she bled and how she felt like an arm held out a speeding car window. The first, standing at the gravesite of Michael the Bear in Sherman Heights, his bronze and black Keller Holland casket like a train car, eye level for a girl of five foot one, blocking out the sun which glared around it, golden but soft, dusk coming. Agnes thought of the man who lay inside, Michael the Bear, her father's uncle, an Irishman raised in England, though 40 years in the States, Pacific Grove, 10 years, Watsonville, 12, then San Diego, 18. Before that, a pub cook in Coventry, two years, then an RAF pilot in the Second World War, 26 months. Michael the Bear, the man who cared for Agnes after her mother passed away, breast cancer.

her, and her father went to jail for his brother-in-law's murder. Michael the Bear stepped in, selfless, noble, loyal to Agnes. Forever loyal is to finding characteristic. What else? He was strong, but wouldn't stoop to violence. Which he told Agnes was unbecoming, as was backbiting, complaining, self-pity, selfishness. He was classy, she decided, yes. Whatever classy meant, he was that.

This had nothing to do with money, which he had, but rather an overriding trait of his upbringing, his generation, and his content of character. Michael the Bear was a man who liked people, who quietly loved anyone fighting to do a good thing. Whatever it was, the goal mattered less than the path there. The final objective itself was unimportant, or secondary. Agonis stood at the gravesite next to her cousins, who smelled like cigarettes and sheds. shampoo, and thought of his face, dark, dignified, high forehead, crow's feet around the eyes, his hair swept back in a mane like a lion's, a voice like Liam Nesson's, deep and slow and

resonant with bass, a calm voice, husky on the W's and soft vowels, telling her she was a good woman, that she had grown up well, that he missed her around the house but understood her absence. The day he died, Agnes found the body. The door was locked, but she had a key and she stopped in on the way to ban practice the day the wildfires swept over East County. The night before, she had dreamt of skulls of sheep washing up on the beach, though huge, whale size, rolling in the surf. It was a dry day, and it was hot, and you could smell smoke and ash in the air from the blaze. Somewhere down the street, a dog barked, yipped, as she unlocked the front door. Agnes heard the sound of the breeze and the eucalyptus. She pulled the door shut behind her. The front room was quiet and still,

and there were dust motes moving in the light of the side yard window. She called his name. The mouth of the hallway was dark, a black rectangle, open, featureless. She stepped into it and called out to him again as she walked down the hall. In the bedroom, Michael the bear was under the big denim quilt. He, no not he, she thought his body, it, was facing the wall. A giant, six foot four, even at his age, a flattened mountain or a cinder cone, motionless. His body was still in a way that the living never are. The room was cold.

She dropped to her knees. Michael the Bear was 82 and it was coming Her cousin Mary Lynn said on the car ride to the cemetery But it would never happen today Some other day perhaps, not today Today would be fine He would be here today Anyway why say goodbye to the living

Why sum up your time with someone When their time has not come Hummingbird was his name for her Riding on his big shoulders at the Delmar Fair Age 4 talking in her high, piping voice, tiny hands too tight around his neck, but he didn't mind. He loved her with a burning pride, a strong, tremendous, substantial love. She couldn't hurt him.

No one could. He was a stone, a castle wall, a locked drawbridge, but a drawbridge that would open if she, or anyone worthwhile, asked. He was tough without being hard, and that was the thing that made her feel safest. Over the years Michael the Bear told Agnes some variation of the following in his slow, rolling, measured tone. Hummingbird, if you can grow up tough without becoming mean or bitter or sour or cynical, you'll do just fine. He said things like, remember hummingbird, life is about finding as much happiness as you can without hurting anyone in the process. You won't find the meaning of life, but you'll look, if you're any good,

and I know you are. What you will find is truths like that. True ways to live. That is one of mine, and it can be yours as well. Enjoy life violently, but never be violent. Violence is the tool of cowards. Agnes loved Michael the bear with a fierceness she would not begin to understand

until she was a parent herself. It was the true animal fierceness of a blind cub in a den, of the small protected by the strong. Now that he was gone, gone entirely and unavailable to her, nothing she could do would allow her to speak to him again, which is what she wanted more than anything. Less to say goodbye than to ask him where he was. She couldn't imagine him to be so far gone as to be nowhere,

as to not exist. His body, that was nothing. Where was he? Where was the big, honest, courageous, tireless spirit that was Michael the bear? A good thing like that doesn't die. And do you know what, dear reader? You know what else doesn't die? The relentless spirit of capitalism

that fills me with the holy sweetness of the products and services that support this podcast. And I am reborn in their glory. And in my eternal devotion to the ads I throw. And I throw twice an episode, approximately evenly spaced. Ads. Radio Experience. Weekend gold tickets to Illsexual.

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So this podcast lets us uncover all of that together. We're going to have these meaningful conversations with the world's most fascinating people. Like when actress Olivia Munn shared how she overcame fierce health challenges that she never saw coming. I've gone through breast cancer and then helped my mother through breast cancer, and that was more difficult. There's a lot of people who understand postpartner depression. I was not prepared for postpartum anxiety. Olympic champ Sean Johnson revealed why she had no choice but to be a gymnast.

There was something about gymnastics that was intoxicating to me. It's given me a belief that we all have one of those treasures inside of us. We just have to find it. Listen to Joy 101 with Hoda Kotby on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. American soccer is exploding. The knockout rounds are here. The U.S. won their group. And now every match is winner go home.

I'm Tad Ramos. And I'm Tom Boger. On our podcast, Inside American Soccer, we'll talk about the real storylines. I'm not worried about Policic. I'm not worried about Balagan. I'm not worried about McKinney. My only concern is what happens in the back. And give you the truth about the U.S. national team from inside the program.

It wouldn't be a huge surprise if our team ends up in the quarterfinals or potentially a great run into the semifinals. Whether you're a lifelong fan or this is your first World Cup. We've got you covered. Listen, inside American soccer with Tom Bogart and Tabramus in the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever you get your podcast. My husband is currently on a vacation with his mistress, and I'm confronting them. Tell me, Sophia, how did she even catch them?

One Amazon shopping receipt. He accidentally sent her a photo of the kid's Christmas gifts, with a delivery to another woman at the bottom. He exposed himself? That's a rookie move. Couples massages, monogrammed bath robes, and lingerie he then moored her for. So she spent four weeks gathering evidence and taped a 10-page letter inside his luggage before he flew out. In his luggage, she came to play.

And the second he landed, he blocked her. So she called the hotel room directly and got the mistress on the phone. Ooh, she got the mistress live on the phone? That is a bold move. Let's see if it pays off. Then it gets worse. He took the mistress on the Bahamas honeymoon trip he had planned with his wife. And then the mistress tagged him on Facebook, outing the fair to her entire family.

That's like a whole public confession. And spoiler, two years later, karma hits him so hard. He's calling his ex-wife in tears saying about the mistress. What a mistake that was. To find out what happened, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And we're back. And now. Safe in heaven with God, said the preacher.

He didn't know Michael the Bear. He was hired from St. Matthews by the sea, a hired man. Martin Schrader, he called him. Who is Martin Schrader? Michael Schroeder was Michael the Bear. There is no Martin Schrader. No, not here, not lying in there. Mr. Schrader, a good man in God's providence after a long, fine life.

Droning, enjoying a long pause and the sound of his own voice. But disinterested in the meaning, Agnes smelled rum on his breath on the walk across the lawn. The smell of the flowers was sickening. She wanted nothing more than to set fire to the pile of them and push the preacher down into the blaze. She wanted to burn him to cinders for giving Michael the bear an improper send-off. Stomp on his skull till it smashed flat and his brains burst out like cold pork gravy. Pull his spine from his body and beat the ground with it. Beat the ground and mourn Michael the Bear, mourn him with blood speckling her arms, misting the air.

Agnes felt like a monster. She wanted to scream. She wanted to let loose her rage until the whole world shook. Agnes couldn't be kind like Michael the Bear. Not now. She wanted violence. She wanted to be violence. The next few hours are remembered in a gauzy flash of images. They were always. They were as follows, cresting the hill of the giant dipper roller coaster in Belmont Park with her cousins Daniela and Mary Lynn after the funeral. A red-headed boy her age sitting in the coaster car next to her, who smelled like old pasta floating in a pot of water. He held the metal bar in front of him and looked seasick as they rose up the track. Earlier on the car ride back from the cemetery, the green blur of Balboa Park flashing by.

We have to kill an hour, said Mary Lynn, driving. She wore big sunglasses with white plastic frames, and her dyed blonde hair moved around her face in the breeze. Daniela leaned in from the back seat, cigarette breath. Hotboxyota the Toyota and ride the roller coaster? Hell's yeah, let's do it. Agnes? Huh?

Agnes, you want to get stoned and ride the dipper? It doesn't matter. And it didn't. Or did it? She sat in the beach parking lot while her cut. cousins laughed and passed the pipe from the front seat to the back. Did it matter? What mattered? It didn't matter.

Then, after the clacking ascent up the roller coaster track and before the plunge downwards, there was a view of the sea, silvery and wind-chopped, cold, vast, rolling with long lines of swell. It never ends, thought Agnes. Next, the drop down and her hair blowing straight back in the tightening of her stomach muscles as her cousins screamed happily, arms held up. They took the turn hard, the wheels rattling, jostling on the track, the wind in her face, gritting her jaw, strained, nauseous. Next, ditching her cousins at the amusement park in the dark of the arcade,

Agnes walked down Mission Boulevard alone with the evening traffic all around and the wind whipping her hair into her eyes. Storefronts, surf shops, beach bars, grains of sand under her shirt, shoes on the sidewalk, traffic lights in the dust. Next, asking her boyfriend Stephen for a ride home at his Uncle Carl's Halloween store. I'm sorry to ask, but... No, it's cool. That works. Come back here a sec. Here? Just come on.

Stephen took her hand and they walked past the walls of masks. Ghoulish faces, hairy, mouth is open, cut out holes for eyes, screaming silently, devil beards, worms and maggots nestling in wounds. bloody teeth fanged, rubbery, howling without sound, horrible mouths. And into the back room while Big Marcos, the new hire, sat at the register reading a comic book. There was gray light, a fading light through the windows, and Big Marcus, frowning down at the book, turning the pages with a soft, fat hand, the spider man swung through the city after the green goblin,

casting his webs left and right. Next, in the back room, Stephen shoving her forward against the counting desk on her belly. Her skirt pulled up to her waist, her panties to her ankles, and pushing up inside her before she was ready. Slower, she said. Ow, Stephen, slow down. I'm trying. Take your time. Slower.

Stephen, no, not yet, no. It was over fast. One hand on her waist, gripping, her nails digging into her flesh, the other clawing her right breast until it hurt. Her hips smacking against her. And he came into Agnes. Like a dish soap bottle squeezed into a tub of warm water, he told Big Marcus with a laugh while Agnes cleaned up in the bathroom. Agnes, she's a mess, but she's a hot little fuck, he said.

Check it, take my keys, drive her home. If you want to fuck her, you totally can. I bet she'd at least suck your dick. My brother Ted's in town. The three of us should get her drunk and try and run a train on that little bitch. Big Marcus, overwhelmed and upset by the proposition, took a smoke break before driving Agnes home. The next day he would quit Stephen's uncle's Halloween store and apply unsuccessfully

at the Claremont Party City before landing his dream job at the Karl Strauss Brewery by the freeway. Eight years later, he would add Stephen on Facebook and send him the following message. Dude, that's shit you said about your girlfriend and us having sex with her? That was so not okay. I've been thinking about that for years and I had to get it out. That was a shitty, evil thing to say. The message received no reply. and Big Marcus was promptly unfriended.

But do you know what, dear reader, do you know it will never unfriend you and what is never a gross and evil imposition eternally on our minds? It is the sacred and holy sacrament of advertisements. We are bound to the product and tethered by the services. Amen. Canadian women are looking for more.

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joy 101 with Hoda Cotby okay if you know me you know this I'm always searching for inspiration support and useful tools to help maximize joy. So this podcast lets us uncover all of that together. We're going to have these meaningful conversations with the world's most fascinating people. Like when actress Olivia Munn shared how she overcame fierce health challenges that she never saw coming. I've gone through breast cancer and then helped my mother through breast cancer and that was more difficult. There's a lot of people who understand postpartum depression. I was not prepared for postpartum anxiety. Olympic champ Sean Johnson revealed why she had no choice but to be a gymnast. There was something about gymnastics that was intoxicating to me.

It's given me a belief that we all have one of those treasures inside of us. We just have to find it. Listen to Joy 101 with Hoda Kotby on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. American soccer is exploding. The knockout rounds are here. The U.S. won their group, and now every match is winner go home. I'm Tad Ramos. And I'm Tom Boger.

On our podcast, Inside American Soccer, we'll talk about the real storylines. I'm not worried about Policic. I'm not worried about Balligan. I'm not worried about McKinney. My only concern is what happens in the back. And give you the truth about the U.S. national team from inside the program. It wouldn't be a huge surprise if our team ends up in the quarterfinals

or potentially a great run into the semifinals. Whether you're a lifelong fan or this is your. your first world cup. We've got you covered. Listen, inside American soccer with Tom Bogart and Tabramus in the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever you get your podcast. My husband is currently on a vacation with his mistress and I'm confronting them. Tell me, Sophia, how did she even catch them?

One Amazon shopping receipt. He accidentally sent her a photo of the kid's Christmas gifts with a delivery to another woman at the bottom. He exposed himself? That's a really... Rookie move. Couples massages, monogrammed bath robes, and lingerie he then moored her for. So she spent four weeks gathering evidence and taped a 10-page letter inside his luggage before he flew out.

In his luggage, she came to play. And the second he landed, he blocked her. So she called the hotel room directly and got the mistress on the phone. Ooh, she got the mistress live on the phone? That is a bold move. Let's see if it pays off. Then it gets worse. He took the mistress on the Bahamas honeymoon trip.

he had planned with his wife. And then the mistress tagged him on Facebook, outing the fair to her entire family. That's like a whole public confession. And spoiler, two years later, karma hits him so hard. He's calling his ex-wife in tears saying about the mistress,

what a mistake that was. To find out what happened, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And we're back. On the drive back to Golden Hill, Big Marcus humming along with the car stereo

while Agnes sat in the passenger seat and felt small and used up and unimportant. To clear her mind, she thought of Michael the Bear's favorite things to cook. One. Once a week, lasagna with Italian sausage. Later, as a substitution, butternut squash ravioli with brown butter sage and shaved parmesan when she quit eating meat.

For both, side of garlic bread, a spinach and cabbage salad with halved red grapes, calamatta olives, marinated artichoke hearts and goat cheese. Later, baked tofu. Two. On the rare chilly nights in the winter, they would sit around the small kitchen table

and eat thick split pea soup cooked with carrots and bacon. And later, liquid smoke or becos. On the side, sourdough bread. The serving of the bread, butter and a squeeze of lemon, a result of Michael the Bears four years at working at Bozix,

1976, 1980, a seafood restaurant. on Claremont Mesa Boulevard. Three. On summer days when it was too hot to move, he made gazpacho with a pitcher of strawberry lemonade. For dessert, peach ice cream garnished with a sprig of mint. Michael the Bear maintained what he called a victory garden,

and with San Diego's long-growing season, a good portion of each meal came from what he grew. She saw him standing at the kitchen counter at the old North Park house, slicing lemons in the late afternoon light, saying, Agnes, everyone must know how to grow their own food. When you cut yourself off from that, you shut the door on something older than history, something important and deep to our character. Agnes thought of his meals and his happiness and how serious he was as he prepared them.

She stared out the window at the growing dark, the sun set behind the car like a wall of fire consuming the earth. Don't fucking cry, she told herself, not in front of him. stopped at a traffic light across from the Nuevo Cristo church. She saw a wedding party push open the big doors and come out from the gold-lit square of the hall and down the steps, the bride in front, holding up her dress to walk. She imagined Michael the bear giving her away at her own wedding. How proud he would be and how stirred his big heart

as he answered the words, Who gives this woman away? That would be me. It was night now and the bride's gown was so white it was nearly blue, like snow glowing against her dark skin and all the black suits and dresses and gray stone around her. They made a left at the light. Isn't it kind of late in the day for a wedding? She asked Big Marcos, who drove with one hand on the wheel, the other on his right thigh, tapping along to the radio.

He shrugged. He didn't know. The singer on the radio was singing that if he could find that Haina and that Sancho that she'd found, he would pop a cap in Sancho and smack her down. and Agnes wanted to die. For the first time in her life, she wanted to die. Big Marcos dropped Agnes off at the studio apartment in Golden Hill, which sat between two Victorians in the shade of a grapefruit tree, a street lined with cars, the yellow lighted windows blinking on in the darkness.

Walking up the brick path under the trees, she heard mariachi music from the line of pink apartments across the street. Fuzzy, barely there. She could smell onions and garlic frying in by, and a voice was yelling something distant, then laughter followed by a frantic noise on the TV, the war or a riot. Sleepwalking, she opened the door,

shut it behind her, and dropped her keys on the carpet. She stepped across the bare twin-sides mattress on the floor and over her guitar and four-track machine and a pile of tapes and cables as she pulled off her clothes, then three steps to the tiny bathroom. The person in the mirror, pale skin, freckles across her nose, soft brown hair swept over her forehead and tucked behind her left ear, longer on the sides than the back,

falling into pin curls around her chin. The face was unsmiling and had empty, slate-gray eyes. She was wrung out, she decided, rung out in so much older than 22. She ran her hands across her bare shoulders, a new mole on the rise of her collarbone, the tattoo of a one-winged locust on her chest above her left breast. Agnes cupped her breasts in her hands and looked down at them, her bright pink nipples poking out from between her fingers.

She shook her head. She saw the bath mat below her feet, orange, new but starting to wear. Stevens' cum was dried on the inside of her right thigh. Her toenails were painted baby blue. She knew she was pregnant. Somehow she knew. She thought of his cock inside her and the sour smell of his body and her stomach went tight again as it had on the roller coaster.

bending down to turn the cold water knob, then the hot, hot to burn her flesh until she was able to forget. In middle school, she was called the pale whale. It was before I lost my baby fat, she told her co-worker Melanie Crenshaw, 14 years later, in the dead center of the country, Overland Park, Kansas, while they sat in the living room of Melanie's new white townhouse drinking chardonnay with a plate of untouched ritz crackers and sweet pickles. You were fat? I don't believe that.

I wasn't fat. I was... It was a kid. It was the only time in my life I had tits, but I looked awful. In high school, my first boyfriend, Travis Brodus, called me the pale princess. He meant it as a compliment, but ugh, I hated it. I hated being the pale princess, even worse than the pale whale. That's why I called the band Pale of Shit. What? Agnes? Oh my God, girl. I didn't know you played music. Was it any good? I can't imagine you in a band.

Agnes the little secretary in a band? Like what? It doesn't matter. What did it sound like? It doesn't matter. Come on! It's dumb. It was a hardcore band.

I played guitar and screamed. I screamed and played guitar. It was so dumb. Hardcore? Is that like punk? Get out. No way. You were so not in a punk band.

I was. Yeah. Pale of shit. Raising her hands above her head shaking them. Woo-hoo. Laughing. Then not. It was during college. I had my own apartment, a car that never ran. Yeah, a band. I was in a band. I was 22, and we broke up when I was, God, like 23, a year later maybe. Wow, Ags. I can't imagine you like that. What happened? Life? Growing up? I don't know. Do you still listen to that kind of music, sipping her wine, if you can call it that. No, not at all, she said.

lying. I'm not that kid anymore. The shower steamed the glass until Agnes was an outline in the mirror. She stepped into the stall and pulled the curtain closed, the plastic rings clacking. Agnes shut her eyes and let the water hit the back of her head and run down her shoulder. And that's where we're going to leave it for this week. That's the end of part one, I guess. It's not separated into parts like that exactly. But, you know, we have to separate it into parts because we make a podcast out of it. what do I want to say about this piece? Well, part one is the roughest of them. You made it through

the roughest of them. I fucking love Ganadi's prose. And there's a kind of honesty to this style of prose that I find really fascinating that to me comes out of the sort of the zine culture where people write mostly personal zines. And people started basically writing in a personal zine style of other people and writing fiction that way. And it made me realize I'd love modern literary fiction that's like about people without any demons in it except of course the human demons yeah i don't know i'll have more that i continue to want to say about this as we go but adam ganadi for a little bio about him adam ganadi's writing is released as a connected series of books and audio recordings of writing with musical accompaniment self-described as talking

songs. Aimed at creating a personal history of life as I knew it when I lived, Gennati's work is published and issued by Bread and Roses Press, 3-1G, Hello America Stereo Cassette, and the Numero group. Gennady intends his books to be seen, quote, as one long interconnected novel in the way of Proust's, I don't know, pronounce Proust's name, Proust, Proust's autobiographical writing, end quote, but obviously the aside in there was me having an aside about not knowing how to pronounce that man's name. The recorded albums, quote, should be considered a vast, hours-long soundtrack running parallel with the stories in the books, continuing plot lines and further explaining the characters as they navigate a lifetime. Recent works have included the Home and Away Quartet, which is comprised of the novels,

After Tonight Everything Will Be Different, 2022, the internet newspaper, 2023, I Wish to Say, lovely things, 2024, and your friends will carry you home, 2025. And the Talking Songs Collection, the World of Today and the World of Tomorrow, issued on cassette in 2021 and lathe cut CD in 26. On September 26th, 2020, this very year, Numero Group will reissue Gannadi's 2005 debut Talking Songs record, Run, Hide, Retreat, Surrender on 12-inch vinyl. In October of 2026, his 14th book, Wild Horse Shit will be released by Bread and Roses Press in conjunction with 3-1G.

Born in San Diego, California, Adam Ganadi now lives on a six-acre farm in rural Kansas, near the towns of Lawrence and Tenoxy, and a half an hour outside Kansas City, Missouri. And I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy, and you can find my writing every week on my newsletter, which is Margaretkilljoy.substack.com. I have a bunch of books, too, not nearly as many as Adam Ganadi, but I guess my most recent one as the immoral choir holds every voice, which is like the same, only there's demons in it. I put demons in mine.

And I'll be back next week with more locust house. Until then, remember that the urge to destroy is also a creative force. Fuck ice, free Palestine, burn every single prison of the ground, but only after we get everyone out of them. See you all soon. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com,

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