The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Layman’s Report by Eugene Marten

Episode Date: August 11, 2024

Layman's Report by Eugene Marten https://amzn.to/46KhV4B A disturbing, darkly funny fictionalization of the life of Fred A. Leuchter, the garage tinkerer turned execution authority who became a darling of the neo-Nazi movement, and subject of the Errol Morris documentary, Mr. Death. He comes to fix your photocopier, but really, Fred’s an inventor. At night, he goes to work. He has goals, ambitions, and when offered the task of building a better electric chair, he jumps at the chance. People have to die—he believes in the occasional necessity of evil—but what if we could kill them more humanely? A death specialist, first in his field but forever under-appreciated, he’s charmed when a new generation of fascists come calling for his expertise. A Holocaust denier is on trial in Toronto—could Fred prove the gas chambers never existed? Newspapers descend. Talking heads have their say. A documentarist makes a film. Everyone will know his name, though some things society will simply not abide. Dishonoured, discredited, disgraced. But Fred’s work does not stop, and the world may yet be reminded of the dangerous truth that some men are driven by forces far more powerful than shame. First published in 2013, this is the updated and definitive edition of Eugene Marten’s chilling masterwork of transformational historical fiction.

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Chris Voss. Chris Voss. There you go, ladies and gentlemen. We're in the Iron Lady. Things of that makes it official. Welcome to the show. As always, we appreciate you guys being here. There you go, ladies and gentlemen. We're in the Iron Lady. Things of that makes it official. Welcome to the show. As always, we appreciate you guys being here.

And as always, we prefer to show to your family, friends, and relatives. Go to goodreads.com, 4chesschrisfoss, linkedin.com, 4chesschrisfoss. Chris Foss won the TikTokity. All those crazy places on the internet. As always, we have the most amazing authors with the hottest new books coming off the shelves. Just literally flying you through the chris voss show duck there you go for we have the latest book that's coming out august 13th 2024 called layman's report by eugene martin and we're gonna be talking to him about his book it's a kind of a re-improvement of sorts and why it was popular and all that good stuff and needed that second coat of paint.

Eugene was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba to European parents, emigrated to the U.S. before the age of two and grew up in Cleveland, Ohio after stints in Oregon, New York City, Costa Rica, Texas, South Dakota, and Los Angeles. In 2014, an expert from Lay's Report earned him a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. Welcome to the show, Eugene. How are you? Thanks, Chris. I'm great and happy to be here. We appreciate the opportunity. We're happy to have you as well. Welcome back to the show. Welcome back with a book that you've restructured and re-put out again. Give us any dot-coms. Where do you want people to find you on the interwebs?

I hate to say that I have no dot-coms. I have no internet or social presence media other than email. Who hurt you on the internet? Pardon? Show me on the doll where the internet hurt you. Why don't you have... Just a lack of interest, I think, and no affinity with it. I think I might even have a slight fear of social media.

Ah, there you go. Well, it has kind of turned into something dark and dangerous. It started out really nice, but it's much like the Pandora's box sort of thing. It really is, yeah. Once it opens, you can't put the baby back. So give us a 30,000 overview of your book, Layman's Report. Okay, it's a work of fiction. It's based on a real person.

Actually, the guy's name was Fred Lutcher. In the book, he's just Fred. And he is just kind of an average, mild-mannered guy in most ways. He has certain skills. He's what we call mechanically inclined. He's good with his hands. He's sort of a self-styled inventor.

And he parlays this skill set into pretty unusual occupation, which is building, designing, and maintaining equipment that's used to execute criminals in the American prison system. Oh, wow. He actually has turned this into a small business. You know, he has a business partner, which doesn't work out well for him, but a number of employees. It works out of a storefront in a, you know, kind of little shady part of town in a Midwestern Rust Belt town. And, you know, the thing that's interesting about him, though, is he approaches this, you know, this vocation with a certain amount of humanity because it's a fact that in the prison system, capital punishment is not like a professionally done endeavor. There are no scientists or doctors or engineers involved.

It's, you know, these things are put together by, you know, by guys who might have a knack for building things, but a lot of times they don't work and the results are horrific and, you know, undocumented. And Fred approaches us with great seriousness and thinks, well, if, you know, someone's being seen out this way, then, and the state has taken it upon themselves to do it, then it shouldn't be state-sanctioned torture. It should be done as painlessly and humanely as possible on their way to see their maker, which Fred believes in. Well, he's got this going. Meanwhile, up in Canada, there's a trial about to take place in which the defendant has denied the Holocaust. He has published a work saying that the mass extermination of Jews

during World War II never happened, that the concentration camps were not made for that purpose. They were just labor camps, displacement camps, relocation, what have you. And in Canada, that's a big crime, and you can be prosecuted and sent to prison for it. This defense team decides, well, we need to prove that the Holocaust didn't happen. So all they can think of is we need to find some kind of expert who can go to the camps, or Auschwitz in this case, and look for forensic evidence as to whether or not this happened. And lo and behold, they come up with Fred. They recruit him for this purpose. He goes to Poland.

You know, he visits the camps. He gets samples, takes measurements, analysis, all this stuff. And, you know, he goes to Toronto after that to testify as an expert witness. It does not go well for him. So he publishes a report, you know, based on his purported findings, the report of the title. And, you know, after that, it's just he's gone completely down the rabbit hole, through the looking glass, however you want to put it,

and his world just turns upside down. Wow. Yeah, there you go. So there's a lot of adventure that he goes on the the don't you know this is the re how do you how would you describe this the reissued version oh yeah it's reissue or republication it is a something of a revision still the same story all the content's the same, but I'm very much a language and sentence person. And so I was able to elevate, you know, and refine the voice of the story and included a little bit of more content, but nothing as far as plot or story. Everything that happens in the original happens in this one. The reason for it being, you know, put out in this, you know, 2.0 version was

just simply the initial publication. And I use that term advisedly was done with a publisher that was just having a lot of problems. There was all sorts of incompetence, just lack of communication, just on all levels, just from typesetting to the cover to editing. And if you complained about it, he would challenge you to a fight. Oh, fist fight? Yeah, fist fight. Yeah, several times. Do you want to dance? Unquote. You want to dance? You know, he was in Michigan at the time and I was in California. You know,

I suppose we could have met halfway or something. Halfway, do you want to dance? That's usually what they say to me at the Blue Oyster Club in Police Academy. Some people will get that. I know. I was thinking, well, people actually say that. Anyway. And so it was, you know, when the book was released, it wasn't even, the layout wasn't even finished.

There were all kinds of errors. There was no marketing, no publicity. I did go to one reading in LA at the Book Soup on Sunset, and there was no marketing no publicity i did go to one reading in la at the book soup on on sunset and there was one person in the audience because there was no publicity for it but you know and she was assured me that was okay because she was a columbia grad which but turned out she was just there for a free book so it was it was a nightmare and now it's on uh you've been able to go back re-edit it yeah do some improvements maybe it was anything added that maybe you know you've put more back into the story maybe people that

read it before need to go back and see what's on there now it's it's possible you know i don't know how many people though would have even picked it up because it was it was like i said it was just below everybody's radar i think at that time that time. So I am, regardless of what happens, I'm not saying it's going to turn it into a phenomenon, but I'm just grateful to have a second go at it. Back on track. And with a really great team. Back on track.

At the PHRC. Yeah. The PRHC. There you go. So when did you become a writer? I think you've written two books, is that correct? This is the fifth. Fifth.

Okay. I found Pure Life and, oh, okay, Waste, Firework, In the Blind. And so what made you want to become a writer? How did you grow up and how did your being raised influence you? And when did you first become a writer? I was always attracted to books. According to my mother, before I could walk or talk, I was looking at books. I would leaf through the pages if I couldn't read.

If two pages were stuck together, I would pull them apart and go back. But, you know, I always wanted to do, you know, after I got the other, you know, the other boyhood aspirations, like out of the way, like astronaut, football player, priest, all that stuff. I wanted to do something creative. I was just obsessed with the idea of doing something creative. And I tried. I wanted to be a filmmaker at one time, a musician, which I have a little more talent for that. But finally, I always did have a certain ability for writing. But I think it was kind of a case of, well, if I'm good at it, well, you know, how good can it be?

And once I turned the corner, when I realized that writing and literature really is an art form, because I couldn't see it as that. I think I found this kind of perfect synthesis of all the media, you know, because like if you have film or music or whatever in, in writing and in great writing, you, you also have sound and images. Yeah. You know, I think, I think like, you know, for a while,

a writer was the last thing I wanted to be, but then it became a bit like, like Saul on the road to Tarsus. I'm, I'm the biggest convert, you know, and fanatic you could find. So now it's a question of just trying to do it right.

You know, there you go. There you go. You've got this book redone and out. What's the future hold? What are you planning for the future? For this particular book or just for me? Well, your books are for you, I suppose.

Well, I'm working on something else now. I just finished a draft of a longhand draft. I write like a couple of drafts in longhand when I first do it. It's a long book. It's kind of, for me, like a bit of an epic, I guess. Maybe not in the traditional sense of like, you know, Boris Pasternak or something. But so whatever happens with this, you know, I have not gotten tons of recognition in my, you know, career, if you want to call it that. And of course, you're going to change all that. But I'm just, i get so much joy out of it that it never discourages me from doing it it's like when i'm

sitting there you know in my little office there at my desk i'm playing with sentences getting the right sounds getting the right words together which is what it's all about for me that's just it's like playing an instrument and you know i'm at peace with the world when I'm doing that. So I won't stop no matter what happens. Until I run out, I suppose. There you go. Is there any follow-up to this book? Is maybe a book two of this?

No, to me, like, in a way, every book is a sort of unofficial sequel to whatever preceded it. No matter, it might not be obvious in terms of content or anything like that. So I don't really ever think in those terms. When something is done, it's done. I have done... Pure Life was a kind of spin-off of a character that was mentioned in Firework, who was just a peripheral.

And that turned into a full-fledged character. But it wasn't because I wanted to continue that book. And it might've happened anyway, even if the character hadn't been written. But as far as sequels or part twos or series, no, I just don't think that way. All right. It sounds good. Well, it'd be exciting to read the new version out on, let's see, August 12th, was it? 2020. Oh, 13th. 13th. There you go. August there you go august yeah i know i was thinking i was like tuesday because i was thinking what happened on monday but that's right it is the 13th i the i was switching between the audiobook and the thing so stop showing it thank you very much

for coming the show give people any dot coms or tell people where to pick up the book wherever fine books are sold i guess okay well the publisher is Strange Light, and that's it. Penguin Random House Canada, Barnes & Noble's, Amazon. It'll be in, you know, probably every Barnes & Noble in, you know, any major city. Independent stores will carry it. I'm not sure which ones. But yeah, as far as my own, I don't have my own site or, you, you know, my, I don't, I don't tweet or X or whatever they, they call it now.

It's just like, you know, have a phobia of all that, or maybe it's not a phobia. Maybe I'm just protecting myself. It's just healthy. Yeah. I mean,

it's quite the obsession to get into. It's a bit much. Yeah. It's really, yeah. Yeah. So maybe, you know,

living the real world's a whole lot nicer. So thank you very much, Eugene, for coming on the show. We really appreciate it. I appreciate it too. It was, it was, I had real world's a whole lot nicer. So thank you very much, Eugene, for coming on the show. We really appreciate it. I appreciate it, too. I had a great time. There you go.

And I'll refer our friends and neighbors, relatives, pick up the book where Refined Books are sold. Layman's Report out August 13, 2024 by Eugene Martin. Refer your friends to our websites across social media. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you guys next time. And that should have.