Welcome to the Deep Dive. Our mission, as always,
is to take a whole stack of compelling sources,
really cut through the noise, and just leave
you with the essential knowledge. And today,
well, we're immersing ourselves in a career that
somehow manages to connect some really, really
different extremes of 20th century culture. It's
quite a journey. It really is. If you have any
interest at all in, like, the definitive story
of the New York punk scene. Yeah. You know, that
raw, visceral time with the Velvet Underground,
Iggy Pop, the Ramones. Then you definitely know
the book Please Kill Me. And our subject today
is Gillian McCain. The co -author who really
helped shape that incredible oral history. Exactly.
But here's what makes this deep dive, I think,
so fascinating. It's the sheer, maybe unexpected
range of her work. Our sources show this major
figure in punk history. Right, a towering figure.
Who is also simultaneously a Canadian academic,
a really sophisticated prose poet, very much
plugged into the New York school literary theory.
Yeah, on top of that. And yeah, also a dedicated,
rigorous curator of forgotten photographs, you
know, with the art world. calls found art. It's
quite the spectrum, isn't it? From the noise
of the mosh pit, you could say, straight to the
quiet focus of the archive. Yeah, that's a great
way to put it. And what's really fascinating
here, and this is what we're going to track throughout
her career, is this single core idea. Synthesis.
It seems to run through everything. Synthesis?
How so? Well, think about it. Whether she's pulling
together hundreds of, you know, often conflicting
interviews for a history book. or isolating just
a few stray lines for a poem. Or even saving
an old snapshot from a flea market. Exactly.
She's always giving weight, giving value to these
discarded fragments, things others might overlook.
So our mission today is really to explore how
she became this, well, architect of counterculture
history. And how that unique way of seeing things
led her to champion this vernacular overlooked
art. Right. And the benefit for you listening
in is you get this. really complete intellectual
toolkit by the end. Yeah, we're covering a lot
the foundations of the NYC literary scene, the
origins of modern oral history as a form. The
specifics of post -beat experimental poetry,
which is its own... fascinating world and the
surprisingly deep world of collecting these forgotten
images you'll definitely walk away with a richer
sense of what it means to be an archivist of
the overlooked i think definitely so let's dive
in we should probably start with the groundwork
right her academic and literary foundations because
there may be more traditional than you'd expect
given where she ended up absolutely so gillian
mccain her roots are actually in canada bath
New Brunswick, specifically, which, you know,
feels a long way from the Bowery in New York
City. A very long way. Her initial schooling
gave her a really solid base. She got a Bachelor
of Arts in Literature from the University of
King's College in Halifax, Nova Scotia. And that
strong base, it seems, quickly propelled her
south. She made that really key move to New York
City in 1987. Right. And you have to imagine
New York at that time. What a magnet it was for
writers, for artists looking for that. That downtown
energy? Absolutely. And by 1990, she'd already
secured a Master of Arts in Literature from NYU.
So you see this mix, right? Canadian discipline,
maybe, and then this New York academic rigor.
That's her starting point, intellectually. But,
okay, something really important happens right
in the middle of that MA work. In the summer
of 88, she attends a study program at the Naropa
Institute. In Boulder, Colorado. Ah, Naropa.
Yes. For anyone who doesn't know, Naropa is hugely
significant in American letters. Founded by Chugam
Trungpa Rinpoche, a Tibetan Buddhist teacher,
but also poets Allen Ginsberg and Ann Waldman.
The beat connection. Exactly. That's famous for
its association with the beats, with developing
American avant -garde poetry, often really focused
on, you know, spontaneous writing, non -traditional
methods. So this exposure seems critical. It
shows she's absorbing classical literary theory
at NYU. But at the same time, she's embracing
this very different, experimental, maybe more
lived experience kind of poetry at Naropa. It
really sets the stage, I think, for her whole
career. Bridging that gap. between maybe the
highbrow and the lowbrow. She understood structure,
absolutely, but she also clearly understood the
power of the unfiltered, immediate voice. And
that understanding seems to have led her straight
to, well, what really was the nerve center for
experimental writing in New York at the time,
the Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church in the
Bowery? Right, an amazing institution. located
inside an active Episcopal church, which is interesting
in itself. But yeah, it was the absolute nexus
of the literary underground. And straight after
graduating, she jumps right in and basically
starts shaping the conversation there for like
the next decade. You can see it in the role she
held. The timeline shows real commitment, not
just showing up. She was program coordinator
from 91 to 94. And being program coordinator
there, I mean, that wasn't just booking readings
in that downtown scene. That meant managing some
pretty volatile personalities, probably juggling
grants, keeping the whole sometimes chaotic thing
running. Yeah, I can only imagine. And then she
shifts, becoming editor of the Poetry Project
newsletter from 94 to 95. See that shift from
managing people and events to managing and shaping
the narrative, the actual published record of
the place. And on top of that, she also edited
four issues of the literary magazine Milk, which
was... Pretty influential at the time. So she's
not just a writer observing. She's mastering
the craft of literary curation, of editing, right
there in the thick of it, in real time. If we
look back at her legacy from that period, though,
the big one has to be founding the Friday Night
Series in 1991. Ah, yes, the Friday Night Series.
What was the specific vibe of that series? Because
it sounds like it was pretty broad. It was intentionally
expensive, yeah. Hosted over 400 artists in just
four years, and it cut across every boundary
you can think of. Poetry, fiction, nonfiction,
themed readings, tributes, lectures, performance
art, even music. 400 artists in four years. Just
think about the curatorial skill needed for that.
To program that many diverse people and keep
it coherent, keep it relevant. especially in
that notoriously competitive, opinionated downtown
scene. It really takes serious vision. It became
this weekly institution that kind of normalized
mixing disciplines, you know, poetry right alongside
performance art, fiction next to music. And the
fact that it's still going today. That really
says something. It's a testament to how important
it was, how solid its foundation was in the NYC
literary infrastructure. Definitely. And that
ability, you know, to manage all those voices,
those different art forms, to synthesize that
chaos into a program people actually wanted to
come back to week after week. That's the exact
skill set, isn't it? The transferable skill she'd
immediately apply to her big nonfiction projects
later. That period at St. Mark's was her training
ground for large -scale synthesis. And we also
see a clear pivot point here. She commits to
writing full -time starting in 1995. Right. It
was also clearly a deeply personal space for
her, too, not just professional. Also. Well,
she met her future husband, the writer James
J. Marshall, right there at the Poetry Project.
They got married in 2002. Ah, okay. So it really
proves the place was more than just, you know,
a line on her resume. It was really the crucible
for her creative life and her personal life,
too. Exactly. And that pivot to full -time writing
in 95, armed with all those editorial skills,
those organizational chops honed at St. Mark's,
well, that led her straight to the project that
would pretty much define her public image for
decades. Okay, yeah. Let's get into it. The book
that, for so many people, is Gillian of Pain,
Please Kill Me. The Uncensored Oral History of
Punk. Grove Press, 1996. Co -written with Legs
McNeil. This book was, well, it was a landmark.
Before this, most rock history, especially the
counterculture stuff, it was often told, you
know, through journalists writing analytical
narratives or maybe kind of sanitized biographies.
Right, someone telling you about the scene. Exactly.
Please kill me. Yeah. Just codified a totally
different approach. The Uncensored Oral History.
The book is structured almost entirely as dialogue.
It's just chunks taken from hundreds of interviews,
letting the messy, often contradictory voices
of the people who are actually there speak for
themselves. And the subject matter. I mean, it's
the absolute core of that American counterculture
explosion. It covers such a crucial period, starting
with the formative influence of the Velvet Underground.
That primal force. Yeah. And then charting the
rise and often the fall of icons through the
70s. Iggy Pop. the New York Dolls, the Ramones.
It's volatile, complicated history, but it's
presented as just raw, unvarnished testimony.
And the impact was, well, it was immediate, explosive,
really. It wasn't just a hit book. It very quickly
became a cult classic. And it basically inspired
a whole new genre of book. The musical oral history.
Right. Suddenly, history, especially music history,
could be told is this kind of collective autobiography.
You didn't need a narrator stepping in to mediate
the experience for you. It validated the voices
from the fringes, you know, elevated their stories
to actual historical record. The praise was pretty
definitive, too. Right away, it was named a top
10 book of the year by both Time Out and the
Daily News. And look at the language they used.
Time Out New York said it ranks up there with
the great rock and roll books of all time. That's
not faint praise for just a niche music book.
That's elevating the oral history of Tunk to
the level of classic cultural literature. And
its reach was clearly global. It's been translated
and published in tons of countries. Brazil, China,
France, Germany, Japan, Russia, Italy, so many
others. Plus, excerpts ran in Vanity Fair when
it came out. That signals that even the mainstream
establishment recognized this history as essential.
It really became the definitive synthesized account
of what was, let's face it, a pretty fragmented
scene. And the energy of it, the raw energy,
it apparently translated right off the page.
In 2011, a French director, Mathieu Bauer, took
the whole text and adapted it into a stage show.
a punk musical. Wow, a musical based on the oral
history. Yeah, which was then toured by the Nouveau
Theatre Montreuil. It just speaks to the, I guess,
the inherent theatricality and the enduring raw
power that she and McNeil captured in collecting
all those interviews. Now here's where we really
see McCain's core philosophy, that idea of synthesis,
demonstrated again, but with a massive thematic
shift. Her next major collaboration with Legs
McNeil in 2014 was Dear Nobody. The True Diary
of Mary Rose. Right. This one maintains that
commitment to the uncensored voice, that raw
truth. But it pivots completely away from famous
rock stars to someone completely anonymous and
tragically so. It seems like a huge leap, doesn't
it? From celebrated documented rock royalty to
an unknown teenager's private struggles. Was
that seen as a gamble? Commercially? Critically?
Was there any pushback about potentially exploiting
a painful personal story? That's a really important
question. And from what our sources suggest,
the reception was largely positive. And I think
it's because the editorial philosophy stayed
consistent. Okay. How so? Just like Please Kill
Me compiled all those different, sometimes conflicting
accounts from punk rockers to try and find the
truth of the scene. Dear Dendy. Nobody compiles
and edits the actual journal entries of one specific
person. A 17 -year -old Pennsylvania teenager
named Mary Rose. Detailing her struggles with
addiction, alcoholism, and also cystic fibrosis,
right? Exactly. So the goal is the same in a
way. Present an unmediated raw truth. Let the
voice speak for itself. So the common thread
isn't fame, it's... It's documenting these marginalized
voices, voices kind of fighting against the void,
whether they're doing it with electric guitars
or, you know, a pen and a diary. I think that's
it precisely. Publishers Weekly called it a rare,
no holds barred documentation of an American
teenager's life written for no audience but herself.
Written for no audience but herself. That phrase
really elevates it, doesn't it? It makes it the
ultimate found historical document. Something
never intended for public eyes, but revealing
this searing truth about, well, contemporary
American life for some people. It was also specifically
praised, and this is interesting, as being the
true version of that famous 1971 novel, Go Ask
Alice. Ah, right. Which was presented as a real
diary. But later revealed to be fiction. Exactly.
So Dear Nobody, in a sense, gave an authentic
voice to a type of tragedy that had previously
been fictionalized. It restored that commitment
to reality, to the actual found document. And
the way people talked about the book seems to
confirm its cultural weight. The diarist Mary
Rose was famously described on WNYC -FM, I think
it was during an interview with McCain and Mary
Rose's mother back in 2014, as the Jane Austen
of juvenile delinquents. Wow. The Jane Austen
of juvenile delinquents. That's quite a phrase.
It really is. It elevates this raw, painful,
private testimony. It recognizes that the emotional
depth, the observational detail found in these
private fragments is profound enough to stand
alongside great literature. Okay, so we have
her curating hundreds of public voices into a
historical narrative, Please Kill Me, then curating
one private voice into this powerful literary
document, Dear Nobody. Now we need to pivot again,
because at the same time, she's focusing on an
even smaller unit of language, the poetic line
in her own poetry. Right. It's amazing, isn't
it? While managing these huge nonfiction projects,
she's also rigorously developing her own poetic
voice. She started out apparently interested
in free verse. Pretty standard. And then? But
then her studies with the poet Larry Fagan, who
was a significant figure himself, influenced
her to pivot towards the very specific structure
of prose poetry. We should probably pause there
for a second just to clarify what prose poetry
actually means for listeners who might not be
familiar. It's not just, you know, poetry printed
like a paragraph. Oh, absolutely not. No. Prose
poetry is a really specific hybrid form. It rejects
the traditional line breaks, the sort of rhythmic
scaffolding of verse, but it tries to keep the
density, the compression, the heightened imagery
of poetry. So it looks like prose on the page.
Right. But it feels like poetry when you read
it. It aims to blend that maybe musical quality
of poetry with the visual flow of prose. Often
it's quite fragmented, maybe diaristic, focused
on intense moments rather than, you know, big
narrative arcs. So her first book of poetry in
this style, Tilt, comes out in 1996, which is
the exact same year that Please Kill Me drops.
Incredible bandwidth, right. Managing two massive,
structurally demanding projects at the exact
same time. One collecting external voices, the
other crafting her own. And Tilt, you said, is
deeply connected to the New York School of Poetry
Aesthetic. Very much so, yeah. To really get
the analysis of her work, we need to quickly
touch on what defined that movement. You know,
the figures like Frank O 'Hara, John Ashbery.
Okay, so what are the key characteristics of
the New York School? Well, broadly speaking,
it's known for its urbanity. It's kind of anti
-academic stance sometimes, and especially its
focus on the immediate, often mundane. details
of daily life. Like diary entries almost. Sort
of, yeah. Diaristic observations, spontaneous
images popping up, a rejection of the big formal
themes that maybe earlier poetic schools liked.
And McCain's work fits right in. Tilt is described
as reflecting the day -to -day chaos and intensity
of New York life. And noted for its chatty, detached
style. Exactly, that immediate observational
style. It perfectly mirrors the kind of fragmented
snapshot quality we see later in her visual art
curation. And here's where it gets really interesting
conceptually, I think. Because the critical praise
for Tilt, it almost creates this bridge linking
her poetry to her later work with found photos.
How so? Well, the poet John Ashbery himself,
you know, one of the giants of the New York school,
he gave this amazing quote about Tilt. He said,
McCain's poems are like urgent telegrams from
the next door or oddly but brilliantly cropped
snapshots of a life that is going by. Brilliantly
cropped snapshots. Let's just hold on to that
phrase for a second, because that feels like
the conceptual key, doesn't it? It really was.
Ashbery saw right back then that the way she
presented these language fragments. isolated,
framed moments. It was basically a form of visual
curation. The meaning was in the editing and
the framing, just like a curator deciding which
photo to hang on a wall. The small piece, the
isolated fragment, whether it's a line of text
or a moment caught on film, it contains the whole
story. Exactly. And the praise for this style
was high. Harry Matthews, another respective
author and poet, called Tilt, a brilliant collection
of prose poems. She followed that up with a second
collection, Religion, in 1999. Right. And the
poet Mark Wallace, reviewing it in the Poetry
Project newsletter, he really nailed her technique,
I think. Yeah. Especially highlighting that critical
distance she maintains. What did he say? He noted
her work has that characteristic, I did this,
then I did that New York school immediacy, you
know, that fast observational present tense kind
of flow. He says she undermines it with ironic
distance that collapses any naive faith in the
immediate as a source of value. That ironic distance
that feels key to her being such a good editor
and archivist, too, doesn't it? Whether she's
editing hundreds of interviews for Please Kill
Me or compiling her own observations in a poem,
she pulls back slightly. Right. She lets the
fragment speak for itself. She doesn't over explain
or over sentimentalize the material. It's kind
of the opposite of self -indulgence in a way.
And her actual process for writing poetry, it
reinforces this whole idea of finding and curating
fragments. She famously calls writing poetry
treasure hunting. Treasure hunting. I like that.
Yeah. Her method involves actively grabbing lines
from outside sources, like conversations she
overhears on the street, random lines pulled
out of books, magazines, newspapers. So she's
literally collecting the discarded language of
the world around her. giving these verbal castoffs
new value, new context within her poems. Exactly.
She's treating language itself like it's a found
object, which is fascinating because it means
her poetry isn't solely about like internal emotional
expression. It's much more about external observation
and assembly. Putting things together. Precisely.
And the Encyclopedia of the New York School Poets
actually synthesized the bigger meaning of this
method really well. It said her prose manages
to be both playful and deadly serious in its
criticism of its form. Okay. Criticism of form.
The forms of contemporary society and the forms
of opposition to society. So she's using this
prose poem structure, this highly fragmented
found object way of writing to implicitly critique
the more organized formal structures of society
itself. It's quite sophisticated. And this focus
on shared voice, on fragmented experience, it
carries on into her later work, too, right? Like
that collaboration Descent of the Dolls, part
one in 2017, which she wrote with Jeffrey Conway
and David Trinidad. Right. The very fact that
it's collaborative reinforces that idea that
the strongest voice for her, perhaps. is often
a synthesized one, a collective one, not just
a single authorial voice. Okay, so we've tracked
her journey from coordinating the New York scene
to being this major punk historian synthesizing
hundreds of voices to being a prose poet collecting
found language. Now we shift to the third major
part of her work, which is maybe the most visual,
the most tangible. Her collection and curation
of physical fragments found photography. Yes,
and this is where all those conceptual threads
we've been pulling really come together visually.
She specializes in found photographs. Let's just
define that concept clearly. Found photographs
are basically vernacular images, everyday pictures
that have been, well, forgotten, discarded, orphaned,
lost, stolen. maybe bought at flea markets or
estate sales. There are snapshots that were once
incredibly meaningful to a specific person or
family, right? But now they're just artifacts
floating free of their original context. It really
is the visual equivalent of her grabbing an overheard
line for a poem, isn't it? Or using a raw anecdote
in the punk history. These are the spontaneous,
unmediated expressions of everyday life, usually
without any high art pretensions. Exactly. They
capture real moments. Awfully accidentally beautiful
or maybe just strange in a way that maybe a professional
photographer aiming for perfection might miss.
And her dedication to these orphaned images led
to a major exhibition and a book both called
H .L .P .M .E. back in 2010. She co -curated
this show, selecting photos from her own collection
with the artist Megan Kump. When it was exhibited
at the Gallery of the Camera Club of New York.
Her collection itself is incredibly broad in
terms of format, which really shows her archival
passion. It includes things like early tin types.
Wow, really early stuff. Yeah, and formal cabinet
cards from the 19th century, right up through
instant Polaroids and more modern snapshots.
She's not just collecting pictures. She's collecting
the physical history of everyday photography
itself, making sure these forgotten moments get
preserved. And this artistic effort got validated
pretty quickly. Vince Aletti, who's a very respected
photography critic for The New Yorker, he reviewed
the show and called it exhilarating. Exhilarating.
That's strong praise. It really validates the
idea that these anonymous, discarded, often accidental
images, they can be elevated to high artistic
merit, but it takes that thoughtful curatorial
eye. Letty's specific comments are really telling,
too, because they highlight the kind of bizarre
reality that vernacular photos often capture.
He noted that images of rifles, costumes, and
injuries crop up repeatedly. Rifles, costumes,
and injuries. That's the uncensored life again,
isn't it? The inherent weirdness of everyday
American life caught outside of the usual posed
family portraits. Right. And Aleti concluded
that there was no real theme, only plenty of
diverting quirkiness and inspiration. And that
idea that the randomness is the theme that feels
essential to her whole project. It forces you,
the viewer, to kind of construct your... own
meaning your own narrative from the fragments
she provides just like reading please kill me
where you have to synthesize the history from
all those conflicting voices it becomes a shared
act of creation between the curator and the audience
exactly and the international appeal of her collection
was highlighted too it was featured in the december
2010 issue of the big french magazine photo so
the appeal of these universal yet totally anonymous
moments Clearly crosses borders. Also in 2010,
she published another collaboration focused on
found images. But this one added a really interesting
digital, almost collective element. 50 photos
found by Fang with text by the hound. Ah, yes.
This project is great because it merges her literary
side, her curatorial side, and her personal life
so beautifully. Fang is the nickname, the sobriquet,
for McCain herself, the finder, the collector.
And the hound. That's her husband, James Marshall.
he provided the text descriptions for the photos
okay so the structure here sounds pretty complex
very interactive especially for 2010 reflecting
how media was changing it's her found photos
paired with descriptions by marshall and crucially
also paired with commentary from readers of his
popular music website because the photos were
initially posted online there Ah, so it's not
just found art, it's collectively interpreted
art by this anonymous digital community. That
really is the ultimate exercise in synthesizing
fragmented visuals and fragmented digital voices.
Totally. And to get a feel for the sheer compelling
strangeness of the content, there's a great quote
from Joe Bonomo's blog, No Such Thing As Was.
What did he say? He described the book as this
incredible collage of life. He wrote, In 50 photos
found, there's young love, old love, doubtful
love, drinking, hamming, military life, beach
bums, and barflies. Okay, a real slice of life.
Nudie posters on the wall, maybe pimps, parties,
teenagers, bedrooms, and basements. A generous
slice of living enacted by mysterious strangers
caught in perpetuity doing strange things, or
things so ordinary that they become strange.
Things so ordinary that they become strange.
That line just perfectly encapulates the whole
aesthetic, doesn't it? The goal of looking at...
vernacular art? It really does. It's about pulling
significance out of the mundane, capturing those
fleeting moments that, as Bonomo says, blink
and you'd miss it. It's the visual equivalent
of her collecting that overheard conversation
for a poem. It's really an exercise in deep attention.
And her collection has kept drawing attention
from both literary and art worlds, sort of cementing
her role as a key archivist of this kind of material.
Yeah, it was featured in Lid Magazine in 2012
in a section called Sleepwalking. photographs
from the collection of Gillian McCain, and images
were also featured in the Columbia Poetry Review
in 2014. Her curation, her act of selecting and
presenting these images, is consistently recognized
as being almost a form of literature itself.
So, okay, if we step back now and look at the
whole arc of this incredible career, what's the
big unifying idea? We started with, you know,
punk rock chaos and academic rigor, and we ended
up looking at anonymous family photos and overheard
snippets of dialogue. I think the unity is absolutely
in the methodology. This whole deep dive into
Gillian McCain's work, it reviews this powerful
lifelong practice of collection, editing and
synthesis. And maybe most importantly, giving
enduring value to things that other people might
have deemed abandoned or maybe even worthless.
Right. She collected. hundreds of competing stories
for Please Kill Me. She collected these disparate
bits of language for her poems, and she collected
these visual fragments, these orphaned photos
for her exhibitions. She consistently acts as
this archivist of the overlooked. She gives weight
and significance to fragments, to previously
discarded voices or artifacts, whether that's
a punk rocker's crude anecdote about some filthy
hotel. Or a struggling teenager's incredibly
painful diary entry about addiction. Or just
a blurry, forgotten Polaroid snapshot found at
a flea market. She sees the value in all of it.
So the big takeaway here for you, the listener,
is maybe that her work teaches us something important.
That the greatest insights, whether you're trying
to write history or poetry or even just understand
art, they're often found not in the big, grand
narratives. But in the seemingly random stuff,
the overlooked things, the things that, like
Bonomo said, blink and you'd miss them, it takes
a certain kind of editorial eye, I think, to
be able to spot the truth hidden in the wreckage,
so to speak. And that leads us perfectly into
our final provocative thought for you to chew
on. Given her deep commitment to capturing the
raw, the uncensored voice that fragmented maybe
accidental truth of a moment, we have to think
about how her method applies now. Right. We live
in an age of just unprecedented digital debris,
don't we? Billions of forgotten social media
posts, blurry phone pics, abandoned digital diaries.
So what new forms of found art are being created
and maybe instantly discarded every single day
in the digital realm? And how will future curators,
future archivists, applying McCain's kind of
ethos of synthesis and preservation, how will
they ever manage to sift through that absolutely
endless stream of digital fragments to find the
pieces that have enduring power and meaning?
That's a huge question. And maybe answering that
and perhaps... seeking out your own overlooked
fragments in the world around you is your task
until the next deep dive. Thanks for joining
us as we explored the incredible, really multifaceted
career of Gillian McCain.