Episode 9: Dana Spiotta with Lucas Hare

In this episode of Rock is Lit, Dana Spiotta joins me to talk about her National Book Award-nominated novel ‘Eat the Document’. Later, Lucas Hare, co-host of the Is It Rolling, Bob? Talking Dylan Podcast, joins me to share his thoughts about Bob Dylan’s unreleased documentary called ‘Eat the Document’, which is where Dana’s novel gets its title.

Episode 9 Promo

Dana Spiotta

Dana Spiotta is the author of five novels, most recently ‘Wayward’, which was a ‘New York Times’ Critics' Top Book of the Year. She has been a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. She was a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Rome Prize, the St. Francis College Literary Prize, and the John Updike Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

 She lives in Central New York and teaches in the Syracuse University MFA program.

Lucas Hare

Photo by Jane Paszkiewicz

Lucas Hare is an actor and, with Kerry Shale, co-host of the podcast Is It Rolling, Bob? Talking Dylan.

About This Episode

HIGHLIGHTS:

DANA

• What Dana’s reaction would be if she could meet Paul McCartney

• The extensive research she did for her novel ‘Eat the Document’

• Our thoughts on the question that’s central to the novel: Can you really reinvent yourself?

• Famous real-life 1960s and 1970s militant groups and fugitives, such as Katherine Ann Power and Bill Ayers

• Why Dana chose ‘Eat the Document’, the unreleased documentary about Bob Dylan’s 1966 UK tour, as the title of her novel

• Our shared love of Gram Parsons, the band Love, Bob Dylan, and music and literature and film in general

• My short story about Gram Parsons, “Grievous Angel,” published in ‘Still: The Journal’

• Dana’s connection to legendary film director Francis Ford Coppola

• The allure of underground and lost films and bootleg records like The Beach Boys’ ‘Smile’, which one of the characters in her novel is obsessed with

• Why denigrating someone’s obsession and passion is really s@&*$*

• Dana’s Largehearted Boy playlist for ‘Eat the Document’

• What we really think of Mike Love

LUCAS

• What Bob Dylan’s career looked like in 1966, the year the documentary ‘Eat the Document’ was filmed

• Dylan’s 1966 UK tour

• Dylan’s 1966 motorcycle accident

• Context for the film ‘Eat the Document’ and why it was never released

MUSIC AND MEDIA IN THE EPISODE IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE:

1. Clip of Beatlemania: “I love you, Paul!”   

2. “You’re My Everything” by Diana Ross and Marvin Gaye

3. “I Shall Be Released” by Flying Burrito Brothers with Gram Parsons

4. “Who Are You” by The Who

5. “Eve of Destruction” by Barry McGuire

6. “Farewell My Friend” by Dennis Wilson

7. “Alone Again Or” by Love

8. “Heroes and Villains” by The Beach Boys

9. “Little Hands” by Alexander “Skip” Spence

10. “Return of the Grievous Angel” by Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris

11. “Our Prayer” by The Beach Boys

12. “If You See Her, Say Hello” by Bob Dylan

13. “Like a Rolling Stone” by Bob Dylan—live, “Judas!”

14. Clip from ‘Eat the Document’—John Lennon and Bob Dylan in car 1966

15. “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere” by Bob Dylan

16. “I Shall Be Released” by Bob Dylan

LINKS:

Dana Spiotta website, https://danaspiotta.com/

‘Eat the Document’ playlist at Largehearted Boy, http://www.largeheartedboy.com/blog/archive/2007/01/book_notes_dana.html

Is It Rolling, Bob? Talking Dylan Podcast, https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/is-it-rolling-bob-talking-dylan/id1437321669

Link to “Grievous Angel” short story about Gram Parsons by Christy Alexander Hallberg, http://stilljournal.net/christy-alexander-hallberg-fiction2021.php

Rock is Lit mascot Wyatt pondering the brilliance of ‘Eat the Document’