"Please Step Back" a novel by Ben Greenman

Ben Greenman, author of Please Step Back (Melville House) spills his inner-most in an interview with uber-hipster “L” magazine. There you can learn that the language of his main character, Rock Foxx (loosely based on ’60’s great Sly Stone) is inspired by Joseph Conrad. “Weirdly, in my mind, I kept coming back to Conrad — Joseph Conrad, not Conrad Janis, because there’s an almost hallucinatory intensity in his work,” says Greenman.

“L” asks some insightful questions, like, was the “most fun thing about writing a book like Please Step Back ….making up all the band names and song and album titles?” Is it hard and/or fun to write about sex and drugs? Is it better to be a genius who flames out, or one who lives on?

To which Greenman enlightens us with his theory of “punking history”, “fast-burning stars over the stars who persist,” and what Henry James has to do with it all.