Interview w/ Dane Johns, Author of The Futile

I became friends with Dane Johns around 2008-09. I was just 16 years old and started a small music venue in West Frankfort, Illinois called The Creature with some friends. I wanted to get his band Alliswell to play on that stage. They eventually did at our Halloween show. They were awesome and it was a big thrill for me to have my favorite local band play at my tiny little venue. We developed a friendship after that exchanging facebook messages and texts about our favorite bands and other topics that honestly haven’t changed too much over the years. They’ve only gotten more nuanced and thoughtful. He’s seen me grow up from a teenager to a dad. I’ve seen him grow from a new uncertain dad to a confident father of three.

When he told me he was starting to write a novel I knew that it would be good. Not because I’m his friend and I’m blindly supportive of anything creative he would want to do. It was because he has the sensitivity and work ethic to write a novel that could take you into a world and create characters you care about. He cares about details. emotion, and making people glad they spent time with his art. His music is known for its lyrics. He tells a full sweeping story with just a few lines.

It's time for us to face the facts

that some of us are meant for shame more than glory

that some of us are meant to play the townspeople

in the background of someone else's more interesting story.

There’s a kindness to Dane that is evident upon meeting him. He always greets with a smile and an open heart and ear to whatever you would like to say. He has a never ending generosity of spirit that can be infectious. I am personally more cynical and easy to let something question whether someone I’m around is worth my time or someone I don’t like. Dane would never do that. It would take years for him to get to a place where he might think poorly of someone without adding in a disparaging fact about himself first. He always sees himself in other people. Both a quality of trying to understand them and make sure he keeps himself in check. He has more empathy than anyone else I’ve ever met. All while still focusing on bettering himself.

His best qualities are what makes a good book. A book that greets you, welcomes you into the world, keeps your attention and your interest when you might want to feel uncomfortable or bored. Not making you feel any negative feelings without interrogating why you might be feeling that. You’re always in it together. He isn’t steering you someplace to confront you or make you deal with something you aren’t ready for at this moment. He will challenge you, but he knows you can handle it because he challenged himself first. He makes books for those who want to dive into a world and think about every facet and who just want to enjoy a fascinating story. He is a true blue author with talent, effort, and adaptability it takes to create something substantial.

I was honored he wanted to be interviewed by me.

Check out https://www.danecjohns.com/books or https://linktr.ee/danejohns to buy his book.

M - The opening quote from The Futile is from The Best Ever Death Metal Band Out of Denton by The Mountain Goats. I can feel John Darnielle’s influence throughout this book. What is something from that great song that you wanted to convey in your novel?

D - In just over two and a half minutes, Darnielle captures what I’m trying to get across in 85,000 words & 310 pages, which is this spirit of friendship, honest creativity, and rebellion. There’s just a purity in Jeff and Cyrus (the two protagonists of “Best Ever Death Metal Band”) practicing in Jeff’s bedroom, debating their band names, designing their band logos, and dreaming their big dreams. Just picturing that is inspiring. I wanted the five members of The Futile to embody both that innocence and fearless determination. I think that's where anyone who is trying to make anything really starts. It's only along the way that we lose that and I don't want that to happen to them. I don't want it to happen to me either.

M - The painting We Will Not Become What We Mean to You hangs in the Chicago Art Museum. What did that painting initially make you feel and think, and how did it come into play in writing this book?

D - The phrase is what stopped me. If you’re not paying attention, the black and white picture would be pretty easy to walk right past, especially when considering all the other bright, graphic, attention-grabbing stuff in the Modern Art wing. But then that phrase, We Will Not Become What We Mean to You, in smaller font on the lower third of the picture of the shawl on a woman with only the bottom half of her face visible. It made me think about the woman in the picture. What limitations were placed on her that she was required to wear the shawl? Maybe she wanted to cover up like that to keep men from leering at her in order to keep herself safe. Maybe she felt like it was expected of her to fit in. Allowing those questions to expand outward to how women must feel all of those things all at once all of the time. I stood there for a while considering the picture and the implications of it. I let the phrase sink into my mind and thinking my dumb man thoughts. I was probably far too limited in my understanding of it, but trying all the same.

I went back and looked through social media and I think it was Spring 2016 when we visited the Chicago Art Institute. I had started writing The Futile soon before then. I definitely didn’t know what it was yet. Still that phrase stuck with me so as I kept progressing on The Futile and they needed to name their album, and that phrase seemed like something Nas would use for all those same reasons. I didn’t ever think of the phrase being on the cover so when the cover artist Sarah Baldwin worked it in there, it just seemed like such a natural fit for the themes of the book. Hopefully it’s seen as an homage to the artist Barbara Kruger rather than ripping her off.

On a similar note, the big clothing brand Supreme apparently took their logo from Barbara Kruger and she never really said much about it until Supreme tried to sue another artist for making use of their logo, then Kruger commented: "What a ridiculous clusterfuck of totally uncool jokers. I make my work about this kind of sadly foolish farce. I'm waiting for all of them to sue me for copyright infringement.”

Which as far as a put down goes, a “ridiculous clusterfuck of totally uncool jokers” is about as good as it gets.

M - That is the kind of insult only the smartest artists can dish out. That reminds me that early in the novel there is an asterisk’d “would you rather” phrase and I wanted to ask if you would share what the entire phrase was here?

D - Oh man. I don’t know if I want to share it. It’s a real Would You Rather that someone (Jake Yordy, I’m pretty sure, which is a hint in itself) asked me before, but no, I don’t want to spoil what it could be as the unknown is probably better. I won’t tell you if you’re right but do you have any guesses?

M - I think the first part is shit in public every day for a year. But I can’t get the next part. I respect you letting the mystery be.

A passage from the book on page 102 reads "Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. Each band member claimed a stage of grief for their own as they walked the perimeter of the van." Could you match the character with their corresponding stage of grief?

D - Okay, so the character breakdown for that scene would be Remi - Denial, Brie - Anger, Nas -Bargaining, Davy - Depression, and Neef - Acceptance. The early drafts said that outright but I hoped that if readers thoughts about it they could put it together.

M - From the very beginning you are creating an entire future to the book with documentaries and autobiographies and speaking to the fans of this band you’re writing about. Were you worried about coming off as too confident with making an entire mythology with your first book? 

D - You know, I worried about a ton of things as I wrote this. Am I embarrassing myself by trying too hard? Am I going to let everyone down if this comes out and it sucks? Will they feel bad for me when it sucks so bad? Am I going to offend anyone? Am I being too safe because I don’t want to offend anyone? There was a constant push and pull one way or another with those worries and so many more. On and on, but I have to say worrying about being too confident wasn’t anywhere among those thoughts.

I really tried to go for it the best I could with writing what to me would be a fun story to read. Ultimately I know what works for one person doesn’t always work for someone else.

M - I think that confidence is important and makes you feel you’re in safe hands as soon as you read the first footnote. Was that ambitious future always part of the plan or did it come about as you started writing? 

D - It definitely wasn’t something I thought of beforehand. Starting out, I planned for this to just be a story about a band set in a world very close to our reality, but the more I wrote the further I got from that. The ambitious history of the band came from that and also came from how much I enjoyed writing the footnotes and asides.

There were plenty of days where I thought what I was writing was absolute garbage (plenty of times it was true) so sometimes I used those footnotes/asides as a crutch so I wouldn’t feel so down after writing all day. It was hard to hate what I had written if I had fun writing it.

The mythologizing of the band happened as a result of all that. I told myself I would cut all the footnotes and asides after I finished the story, that they were just a means to get me there, but once I finished, I realized it would feel incomplete without all those so I left (most of) them in.

So I guess like most anything I write it comes from a healthy mix of ambition mixed with insecurity.

M - You definitely made the right choice. Those footnotes really add even more depth and personality to your story.

Along the lines of insecurity and ambition, almost all art or entertainment is political, whether it was intending to be or not, and your book is extremely so. It discusses almost every subject most of America is afraid to touch in a substantial way. How did you handle the anxiety of putting these feelings and topics out into the world?

D - Knowing that I would have as many drafts as I felt I needed before anyone else would see it definitely helped with that anxiousness. Each draft hopefully got a little less on the nose, a little less didactic with a bit more kindness, or at least that was the goal. The bulk of the book was written from 2016-2018 so there was plenty going on that provided the drive for the themes of The Futile, but also there was a lot being said about all those things all the time (which is still true), so I tried to be intentional with whatever I had to say to hopefully build onto the conversation with something meaningful rather than adding to the static. It's not up to me to say whether or not I met that goal, but I can definitely say I was much closer with the final version than I was with the first draft.

It's weird that I've had several people who are particularly Right Wing (or leaning that way) come up and say "sounds like what we're living through right now" when they hear what the book is about, because ideologically/politically/whatever those people and I probably couldn't be further apart with our beliefs. So I usually say some version of that to them soon followed by, "but still, I hope you read the book."

M - Speaking of the right wing, maybe even very far right, I love the chapters that are emails from the bot now known as Terry. I got the feeling that the bot gaining self awareness was a fun, but also deeply cynical note about how the humans who are capable of such horrid behavior and beliefs would never own up to spreading lies and enraging so many people. But a computer program couldn’t take it anymore. What was your thought behind showing such accountability through the lens of A.I.?

D - That's a really smart way of looking at it. To be honest, I can't say I really thought of it that way until you said it just now. There was definitely some intentionality to Terry's arc but most of it just flowed together.

Those chapters came about because I wanted to do something that helped set part two further apart from part one of the book and I had recently read about the Troll Farms of Bots that Russia had established during the 2016 election to spread so many lies that people no longer knew which way was up. So I thought it would be cool to just do one email in the voice of a troll bot who had gained self awareness and wanted to right their wrongs. It was the easiest, most enjoyable chapter I wrote for the whole book. It eventually became a thing that whenever I was having a poor writing day or feeling stuck, I'd just start writing a Terry chapter to help find my footing again. 

It was also cathartic as I knew a fair amount of people who were victims of that vitriol, and it was frustrating that no matter how much accurate information they were presented with they still wouldn't back down from the lies they'd been fed by social media algorithms, cable news, the president at that time, and so on. So those chapters were a bit of wishful thinking because even if a bot did gain sentience and tell them "hey, that was all a lie," those people would just see that as a threat or test to the ideology they had built their identity around and would just dig their heels in further. 

With all that said though, when I go back and read those chapters now, what usually sticks out to me as any sort of bigger commentary is how only after Terry switched the tone of their emails from mockery to empathy did they start to have any sort of breakthrough with the person they were emailing. So I really need to take my own advice even though it's fiction.

M - I’ve always found empathy will only get you so far. It’s always the better route to go. But it won’t guarantee connection or understanding. But it is the only way to go for real progress.

I don't want to talk about spoilers since people reading this may want to find things out for themselves. Do you think avoiding spoilers is a worthwhile conversation to have? Or do you lean towards the argument that knowing some of what happens doesn't take away from the journey to get there?

D - Well said.

My spoiler avoidance/acceptance scale is dictated purely on how much I am already anticipating something. If it's a new Pedro the Lion album, or George Saunders book, or Breath of the Wild 2, or even the new season of Stranger Things, then I already know I'm going to check out all those things as soon as I can and I don't want anyone to tell me anything at all about them. But if it's something that I'm not so sure I'm going to check out, then I'm okay with a little bit of spoilers, but I'm still not cool with, like, a mainstream movie trailer spoil-80%-of-the-plot-for-you-thing. I hate that.

M - Do you feel like the world has gotten better since you started writing this book?

D - Shorter answer: No.

Longer answer: I'm relieved that there hasn't recently been Nazis marching in our city streets and that the January 6th riots were shut down pretty quick. But problems like voter suppression, the continued strengthening of extreme right wing media, the fact that so many still falsely claim that the previous election was stolen, corporate greed, inflation, and the democrats inability or unwillingness to accomplish any sort of positive change has made sure I'm not naive enough to think those things won't come roaring back soon.

M - putting something out currently, while a huge privilege to be able to do so, can come with its own stress and worry that your own self awareness may end up being more narrow than you realize. What would you tell someone who asks why you’re the right person to tell this story?

D - This is something I asked myself a lot while I worked on this story, yet I still find it to be a difficult question to answer, because it's like having a hundred different conversations under the umbrella of a simple question. Still, I will try to stick to what you asked here rather than spinning out in a bunch of different directions. 

If someone sees The Futile, the same way I do, as a story about a group of young people trying to overcome their personal flaws in order to accomplish a greater purpose then I believe I am well-equipped to tell that story. Whether it's playing in bands or working at a non-profit youth shelter (and so on, I don't want this to start sounding like a job interview), I have a lot of experience working with others, trying to achieve something bigger than ourselves and I believe I can capture the nuances of that well.

Now, I may not be the "best" person to tell this story as I have no doubt that there are millions of better writers in the world who could take the outline of this concept and spin it into something I can't even conceive of in my mind. Just as I'm also sure that a writer who isn't as privileged as I am could take this story and dig in deeper into themes of oppression, sexual discrimination, homophobia, and racism while having something fresh or more insightful to say, whereas I may be just skimming the surface of those themes. 

M - Was it important to you to make a book that felt timeless?

D - For sure. The first fiction I ever finished is an unpublished novel called Title Track. It’s about a kid living in a youth shelter who finds his place through the local music scene. When I go back and read it now, it feels very much locked in the 2014-2015 time period I wrote it in, which, at this point, would work better in another decade or two as a period piece than it would in 2022.

I put some of the lessons I learned from that into writing The Futile so that it could hopefully exist a bit longer than the 1-2 year span of its origin.

M - Has the experience of writing and releasing this book motivated you to want to go even bigger in scope or release next time?

D - It’s definitely prepared me to do a better job releasing whatever I put out next, but I don’t know if the project itself will be as big in scope as The Futile is. I wrote a quieter YA novel called Our Extended Universe in 2020-2021 so I plan to revisit that and release it early next year.

M - Not to pull a James Lipton style ending here but would you want The Futile to be the creative endeavor you are most remembered for if you died tomorrow?

D - At this point, for sure. The Futile is the most complete creative statement I've made and it's the hardest I've ever worked making anything. Realistically though, it's not exactly going to make headlines when I die, but it makes me feel good knowing that these little statements will be left behind for my loved ones and whoever else may care.

When I first became a father I experienced a lot of anxiety for a whole host of reasons, but one of the offshoots was this feeling of "what will happen to my son(s) if I die? How will they remember me?" Creating stuff, leaving these little bread crumbs behind like the Eleanor EP by Alliswell, or All Hail West Frankfort, or now, The Futile, helps me feel better. It helps knowing that if I die they'll have ways to know how I felt about so many of the problems in life, or at the very least they'll be able to visit me for a one-sided conversation. I wish I had something like that from my mom now. Maybe it won't mean as much to them, but just knowing it's there for them, even if I'm not, helps me feel better. Which, like all this, is probably more for helping me feel better as selfish as that may sound. 

M - When selfishness helps people understand themselves or the world better and isn’t hurting anyone it can be a good thing.

The talk of what christianity has become in the world of the book is a poignant satirical theme throughout. Names like True Believer Network, The Devout Swordsman, The Loyal Defender, The Blessed Path, and The Prophecy of the Flaming Sword populate this book and add a menace and fascistic nature to the government our heroes are having to navigate through. What was the balance of trying to make a point about christianity while ruminating on where you see things are headed?

D - There's this sign in Marion, Illinois at a four way stop that screams "PRO GUNS PRO GOD PRO TRUMP" at everyone that passes. It's like a middle finger just craving conflict, theres no peace, no love, no acceptance, no "I was a stranger and you invited me in" there. A lot of the sentiment behind the Devout Swordsman/Prophecy of the Flaming Sword is encapsulated by that sign and many like it around southern Illinois. Unfortunately, so much of Christianity has been co-opted by Right Wing Media and the Republican Party to become this militarized, white nationalism belief system that reaffirms everything they already believe without requiring any personal change or sacrifice (it's everyone else that needs to change to be more like them), all while making the rich more powerful and somehow convincing many of the followers that the poor and oppressed are actually the ones to blame for so many of their nation's problems. Even though it's practically beyond parody, I wanted those parts to be a commentary on that.

At the same time, while I am no longer a Christian, I do know many Christians that have held onto their beliefs without succumbing to these influences. I know Christians who truly try their best to love/serve others more than themselves, without using that as a way to prop themselves up for their good deeds. These are my friends and family members. It's cool to see how they love others and hold onto their faith, standing in stark contrast to those Pro Guns Pro God Pro Trump types.

Early drafts of The Futile were less kind and didn't reflect that key difference between actual practitioners and those that claim the faith only to exploit it. So in later drafts, I sought to distance it a bit, by building in some of those terms. The goal was to show that it was the oppressive distortion of this belief system that created these problems and not necessarily the teachings themselves (though that's definitely a conversation to have too). The lofty hope (!!) was that mayyyyyybbeee someone would read the novel and realize how they've been tricked into trading in their beloved faith for just plain ole generic idolatry, and then that person would make efforts to change that.

The balancing act you speak of included all these factors at the same time. As far as where I see things heading, I feel like things are getting worse on all these fronts. This novel will likely be just as effective in stopping any of this as it would be if I laid the paperback down in front of the tracks of tank in hopes of slowing it down.

https://linktr.ee/danejohns to order The Futile now.