Seibel’s new book, Hey You Assholes, puts that thesis to the test. His debut collection of short stories was published by Clash Books in March, where the assholes in question can be an cheating wife whose husband discovers her deeds, and an abrasive, ailing father bringing his family along for one last road trip.
His stories make up one of the best published collections in recent memory, comfortably joining the ranks of melancholic vignettes like Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio, Geoff Ryman’s 253, or just about anything by George Saunders.
Seibel, who has cited Saunders and Anderson specifically as inspirations for his work, would probably wince at the comparison, but the astute reader wouldn’t. From the first page of Hey You Assholes — which begins with a four-page perspective on observing a mother going to a movie theater alone — there’s a distinctive buoyancy to Seibel’s writing that manages to be quickly recognizable yet stylistically fresh.
On July 19, he's doing a live reading to Deep Vellum Books alongside fellow author Adam Voith and North Texans Mike Nagel and John Waddy Bullion. The tour stop, which will also go through Austin, is aptly titled MORNING, FUCKERS, and begins at 10 a.m.
Seibel’s first foray into fiction was relatively recent. The stories that makeup Hey You Assholes were born no earlier than 2019, when Seibel tried his hand at working as a copywriter. The bones of his first story, “Master Guns,” which is included in Hey You Assholes, were forged under the title “Secret Short Story Project.”
“Everything matters more in the shorter pieces,” Seibel says. “All those small decisions in the narrative end up having this real impact on what the story is trying to do and the impression it leaves. Donald Barthelme talked about writing short pieces as being high-wire acts. The failure is so great, but the success is so satisfying.”
Thirty of those high-wire acts are in Hey You Assholes, split up between three parts. Plot-wise, each story is separate and self-contained. But thematically, some of Seibel’s emotional motifs are easy to spot. Especially in his first-person tales, his characters often navigate the repression of a specific feeling. In “Mr. Dubecki’s Secret Menu” and “The World’s Biggest Moron Stops Laughing,” the repression is of deep-seated lust. In “Mr. Bananaman,” the repression of suddenly actualized trauma. In “Roller Coaster House,” it’s regret, specifically that of avoidable mistakes in a romantic relationship.“I realized I was writing about my military service, and then I was writing about my life in reaction to it afterward. It all became much more intimate and personal than I intended it to be.” - author Kyle Seibel
tweet this
“Roller Coaster House” is an obvious standout in the book and the sole piece from Hey You Assholes that Seibel will be reading at Deep Vellum. He'll also read his latest published work, "Beyond The Unlivable," a short piece he wrote for the online magazine HAD.
Most of Seibel’s fiction is written in first-person narration, allowing his own personal perspectives to be channeled through each character's lens.
“Listening to Dinosaurs” is one of the more lighthearted stories in the collection. It follows a man who begins to literally and figuratively communicate with dinosaurs in the present day, and reorients aspects of his life around their wisdom.
“It became much more of a personal story than I think the absurdity led me to believe,” Seibel says. “I realized I was writing about my military service, and then I was writing about my life in reaction to it afterward. It all became much more intimate and personal than I intended it to be.”
While subjects like Seibel's time spent in the Navy inform his work, he draws more from those around him.
“I don’t often start from writing about personal experiences directly,” he says. “It’s really rare in the collection that I use big pieces from my life as the furniture of the story. More often than not, I’m thinking and writing about something someone’s told me, or from someone else’s perspective that I find compelling or want to inhabit for a while.”
The opening story, “Unfaithful Starring Richard Gere and What’s Her Name,” is written from actual experiences in Seibel’s life during a period when he worked at a movie theater and would pick up on people's greater personalities through small interactions. It was originally written as a column for an online film blog where Seibel was supposed to pitch and defend a bad movie, but instead, he turned in a short narrative on observing a mother watching 2002’s Unfaithful twice by herself.
“I think that is a good primer for the pace and velocity that the book offers,” he says. “Whatever you think is going on here, there might be a secondary or tertiary element that’s coming as well. In miniature, that story represents a good introduction to the voice.”
As for the journey of finding the voice in question, Seibel cites his time writing “Fish Man,” which is in the new book, as the revelatory moment in understanding the collection's concept.
“By the time I wrote 'Fish Man,' I really started to think that I had a good idea of the chorus of voices I wanted to capture,” he says. “I remember reading a draft of that story to my wife and being really excited. Kind of like, I figured something out there. So that was probably when I started to understand the project of Hey You Assholes, or at least conceive of it in that way.”
Seibel's live readings are almost as much a part of the project's fabric as the written words. He's something of a showman, often performing the same piece in a new, unique way each time.
"I'm going off-book," he says of the upcoming Dallas show. "I'm memorizing my piece, I want to try doing it and seeing if it comes off as natural to me. It's an interesting way to challenge myself and bring a level of performance that I think can be engaging for someone who doesn't always go to these literary events."
What could be more of a sell than that? A brash, punk rock literary debut brought to life by a high-pressure live performance. And it's free? See you at Deep Vellum.
