The Self-Exorcism of Craig Clevenger
“I want to be a better writer with every book, but I want to be a different writer too. But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’m not tapping into some core strength that I have.”
Craig Clevenger sits in front of his laptop, wearing a cowboy hat and an unbuttoned jean shirt. Long hair, glasses, and behind him a Western movie set bakes under a bright blue sky. He looks exactly like what you expect a writer to look like: marginal, confident, free in ways most of us aren’t. Clevenger doesn’t just look the part. He’s as legit as anyone with a publishing contract, and then some. He’s been more successful at it than most.
A writer of his experience shouldn’t care about negative reviews. He’s the first to admit it, and most times he doesn’t. “All writers get negative reviews. Mother Howl got more than anything else I’ve ever done and most of them rolled off my back. I took yours seriously because I respect what you do,” he said earnestly.
Craig and I started talking because I reviewed Mother Howl last winter and… I didn’t like it. Not a verbal thrashing, nothing harsh, but it left me dissatisfied in a mundane way. The protagonist, Lyle Edison, is caught in the adult predicament of sacrificing himself for others (I won’t spoil who or why), and he does so in the most realistic, reasonable way possible. I wasn’t expecting that. I was underwhelmed.
Because I’m apparently that guy who wants every book to change my life and redefine pop culture somehow and that can get to creative people because changing the world ain’t all that easy.
Weeks later, my friend Andrew Nolan (who is an almost supernatural provider of fun and exciting things) DMed me a link to Craig’s latest Substack post in The Insomnograph and said with all his glorious British wryness, "It 100% is about your review."
Cue me, spiraling into my usual existential panic that I might have just accidentally started a literary feud the way I did with Andrew Vachss in 2011, which I’m still recovering from.
The piece wasn’t defending his novel against my criticism, nor invalidating it. Clevenger was basically saying, “Yeouch. I like this guy, and I’m afraid he might have a point about this novel that took years to pry out of my brain.”
So I reached out. As a critic, I believe every work of art is born from a precise context often unavailable to readers, and I was curious if understanding Mother Howl’s origin story might change how I appreciated it. As a reader, every book is a relationship you build with a writer and Mother Howl felt like a miscommunication between Craig and me.
In the Shadow of the Handbook
The first thing I noticed about Clevenger was how comfortable and enthusiastic he was as a conversationalist. He welcomed the idea of getting to know each other better and discussing his novel more deeply, like an old timer greeting a wandering soldier with curiosity, anticipation, and a tidal wave of good faith, even if the conversation might go sideways. Meeting strangers on the internet is a roll of the dice with your self-respect.
"My response was not a rebuttal of your review, but really taking to heart some of the points you made, except one great issue I had. But it was not with you," he said right away.
That issue ties into his entire literary career and the very existence of Mother Howl itself. The driving premise behind the novel was wrestling with one’s own unwanted legacy. “Imagine being Charles Manson Jr.? How quickly you would get denied service in a lot of places. How much spray paint would hit your house in the middle of the night.”
Lyle Edison’s father is imprisoned for a string of murders, but he was never ultra-mediatized or given a fancy nickname by the press. Craig explained he has a friend named Bianchi, just like the Hillside Strangler, but it never caused problems in his life. The legacy is Lyle’s hangup first and foremost.
That’s why the book interested me initially, plus my lasting memory of his first and most iconic novel, The Contortionist’s Handbook. But the book never quite reaches the revelation that Lyle’s name is his problem and his problem only.
It’s always just his problem. As Clevenger says, "My two first novels have a romantic chord, but they’re essentially shallow. The two narrators are all wrapped up in themselves and have a very adolescent view of love and romance. So it started with this idea of surmounting your own baggage for something larger than yourself."
Now we’re touching the real motivations behind Mother Howl’s creation, whether Craig fully acknowledges it or not (I think he does; he’s too self-aware not to). The eighteen years between his sophomore novel Dermaphoria and Mother Howl were eventful for Craig in ways that would disrupt anyone’s sense of identity. His publisher went belly up (and not in a nice way). He couch-surfed to survive. He fought alcoholism, and was a week shy of two years sober when we met.
Craig Clevenger became someone else. He had to in order to survive and protect what’s essential. What was his biggest accomplishment, his claim to fame, the success of The Contortionist’s Handbook, ended up tied to painful memories he had to overcome. He didn’t want to become The Contortionist’s Handbook’s burnout. He wanted to become a different writer. And he totally did.
"I’m not sure whether The Contortionist’s Handbook is detrimental to how my other material is perceived or not, but I’m proud of it. It’s the reason why I have a career at all. I’m not sure I’ll ever have an answer to this question, but it’s a good problem to have," he said.
It’s tough to quarrel with someone who likes you
When I pitched Craig on doing this conversation, I called it an "Enter the Dragon" situation like I call every social encounter where different points of view confront each other. I expected more tension. I thought he’d be hurt and defensive, but here’s a truth I found uncomfortable: Craig Clevenger kind of likes me.
I don’t know about you, but free love for exactly what I want to be loved for is rare. Fifteen years into this grind, it’s not often someone with a name I respect says they unambiguously enjoy what I do.
"I follow you on socials and I really like your criticism. You’re not snarky. You don’t try to promote yourself or do something for your own exposure at the expense of the people you review," Craig said at the start of our talk. " love the contrast of your review topics. The hardcore, extreme death metal and literature? I love that."
During our conversation, Craig asked broad questions about what criticism should be in 2025. Simple questions, but the kind you have to ask if you take criticism seriously. What is the role of the critic? I have an answer, anchored in something my model Chuck Klosterman said on the podcast Music Exists with Chris Ryan: "The world is just more fun when you overanalyze and overthink stuff."
As I explained my philosophy on reviewing, he compared my thinking to French art of living: "People say the French are snob, but no. They have turned appreciation into an art form. When you’re doing anything over there, whether it’s writing books or cooking, you better bring your A game because there will be someone for who appreciating what you’ve done is really important."
Criticism is, at heart, a form of intellectual entertainment (also from Klosterman), but it only works if you take it seriously and audit your relationship to art. That means feeling a responsibility—at least emotionally—to your readers and telling the truth. If you lay out feelings from the top of your head without understanding how you really feel, your readers will never know how they really feel either. They’ll see no point in reading your reviews.
That’s why I write negative reviews when something doesn’t work for me. But as I’m not here to squander careers, I try to leave writers, directors, and musicians something to think about. You can be critical without being an asshole.
It’s a lesson I learned writing Dead End Follies over the years, but one that’s served me well.
Do I have a different opinion of Mother Howl now?
If I reviewed it today, knowing what I do before reading it, it would probably sneak into the sixes. 6.4 or 6.5, something like that, which is my language for “not bad, but let’s awkwardly move on”. I appreciate it comes from genuine existential struggle and that publishing it is a victory in itself. It still falls short of what I want in a novel, but it can become a stepping stone to something better, something new.
Craig Clevenger is in the process of exorcising the-man-you-think-he-is from his body and soul. Mother Howl is a witness to this transformation. That transformation, that liminal space between past and future, is what I’m really interested in.
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Here’s a link to Craig’s view of how our conversation went.
Here are the two books he referenced in the video interview:
