WORD ON THE STREET
by Holiday Dmitri
The Booster - Wicker Park
May 15, 2002

Your Everyday Joe By Holiday Dmitri

Not too long ago, an old Marvel comic-book hero returned on celluloid, stormed the box office, wowed us with some special effects and left these wise words resonating: "With great power comes great responsibility."

A few weeks back, on the night before his 28th birthday, Joe Meno lay restlessly in bed, supercharged like a hotrod in its primetime. Unable to fall asleep on account of drinking too much Mountain Dew, he began ruminating on his life.

"I'm not doing too bad," he thought to himself. "I am a lucky man. I realize that I am privileged, and I hold responsibilities because of these privileges."

Meno is the author of "Tender as Hellfire" and "How the Hula Girl Sings," a local playwright, editor of the literary magazine "Sleepwalk," professor of creative writing and ethics at Columbia College Chicago and musician in the frolicking, rock 'n' roll band the Phantom Three. But then he's no web-slinging super-hero.

He wasn't blessed with a "spider-sense" and -- too bad for him -- can't scale walls. Nevertheless, like Peter Parker, Meno thinks of himself as an ordinary guy who has come upon an extraordinary circumstance, and like the young Parker feels that with his might comes a sense of duty.

"Luck is being given the opportunity and being able to capitalize on it," says Meno. "I don't think my life is any more interesting than anybody else's, but the thing that I'm able to do is sit on my butt and write about it."

While an undergrad in the writing program at Columbia College, Meno was set up by the school with an opportunity to meet Atlantic Monthly's Senior Editor C. Michael Curtis. Meno handed the magazine editor the first chapter of what would become his first book, and Curtis was impressed. He liked Meno's characters, but not his vernacular language. "Change the language and send it to me," Curtis insisted.

Well, Meno graduated, started working at the punk-haven The Alley on Belmont and Clark, partied, drank a lot and pretty much bummed around.

"I was stupid, I was afraid of rejection and was a flake," he admits. But Meno made himself sit down in front of the computer and in a couple of months hammered out the book. He sent it off to Curtis, who forwarded it on to a literary agent. Not much later, at the ripe age of 23, Meno had his first novel "Tender as Hellfire" out in bookstores across America.

"I was just a dirty punk-rock kid," Meno stresses. "So this was really powerful for me and for the other artists working at The Alley. They thought, 'We can do this too. We can be working artists.'"

The well-received "Tender as Hellfire" centers around two trailer-park-dwelling brothers -- ten-year-old Dough and 13-year-old Pill Bug -- trying to deal with their cruel names, the after effects of their father's death and the turbulence of growing up.

"It's about choosing to take responsibility for your actions rather than continuing to blame the world for what has happened to you," says Meno. "I know a lot of kids who are pissed off. They're angry at the world for how America is set up, how their parents treated them or the horrible things that happened to them growing up. They allow that to dictate how they are going to be or how they behave. This is the victimization of America. But at some point you have to take responsibility for who you are."

"As a writer, my biggest responsibility is to show others the connection between themselves and other people," he continues. "Your connection as an artist to your audience is something I think is critical to your development as a writer. You're writing for a reason. That's what storytelling is about: relationships. Stories make you think about your relationship in a different way, especially if they are people outside of your experience."

After the surprising success of his first book (Meno was being compared to renowned Southern storytellers William Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor), the young author plagued with what he called "working class guilt," turned to volunteering on an art-therapy project at a detention facility on the Chicago's Southside. There, he worked with teenage boys -- all sex offenders -- who were held at the compound until they turned 18 and then prosecuted as adults.

"I had a lot of anger going into it," Meno admits. "I knew about my prejudices, but these kids were doomed. They were like ghosts trapped between things they did and what would happen to them in the future." The experience changed Meno's understanding about forgiveness and second chances, which became the central themes of his second book, "How the Hula Girl Sings."

Says Meno: "A lot of my writing starts from, 'Here's a problem, now how am I going to deal with it?' It took a while for me to call myself a writer, but now I consider it my job, and with it comes the responsibilities of being a writer. I have a responsibility to the world around me."

Maybe Meno was wise to the music he grew up with: punk rock. The recordings of the bands he's been listening to -- Minor Threat, The Dead Kennedys, The Clash -- may have been sub-par in recording to the typical radio tune, but punk rocks' socio- politico messages and D.I.Y. ethics were what rang in his ears.

His band, the Phantom Three, have been around for almost three years. They are on their third record, their third label and -- insists Meno -- if the Phantom Three haven't "made it" by the time he turns 30, he is calling it quits.

But as it goes, Meno has already "made it" onto the big stage. Earlier this year, as part of Columbia College's "Story Week" programming he was invited to read with author Irvine Welsh at Metro, one of Chicago's premiere concert venues, in front of nearly 900 people.

"I felt like a rock star," Meno gushes. "It was like a dream come true. Man, I was on stage! The funny thing was that it wasn't for my band, but for my writing."

Side Note: The Phantom Three will be playing with 20 Miles (Blues Explosion's Judah Bauer's band) on Sunday, May 26 at the Empty Bottle. In addition, Joe Meno will be reading at the Printer's Row Book Fair on Saturday, June 1.

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