The Author Interviews Paul Stephens

For this interview, critic and scholar Paul Stephens forced Robert Fitterman to listen to Nirvana’s Nevermind on CD. Fitterman claims to have no strong feelings about the band—which might seem strange, because by the time the two sat down to listen to the CD, Fitterman had already repurposed Nevermind, every word in order as heard, into a 712-page minimalist poem of the same name (Wonder Books 2016). In part because Stephens knows too much about Nirvana, and in part because the two felt frustrated with the usual interview style, they decided to switch roles. In what follows, the author, Robert Fitterman, interviews the reader, Paul Stephens.

ROBERT FITTERMAN: What did you initially make of this book? What was your experience reading it?

PAUL STEPHENS: I wasn’t sure how you intended it to be read or how you would perform it. When it arrived in the mail, I skimmed through it, and decided I would try an experiment: I went to my local record store, bought a used copy of Nevermind on CD, and read the entire book in a single sitting while trying to keep my page turning in sync with the album.

RF: What was that like? It’s very different from how I perform the text. I like to use a stack of paper rather than read from the book, which makes for a very slow reading, but also draws attention to the physical nature of the object.

PS: I found the experience extremely disconcerting—a bit like karaoke on speed. You have to turn the pages at a dizzying pace to keep up with the music. The lyrics are burned into my brain, and yet I’d never looked at them on the page. I thought I could compare the book to the lyrics inside the CD, but as you know, the album wasn’t released with lyrics. Even though I could often anticipate what I would find on the next page, I was surprised at the violence of the lyrics—which I had tuned out after hearing the songs on popular radio so many times over the years.

RF: For you, Nevermind was an important album. It was released in a rite-of-passage teenage moment for you, the album loomed large on the early 90s psychic landscape. What did you make of my choice of it as a source text?

PS: I don’t think I had listened to Nevermind all the way through since it came out. In high school, I had seen Nirvana open for Sonic Youth before they signed to Geffen, and Kurt seemed like a god to...