{"id":25391,"date":"2019-05-13T13:37:21","date_gmt":"2019-05-13T18:37:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hmmagazine.com\/dvanpelt\/?p=25391"},"modified":"2019-05-20T19:17:44","modified_gmt":"2019-05-21T00:17:44","slug":"grace-jeff-buckley-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hmmagazine.com\/dvanpelt\/grace-jeff-buckley-story\/","title":{"rendered":"GRACE: The Jeff Buckley Story"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

GRACE: The Jeff Buckley Story<\/span>
\nBy Tiffanie DeBartolo, Pascal Dizin, Lisa Reist<\/span><\/p>\n

This graphic novel just dropped (on April 30) from First Second\/Macmillan publishers. And you just have to see the illustration of a young man getting his mind blown on page 6. It’s a great visualization about how music can grab someone from the inside and change their world. The dialog charting Jeff’s experiences early on are highlights that make for great sound bytes (or panels in a graphic novel). In other words, this thing is well done. It’s so fitting that the writer was not previously immersed in the graphic novel genre.<\/p>\n

A couple sound byte highlights include:<\/p>\n

“I want to be a great songwriter. Not a good one. A great one. A full-fledged poet in my own right.” (not in the shadows of his father…I think he achieved his goal)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

“I want to be a twenty-four-hours-a-day guttural output of love.”<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Q (from Steve Berkowitz, A&R, Columbia Records): What do you want?
\n“I want total artistic control… And I want my girlfriend’s cat to like me.”<\/p>\n

Remember: BE THE BEST
\nNO NEGATIVITY
\nNO WEAKNESS
\nNO ACQUIESCENCE TO FEAR OR DISASTER
\nNO ERRORS OF IGNORANCE
\nNO EVASION FROM REALITY
\nYou got it?<\/p>\n

 <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I had a chance to talk to the person who put it together \u2014 to find out why and also hear more testimony about how special Buckley’s music is.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

When did you first hear Jeff Buckley\u2019s music? How did it strike you, effect you?
\n<\/span><\/b>I didn\u2019t hear\u00a0Grace<\/i>\u00a0for the first time until 1999, two years after Jeff\u2019s death. I was on a flight to Italy with my future husband. We were on our way to Tuscany to find a place to get married. I dropped\u00a0Grace<\/i>\u00a0into my Walkman (remember those?) and within the first 30 seconds of the first song, all the hair on my arms was standing on end. By the time I got to \u201cLover, You Should\u2019ve Come Over,\u201d I was sobbing. After that, I became obsessed with the album, literally listening to it for nine months straight while I wrote my first novel,\u00a0God-Shaped Hole<\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

When did you first hear or discover the story behind the man\u2019s life, music and career?
\n<\/span><\/b>I started Googling Jeff immediately after falling in love with his music. I read every article and interview I could get my hands on. Unearthed every demo. The fact that Jeff had lived and died before I\u2019d ever known he\u2019d existed was crushing. And his voice blew me away.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What made you want to tell this story?
\n<\/span><\/b>Well, I originally told it in a very fictionalized version, via my first novel, the aforementioned\u00a0God-Shaped Hole<\/i>. Jeff\u2019s mom, Mary Guibert, had been given a copy of that book when it first came out, and she\u2019d appreciated it. So, when the publishers of Grace: Based on the Jeff Buckley Story<\/i>\u00a0approached her about doing a graphic novel about the book, she suggested that I write it. I didn\u2019t know much about the graphic novel genre. To be honest, I\u2019d never read a graphic novel prior to taking on this project, but the opportunity to work with Mary on this book, and to get to know Jeff posthumously was too great to pass up.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What are some of the moments that stand out to you?
\n<\/span><\/b>Definitely reading his journals during my research was a highlight, and a huge gift. His personal writings are such a beautiful glimpse into the extraordinary man that he was. So focused, so talented and thoughtful. But the part that surprised me the most was how funny he was. I think people often imagine Jeff as this brooding guy, and he had his moments of that, for sure. But his spirit was full of joy and mischief too.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What are the details of his death that surprise you or bother you the most? Why?
\n<\/span><\/b>The most upsetting part for me is how random and accidental it was. The kind of incident that, had he arrived at the shore of the river a minute sooner or a minute later, everything could have been different, you know? Timing is everything. I remember reflecting long and hard on this topic back when I was working on my first book, eventually summing it up like this: \u201cIt seemed cruelly unfair to me, even then, how fast your life can change before you have an opportunity to rethink your choices. We should get second chances on the big stuff. We should come equipped with erasers attached to the tops of our heads. Like pencils. We should be able to flip over and scribble away mistakes, at least once or twice during the duration of our existence, especially in matters of life and death.\u201d (God-Shaped Hole<\/i>)<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

When and how did the graphic novel medium become the one for you and this story?
\n<\/span><\/b>Like I said, the idea of a graphic novel about Jeff Buckley was born before I was brought on board. And I\u2019ll tell you what I really loved about the process. Typically, as a novelist, you do your work and then it\u2019s sort of finished. I mean, there\u2019s the editing process, but that\u2019s basically just another phase of the writing process. With this book, I did my work \u2014 that is, I wrote the story \u2014 and then I got to hand it over to other artists who interpreted my words and my story visually. Once the illustrators were done and I saw the finished project, I reveled in how magical it was to merge my work with their work to create one unique piece of art. It really moved me. I love it.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What’s your favorite SF 49ers memory? Were you there for “The Catch?”<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u00a0was<\/em>\u00a0there for \u201cThe Catch\u201d! I was only 10 at the time, but I remember it vividly, and it\u2019s definitely one of the greatest 49er memories I have. No one thought we were going to win that game, and when I tell you, the amount of joy it brought to the entire city of San Francisco\u2014people still talk about it today with tears in their eyes, 38 years later. Another big football memory I have is\u00a0Super Bowl XXIII in 1989. The last drive of the game, Joe Montana threw the ball to John Taylor, who scored with 34 seconds left. It was very dramatic and exciting.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What sort of strife would it cause in your family if you cheered for the Dallas Cowboys?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ha ha ha! Honestly, coming from me, it probably wouldn\u2019t have caused any strife at all. Just a lot of eye-rolling. I\u2019m sort of the weird one in the family, the only one who\u2019s not super into sports, and my parents and sisters probably would have just shored it up to Tiffanie being Tiffanie. My old love of the 49ers really came from my love for my family and the family-like relationships we had with the players growing up. I rooted for them because I knew and loved them as people, but once my dad got out of football, I stopped paying attention.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

When writing a graphic novel (or any story for that matter – but especially one so relatively short), how do you know what parts to leave out?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s a tough question. I never leave anything out when I\u2019m writing the rough draft. Therefore, it really becomes an issue of editing. And I think any writer will tell you that the most difficult part of editing is letting go of good stuff. Sometimes I write a sentence, a page, or a whole chapter that I\u00a0know<\/em>\u00a0is good, or moving, or interesting, but when I get to the editing process, I find that this particular section doesn\u2019t necessarily\u00a0need<\/em>\u00a0to be there, you know? That\u2019s when editing gets painful. I\u2019m an economical writer. I like prose that\u2019s succinct and straightforward, and the question I always ask myself when I\u2019m editing is:\u00a0Does this serve the story I\u2019m trying to tell?<\/em>\u00a0And if the answer to that question turns out to be\u00a0No<\/em>, I delete it. And then I cry and have a little word funeral.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

How hard is it to cut something cool from the story? Got an example of a part or mini-storyline that you had to leave on “the cutting room floor?”\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard! My very first draft of GRACE<\/em> was over twice as long as the book ended up being. Jeff had a short but fascinating life, and originally there were a lot more details in it, mainly about his childhood and his romantic life. And when I turned in my work, the publisher said,\u00a0This is so fantastic, but we need you to cut about 100 pages!<\/em> (laughs).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Prior to this story, had you ever tried to know somebody from second-hand stories? How do you formulate an idea or begin to fathom who someone is or describe them when you’ve never met them? I’m curious how much of a challenge that was.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I love this question, especially in relation to Jeff, because even before I was brought on to this project, I had a sense that I knew Jeff. Not literally, obviously. But he was an artist that put a lot of himself into his work, and that made me feel a deep connection to him. I formed a lot of notions about who he was. Cut to a few years later, after I was hired to write the text to GRACE<\/em>, I started to research him, and I began to discover that most of my perceptions of him were pretty spot on. The real challenge for me was how to convey who he was in a way that would please him. All throughout the writing, I was very conscious of that.\u00a0Would Jeff approve of this? Would he like it<\/em>? That was a big part of my process. I think it was Stephen King who once said that every book is actually a love letter to one person. This book was a love letter to Jeff.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

God-Shaped Hole<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0is a concept that our Creator made each of us with a void that only He can fill. How does that concept shape any of your work (if at all)?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Another really great question. Although I\u2019d clarify that my definition of the concept doesn\u2019t have such a strong religious connotation. As far as I\u2019m concerned, God can\u2019t fill the void any better than a lot of other crutches. From my point of view, God is just another crutch \u2014 a human construct concocted to help us cope with the mysteries and sorrows of existence. In my first novel,\u00a0God-Shaped Hole<\/em>, the main character has a theory that all humans have these big, gaping holes in our souls, and life is a constant search to try to fill them up. Some people use God and religion to fill the void, some people use drugs or alcohol, or work, or donuts, or shoes. The list goes on and on. But it\u2019s all the same thing, really. We\u2019re all trying to figure out how to escape our sorrows. I\u2019m certainly no exception to that. I happen to write to fill the void, and to search for answers about what the void actually is.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Great job on the graphic novel. Anything else you’d like to add?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Just a big thank you for your time and interest in this book. It\u2019s a story that touches me deeply, and I hope it touches others as well. Also, your questions were dope. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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