Chicago writer John Pierson has spent his adulthood leading a triple life. To some, he’s simply John Pierson, a longtime writer/performer with the Neo-Futurists collective. To others, he’s Ian Pierce, a prodigious playwright. Then, to thousands of fans around the world, he’s Jughead, co-founder of the legendary local punk band Screeching Weasel, which disbanded in 2001 after 14 years. All three identities come together in his debut novel, Weasels In A Box, which lists all of his names on the cover. The book is a meta-fictionalized history of Screeching Weasel, but Pierson gives rock memoirs an artsy reworking by incorporating a surrealist, non-linear structure and a perspective-shifting narrative, and by changing the names of people and events. Just before he left for a European tour with his current band, Even In Blackouts, Pierson spoke to The A.V. Club about his many identities.
The A.V. Club: How long did it take to finish Weasels In A Box?
John Pierson: I say six years. It took a long time, because I wasn’t expecting to write it. I had been working on another novel for 15 years… It made sense that my first novel should have more to do with the stuff I’ve been through. What I realized was, I didn’t want it to just be a regular rock novel, so I think a lot of it was just worrying about how to write it. I like playing with meta-fiction, so I wanted it to be on different levels, like looking through a window. I think non-linearly too, so I wanted to make sure that that’s the way it’s seen, through the eyes of someone who is very chaotic in the way his memory works. So I think all the elements took a long time, and I think what really took a long time is, there are a lot of scenes that are actually true that were really touchy between everyone in the band, and I wanted to be able to write it right and not skirt around the issue—because I didn’t want it to be, like, a pretty picture of the heydays. [Laughs.]
AVC: Did you limit yourself with the non-linear writing in places you thought it would be hard to follow?
JP: Yeah, I’ve actually had a few people tell me it’s too hard to follow. [Laughs.] But I really wanted to get it out the way that I thought it. It really was just me trying to interpret the way my memory works. Some people like the surreal elements, and some people are critical of them. It was my way of showing the emotions of things I couldn’t really tell in words. That’s the main reason I wanted to make it fiction, because I wanted to be able to express things in a surreal manner.