Jonathan Franzen's new book, Purity, comes out in a few weeks. Sure, you should read that, but if you want to read a St. Louis author who still has roots here—and is definitely not writing about purity—you should read Chris Andoe's new book, Delusions of Grandeur: A Few Hundred Tales from the Emperor of St. Louis. There's always a bit of a high you get from reading a book set in a town you actually live in. But Andoe is also a brilliant storyteller who writes in the bawdy, humorous tradition of say, Chaucer with a dash of Grace Metalious. He is also a wonderful chronicler of place; as librarian and fellow writer Gina Sheridan noted, he "does an impeccable job of shedding a light (a rainbow!) on my hometown of St. Louis and its cast of colorful characters." And Paul Hagen notes in his preface that Andoe writes about "the goings on in and around St. Louis...[with] the urgency of an embedded journalist in a war zone."
Full disclosure: I read the manuscript right before the book went to press, and I, too, sent Andoe a glowing blurb. And I meant every word I typed. I first crossed paths with Chris Andoe at a dinner party, where I watched him tell stories out loud and hypnotize the whole table. That night, he told us about posting his stories on Facebook (including the backstory of what become the section of Delusions titled "Tawdry Tales of Rotten Crotches"). it's telling that he had a rabid fan base even then, a group of readers who pestered him for new installments when he didn't get fresh material posted quickly enough.
"I was always a storyteller," Andoe says, "Friends would always tell me at parties, 'Oh, tell this story, or tell that story.' Everyone kind of came to me as the one to tell the story of our group. It started as just a modest project of cataloging my stories. I had no grand ambitions of a book to be shared with the general world, or anything. It was just all of the stories that I told, I started to write them down."
That was seven years ago. He says that initially, there was a real adjustment process from storytelling to writing.
"I always say the difference between telling a story and writing a story is, initially, the difference between running down a hill and running through a swimming pool," he laughs. "But my brother Joe, in New York, who’s in the book, gave me some breakthrough advice, which was to write it like you would say it. Because people tend to get really formal and clam up when they’re writing. And that changed it. After that, every time I’d write something I’d read it and ask myself, does this flow in the way I normally speak? And if it didn’t, I’d editing it and start taking word out and smoothing it out."
Work on the book went warp speed this past year. In late 2013, he and his partner of 14 years parted ways; Andoe relocated from the Bay Area to New York to, as he puts it, "get his head together," during his grieving process. He was offered a director-level job in Philadelphia, and had to weigh out in his mind what was more important to him: finishing the book, or staying on the east coast? He says he knew in his gut that taking the job would push the book off another four or five years down the road—or derail it completely.
"What I really cared about was finishing it—this was my unfinished business," he says. "So I turned down the job in Philadelphia, downshifted, and came back to St. Louis. I lived in a very modest living situation just to finish it—I worked nonstop." At one point, he sent what he felt was a finished draft to a writer friend in Palm Springs.
"I was thrilled with it," Andoe says. "I was getting good feedback, and he was the one who gave me the harsh critique. He said 'There’s way too many characters here, and not enough of a unifying theme.' I went through the whole seven stages of grief—I was in denial. I thought it was perfect," he chuckles. "I was upset, then I was depressed, and then finally I just accepted I needed to make some changes. So I pulled a third out of the book to use for later. I think it’s now so much of a better finished product, and when people praise the book now, every single time I think about how grateful I am for his critique."
That huge section chronicled his growing-up years in Tulsa, Oklahoma, including coming out in the pre-Internet Bible belt. "You had to do your legwork. You couldn’t just sit at home and figure it out in safety," he says. "You had to hit the streets and figure out what was happening. I decided those stories are better served as their own free-standing book, which I plan to work on after this."
For now, his subject is St. Louis—a city he writes about with tenderness, clarity, and of course, humor.
"If St. Louis was a movie character, she’d be Norma Desmond from Sunset Boulevard," Andoe says dryly. "She was once the biggest star the world had ever known, and she’s very elegant, dramatic, and regal. She simultaneously celebrates yet mourns her glorious past. She rattles around in a big, beautiful mansion, and it’s just her, and when you look at some of our grand structures there’s hardly anyone in them sometimes…there’s so many parallels. St. Louis is a very haunted city, and exceedingly private. I speak on how Kansas City really plays up their mob history as part of their branding, and we do the opposite."
Though perhaps the witty frankness of Delusions of Grandeur will help us pause and reconsider that. Maybe it's time to celebrate our gangsters, among other things? Ready or not, Andoe's given St. Louis its close-up, but with a far less cynical eye than Billy Wilder. As Dr. Patrick Dilley at SIU-E put it: "London had Dickens; San Francisco had Maupin; we have Andoe!"
Chris Andoe reads from Delusions of Grandeur this Saturday, August 22 at STL-Style, 3159 Cherokee, from noon to 3 p.m. For more info, go to the Facebook event page.
