Matt's Writing

Matt Werner, writer & editor

East Bay Express reviews Oakland in Popular Memory

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“It wasn’t until college that Matt Werner began to truly understand the meaning of his hometown. He remembers it vividly: He was at UC Berkeley, chatting with someone at a party, when she asked where he was from. He told her Oakland, which was met with an ‘Oakland? We don’t go into Oakland.'” -Ellen Cushing

Read the full article “Oakland, in Its Own Words” by Ellen Cushing on the East Bay Express website.

Purchase Oakland in Popular Memory on Amazon.com or directly from Thought Publishing.

Michael Chabon’s Real and Imagined Storefronts

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Jorge Luis Borges wrote fake book reviews of books that didn’t exist. Michael Chabon has taken this postmodern literary conceit beyond Borges. Chabon has not only written fan fiction based on his own writing, but he’s created stores from his fiction in real-life. Take for example Diesel bookstore in Oakland which was converted to Brokeland Records.

This fictional record store has replaced the independent bookstore from September 7-14 to correspond with the release of Michael Chabon’s latest novel, Telegraph Avenue. Chabon opening Brokeland Records goes beyond book marketing. It’s an interesting addition to postmodern literary experimentation, in that it raises the question, What happens when a fictional store you’re writing about, becomes real? And this isn’t the first store to be created from Chabon’s fictional work. The Escapist comic bookstore on Claremont Avenue in Berkeley is named after Chabon’s comic creation The Escapist from The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay.

Read the full post on the Diesel Book Store blog