“He Trusted the Author”: Remembering Giancarlo DiTrapano
Hell’s Kitchen, July 2012 (photo by Brooks Sterritt)By James Yeh, originally published in the Believer (2021)
Independent publishing is, I don’t have to tell you, kind of a shit place: first you lose your time, and then you waste your money, to paraphrase artist and ex-publisher Paul Chan, who would know. But it’s people like Gian—otherwise known as Giancarlo DiTrapano, the intrepid editor, publisher, writer, rabble-rouser, and West Virginian who founded New York Tyrant magazine and its imprint Tyrant Books and succumbed prematurely, monstrously last week at forty-seven—who remind us why it matters. A lot of people online have mentioned how cool he was (which he was, effortlessly, real-deal) and how generous (which he also was) and charitable (that too)—all rarities, of course, in this life and this industry, especially.
As a cofounding editor of a—is the word rival?—literary outfit, Gigantic, we didn’t always align on aesthetics or approach, but we certainly shared more than most, particularly, our mutual interest in language and ever-belief in literature’s unimpeachable value, despite all the spent time and blown money, and I could never knock the full-throated way Gian stumped for his writers, and the integrity with which he carried himself and brought to all his projects. Tyrant Books’ ultimate success, without bowing to orthodox industry norms, was a joy to behold.
Like the best editors, Gian was someone who brought a lot of interesting people and ideas together and then spun the parts into something greater—more forceful, bold, memorable. But he was so much more than that, too: a mensch and a sweetheart and a tireless advocate for so many outside the traditional walks of literary life. He was unabashedly not to the manner born, but through sheer will claimed a place in contemporary American letters for himself and others he felt compelled to usher in, the unloved, underdogs and outsiders. Gian wasn’t a gatekeeper so much as a gatecrasher, the benevolent trickster who sneaks past security, then slices a hole in the fence to let a bunch of others in, because why shouldn’t we be so generous? He was the grand Dionysian older sibling who hipped teenage you to the best books, art, bands—then got you drunk when your parents were out of town. Maybe he checked in on you the next morning, maybe you checked in on him. Either way, you felt lucky, affectionated upon.
Gian was, it must be said, a world-class shit-stirrer. Our first emails, from 2010, had to do with the storied editor and lecturer Gordon Lish, arguably a spiritual forebear to Gian, whose marathon writing classes our friend found “interesting as hell,” gushing: “Never witnessed another human being so passionate about writing and who can talk about it for eight hours and be entertaining. It’s a spectacle.”
Other parts of the class, though, Gian liked less. “A lot of the lecture is about how to live (kinda),” he griped. “For example, he has this thing where he says, ‘If a car pulls up and the door opens and someone tells you to get in, then get in.’
“And I’m like, ‘No shit.’ I don’t need any more of that kind of advice.”
That was Gian: He got in. Nobody had to teach him that; he knew.
Here is another email he sent me, also from 2010, which I will include in its entirety:
Hey Yeh,
What’s up? You heard from those Vice faggots yet? I just finished Richard Yates and loved it so I’m doing a small post for them online. I made it clear to Thomas that if this were to any way interfere with them publishing your interview (like too much Tao) that they should please not publish my piece. Just wanted to run that by you so you don’t think I’m cock-blocking you when the post comes out. Cool? Anyway, wow, I really liked Richard Yates.
What are your weekend plans?
G
This too seemed to me classic Gian: profane, outré, beyond tender. Moreover, there was also an uncommon respect, a generosity of spirit that guided him—Gian always sided with the little guy; that interview, if accepted, would have paid far more than I’d ever been paid for my writing. And here was Gian, willing to pull his own piece, so he wouldn’t “cock-block” mine. Who else would have been willing to offer that, and to offer it so freely?
Writing these words I find myself thinking of, of all things, Game of Thrones, which Gian must have despised for countless reasons, number-one its mass appeal, which he, like a true Gen X-er, instinctively distrusted. But there’s this one character, played by Pedro Pascal, an irresistible debaucherous stylish prince, lover of beauty, sex, and partying, who you aren’t sure is necessarily noble or even serious. But then, when it’s a matter of life or death, he of all people is the one who steps up. “I will be your champion,” he declares with drama and courage. That was like Gian—for so many of us, Gian was that prince, and that champion.
Gian also knew how to throw a good party (another rarity in this industry). In this spirit, we asked thirty-three writers, editors, and friends to share their remembrances of him. They include writers he published, Tyrant colleagues, old friends, former students, and fellow travelers in the literary world. Here’s what they had to say. A livestream service, held by Gian’s family, will begin on April 6 at 1:50 PM.
—James Yeh
He Would Give You the Last Fuck off His Back
NADXIELI NIETO: I met Gian sometime in the late ’90s or early 2000s. Hard to remember. Those years were a blur, and frankly, it feels like I’ve always known him. He had that way about him. I loved him immediately. He felt like an essential element. He gave absolutely no fucks and all the fucks in the world. He would give you the last fuck off his back. He would divide that fuck into three fucks and make sure there was enough to feed everyone at the fucking table. In my many lean years in indie publishing, he was always someone I could turn to. When I was hungry and needed extra cash, he would find a publishing odd job for me (proofreading or calling up bookstores for Eugene Marten’s Firework). Undoubtedly, the men of indie lit will remember the loudest; he had a way of making everyone feel special and, well, cooler. But what drew me to him was how much of myself he encouraged me to be with him. He did that for women. He encouraged us to be as big as we could, as big and weird and loud as we wanted. It sounds like a small thing, but it’s not something most men are good at, never mind editors. When he started New York Tyrant, I was running a reading series called PEEL out of a Brooklyn bar with a mutual friend, Ellen Moynihan, and we hosted his first readings. And so began the literary side of our friendship. He published my first prose poems in the third issue of Tyrant, still some of my favorites. I was young and unsure of my voice, newly in an MFA program. I came back with a new version of one of the poems edited within an inch of its life by a professor. Should we use this one? I asked—the “official” one, the MFA-sanctified one. Do you like it? he asked. No, I said, I like the first version. And so we ran that one. A small thing, sure, but that was Gian. He was both extremely opinionated and extremely interested in your opinion (fuck the establishment). He loved and championed writers, especially us weirdos, in a way that was and is exceptional. He was the best person to argue with. A true ballbreaker. As I look back over decades worth of emails, the most common feature is our shared affection for scatalogical humor. We called each other fartface, and ugly, and talked about ripping big ones in each other’s faces. He knew I hated to be called Nodge, and so he called me that relentlessly, and I loved it.
A Hero of Feeling
SAM LIPSYTE: I don’t really have anything artful to say about the life or death of this unique man. I’m just very sad. I met him about twenty years ago at a workshop I taught in Queens. I don’t think he came to many of the sessions, and I’m not sure he actually wrote anything, but we hit it off right away, both of us confessing to too much knowledge of certain Steely Dan lyrics. He seemed to me from another planet, a better, kinder, bolder one. It’s fun to romanticize his excesses, but over the years he told me about his struggles, and I saw pain in his eyes. I never knew him well enough to know what really drove him, but the scope of what he accomplished—as a publisher, an editor, as the person who carved out an abundant space in which so much superior writing (and conversation about writing) could flourish—isn’t really even understood yet. Sometimes he seemed like a shambling—if stylish—mess, but he saw and heard everything, at the frequencies that mattered, with phenomenal clarity. He loved language viscerally, the way you would expect somebody who devotes a life to literature would, and so few in that world do. He was a hero of feeling. He was also a very sweet and funny guy, whose glow could obliterate the general shittiness. Once, at a bar, this person, some friend of Gian, got in my face and started hassling me, insulting me, my work. Gian walked over and pulled his friend away. He came back and put an arm around my shoulder, comforted me in my jangled state. Others might have made excuses, or spoken ill of their friend, or tried to spin things. But Gian just smiled. “It’s OK, man,” he said. “He just really doesn’t like you at all.” Something about the way he said this filled me with an inexplicable golden warmth. It was Gian’s warmth, which never shrank from the truth, but wouldn’t surrender to its coldness, either.
Read the full article at The Believer.