MENO, Joe 1975-

PERSONAL: Born 1975. Education: Attended Columbia College Chicago.

ADDRESSES: Home—Chicago, IL. Office—Columbia College Chicago, 624 South Michigan Ave., Room 1200 O, Chicago, IL. Agent—c/o Publicity Director, St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Ave., New York, NY 10010. E-mail—jmeno@colum.edu.

CAREER: Novelist. Columbia College Chicago, Chicago, IL, professor of fiction writing. Publisher of fiction zine Sleepwalk; worked as flower delivery truck driver and art therapy teacher at a juvenile detention center.

WRITINGS:

Tender as Hellfire (novel), St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1999.

How the Hula Girl Sings: A Novel, ReganBooks (New York, NY), 2001.

Contributor to literary magazines, including Other Voices and Tri-Quarterly, and to the Playboy Web site.

SIDELIGHTS: While still in his twenties novelist Joe Meno has already published two books and was labeled by some critics as a promising young author. A graduate of Columbia College Chicago, Meno wrote his debut novel, Tender as Hellfire, when he was just twenty-four. Two years later he published How the Hula Girl Sings. In both novels, Meno experiment with language, trying to keep the dialogue of his characters as close to everyday language as possible. The result, as some critics have noted, is a narration that includes numerous expletives and vulgarities. Meno explained this facet of his work in an interview with Melanie Masserant of the Columbia Chronicle, a Columbia College Chicago publication. "What I've learned in my short career as a writer is that taking big risks can have payoffs. I'm a firm believer in thinking big. It's important not to limit yourself as a writer." Meno also told Masserant that the writers he admires, such as Toni Morrison, Hubert Selby, Jr., and William Faulkner, have also used natural language in their writings.

Meno caught a professional break when an Atlantic Monthly editor discovered his manuscript for Tender as Hellfire while Meno was still an undergraduate at Columbia. The book, which a contributor for Kirkus Reviews called a "rambling and oddly good-natured debut," is narrated by an eleven-year-old boy named Dough Lunt. Dough, along with his brother Pill Bug, who is two years older, must move from their home in Duluth, Minnesota, after their truck-driving father is killed in an accident while smuggling a truckload of illegal cigarettes. The boys move to a trailer park home in the fictional plains town of Tenderloin. The story is the boys' coming-of-age tale, as they deal with the many trials and tribulations of living in the fictional trailer park. For instance, their funny names immediately put them at odds with the local kids, and they have to prove themselves physically on numerous occasions. They also have to deal with their mother's eccentric behavior, especially her communal sex life, while coming to grips with their own developing sexual desires. Despite the difficulties, the boys have each other to lean on, and they learn valuable lessons about themselves and life in general. "We had learned we didn't have a damn thing to lose, and no matter what we were caught doing, nothing could bring you down lower than the sad state you were already in," Dough declares at one point in the story.

Meno also created a number of secondary characters whom he paints with an extremely fine brush. Joy Malinowski of the Philadelphia City Paper called Tender as Hellfire "a satisfying story, with its small antiheroes navigating proudly through any number of confusing, humiliating and horrifying situations." Likewise, a contributor for Publishers Weekly thought the book features "some of the liveliest characters just this side of believable that one is apt to meet in a contemporary novel." James Klise of Booklist called Meno "a writer with promise."

Several critics thought Meno improved upon his first effort with How the Hula Girl Sings, a tale about an ex-con named Luce Lemay who tries to pick up the fractured pieces of his life after being released from prison. Lemay has served three years in a state penitentiary for running over and killing a three-yearold child while fleeing from a liquor store he had just robbed. When he returns to his hometown of La Harpie, Illinois, "a place of quiet villainy and secret lust," Lemay finds that not only does his old girlfriend want nothing to do with a former convict, but the entire town continues to hold a grudge against him because of his past.

Meno sympathizes with Lemay's character, and he wants the reader to do the same. As the author explained to Masserant, the idea for How the Hula Girl Sings came from two separate experiences in his life. In 1999 Meno drove a flower delivery truck, and he was always haunted with the fear of running over a child and having to carry the burden of guilt associated with such a tragedy. The second experience was when Meno taught art therapy at a detention center for juvenile sex offenders. Despite approaching the youths with initial prejudices, he said he ultimately felt some compassion for them. "Doing creative writing with them, I realized that it's a lot easier to be angry at these people and to think of them as nonhuman than to be aware of their humanity," he told Masserant. "In a sense, they are completely haunted by what they have done. They are haunted by the sense of their future and are stuck in time by this event in their lives. They are having an impossible time forgiving themselves."

In the book Lemay fits this description—a man continuously at odds with himself and society for what he did in his past: "They gave me back my full Christian name and my own clothes and three miserable old Viceroy Golds," Lemay says when leaving prison. "They gave me back my full name and the life I had lost, but still that baby carriage rolled on cold through my head. It rocked and wavered right past me as I wandered out of those penitent iron gates and back to being a sovereign man." Lemay finds some hope when he begins to romance a waitress named Charlene, but the townspeople, including her father and former fiancé, do not approve of their relationship. When their narrow-mindedness pushes the townspeople to take violent action against Lemay, he is forced to confront his own violent past he is trying to run from. To make matters worse, a man named Toreador is set on seeing Lemay dead because Lemay beat him up while the two were in prison together. In the violent climax, Lemay finds out just how far people can take a grudge.

How the Hula Girl Sings. received positive reviews. Masserant felt Meno maintains "his position as a poignant voice in fiction." A contributor for Publishers Weekly thought the novel "should bolster Meno's reputation" as a writer, noting that "Meno has a poet's feel for small-town details . . . and he's a natural storyteller with a talent for characterization." "Fans of hard-boiled pulp fiction will particularly enjoy this novel," wrote Dowling Brendan, reviewing the book for Booklist.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, March 1, 1999, James Klise, review of Tender as Hellfire, p. 1156; August, 2001, Dowling Brendan, review of How the Hula Girl Sings, p. 2089.

Kirkus Reviews, January 15, 1999, review of Tender as Hellfire, p. 91.

Library Journal, October 15, 1999, Dan Bogey, review of Tender as Hellfire, p. 132; March 1, 1999, Jim Dwyer, review of Tender as Hellfire, p. 110.

Publishers Weekly, January 18, 1999, review of Tender as Hellfire, p. 326; July 23, 2001, review of How the Hula Girl Sings, p. 47.

OTHER

Columbia Chronicle Online,http://www.ccchronicle.com/ (November 26, 2001), Melanie Masserant, "Faculty Author to Read Excerpts from Dark Novel."

On Milwaukee,http://www.onmilwaukee.com/ (September 7, 2001), "Chicago's Meno Reads from Edgy New Novel."

Philadelphia City Paper,http://www.citypaper.net/ (June 17, 1999), Joy Malinowski, review of Tender as Hellfire.*