Louisiana Book Festival preview: Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain

Some might argue that the sounds of the ’70s didn’t get their proper respect until writers Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain released Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk. The book chronicles the rise and fall of punk rock music with anecdotes from musicians such as Lou Reed, Iggy Pop and Joey Ramone.

The book is a must-read for anyone remotely interested in rock music. Even when it’s hard to believe.

“I thought they were hysterical,” McNeil says about his reaction to some of the stories compiled in Please Kill Me. “It was just like another night on the scene for me.”

Now the duo is back with a new book, Dear Nobody: The True Diary of Mary Rose. These are real diary entries from a teenager who is dealing with everything from a battle with cystic fibrosis and habitual drug use to abuse. McNeil heard about the diary through his daughter’s friend. When he got his hands on the material, he sent it to his writing partner right away.

“I read five pages, and I couldn’t believe how good the writing was,” McCain says. “He knew my answer to working on this would be ‘Yes.'”

McCain and McNeil combed through 400 pages of entries written by Mary Rose. More than half of the material was fiction. The duo decided to focus on the non-fiction. McNeil wanted to publish the diary because he had always been upset that the last major diary published, the ’70s release Go Ask Alice, turned out to be fiction.

“I’ve been looking for the real, diary-like story,” he says. “We both thought this story was so all-encompassing. She packed a lifetime into these two years, and it has these universal themes going through it.”

The writers only added “Dear nobody” to the beginning of each diary entry and one line where Mary Rose reveals she has cystic fibrosis.

“We wanted to present her life as she did—honest and sincere,” McNeil says.

Editing the manuscript was key. McNeil says he and McCain went through 150 drafts. It didn’t help that the entries weren’t in chronological order, either. The duo had to investigate police and hospital reports for time stamps.

Much like Please Kill Me, Dear Nobody occupies a space that’s not based in today’s 140-character, social media-dominated world. Mary Rose’s life was set in the mid-to-late ’90s, right before the computer communication boom. McCain says had the diary been written a couple years later, the book wouldn’t exist.

“She might have had a blog, rereading and editing it, thinking ‘Do I want to say this?'” she says.

The writers are currently at work on new projects. McNeil says he is working on a new oral history that starts with The Beach Boys and ends with the Manson family. He wants to go back and do a corrective on the ’60s.

“It’ll either be a masterpiece or a complete and utter failure,” he says.

McNeil and McCain will discuss Dear Nobody at 11:45 a.m. at the State Library’s second floor meeting room as part of the 11th annual Louisiana Book Festival in downtown Baton Rouge Saturday. They will also sign copies of the book at 12:45 p.m. at the B&N Jr. Tent. Get more information.