Emily Books

Jul 17

“The Story Never Seems To End”: A Quick Q&A With Martha Grover

Martha Grover is the author of our June pick, One More For The People. Buy it! Or if you’ve already read it, find out about the continuing adventures of Martha by subscribing to her long-running zine, Somnambulist.

One More For The People

1. How did the zine become a book? What changed or was left out?

The zine became a book because Michael Heald, my publisher, found one of my Somnambulist zines in the public library here in Portland. (Portland Librarians rock and have always been very supportive of the zine community.) He got in contact with me and we talked about doing a book. The process was as follows: I gave him a bunch of stuff to look at and then together we whittled it down to a book-sized manuscript. Almost everything in the book was from an issue of Somnambulist Zine I had published over the last decade. A couple pieces were from my blog and then a couple had never been published anywhere.

2. How does your family feel about your zine and book? Have they read them?

Cheese Clerk

an excerpt from One More For The People by Martha Grover

I work in the cheese department of a busy, upscale grocery store. We sell around $3,000 worth of cheese a day. If you figure the average price of cheese is about $5 a piece, that means we sell 600 pieces of cheese a day. I personally cut, wrap, price, and label about a quarter of that. That means I wrap about 150 pieces of cheese a day. Multiply that by the four days a week I work and you get the figure of 600 pieces a week.

I can do this work with my eyes closed. I can cut, slice, and wrap cheese with the precision of a machine. While I work, it’s possible for me to hold long conversations with actual people, or if no one else is around, the people in my mind. Customers come in with their cheese problems, questions, and complaints. Sometimes I can help them.

“Can I help you find a cheese?” I say.

“I’m having friends over tonight and I want this certain cheese but I don’t remember the name,” the woman replies.

“Can you describe it?”

“Well, let me think … it was Italian and was kind of like a Parmesan but fruitier.”

“Was it the Piave Vecchio?”

“Yes! That was it.”

And I feel good. But often I can’t help customers—we don’t have what they’re looking for. Or, as is often the case, they don’t really know what they want. Something sharp and spreadable? (It doesn’t exist.) Something to use in place of a Cheddar in macaroni and cheese, but that has flavor—but not too much flavor? I sigh and try to be helpful. But sometimes I can only point them in the general direction of a good melter (Fontina, Gruyere) or something their in-laws from Michigan will like (Cotswold?). They leave, not dissatisfied necessarily, but confused, almost melancholy.