Publishing's Feral Child

Adam Parfrey sheds light on the dark sides of life.

Brian Doherty from the November 2002 issue

(Page 2 of 4)

Extreme Islam was produced primarily to get across an idea that wasn't disseminated widely in American culture -- to show how strong the [fundamentalist Muslim] belief system is and how unmanageable it is, considering there are tens or possibly hundreds of millions of people sharing these ideas. America has to come to grips with the intensity of their beliefs. Any conflict with them will not be resolved by simply saying we're great guys, we believe in democracy.

I believe Osama bin Laden, if you examine the Koran, is closer to the Koran and the prophet Mohammed's beliefs than the hope that Islam can be democratic. It's not a very democratic belief system. To say that it is comes out of a wish that has nothing to do with Islam. It comes from the idea that everything good has to do with democracy or democratic ideals. Well, there are different ideals at work in the world, and we need to come to grips with that.

Reason: People sometimes make comparisons between fundamentalist Islam and fundamentalist Christianity. Maybe the ideas in Extreme Islam are no more representative of Islam than fundamentalist Christians are of Western culture.

Parfrey: There is something to that, I think. You're talking about three monotheistic religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. There is a belief by some Christians and Jews that Islam is "undeveloped." That's what they say when they are being nice about it. They say that Christianity and Judaism have had many more years to "progress." I do think that all fundamentalisms have something in common. Each one believes in the deficiency of other beliefs and the ascendancy of their own beliefs over everyone else's.

The situation in east Jerusalem, at the Al Aqsa shrine, indicates this. The Al Aqsa shrine in east Jerusalem is thought by Jews and some Christians to be the site of the Temple of Solomon. Let's say the Orthodox Jews and Zionist Christians actually do what they wish and destroy the Islamic shrine and then rebuild the Temple of Solomon. You're talking about a world war situation these people are fooling around with. But they would wish for it to happen. That's what's scary. It's not like they don't care -- they want it! I discussed that with a Time magazine writer, who ended up writing a story that discusses that specific problem. It's watered down a bit from what I had said to the writer, but nonetheless it's a very disturbing situation in the Middle East regarding the Temple Mount, and these democratic well-wishers just refuse to talk about it.

Reason: How do you choose what to publish?

Parfrey: The intent is to interest me personally. It's a small business, and I started it by thinking that things I was interested in would also interest others. It's fully dependent on sales. There are no grants, no awards, no rich daddies. It's totally dependent on word of mouth also, because I can't afford to be put up at the front table at Barnes and Nobles or Borders. That sort of placement costs too much for me.

Before starting Feral House, I worked for a small avant-garde publishing house in New York City. The way they worked was to get grants from academia and elsewhere, and that kept them going. My interests are considered offbeat, weird, whatever you call it. People accuse me of being sensationalist, and I'm not sure how to react to that. Some of my interests are sensational, I suppose, but they are interesting. Certainly there are very provocative things in some of the books I publish, but there are also things with academic credibility as well, some even written by college professors.

I realized that if I went the grant route, my interests would have to coincide with material that was less penetrating of people's emotions. I couldn't have people saying, "Oh God, what's that horrible thing?" I'd rather have the bottom line question be, "Will enough people buy that book?" rather than, "Will a few people in the ascendancy of academic culture be offended by it?"

Reason: It might be said that Feral House has an unsavory obsession with evil: Satanism, serial killers, Nazis....

Parfrey: Some books, not the majority of books, but some. Major New York presses do a lot more on Nazism than I ever have.

Reason: What do you say to people who think you concentrate on inappropriate topics?

Parfrey: Like books about the Church of Satan and brutal crimes? There are things that are certainly dark that I've published, but I published a book on bubblegum music too (Bubblegum Music Is the Naked Truth). My publishing books by and about Anton LaVey [the founder of the Church of Satan] was a business decision. Here's a guy whose book The Satanic Bible sold over a million copies -- and he had other, out-of-print books. I knew that I could begin a press and rely on those as backlist titles. And I was right. It was a good decision to make. Whether that tarred and feathered me -- that was a choice I had to make and it was worth it to me. As far as true crime, I've been interested in and done interesting books in that genre. It's still a small percentage of the books I do, but I have done some pretty amazing books in that field.

Reason: You've also done a fair number of strictly political books recently as well.

Parfrey: I was interested at one time in doing a politically oriented press called "None of the Above." I'm not a Democrat, Republican, Libertarian -- I don't like joining parties, though I sympathize with libertarianism as a political philosophy more than any other. The political books I publish are beyond parties.