Steve Almond's (Not that You Asked) will be sold in bookstores starting today. He will be reading at Brookline Booksmith on Thursday, September 13, at 7:00 pm.

Almond spoke with Bostonist right after Karl Rove resigned, so we caught him when he really raging against The Man. He resigned from Boston College when BC invited Condoleezza Rice to speak at their commencement, so he didn't mince words when it came to Rove or any other politicians out there.

Almond's new book of essays, (Not that You Asked), addresses way more than politics. Almond covers just about everything regarding his adventures and misadventures in life, which involve Sta-Hard Gel, chest waxing, Hannity & Colmes, Vonnegut, and fatherhood. He covered politics, fatherhood, and what he's reading - but we stayed away from the chest-waxing business.

What is your take on the Rove resignation?

Well, I think it's perfect. In the sense of, if you're Karl Rove, it's brilliant. These guys are such a bunch of crooks and have been chipping away at basic notions of fairness, decency, and self sacrifice and so forth for so long that the fact that we are still standing for the administration is the outrage. Rove just doesn't register for me at this point. I'm so far beyond, grief-stricken, at the fact that the electorate is still buying this message of hate and mistrust and this demented patriotism that is sadistic and crazy.

I want to be proud to be an American. My daughter is an American. But it's impossible now. In the book I talk about how the Bush presidency is the sports presidency. In that essay, I have a little note that I am increasingly seeing the right wing or what stands for the right wing at the moment--it's really a sports mentality. Whatever it takes to win. Just win, baby! And I think this is true of the Democrats to a distressing degree as well. It doesn't have anything to do with morality anymore, it's all politics. It's like me trying to talk with Sean Hannity. It's all politics, it's all sports, it's a game, and who's gonna win. It's a shame culture mentality.

More about Democrats, Republicans, babies, and books after the jump! Lots more, in fact. Image of book cover from Amazon.

Democratic candidates were asked the other day about gay marriage, and their response should have been "Anybody who has a problem with gay marriage is a bigot. It's wrong, okay?" Have we learned nothing from the past 20 years of Republican and Democrat politicians making stupid decisions in their personal and sexual lives and having a separate role from that, which is their role as elected officials. Have we learned nothing about that?

People are allowed to do and fuck whatever they want, as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else. Anybody who has a problem with that needs to go to a psychiatrist or needs to have some kind of counseling to work out why other people's genitals are so important in their marriage, why all those gay genitals keep poking into these fine, upstanding heterosexual marriages. [Ed. note - Almond was making these statements long before Larry Craig allegedly tried to get some in a men's restroom.]

And what of these asshole coward politicians - [impersonates unnamed Democrat politican] "Well I believe …" Well, they try to say the political expedient thing, not bigotry on any basis is wrong but, well, you know, civil unions and blah blah blah. It's like nobody has any moral courage in the world anymore. It's just despicable. And a guy like Rove - what a nightmare for you to try to transcribe this! So be it. It's just how my mind works. A guy like him is just the apotheosis of politics as sport. Politics as how do you win, what is the nastiest, meanest thing you can do or set of feelings within the electorate that you can exploit in order to win. Who are we going to hate? Well, they got lucky. They got these terrorists who were genuine villains. That sort of wore off and they went, "Let's get back to the gay people. Let's get back to the immigrants." As long as they can't fight back too well, let's go after them.

So, if you could run Massachusetts for a day, what would you do?

I think I would just spend the entire day talking about the way in which Americans increasingly have lost touch with their basic morality. It's not like these ideas are particular to a political party. The idea that love is a revolutionary force is the fucking foundation of the New Testament. It's like, no, you will be merciful of people's weakness and iniquity, you don't prey on it for political advantage, you try to understand how somebody's heart got broken and why they are now behaving in a way that is mean, hateful, resentful, or aggrieved, or whatever it is. And that is relevant to civic life and political life, even though now, increasingly, the reason that Americans are so asleep morally is that there's no figure [who inspires us].

I was begging for, coming out of the Condoleezza Rice nonsense, where is [the one] who says, "This is indecent what has happened to our democracy. No more of this hate-mongering. We can't have it anymore. People are going to have to live up to the better angels of their nature." That's the Lincolnian Formulation.

So I think I would try to use a day of public speaking to go to an inner-city school and say the problem with our school is that people don't want to hear that we need taxes to support them because education is the center of opportunity. The great American Dream that has become a myth but what should be the central and driving inspirational idea of this country. No matter who you are or where you come from, you have the opportunity to get educated and raise yourself up and become a citizen of worth, of moral worth. And if it's important to you, then financial worth.

I would use it as an opportunity to bang the Bible for a day - the Bible of "stop being so fucking mean and stop treating the electorate like they're infants!" The American people, Massachusetts or Texas, have pretty good values. They're just not being asked in a forceful and compassionate way to act on those values. If a politician had the guts to say, "We need to raise taxes for this reason, we need to have a good public education system. We need to make sure there's health care for all the citizens." So we're gonna have to raise taxes. No more of this bullshit about, well, nobody's gonna raise taxes because they'll lose the elections if they say so - just say it. "I'm gonna raise taxes because there are things that we agree are important, okay?"

That would be too easy.

Well, if I was only in charge for a day, I wouldn't have to worry about getting re-elected the next day. But what strikes me is how cowardly these politicians are. They're so worried. The idea of you've gotta win the game has affected them. Kennedy said, "Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country." That didn't feel like he said it, like a bunch of bullshit rhetoric that a politician says. I think he believed it, and I think people really believed him, that there was an idea of sacrifice that really mattered.

And there was a civic culture that said, "That's right, it's not just about me. Some of my responsibility as an American citizen is about what I have to offer, to give away, not to grab for myself and protect at the point of a sword." That idea of the American Spirit has been choked out. It feels like that to me because I hear the dominant discourse in some way or another being "Get away from me! Fuck you! What do you want? If you give me any trouble, we're going to come down on you with the wrath of God and all our artillery. Get off my property, don’t take my taxes, government's the bad guy. Shit, how did we get so mean so quick?

Is there any politician out there who is inspiring?

[The late Minnesota Senator Paul] Wellstone was, but he didn’t have a big national following. Really, I don't think they make it far enough in the political world. How far would I make it in the political world as a pot-smoking, pornographic …

Not very far.

Not very far. I see this with Obama who gave that great speech. And everyone said, "Obama, Obama." They were hungering after that inspirational moral figure, that figure of moral courage and leadership. And I hear him now - what the hell? That guy got to Congress, got to the Senate, the first thing he should have said was, "This thing in Iraq is a travesty. It's a mess. Too many Americans - forget Iraqis, which we shouldn't but OK forget 'em - too many Americans are dying, too many are being psychologically brutalized. It's expensive, it's wasteful, it's not serving any purpose, we gotta get out." That's the first thing he should have been saying when he got to the Senate. He didn't say that at all. Go along to get along. Some handler's got a hold of him, or maybe he himself has this within him, and expedience started to take over. Not moral courage, but expedience. I was sort of excited about him early on, and now that's gone.

My wife supports Hillary Clinton because she's a woman. I would love to see a woman, I would love to see a homosexual midget woman be elected - whatever. Who cares? As long as they have a kind of sense of decency that they are willing to say, "Okay, maybe this isn't going to get me re-elected, but we have got to be kinder as a culture." For too long, the right has been in ascendance, and it's not as if they're being replaced by a bunch of people who are saying, "Gee, the way Bush wanted to do it was vilifying, and scaring, and manipulating, and that was all wrong." We'd better find a different way. I don't hear the Democrats saying, "Whatever Bush said to do, we gotta do the opposite, okay?" We've got to grow up. We've got to be good parents, not children. And what they do - these politicians, they appeal to the child electorate and just infantilize them. Rescue me from the horrible pedantic place I am in!

You got it. You just mentioned parenting. You write a "babydaddy" column for babble.com, a website for "New Urban Parents," and you dedicate a section of your book to the many ways a parent can kill a baby. So what about parenting and being a grownup?

"New Urban Parent" is just a marketing term. Everybody's just a parent. And that's the beautiful thing about becoming a parent. It's fundamental. It is this thing that people can talk about and try to label or market, but fundamentally it is such an intense emotional experience. You suddenly have this thing - so cute - but totally helpless. A baby can do nothing and can find many ways to die or appear dead that you feel responsible for. That's what I was trying to write about a bit in the book.

I like doing that "babydaddy" because it's like our scrapbook of our first year. We'll get rid of it if we feel like I upset the kid or something, but we want to remember what it was like and what we were preoccupied by and what it feels like. Kids change more from 0 to 1 than they change for the rest of their lives. It is showtime in their consciousness. For a parent, it's profound. She was just basically a dry fetus when she was born. That's how we evolved. Our brains got so big that when we came out we really couldn't do much - can't protect themselves, can't move, can't feed themselves, nothing. Now she is walking around, and the world is her oyster. She's 10 months old, and it feels like she's already been 4 or 5 different little people.

I was writing about the very beginning of that, where it's the first 3 days. And you think somehow that there's some instruction manual - but there isn't! That's the crazy thing!

You mean you didn't try Dr. Spock?

You can read those things, but it's experiential. You can't ever get to a place where you're like, "Oh, okay - the baby is crying, and I found an explanation. It wasn't a, b, c, or d." Who knows what's going on in there? They have only a couple of tools to show you. They can cry, or they can be drowsy and sleepy. They have no way of telling you, and there's no book that can allay all the anxiety that you're gonna feel. You're suddenly trying to adjust - it's a love adjustment - you adjust to suddenly having this new person in your life with all of your adult consciousness. You have a whole set of adult feelings, but kids, they don't have anything. They just go "Waa, waa," they poop, and they sleep.

You were talking about how it is time for the United States to grow up. Do you feel as if that having a child brought you do another level of maturity? Did that make you a grownup?

Probably not. You know what I'm hoping it will make me? I want to be more patient. You can hear how my mind works - which is impatiently. I leap from one thing to the next. One thing you have to be is patient. My wife is so good at this. She is patient with [our daughter] Josephine. I try. I'm trying my best, but she's still got some teaching to do, by which I mean Josephine. It's tough. It's a real challenge for me. They don't tell you in whatever manual you subscribe to that kids can be extraordinarily uninteresting to care for because, at least early on, they don't have a lot of ways of interacting with you. Even now that she's ten months old and utterly fascinating, she will take the socks out of the drawer 10 times. You can put them back in, she'll take them right back out. You're really following after them and trying to keep them from hurting themselves and keep them occupied. They give you smiles, and they laugh, but it's not like the discussion we're having now. You're basically a physical caretaker responsible for being loving and patient. And that should be easier. But it's tough. That's why moms are moms. They're naturally better at it. Dads have to do some growing up in order to be more patient and loving.

I can imagine that moms do some growing up, too.

Absolutely. We're in such a lucky circumstance. When I think about most of the parents of the world, the developing world, imagine if you had that intense feeling of wanting to care for your baby, keep them safe, but you couldn't. And now you think, what is most of the world like? There's a much higher infant mortality rate. You might see your child starve. An illness might take your child before you can do anything about it. That's when I start to go - "We are very lucky to be worried about our anxiety about parenting when a lot of people are worrying about real basic stuff." It's another reason, and Josephine is a big reason for me to be hopefully not horrible and pedantic and go on rants but to really be concerned about what world are we going to be leaving her with. This empire might be able to skate for another 40 years, but it's not for another 80 years. And then Josephine's gonna have kids. You realize that you're part of a continuum.

I'm determined that we think about the next generation as we're making these decisions. "Oh, okay, well, the Iraq War was pretty bad, but no big deal." Well, it is going to be a big deal when all those soldiers have to try to be parents also and they go through whatever they went through in their heads. It is going to make it so much more difficult to try to be parents also, to get all the crazy fear and irrationality and whatever injuries they suffered, physical or emotional - that’s going to play out in the next generation. And it's going to play out for another 60 years because a lot of these guys and women are 19, 20, 21 years old. When I think about that, I think, "That is why we should make Bush go and be in Baghdad for a while and get his ass shot at and maybe get blown up." And all of his rich advisors. Send them over there and make them go through the kind of trauma that these soldiers go through and then tell us that it's worth it somehow. That would never happen. It's only because they have other people going in their stead. Wait. I'm sorry. I'm backing out of the pedantic.

This is kind of related. What are you doing now - you quit BC - so what are you doing now for cash?

This is a way in which I'm trying to grow up. You mentioned, "How are you growing up, pal?" And this is one way in which I'm trying to grow up. My wife is a writer also. Because of the way we met, got married, got pregnant - it happened very fast. That's frequently the case with older fuckups like me, where I'm kind of looking 40 in the eye and going, "You know what? It wasn't everybody else who was the problem all those nights when you were the problem. Get your ass some good therapy and start to make the kind of good compromises that you need to start a family and move into that joyous phase of your life." We're overjoyed to have a child and want to have another one.

So I'm now thinking more about, OK, I'm head of the household. I want my wife to have the opportunity to do her creative work in the same way that I did when I was in my 30s. And I could sit there and work or pretend to work or avoid working until I got sick of avoiding working and finally working for 16 hours a day. For 16 hours a day, I was potentially able to work. I didn’t have any other responsibilities.

My wife is in the circumstance where she graduated from her MFA program, and she should have the right because I stole some time from her. I did it with the best motives in mind. I wanted to have a family. Her creative life - she's had to reallocate resources. I owe it to her to be the breadwinner of the family for the while so we can pay enough to have a babysitter so she can write for at least 2 hours every day, etc., etc. Not only that, but I'm very determined that she is not going to have to take some soul-crushing job just so we can make ends meet. I want to do that. That's on me. That's my responsibility. So I'm hustling, that's the bottom line. You gotta hustle - you really have to figure out what opportunities make sense and live by your wits.

For writers, I've recognized that the world doesn't want my short stories. I can't make a living that way. I'm heartbroken that I can't, but I also recognize that I can't. So that's going to have to be my habit. I'm going to have to find ways to support that habit and to support my family at the same time. I cobble together a lot of things. I try to teach at conferences because I love teaching and I miss it terribly and I miss my students and that relationship, that ability to watch them start to become braver and tell the truth, whether it's fictional or not. I try to find opportunities to teach if I can. I take opportunities that I feel like I can do some interesting work.

Hopefully, I'll get across some important ideas and engage my imagination and make enough money that we can start talking about having a second baby and not have to wind up in the situation like Stephen Crane, the writer. He died, and they asked a friend of his, "What did you think about Stephen Crane? What did he die of?" The friend said, "He died of not having enough money." By which I think he meant he died of the kind of ongoing anxiety and desperation of worrying about how I'm going to support myself and my loved ones. So I'm trying to figure that out and work very hard to make sure that if there's a big economic downturn, we'll be okay because we socked away enough money. How's that going? It's going how it's probably going for you. It's a hustle. You gotta work at it.

Who are you reading now that is inspiring you?

I read the galley of my friend Karl Iagnemma's new novel. He has a beautiful collection of stories called "On the Nature of Human Romantic Interaction." [The Expeditions] is his first novel which will come out in early 2008. I was just lucky enough to read a galley of it, and it's fantastic. It's fascinating because it's a historical novel set in the 1870s in Michigan. It's about an expedition to explore the natural resources of that region, and there are Native Americans to be contended with. It's got a wonderful plot, but what I was fascinated by was that my response to my distress about the current state of America is to go on this rant and quit my jobs and so on and so forth. Go toe to toe with Sean Hannity. But his response, I admire it and look to emulate it if I can shut up for a minute. He looked at what's happening currently and looked back into our history and did a lot of research and crafted a book that is to me about the ambitious, acquisitive nature of the American spirit that has always existed. In other words, we didn't just turn mean. We've always been a voracious, acquisitive culture, so writing about these guys going into unspoiled nature of northern Michigan, at least one of them for the express purpose of figuring out if there's gold and silver and copper in them thar hills is quintessentially American. I love that book. [Like most dads, Almond also gives a shout-out to "The Hungry Caterpillar."]

I'm all done. I am covered!

You're probably covered in my own feculent, pedantic word flow, but do your best!